in the 2k10 i am learning to make cocktails. this is my mixology thread

7-bottle shopping spree today along with what i had already equals enough for a working home bar. i've already done some research, i have most of the tools, i have just about enough of the time and money. i am learning to do this.

itt i will post recipes, observations, and pro-tips abt making drinks at home for you and the guests you may/may not have. bartenders, pro, ex-pro, and amateur, pls feel free to contribute.

First question, what booze do you now have in your home bar?

RECIPE ONE: negroni (with a wink and a smile at HI DERE)

of course this is a classic. i bought the stuff to make it today because they are delicious:

EQUAL PARTS gin, campari, sweet vermouth. add ice and stir; garnish w/orange.

mine was a little sweeter than i planned--may drop vermouth content ever so slightly to suit my tastes.

ok here is a rundown:

GIN tanqueray (wanted plymouth but could not turn down deal on tanqueray)

BRANDY laird's applejack (regular, not bonded--bonded seems to be preferred all around but i can't find it atm)

TEQUILA corzo anejo (this is a nice bottle that was a gift--not for mixing imo)

RUM appleton silver jamaican (from a few nights of mojitos a while back)

RYE old overholt, tuthilltown manhattan rye, sazerac 18-year

BOURBON michter's us1, four roses small batch, van winkle 12 year lot "b"

SCOTCH laphroaig 10-year

ABSINTHE lucid

VODKA i don't know, there's some around here somewhere

VERMOUTH martini and rossi sweet and also dry, lillet blanc

BITTERS angostura, peychaud, fee bros orange bitters

OTHER STUFF campari, green chartreuse, herbsaint, cointreau

this is a good idea imo ~ wish i had funds rt now 2 mix along w/ and learn sum - shd b st8 by spring/summer 2 copy sum lavish drinks tht hopefully f/ tiny umbrellas

yeah dude i am saving rum drinks for the summer because it will be more appropriate and also frankly that shit is really confusing

RECIPE TWO: marconi wireless

1.75 oz applejack
.75 oz sweet vermouth
2 dashes orange bitters

stir in a mixing glass with ice, strain, garnish w/lemon

first, i garnished w/orange because i was already in the process of destroying an orange. second, tbh, i fucked up the proportions by reading too fast--assumed it was 2:1 applejack: vermouth and ignored that extra .25 oz. so of course the drink tasted a little vermouth-y at first. however, it did mellow out to a pleasant apple/orange concoction.

INGREDIENTS UPDATE

so one day after bitching about being unable to find laird's bonded apple brandy, i found it. it's like 3 bucks more than the 80-proof applejack. it also has a much shittier label for whatever reason. quick taste test indicates it has more of an apple flavor than its little bro (to be expected) and enough alcohol burn that you would only ever use it for mixing. i will remake the marconi wireless with it sometime soon.

also grabbed a bottle of lemon hart demerara rum. all i really know is that it is the 151 proof rum that serious tropical drinks people use. it's also next to impossible to find around here, so i will stash this bottle for the summer. ironically, i finally got it at the second-closest liquor store to my house.

also attempted to make some grenadine today (the things i can accomplish when i take a week off). recipe:

16 oz. POM pomegranate juice
1 cup sugar
1 tsp vodka added after cooking to preserve

combine POM and sugar, bring to boil, simmer while covered until bored. let cool and bottle w/vodka.

for whatever reason this did not reduce and become as syrupy as i think it is supposed to. maybe i didn't boil on high heagt for long enough. i really have nothing to compare it to but it smells good.

excited for this thread - i would like to make a request that you try the nipsy russell at some point.

By chance I picked up some bottles on the way home tonight. As of now I have:

VODKA gvori
RUM el dorado 5 cruzan
GIN bombay sapphire
TEQUILA dos manos
OTHER cointreau, grand marnier, cherry heering, blue curacao, angostura bitters, grenadine, etc

I'm not much of a fan of bourbon, and I do 95% of the drinking around here, so I don't have it stocked as of yet.

that's the most booze it is possible to have in one place without anything i'd want to drink

john i am glad you are excited--have no way of pureeing a haberno at the moment but i will oblige at some point, i promise

i gotta get some cherry heering like hell, too

i want to go survey my liquor cabinet, but its all the way over there and i am lazy

RECIPE THREE: jack rose

another well-known classic.

2 oz. laird's bonded
.66 oz lemon juice
.66 oz grenadine

combine and shake w/ice, strain, garnish with lemon

laird's bonded already proving its worth--there is a distinct apple taste amidst the other fruits going on here. with my homemade grenadine this was really tasty tbh--fruity but not oversweet with nice strong citrus and apple notes. would make for anyone.

btw recipe for that was proportioned up slightly from the one in jimmy patrick's 101 cocktails iphone app--which in terms of providing an intelligent selection of recipes by someone who knows what they're doing is a real winner.

Good start so far w/ the ingredients, also the jack rose is probably the most overlooked classic cocktail.

I wouldn't use the applejack, even the unbonded, in recipes calling for brandy - it's a substantially different ingredient. You can get a brandy that's fine for mixing for cheap - I use Tres Cepas, a spanish brandy, which wasn't much over $10.

pro tips:

- Keep your vermouth in the fridge. It is a wine, though fortified, and will spoil after a few months, less if you keep it at room temp. A nicer bottle of vermouth like Vya, Carpano Antica, or, if you can find it, Dolin, is an absolute revelation, and so worthwhile for the number of drinks it's used in.

- Learn how to cut citrus for different garnishes. Twists, strips, thumbnails, etc. Learn how to flame a citrus zest - very impressive.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wsdgadp6NTU

- Pay attention to the bartender in that video and his blog - http://www.jeffreymorgenthaler.com/

good video, i dig that guy and his blog

also yeah i have no other brandy right now but am only using laird's products in recipes specifically calling for applejack. i'm planning on picking up some vs cognac soon for other brandy mixing. not sure what tres cepas is made of/if it's available here but i will look around.

