Catching Up

      Well, it certainly has been a while, hasn’t it? The Apex Shave hasn’t had a new post in sometime, so it is time to catch up. 2021 has been fun so far for us here at Apex Alchemy. Since the last post, we have rereleased Alchemical Romance and Love and Other Drugs in our new soap formula that we switched over to in the middle of last year. In addition to that, we have released Grēn River and Nectar of the Gods. For this blog post, I want to talk about those releases, especially Nectar of the Gods.

         Grēn River was inspired by a soft drink that is locally produced around the Chicago area called Green River. It is a lime-flavored soda that uses real sugar as opposed to High Fructose Syrup. That deep green color is meant to pay homage to the Chicago tradition that takes place around St. Patrick’s Day Weekend where the Chicago River is dyed green. It is a favorite of ours and it gave birth to the idea that we should have a lime scent but with a twist to it. If Apex Alchemy ever does a scent that is common in the market, you can bet we are going to give it a twist to make it more unique amongst the competition.

         Nectar of the Gods was a release 2 years in the making. It is an horchata scent and one of my personal favorites amongst our offerings. For the uninitiated, horchata is a drink often served at Mexican restaurants. It is also found in powdered form but the real stuff is much better. It can be best described as a rice and cinnamon drink, though it can also include almonds and the original Spanish version was grounded tiger nuts. At the end of this blog post, I will leave a recipe for it for those who are interested in making some at home.

         Back to Nectar of the Gods, I was always waiting on some other artisan to release soap with such a scent. Such a day never came to fruition and in the words of the Mad Titan, Thanos, “Fine, I’ll do it myself”. When Apex Alchemy started, so did the drive to bring about this scent and we did just that. Nectar of the Gods is very much a passion project and one that we made sure to test. Since the drink itself includes cinnamon, the scent would have to as well. We wanted a scent that could evoke the idea of drinking a nice, cold, tall glass of the beverage while not causing irritation. I believe we succeeded.

         Nectar of the Gods also marks the first label design by an artist and not us. Brent and I have always had many ideas for how we want the designs to look but it was an artist that we needed. We found our artist in Paul Ramirez, a friend of Brent from a few years back while they worked at the same gym here in the city. Paul Ramirez’s style and talent is what drew us to want to bring Paul on board for the designs. The idea to include an Aztec pyramid/ temple and horchata was something I wanted to include ever since the project started. Seeing the final image still blows my mind and we are planning to continue with Paul for future releases.

         Speaking of future releases, Apex Alchemy hasn’t done a double release this year so far. That changes for July. We are looking to drop some cool, refreshing, and explosive scents for July 2021. Look forward to the Reddit posts on Tuesdays and Saturdays, our Instagram posts, and the next edition of the Apex Experience for more teasers. It is almost chilling what we have in store.

Homemade Horchata Recipe

Each of the following ingredients is meant for roughly a liter of Horchata. For more, multiply the ingredients by the amount of desired liters

1 cup of long grain white rice

½ cup of sliced/ crushed almonds (unsalted and unroasted)

1 cinnamon stick

1 tablespoon of vanilla extract (use the real stuff, not the imitation crap)

1 can of evaporated milk (sweetened condensed milk is a great substitute but you will have to reduce the amount of sugar you add afterwards.

1 cup of sugar (½ cup if a can of sweetened condensed milk was used)

1 cup of milk (almond milk works fine as well)

1 liter of water

1) Put rice, cinnamon stick(s) and almonds in a bowl of water for at least 5 hours, overnight for best results.

2) Strain the ingredients from the water. Add the can of evaporated milk/ condensed milk and soaked ingredients into a blender. Blend until a mix is formed and the solid ingredients are finely grounded.

3) Strain the resulting liquid from the grounds and place the liquid into a pitcher.

4) Add the milk, vanilla extract, water and desired sugar to the liquid.

5) Once sweetness is achieved, you have yourself a nice amount of homemade horchata!