After being postponed due to Corona, mixology.eu‘s own Made in GSA competition took place in Cologne on the 31 VIII 2020. They received 80 applications, and selected 10 bartenders to go to the finals, among those:
- the young Paul Pelzer from Cologne, who rightfully took the first place with his rhymed presentation that had the judges and audience laughing for a full 7 minutes
- Linda Le from Bramberg, who had previously won the Humbel Stork Trophy
- my friend David Golo from Zurich
- Julian Hoy, who wowed me with his composed presentation
- and my humble self
The competition was judged by Thomas Huhn, Marie Rausch and Sigrid Schot, who provided with excellent feedback to the participants. The quality of a competition stands and falls with the judges, and I was very happy with the organiser’s choice.
In terms of drinks, the complete focus on local ingredients was noteworthy: None of the participants used any citrus as a source of acidity, resorting instead to verjus, vermouth or butter milk. I think my contribution was also somewhat of a novelty, being a non-alcoholic drink competing in an alcoholic drinks competition.
While the two first placed drinks where basically split-base variations on Golden Ratio-drinks that I liked, but didn’t think particularly novel, David’s drink stood out to me particularly for its conceptional simplicity and clarity of flavour:
Three Trees is a mix of pear brandy (Humbel’s XB), apple verjus and quince syrup, briefly shaken to wake up the verjus – the idea reminds me a bit of the Trois Pépins from the famous Cidrerie du Vulcain; and it tasted amazing.
I also really liked Linda Le’s drink, which used butter milk and beet distillate to great effect!
My own drink was called Sonnwendfeuer, in reference to the solstice tradition in the alps of Bavaria and Austria, where big fires are lit during the night. I tried to offset the lack of texture of the non-alcoholic gin by adding honey and jam; replicating the alcoholic bite by smoke and the metholated side of the lime blossom honey; and countering the sweetness by a drying finish provided by the tea’s and the verjus’ tannins:
- 55 gr Siegfried non-alcoholic gin
- 40 gr apple verjus, infused with 4 gr of Zhengshan Xiaozhong (smoked black tea) for 3m. This was to conform to the rules of the competition; an overnight cold infusion gives more vibrancy
- 20 gr red currant jam
- 15 gr lime blossom honey
Dissolve honey and jam into verjus (during the competition I had warmed it); and shake once, this drink doesn’t take dilution very well.