RECIPE FOUR: corpse reviver #2

everybody on the internet swears by this cocktail

1 OZ. EACH gin, lillet blanc, cointreau, lemon juice
A TINY AMOUNT of absinthe (i used my 1/8 tsp measure)

shake well w/ice, strain.

sugg. garnish is a stemless cherry but i'm not going to bother with that given that i live alone and am watching the nba and posting to ilx right now. also i don't really like cherries.

you can see why people like this. the gin, lemon, absinthe, and cointreau are all clearly detectable and the lillet just seems to kind of hold everything together. the total package is pleasant and citrusy but ends on a more complex note (via the gin flavorings and absinthe afaict)

my pro-tip for recipes calling for whiskey (the scotch variety) - don't use a nice single malt like laphroig! that's for sippin!! buy a blend like johnny walker (or famous grouse, or bell's, or jameson, or etc)

also re gin - sapphire is garbage - tanqueray is yoga flame for all time

i just made a corpse reviver! FABULOUS

:D

hey friends back from a weekend away to continue makin drinks in the 2k10.

a visit to the new hampshire state liquor store didn't yield as much as i'd hoped. their selection of liqueurs is subpar and you only get really really great prices when they put stuff on sale.

so i settled for a bottle of courvoisier vs and a bottle of benedictine. why courvoisier? well, it was on sale, and my friend and i decided that their little logo looks like a gangster pulling a gun.

benedictine had been popping up in a few recipes i wanted to try; all i can say at the moment is that it tastes sweet and kind of weird.

RECIPE 5: diamondback

this was introduced to me by awesome local bartender j0sey p4ck4rd when i asked for an "intense" rye-based drink. (btw she appeared on rachel maddow's show a couple weeks ago; you can google it). i have been fucking w/the proportions and ingredients for a little while, but i am settling on the 3:2:1 measurements described to me originally:

1.5 oz rye whiskey
1 oz laird's bonded apple brandy
.5 oz green chartreuse

stir well over ice, strain into a small glass. no garnish you pussy.

this tastes really weird and is probably not for everybody. however, there is def. something compelling about how three strong spirits can combine into something that goes down pretty smoothly.

Tonight I am enjoying one of my very favorite drinks from the excellent Grog Log by Jeff Berry, which collects a bunch of "lost" tropical drink recipes from the 1940s-60s.

NEVER SAY DIE

.5 oz fresh lime juice
.5 oz orange juice
.5 oz grapefruit juice
.25 oz unsweetened pineapple juice
.5 oz honey
dash Angostura bitters
1 oz Barbados rum
.5 oz light Puerto Rican rum
.5 oz dark Jamaican rum

Heat honey until liquid, then blend with all other ingredients with 4 ounces crushed ice for 5 seconds. Pour into diamond plated goblet and roll a fat one - you're about to have a fine sunday niiiiiiight.

(recipe originally developed by the legendary Don the Beachcomber)

http://i50.tinypic.com/2a99r3a.jpg

fuckin' love this guy

z s that sounds excellent. did you just use a microwave to heat up the honey?

Yep, just 20 seconds or so works fine!

hey guys, i'm back from being sick and busy with some new stuff for you.

first, i remade the marconi wireless (recipe two above) with three key changes: correct proportions, lemon not orange garnish, and fresh vermouth. i straight-up did not know about vermouth freshness until my mans I DIED said something upthread. he's right. obviously. anyway, the remade drink is more balanced and a lot better--sweet and light, v. refreshing imo.

so i had been wrecking a lemon for garnish for a couple days and needed a good reason to juice it. this leads us to

RECIPE SIX: the frisco

2 oz rye
.75 oz benedictine
.74 oz lemon juice
garnish with a lemon twist

stir over ice; strain into a cocktail glass (tbh the recipe i used says to shake but this does not feel like a shaken drink to me, ymmv)

found this browsing recipes on cocktailchronicles.com; apparently there are many options for proportioning these ingrendients. hard to say what the desired effect is but this is a weird drink--the tartness of the lemon juice and the sweetness of the benedictine hit completely different areas of your mouth at the same time. the rye is just kinda there gettin you drunk. i would re-proportion, but honestly i don't totally know what i would do different.

LOL .74 ounces. that is .75 but you already knew that.

Learn to pour freehand. 1 (slightly generous) ounce is 3 seconds' pouring through most pro quality pourers (which are cheap). Practice with water in old bottles so you don't waste booze -- it's not just a show-off thing, your feel for mixing changes in good ways at the same time.

so for the frisco--i tried again with only .5 oz benedectine and it might be better that way. final experiment i think is to shake it--benedictine is really syrupy and heavy and def sank to the bottom of my glass.

so then it's time for a partial INGREDIENTS UPDATE:

FERNET BRANCA is one of those things that is quite polarizing. as a fan of bitter drinks in general i figured i'd like it. my friend zoe remarked that it tastes like toothpaste which is actually as good a starting point as anything. the fernet site recommends you take three slow sips to fully appreciate whatever the hell they put into it. good idea--the mouth-numbing bitterness goes away and you can detect more fruit and whatnot.

FEE BROS WHISKEY BARREL AGED BITTERS i see a lot of what i'd call "blog cocktails" that use these bitters. they kind of smell like cola.

ok, let's talk recipes:

RECIPE SEVEN: old-fashioned

this is essentially an economy/simple old-fashioned for the home bartender; though i've seen some v. reputable places use only these ingredients. old-fashioneds kinda fall into the orange/cherry or no orange/cherry camp--for reasons of taste, simplicity, and economy, i think you get a really satisfying drink without the fruit. the version with the fruit is good too though!

