Dripping Springs Distillery Tour and Tasting

— Posted inFood, Travel — 2 min read
Mat

Back again today to Dripping Springs Distillery. We had arrived yesterday afternoon at a RV Park in the town of Dripping Springs since last night (Thursday) is the only night they have a Happy Hour. Today we were going on a tour of the distillery which would be followed by a tasting.

small batch stills

The small batch still room. Small batches and multiple distillations is their hallmark.

large still

Large still. The bottling line is in another building. Sorry, got so involved in what the guide was talking about I forgot to take any photos in there. They also have facilities in another location in Dripping Springs.

Tasting

The tours are limited in size. The seven people on our tour made it easy to see and hear everything. Next came a tasting of each of their offerings.

7 bottles

They do no advertising. My wife had been looking for the “perfect” gin for a long time. Every visit to a liquor store she would buy a bottle or two of a gin she hadn’t tried before along with her favorite of the moment. Since that first bottle of Dripping Springs Gin she has never bought another brand except when we are traveling and Dripping Springs can not be found. For me, I was surprised at how smooth their Bourbons were.

cookies

After the tour we sat outside on their patio and enjoyed three cheeseburger sliders and an Electric Lady for she and three chicken street tacos along with a Blackberry Bourbon Smash for me. Those were followed by a fresh baked chocolate chip cookie for each of us.

Dripping Springs Distillery

— Posted inFood, Travel — 1 min read

I’ve posted before about the gin that my other half simply loves. We are once again traveling in our RV, Sophie, and you can guess in which town we are staying for a few days.

Sign
Distillers Bar
Happy wife in front of Distillers Bar
Bar
Inside Distillers Bar. We arrived right at the start of the Thursday night Happy Hour. By the time we left it was very busy.
Wife flight
We opted to each buy a flight to sample something new. Note that she included her old standby, Artisan Gin.
My flight
I opted for the two Bourbons they produce To say the least, we had a great time. For the first time ever at a tasting, we rated everything we tasted as a future buy.

Sophie’s Surge Protector

— Posted inEclectic, Travel — 1 min read

Reinstalled the surge protector in Sophie. It also proves the point that the more times you do something the easier it gets.

Surge Protector wiring
All wired up.
Cover on
The cover in place. Bending over and working down in that location wasn’t easy.
Seat in place
The wooden base and seat cushions back in place.
Display
It’s such a good feeling when everything works!

Mango Margaritas

— Posted inFood — 3 min read

I had always preferred the traditional lime margarita, but that changed when we spent time in Mexico last fall. My wife had a mango margarita at the suggestion of a waiter. It took a couple of more visits to restaurants before she convinced me to try one. It was okay but nothing to write home about.

Then she started to make them herself. She kept after me to try them and slowly but surely she was winning me over to them. The problem was there was something about her recipe that just wasn’t right for my taste. I’ve always been willing to experiment, and experiment I did. She was making her margaritas by first making a concentrate, then adding ice and water before drinking.

My first task was to come up with what I felt was the correct concentrate. Mango juice, triple sec and tequila were the ingredients. Since Jumex Mango Nectar is readily available I settled in on it. (Other brands are okay but we like Jumex the best.) Since the overwhelming flavor was the mango a few tests and we concluded it made very little difference to our taste buds which brand of tequila or triple sec we used. (By the third margarita it makes absolutely no difference.)

As you can see we make our margarita concentrate in a one quart jar. We weigh out the ingredients precisely each time we make the concentrate. The ingredients are: 16 fluid ounces of mango nectar, 3 fluid ounces of triple sec and 6 fluid ounces of tequila. We keep all the ingredients and the premade margarita concentrate in the refrigerator. It is the ratio of ingredients that is important, 16:3:6 in our case. You can make yours at any ratio you prefer, just keep it consistent once you determine what you like best.

When the time for enjoying a mango margarita arrives, we add 6 fluid ounces of our premade margarita concentrate, 2.5 fluid ounces of ice and 2.5 fluid ounces of water to the glass, stir, and enjoy. Again it is the ratio that is important, not the actual amounts. This gives us both the taste we like which is actually very unusual since our tastes in foods and beverages usually differ with me preferring strong and spicy, with my wife being the opposite. The key to all this is for everyone to experiment to find what they like best, then make it the same way every time. And in case you might be wondering, no margaritas were consumed during the writing of this post.