The word of the day today is frabjous (pronounced frab-jess) and it means delightful or joyous. If you use this in a sentence today, no one will know what the hell you’re talking about, which could be frabjous, depending on your personality.

Green Almond Sour “Amazake” Orgeat

2 cups sliced green almonds

1 cup koji rice

5 cups filtered water

Combine ingredients and sous vide for 15 hours at 135° for 15 hours, puree the whole mess, then leave it out at room temperature for another 24 hours. Strain through a chinois then strain the remaining liquid through a superbag. Once you have the liquid combine it with equal parts by weight sugar and blend on high for two minutes. Voila. By the way, the liquid portion of this smells like absolute shit before you add sugar. It’s really fucking weird and very green.

An almond is considered a stone fruit. Hmm. This whole time I thought it was a nut. Makes some sense I guess, the green version is fuzzy like a peach. So, sorry cherries, you’re no longer the heralds of the season to come. The above recipe is a modified version of the Sour Amazake instructions straight from the book Koji Alchemy by Rich Sich and Jeremy Umansky. It’s on page 115. I’m a little more impatient with it and don’t allow it to fully ferment for the prescribed week. Just the one extra day after the first go. So it isn’t a true amazake but still approaches.

Anyway, the flavor is really whacky, next time I’ll go an extra two days after the initial ferment, and goes well with the grassy funkiness of rhum agricole. I use the above recipe to make any orgeat now as the sour nutty flavor is truly remarkable and instead of regular old orgeat, you’ve now given your cocktail some umami backbone. Yes, even a little bit is important because people will scratch their heads wondering why your cocktails are so much tastier than everyone else’s. Shit, just using fresh juice is a superpower that most bars still aren’t aware of.

I’m still a novice with the koji experimentation but I don’t see many other bartenders dicking around with it at all. It’s quite easy as long as you keep everything clean. The big detail is not to freak out when you first open the jar and take a whiff, especially with the green almond. Have faith that once you combine it with other ingredients, it’ll work out. I’d compare it to fish sauce (not the smell) in that the sum is greater than the parts.