1 sugar cube
2 oz. rye
.25 oz water
A FEW DASHES angostura
lemon peel for garnish

put the sugar cube in the old-fashioned glass, dash w/angostura (just a few times till the cube turns reddish pink). add the water and stir gently. add the rye and stir gently again. add 4-5 ice cubes and stir one more time, twist the lemon over the drink and wipe it around the rim of the glass.

one cool variation i've seen basically hinges on your ability to get one large ice block or chunk to fill the entire glass. slower dissolution = a cold but not watery drink.

and RECIPE EIGHT: fernet old-fashioned

v. slight modification of a recipe by the guy who does kaiserpenguin.com--he is purportedly a huge fernet branca fan.

take recipe 7, substitute fernet branca for rye, orange bitters OR fee whiskey barrel aged bitters gor angostura, and orange garnish for lemon. if you feel fancy, grab a lighter and flame the orange oils.

i think this is an awesome drink--tried both orange and whiskey barrel bitters and i think i prefer orange on the balance, they seem to bring out the fernet's character a little more.

one cool variation i've seen basically hinges on your ability to get one large ice block or chunk to fill the entire glass. slower dissolution = a cold but not watery drink

For Christmas I got an ice tray that makes giant ice spheres:

http://i48.tinypic.com/1sobpt.jpg

The only problem is that I can never get them to come out as perfect spheres like the picture. For reasons too complicated and idiotic to discuss here, the tops of them are always cut off so they look like the Death Star. Still, worth picking up!

wow, that's awesome! definitely going to track it down.

<3 fernet branca! i'll try that version of the old fashioned

I had a couple Sidecars last Saturday will watching football. Excellent drink imo.

brownie what brandy did you use? while not having looked hard, it seems difficult to find consensus on good cheap brandies. or maybe you used a pricey one! in which case more power to you.

also, this is nice: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/17/fashion/17shake.html?ref=todayspaper

I don't know what kind of brandy! a friend whipped them up. I'm not too picky anyway.

I just made a drink with this:

- fresh squeezed blood orange juice
- gin
- cranberry juice

shaken over ice, lovely

xp yeah the overriding sentiment seems to be that any common vs cognac will do for mixing. one book i have gave remy martin a nice writeup so i may try that next.

tracer what were your proportions?

no idea - maybe something like:

3-oj
2-gin
1-cranberry

cranberry really just for a little hint of sweet-tartness

we should definitely not leave this one out:

Hey guys I invented a new drink in honor of tonight's results

THE COAKLEY

6 oz of your worst vodka

shake with ice cube, pour directly into mouth

― CATBEAST!! (Z S), Tuesday, January 19, 2010 7:16 PM

lolllllllllllll

i'm sorry guys! i drove way the hell out of my way to vote in this one, had dinner with my parents, came home and saw the results, and quickly made a sidecar in honor of brownie who is a cool guy UNLIKE THE VOTERS OF MASSACHUSETTS

hey i was gonna do some other posts but in honor of the 2009 saints let's do some new orleans cocktails tonight.

RECIPE NINE: the vieux carre

1 oz. rye
1 oz. cognac
1 oz. sweet vermouth
1 tsp benedictine
2 dashes angostura
2 dashes peychaud's

add all ingredients to a mixing glass, add ice, stir, strain, and serve. optionally, garnish with a lemon twist.

the ingredients (except the twist) are straight from the vieux carre page on gumbopages.com, an excellent resource for new orleans drinks (and probably other stuff too). however, he serves it as a rocks drink which makes no sense to me. it's obviously an up drink, and when i've gotten it out (admittedly not in NOLA) that's how it's been served. it is EXCEEDINGLY pleasant and smooth--nice dessert cocktail imo.

RECIPE TEN: the sazerac

the greatest cocktail? according to some, maybe.

2 oz. rye
1 sugar cube
4 dashes peychaud's
1 tsp absinthe or herbsaint
1 piece lemon peel

fill an old-fashioned glass with ice or pop it in the freezer for a bit. in a mixing glass, add the sugar cube, peychaud's, and just a little water, and mix or muddle them together. add the rye, some ice, and stir. now get your old-fashioned glass and rinse it with the absinthe/herbsaint. add the rye mixture, and wipe the lip of the glass with the lemon peel. in an orthodox sazerac you should NOT twist it over the drink and you should discard it when done.

you know those nights where you just watch college basketball, play guitar, and mix drinks by yourself? yup.

RECIPE 11: the last word

kinda like the corpse reviver in that it comes together in an interesting and unexpected way.

.75 OZ. EACH gin, fresh lime juice, maraschino liqueur, green chartreuse.

shake w/ice and pour into a cocktail glass.

RECIPE TWLEVE: the scofflaw

this is from ted haigh's book and is v. enjoyable. there are so many grenadine/lemon combos out there. i'd say the dry vermouth makes this a nice entry in that category.

1.5 oz. rye
1 oz. dry vermouth
.75 oz. fresh lemon juice
.75 oz. grenadine.

shake w/ice and pour. garnish w/a lemon twist.

one more, tho i'm holding off on a couple recipes to make sure they're proportioned right.

RECIPE THIRTEEN: apricot cocktail

1.25 oz. gin
.75 oz. lemon juice
.75 oz. apricot liqueur
.5 oz. grenadine
1-2 dashes angostura

shake w/ice and pour, garnish w/lemon twist.

i fucked with the original recipe i saw for this a good deal; in the end it's called an apricot cocktail and this does absolutely emphasize the apricot so there you go. would like to sneak a little more alcohol in there tbh.

Hmm, maybe substitute cherry heering for the grenadine? Looks good though, I might try that tomorrow.

**18 hours later...**

two thumbs up! :)

awesome! did you sub cherry heering in?

