Post #336069 by The Gnomon on Tue, Oct 2, 2007 2:15 PM

On 2007-10-02 13:27, Scottes wrote:
Re: Squeezing. My better half says I have a grip of steel and I can close jars and bottles tighter than the factory. My final almond "mash" after squeezing was basically fist-shaped clumps of dry almond dust which
disintegrated on contact with air. The nylon bag held up wonderfully, whereas cheesecloth would have fallen apart and made a mess.

That's why I'm anxious to try those things. You have to be so careful with cheesecloth 'cause it breaks so easily. You can get heavy duty cheesecloth(I'll dig up the link to a source), but the nylon thing sounds more promising.

Re: Measuring. You've obviously made this several times before, and you have a good idea of how much almond and water to use. For now, I'm going to measure, and record my findings.

Your measurements will be of interest and you'll end up knowing what measurements will fill up a 750ml bottle for example (I use larger clamp stopper bottles and decant into smaller ones). My measurements are pretty exact, but they are not in terms of weight or volume. Level out the mash in a container. Add water until the water level matches the level of the mash.

About the heating process... Key point there! That explains why my last batch came out too dark, too. It seems that the right temperature is "just hot enough to melt the sugar." I can say fairly certainly that you will cook the stuff long before you reduce it noticeably. 2 hours of simmering reduced the mixture by about 10%. Which goes back to the water, I guess, and using the "right" amount.

OK. Maybe the long wait can be considered one of the tedious factors of making orgeat, but at least, it's just waiting and stirring longer. The other tedious aspects are messy chores.

Re: Water. I originally poured in enough water to cover the almonds, by by the next morning the almonds soaked up quite a bit, resulting in a consistency of cold oatmeal. This was because after washing the almonds I dried them by placing them on cookie sheets and throwing them into a 150F oven for 20 minutes, stirred them up, and returned them to the oven for 10 minutes. This resulted in warm (maybe 105F) almonds that were very dry. The very dry almonds did chop very nicely in my mini food-processor. But some of what The Gnomon says means that I will keep a very close eye on this step, stirring frequently, to make sure that I don't cook the almonds. I think a food dehydrator would be perfect, but that adds another day to the process.

I do not dry out the almonds other than to get rid of most of the excess rinse water from rinsing off the almonds from the store (quick evaporation with a small hand-held fan). When I let my almonds and water sit overnight, it's in an airtight container. None of the water evaporates. The almonds remain moist from the time they get their bath to rinse off the store dust until they're fully milked. When I return to it the next day, the level of the liquid is pretty much the same as it was when I left it. Only slightly less, which is why it's better to put a little too much water than too little.

Nice point about the W&N WO - that sounds ideal due to its strength (thus less is needed to preserve) and lack of taste (so as not to change the flavor).

It does have a nice funky (kerosene) flavor when you put it in drinks or drink it straight, but when it becomes part of the orgeat or gets mixed in with other stuff, its characteristic flavor seems to vanish.

Sugar: Table sugar will keep the orgeat nice and white. The evaporated can juice sugar is close, but much much better. Using turbinado is very tasty for sure, but IMHO that's starting to get away from "proper" orgeat. Demerara or muscavado or brown sugars would all be very tasty but getting even further from "proper."

Yep. The white sugar thing is what I believe is used commercially. They might as well. Nobody is stopping them and it's cheaper. I prefer mine to have natural colors. Not "bleached."

As for "proper" orgeat, I guess you mean orgeat that is probably closest to what VJB Jr. used to create his masterpieces. Orgeat, like Bumbo (or any kind of stew), has a basic recipe that is really generic. The variations to the basic recipe tend to be infinitely better (or worse, depending on if you're a good cook or a train wreck) but can all be considered "authentic" as long as they conform to the essential elements.

Once you get through your codification of the basic recipe, I bet you branch out and create a few unique recipes that you'll prefer and use pretty much all the time. It's inevitable. You heard it here first. :)

All nice info, and nice lessons learned. My next batch should be absolutely perfect.
And the nice thing is that even if it isn't perfect it's damned tasty anyway. The stuff I messed up last night is delicious despite the cooking and other mistakes.

Mistakes are often the sources of great new creations. You and I have different agenda. You are trying to nail down a recipe that everyone can turn to when they need to make something that conforms to a generic standard. My insights are to help people make something that is "authentic" and better than what they can buy ready-made. I don't, generally, make two batches exactly the same, though most are similar enough to each other, all are fantastic (unless I royally screw it up due to negligence, which has been known to happen). Both approaches are completely valid and non-adversarial in any way.

I look forward to your findings.

Freakin' spelling got me again.

[ Edited by: The Gnomon 2007-10-02 14:18 ]