RECIPE FOURTEEN: the so-so

1 oz. gin
1 oz. sweet vermouth
.5 oz. calvados or applejack
.5 oz. grenadine

stir with ice and strain into a cocktail glass, no garnish.

apparently this is in the 1930 savoy cocktail book. it's a funny one--you look at the recipe and go yeah whatever but it actually mixes up into something interesting. the blog where i got it from suggests that different gins will have a strong impact on the flavor; i only have one gin but i can see what they mean since the gin contrasting with all the other sweet/fruity components and its flavor kind of rises above them.

2 that I like:

Moscow Mule - vodka, ginger ale (pref. Vernors), lime juice
Polish Cider - Zubrowka vodka (buffalo grass infused), apple cider, lemon juice

so-so sounds good

but then again i don't know shit about cocktails so

jordan if you enjoy the flavor of gin and want something that will make it smooth and drinkable without covering it the so-so does that.

dan m, does the polish cider call for hard cider or regular cider? what proportions would you use?

i have a bunch of GENEVER recipes coming up. genever is a serious thing imo.

INGREDIENTS UPDATE: genever.

GENEVER!

http://feteafete.com/blog/Bols%20Genever%20bottle.jpg

i'm starting to realize that this stuff is kind of amazing. for those who don't know, it's the dutch precursor to gin, except where gin became neutral spirits distilled again with juniper and other flavors, genever is a sweeter, maltier spirit featuring those same flavorings. tasting it back to back with gin is really instructive.

RECIPE FIFTEEN: the holland house cocktail

1.75 oz. genever
.75 oz. dry vermouth
.5 oz. lemon juice
.25 oz. maraschino liqueur

shake w/ice and strain, garnish with a lemon twist.

those with a keen eye for such things will recognize this as a riff on the gin/lemon/maraschino in the aviation cocktail. but for my money the holland house has all the aviation's features while being a MUCH richer, more interesting, more complex drink. smooth as hell and really tasty.

one more for tonight:

RECIPE SIXTEEN: the fluyt (that's "floight" (i think), a type of dutch sailing ship)

2 oz. genever
1 oz. cognac
.5 oz. dry vermouth
5 dashes peychaud's
2 dashes fee whiskey barrel aged
1 sugar cube (og recipe calls for demerara sugar cube so uh fire up amazon.com and get on that)
green chartreuse for rinsing

chill an old-fashioned glass. in a mixing glass add the sugar cube and peychaud's and muddle. add the genever, cognac, vermouth, and whiskey barrel aged bitters. add ice and stir. get the old-fashioned glass and rinse w/chartreuse. strain the mixture into the glass and garnish with a lemon twist.

a chartreuse rinse, genever, and two kinds of bitters? sign me the hell up. this is an invention from rumdood.com and imo it does a nice job complimenting the flavor of the genever in some sort of mutant sazerac format.

the things you find browsing cocktaildb because you're worried about the freshness of your bottle of lillet blanc:

RECIPE SEVENTEEN: the roy howard cocktail (nb i have no idea who roy howard is)

2 oz. lillet blanc
.75 oz. brandy
.75 oz. fresh orange juice
.25 oz. grenadine

shake over ice and strain.

you know what this is good for? this is good for when you don't actually feel like drinking. what would actually be fun as hell would be to make a big pitcher of this and eat some fuckin' brunch.

hey cad, any good simple recipes for campari? I remember having a sprite and campari during a really hot and humid summer evening in beijing, it really /really/ hit the spot and the bitterness kept it from being to sweet (not a mixologist so don't really have any mixers, tbh)

excellent question--campari is an awesome thing imo. the basic campari recipes are pretty much what you'd expect--campari and soda water or campari and orange juice in a 1/3 - 2/3 liquor/mixer ratio. sprite would certainly work like soda water. but for not too much money you can pick up some gin and some sweet (red) vermouth and make a negroni which has to be one of the best rocks cocktails out there and hit the same refreshing vibe with a bit more of a kick.

beyond that, ted haigh's book has the boulevardier which is 1.5 bourbon/1 campri/1 sweet vermouth, stir and strain--i'd consider trying that. lots of other things use campari as their bitters component so they're using about 1/4 oz. of it while gin or whiskey or something is the dominant spirit.

wow those sound good - the hot and humid season is coming up so I'm definitely thinking of picking up a bottle to help deal - already have a bottle of bourbon too!

some Campari classics:

Negroni is a super classic - equal parts gin, sweet vermouth, and campari, served up

Americano - equal parts sweet vermouth and campari, topped w/ club soda and served over ice

there's also the Negroni Sbagliato, the "wrong" negroni, with an ounce each of campari and sweet vermouth and 2oz prosecco, served over ice w/ an orange slice in a balloon glass - delicious!

Pretty much anything w/ campari should be garnished w/ a lemon twist or slice of orange.

Aperol is sort of a sweeter lightweight Campari, which can make it easier to mix with. I love it on the rocks w/ 1/4oz orgeat and 1/2oz lemon juice.

so my local paper's weekly bars/drinking column had a piece on the 500th anniversary of benedictine, featuring some local concoctions that use it. i had some good luck making a couple of them tonight:

RECIPE EIGHTEEN: king's yellow

(from eastern standard restaurant, a good place imo. i assume the name comes from the color of this one when you mix it up?)

1.5 oz. gin
.75 oz. dry vermouth
.75 oz. benedictine
1 dash orange bitters
apricot liqueur for rinsing

combine the gin, vermouth, benedictine, and orange bitters, add ice and stir. then grab a chilled cocktail glass and rinse it with some apricot liqueur, leaving a little pool in the bottom. strain your mixture into the glass. garnish with a generous lemon twist, making sure to get plenty of lemon oil on the surface.

i was never the biggest benedictine fan but this cocktail and the next one both offer pretty interesting uses of it. this is a full-bodied drink with strong fruit notes and good balance.

RECIPE NINETEEN: the chrysanthemum

this is from an excellent french/cuban restaurant called chez henri

1.5 oz. dry vermouth
.75 oz. benedictine
3 dashes (abt 3/8 tsp) pastis (i use herbsaint)

stir over ice and strain into a cocktail glass.

surprisingly complex for a drink with three ingredients, this is easy to make, light, and would be perfect before dinner.

RECIPE TWENTY: ride the pink horse

from the same article--only prob is the recipe is incomplete (in that they don't tell you what to do with everything). anyway, they're making it at noir bar, a hotel bar in harvard square. i will reproduce what the paper told me and my subs and interpretations.

1.5 oz. benedictine
22 dashes (!) angostura
.5 oz. peach brandy (sub apricot liqueur)
"2 lemon wedges" (sub .25 oz. fresh lemon juice)
"2 cinnamon sticks" (sub a couple shakes from my cinnamon spice jar)
"1 dash almond syrup" (sub .25 oz. maraschino)

combine in a rocks glass and stir with ice. the original garnish was a dehydrated orange slice, to which i say "lol"

from the photo accompanying the article we know it's a rocks drink. not clear what happened to the cinnamon sticks or lemon wedges in the original recipe, a problem i solved by liquidating and powdering everything. i'm not necessarily going to endorse this as a brilliant drink, but it is assuredly the most angostura you're going to consume anytime soon, and as i type this i find myself enjoying each sip of what is a truly strange concoction.

next boston fap = cocktai77 party imo

^^^wld support!

btw there is cause for celebration in the cad residence tonight, because over the weekend i got to purchase some COUPES!

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4029/4357751005_63d3d6bc58.jpg

the coupe is appropriate any time a cocktail glass is called for. imo it's more attractive than the regular conical cocktail glass, it's a more manageable size and height, and it's easier to drink out of. <3 coupes.

nice!

so tonight i am attending gin cocktail class at the boston shaker. i leave you with these useful words i read recently:

"I like drinking. Not stinking drunk. Not mean drunk. Not out-of-control drunk. Not Mel Gibson, David Hasselhoff or Lindsay Lohan drunk. And certainly not college drunk (fill in your own room spinning, nauseating, swearing you'll never, ever drink again episode here). Unnecessary. Bad form. Mistake.

But how about just a little drunk. Laugh-out-loud-drunk. Who gives a crap? drunk. Let's-get-naked-and-jump-in-the-ocean drunk. Come to think of it, just drunk enough to briefly overlook the mountain of responsibility we face daily. Isn't that what alcohol was intended for?"

do you like rye? have you ever wanted to dress your rye up a bit, but not too much?

RECIPE TWENTY-ONE: the police gazette cocktail

.25 oz. rye (old overholt imo)
.25 oz. dolin blanc vermouth (sub noilly prat dry)
.25 oz. senior's orange curacao di curacao (sub cointreau)
.25 oz. maraschino liquor
1 maraschino cherry (uhhhhh optional)
1 dash angostura bitters
1 dash regans' orange bitters no. 6 (sub fee's orange)

stir the rye, maraschino, vermouth, and cointreau over ice and strain. add the cherry if you are weird, and then dash the bitters on top of the drink.

ok, with a name like that why wouldn't you make it? apparently the police gazette was a magazine with true crime stories, girlie pictures, and cocktail recipes (and quite possibly only those three things). like i said the rye is still at the forefront and the effect of everything else is one of v. subtle modification. still, would make again.

SORRY! 2.5 oz. rye

a little serendipity over the past two days--last night, in gin cocktail class, we were talking about flamed citrus zest and the dude who was running the class mentioned a cocktail called the camino, which was created at a restaurant around here called craigie on main. so today i did some idle googling and got the recipe, which is kind of intense:

RECIPE TWENTY-TWO: the camino

1.5 oz. rittenhouse rye (sub old overholt)
1 oz. housemade ambre vermouth (sub noilly ambre if you go to france, carpano antica if you have a lot of money, lillet blank if you're me)
.5 oz. tremontis mirto dell'isola di sardegna myrtle berry liqueur
2 dashes angostura
2 dashes orange bitters

stir over ice, strain into a chilled rocks glass, garnish with a flamed orange peel.

so anyway, i looked at that recipe and was like "ok, not happening anytime soon." then, on the way home from work, and accident caused me to get off the highway early and pass near a big liquor store i'd be meaning to go to for a while. what is there on a bottom shelf but a single bottle of tremontis mirto? i take it as a sign, spend more money than i intended to, and head home.

mirto is indeed made from myrtle berries--if this bottle is an indication of the overall "thing" it's sweet, dark, and somewhat herbal-y. nice stuff.

GENERAL ASIDE FOR THIS THREAD: in addition to (hopefully) encouraging participation, this thread is basically my personal recipe list (i check it all the time when i'm trying to remember stuff). i don't want to be weird posting a bunch of things that no one can make. that being said, this is a cool drink--sweet with a nice warming alcohol burn, VERY easy going down. if you find yourself in an appropriately equipped bar or just say "damn i should have some myrtle berry liqueur around" i would recommend this up there with anything i have ever made. and i did subs for the two most voluminous ingredients.

hey guys, i've been working hard mixing drinks and trying stuff, but wasn't positive anything deserved to be posted here until tonight.

RECIPE TWENTY-THREE: the periodista

1.5 oz. rum (white rum often specified, i got much better results with flor de cana gold rum)
.5 oz. lime juice
.25 oz. apricot liqueuer
.25 oz. triple sec

OPTIONAL: .5 tsp superfine sugar

shake all ingredients with ice and strain, garnish with lime.

this is a great drink--amazing how much just that splash of apricot transforms everything. tonight i made two versions back to back, one with no sugar and one with. sugar is usually specified in this recipe but i'd encourage you to try it both ways. i don't like things very sweet and my preference would run to the sugar-free, but i can certainly recognize the validity of the sweet version. may also depend on which apricot product you use; my rothman and winter is quite sweet imo and there could be drier ones out there.

I'm going to make this right now!

Actually, before I start, maybe you can offer advice. Which rum should I use? Here's what I have:

Dark Jamaican (Myers)
Light Puerto Rican (Bacardi)
Gold Puerto Rican (Bacardi)
Appleton Jamaican
Demerara (El Dorado 12 year)
Barbados (Mount Gay)
151 (Bacardi)

And I'm going to substitute Cointreau for Triple Sec, which I don't have.

ok well youre in luck on one thing--cointreau technically is triple sec; iirc they removed tripe sec from the label cause too many inferior products were using it

with the caveat that i really know fuck all about rums i'd try your gold bacardi. also which appleton do you have? i didn't get a great drink out of this with white appleton but if you have one of their aged ones that could work.

It's not a white. It's just Appleton Estate, and says "V/X Estate Distilled Hand Blended" at the top.

that might be good! for first attempt i'd prob still say bacardi gold and then experiment from there

fwiw i have been trying to figure out like "what is a sensible selection of rums to own" and it seems totally hopeless (i.e. i'm going to end up owning like 15 bottles)

My rums are completely based off of what I need to make tiki drinks. My gf is obsessed with them and I'm more than willing to oblige, so we always have a variety of rums on hand, along with all sorts of juices. I should post a picture of our tiki mugs here sometime, it's starting to get ridiculous!

*mixing*

I went with the Gold. This is GOOD!

glad you like it!

i have been trying to figure out like "what is a sensible selection of rums to own"

Pampero Aniversario
Flor De Cana at least 7 years
Matusalen maybe? so much of the better rum is only in other countries. anything from Nicaragua I've had has been good.

stay away from Pyrat unless you like heavy spicing

ok so i made the negroni this past weekend as CAD notated it at the top of the thread and thought it tasted horrid when using equal parts of the three liquors but a lot better with less campari/more vermouth. campari is maybe too bitter for my taste but now i have most of a bottle of it left over i'd like to try it in other things

i also made the coffee hopper, which calls for equal parts creme de menthe, coffee liqueur (i used kahlua) and cream (i used half and half), shaken w/ ice. imagine a peppermint patty that gets you a little buzzed.

campari's definitely an acquired taste, i think the more you have it, the more you like it

yeah, trying this out right now (the 'licia albanese' - build 3 pt gin:1 pt campari) - thinking this may grow on me yet

best way to get used to Campari is, I think, in weak Campari & sodas, once you take to it you're hooked but if not, no worries.

I had a good Bronx cocktail tonight, which I have pretty regularly - delicious! Used to be very popular.

2oz gin
1oz orange juice
1/2oz sweet vermouth
1/2oz dry vermouth

Followed it up with the much rarer Brooklyn cocktail:

2oz rye
1oz dry vermouth
Dash of maraschino liqueur
Dash of Amer Picon

also excellent, thank god Amer Picon is available again

i am actually going on a mission to find amer picon later today.

also glad you're sticking with it, donna rouge--you'll be drinking straight fernet branca in no time :)

I just came on this thread to post about the negroni but see that it's already been mentioned! Well done, fellows.

Manhattans have been ruling at my place lately. I went out to a bar in LA - the Edison, for those familiar - a few weeks ago, and they make their Manhattans with some sort of black cherry that was not a maraschino. It was amazing how much the taste changed without that small amount of the red sugar water!

at home, its been 3 parts Bookers (133 proof), 1 part sweet vermouth, three dashes Angostura, and a maraschino over crushed ice. So f-ing good.

hmm i wonder if it was a "real" maraschino as opposed to those gross mass-produced ones

possibly, but it appeared to be a black cherry. I am unaware of the difference b/t real and the mass-pro'd maraschinos.

a real one would be a cherry soaked in maraschino liqueur--no artificial color or sweetener or whathaveyou.

may have been one of these, if not housemade:

http://cn1.kaboodle.com/hi/img/2/0/0/15a/4/AAAAAl9BmaMAAAAAAVpKRQ.jpg

the excellent book Raising The Bar by Nick Mautone, published a few years ago, has a great recipe for making maraschino cherries - I make a big batch twice a year or so and keep them in armagnac, it's pretty easy and they last indefinitely.

I had the best Manhattan last night! Neat, half dry half sweet vermouth, with lemon twist instead of cherry.

Those were them! Maybe my Manhattan has been the pretender.

Ah well.

i have that book, i died. he has a lot of cool recipe-type stuff relating to drinks that i'm going to work on as soon as i have more space and a better kitchen.

related question for you: do you have any thoughts on the shelf life of homemade syrups and grenadines and stuff? mautone seems really conservative on this--i'm positive most of the stuff lasts longer than two weeks but am nervous about testing the outer limits.

Yeah, I've had stuff last months before w/ no problems - just give everything a taste before you use it. Different ingredients go off at different times, of course. If you plan on having something around longer, adding a little vodka to it is a great way to extend shelf like w/o affecting flavor.

tonight: fun with CARPANO ANTICA!

http://onthesauce.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/carpano_antica3.jpg

RECIPE TWENTY-FOUR: the supernova

an original from drink in boston, this is a hilarious performative recipe that also happens to be awesome.

1.75 oz. laird's bonded apple brandy
.75 oz. carpano antica
.5 oz. cardamom simple syrup (sub about half that amount agave nectar)
1 dash barrel-aged bitters
1 dash angostura bitters

stir all this stuff over ice

.25 oz. green chartreuse
lemon rind

pour the chartreuse into a rocks glass and carefully ignite it. squeeze the lemon peel over it and drop the peel in. after about 15 seconds strain the main mixture into the glass. serve carefully (the glass will cool off where the drink sits, but the whole top will be pretty hot)

i don't really know how to explain this but it's complex and quite good.

currently i'm taking the advice of numerous carpano antica stans and drinking it over ice with an orange twist. this stuff is completely delicious.

RECIPE TWENTY-FIVE: creole variation

the creole is an amer picon cocktail, and since it's still unavailable damn near anywhere afaict, we'll make this variation from the cure restaurant in new orleans.

1.5 oz. rye
1 oz. sweet vermouth
.25 oz. benedictine
.25 oz. luxarado amaro abano

stir with ice and strain, garnish w/lemon twist

it's going to be hard to go back to another sweet vermouth after finishing this carpano antica, that's all i can say. this is a very complex drink that i enjoyed a lot.

I know it'll be tough to find another vermouth, but Dolin is fantastic, and somewhat easier than Carpano to mix with as well.

In most cocktails I use about 2/3 the amount of vermouth specified when I'm mixing w/ Carpano, just because it's so intense.

rare daytime cocktal update! didn't want to lose this one from last night.

RECIPE TWENTY-SIX: the casino

2 oz. old tom gin
.25 oz. lemon juice
.25 oz. maraschino
2 dashes orange bitters

stir with ice and strain.

this is a great intro to how old tom gin works--notice there is no added sugar and no sweet liqueurs or vermouth.

i cut up a grapefruit tonight and was able to make these. i believe both are originals from cocktail virgin slut

RECIPE TWENTY-SEVEN: cravan

1.5 oz. bourbon
.75 oz. grapefruit juice
.5 oz. maraschino
.25 oz. campari
1 dash angostura

shake and strain. garnish with an orange twist or a mint sprig

this is one of those nonintuitive happy mess drinks afaict. i was concerned about that amount of maraschino but it turned out to be fine. a sip of this goes through three distinct phases--bourbon and bitters, bright fruit, weird maraschino/campari bitterness. i used a pretty good bourbon and it wasn't wasted--flavor came through nicely. not sure if angostura is the best play here though.

RECIPE TWENTY-EIGHT: leonid

so named as a variant on something called the star cocktail.

.75 oz. gin
.75 oz. apple brandy, applejack, or calvados
.75 oz. grapefruit juice
.5 oz. dry vermouth
.25 oz. cointreau
[1 dash angostura]

shake and strain, garnish with grapefruit twist

tbh i forgot the angostura and i think if i remake this i'd be more likely to use orange or grapefruit bitters. it's a dry cocktail that was strongly alcoholic on the first couple sips; thankfully it mellowed out after that. interesting ideas here but i'd consider modifications in the future.

tonight: inverse cocktails

RECIPE TWENTY-NINE: growing hold and dying happy is a hope, not an inevitability

(yes that is the name, from cure in new orleans)

2 oz. cynar
1 oz. rye
pinch salt
two pieces lemon peel
herbsaint for rinsing

combine the cynar and rye, add the salt and stir. twist the lemon peels over the liquor and drop them in. add ice and stir. strain into a glass that has been rinsed with herbsaint. garnish with another lemon twist.

http://www.betacocktails.com might be me new favorite mixology blog. this drink is weird--sweet to start like you'd expect with so much amaro but a much more interesting finish. sort of an inverse of a manhattan variation, in keeping with tonight's theme.

RECIPE THIRTY: le coquetiez du lion

(from somewhere in germany by way of ohgosh.tv)

50 ml lillet blanc (sorry this is in metric. 50 ml is just about 1.5 oz afaict)
30 ml dry gin (just a tiny bit under 1 oz.)
2 dashes peychaud's bitters

stir over ice, garnish with a lime twist.

an inverse gin martini with lillet. simple and elegant, this is a grown-up drink.

RECIPE THIRTY-ONE: ruirita

(from the guy at adashofbitters.com)

2 oz. blanco tequila
.5 oz. cynar
.5 oz. lime juice
.25 oz. simple syrup
3 dashes fee's rhubarb bitters
2 drops orange flower water (for rinsing)

shake and strain all except the o.f.w., which you just used to rinse the glass

too pungent at first; this mellowed out nicely in the glass. will i ever use those rhubarb bitters again?

RECIPE THIRTY-TWO: the mai tai

but enough of these weirdo drinks, right?

1 oz. aged rum 1
1 oz. aged rum 2
.75 oz. lemon juice
.5 oz. triple sec or orange curacao
.25 oz. orgeat
.25 oz. simple syrup

shake all ingredients with ice and strain into a rocks glass filled with crushed ice. garnish with a mint sprig and a lime husk.

i'm using cheap orgeat (fee bros because most good liquor stores have it) but pretty good rums. one common rec for mai tais is an aged jamaican rum (easy enough to find an appleton product, i'm using their v/x) and an aged martinique rum (tougher, i've seen saint-james and clement and today shelled out for clement vsop). but i think you can experiment as much as you want. soooooooo good.

DAMMIT, lime juice

think i'm over my campari aversion (ie drinking negroni as intended as we speak). that was fast!

glad 4 u! last time i went out to a mediocre bar i got them to make me americanos the whole night.

we're doing manhattan variations until further notice.

RECIPE THIRTY-THREE: manhattan

2 oz. rye
1 oz. sweet vermouth
2 dashes bitters

stir over ice and strain. some people use cherries but not me. i go with lemon twist.

i've been assembling ingredients for manhattan variations for a while, capped off by today, when i finally bought some affordable high-proof rye (wild turkey's 101 proof rye, which is very nice stuff).

RECIPE THIRTY-FOUR: red hook

2 oz. rye
.5 oz. punt e mes
.5 oz. maraschino liqueur

stir and stain, garnish w/a cherry

sweeter, more upbeat manhattan. for the uninformed, punt e mes shares the same sweet qualities as my beloved carpano antica, but with a less complex finish. not really like other sweet vermouths at all, a fact which extends to its location in the liquor store: sometimes it's near the vermouths, but today i grabbed it from a shelf it shared with the amaros and other italian specialty liqueurs.

RECIPE THIRTY-FIVE: little italy

2 oz. rye
.75 oz. sweet vermouth
.5 oz. cynar

stir and strain, garnish with a cherry.

a real winner if you, like me, are an amaro fan.

That sounds good.

I am a big amaro fan - I like trying different recipes w/ an amaro subbed for vermouth. Ramazzotti manhattans are great!

Speaking which, the weather's getting warm enough to switch to my simple summer patio standby of last year, Ramazzotti and soda on ice. Tastes like an adult cola, nicely deep and bitter but refreshing and not too boozy.

man that sounds excellent, going to make one of those in a min

ramazzotti and soda was an excellent suggestion, i enjoyed those v. much that night.

my life is insane right now and i haven't even been drinking much nevermind making manhattan variations. but i do have a pause for a couple of drinks tonight.

RECIPE THIRTY-SIX: peralta (1)

there's an alternate peralta recipe too, but i'm making the one from drinkboston.com. developed by a bartender at deep ellum, an awesome bar in my nieghborhood that i don't go to nearly enough.

1.5 oz. rye
.5 oz. cynar
.5 oz. green chartreuse
.5 oz. grapefruit juice
1 dash grapefruit bitters
1 dash orange bitters

shake and strain, garnish with a grapefruit twist.

i've never seen ramazzotti in london but it sounds like just the kind of thing i like. enjoying cynar + soda tho

successfully signed a new lease yesterday, figure i deserved a bottle of st germain for that:

http://www.thenibble.com/reviews/main/cocktails/images/bottle-greybackground-300_000.jpg

as you may have noticed this stuff is in a lot of drinks these days. i had never been able to isolate the flavor in cocktails on my own, so being able to take a sip of it is helpful. the trick is that it tastes like fruit, not flowers or anything else. mostly like a mild lychee imo. i'd venture that it's been so successful because the amorphous "fruitiness" it adds is pleasant without evoking any one thing.

RECIPE THIRTY-SEVEN: boutonierre

invinted at rendezvous, central sq, cambridge, ma

2 oz. applejack
1 oz. dry vermouth
.5 oz. st germain
1 dash peychaud's
1 dash orange bitters

stir and strain, garnish with orange.

a really good introduction to st germain in a classically-proportioned drink. it's easily detectable here while enhancing some of the other flavors that are going on.

RECIPE THIRTY-EIGHT: shaddock

invented at trina's starlite lounge, also in cambridge

.75 oz. each genever, aperol, st. germain, lemon juice.

shake and strain, no garnish.

another riff on the 4-equal-ingredients formula, this one is pretty smooth and sweet with an awesome orange-pink color. each ingredient pops out at different times.

RECIPE THIRTY-NINE: one-armed french hooker

1.5 oz. genever
1 oz. grapefruit juice
1 oz. st. germain
2 dashes peychaud's

shake and strain, top with sparkling wine (i omitted this).

st. germain and grapefruit seem like a natural combo, so i've been looking all over for recipes that use them both. this is nice, the genever is a supporting player only with the main flavor being sweetened citrus.

what is the consistency/color on simple syrup supposed to be

simple made w/regular sugar should be clear. consistency will depend on the ratio of sugar to water.

a 1:1 syrup will be a little thick but not super-thick

ok, i made 1:! with cane sugar and it's sort of like sugar water? attempting to make mint julep fwiw

when i made grenadine with sugar and pom juice i thought it was p. watery at first, it actually thickened up after chillin in the fridge for a bit

ok, that makes sense

yeah you're probably ok

RECIPE FORTY: spiced tea cocktail

2 oz. absolut boston
.75 oz. lemon juice
.25 oz. simple syrup
.25 oz. allspice dram

shake and strain, garnish with a lemon twist.

i guess this is a cad original--the absolut boston (which is tea- and elderflower-infused if u didn't know)/lemon/sugar combination is obvious in a way, but i felt it needed something to take it over the top. the bottle of allspice dram i picked up last week really did the job.

RECIPE FORTY-ONE: william of orange

1.5 oz. bols genever
.5 oz. aperol
.5 oz. punt e mes
.5 oz. benedictine
2 dashes orange bitters (regan's #6)

stir and strain into a chilled rocks glass, garnish w/an orange twist.

no ingredients subs on this one imo--i made a version of this a while ago and it was not good enough to post. but this is.

RECIPE FORTY-TWO: daiquiri no. 1

2 oz. white rum
.75 oz. lime juice
1 tsp superfine sugar

shake and strain

nothing need be said.

RECIPE FORTY-TWO: hemingway daiquiri

2 oz. white rum
.75 oz. lime juice
.5 oz. grapefruit juice
1 tsp superfine sugar
scant 1 tsp maraschino liqueur

a smoothed-out sweeter version of no. 1. err on the conservative side with the maraschino.

RECIPE FORTY-THREE: ramos gin fizz

havin a lazy afternoon atm, so the least i could do was whip up one of these labor-intensive beasts:

2 oz. gin (old tom preferred, or plymouth)
1 oz. cream
1 tbsp superfine sugar (or 1 oz. simple syrup)
.5 oz. lime juice
.5 oz. lemon juice
1 egg white
3-5 drops orange flower water

shake the living hell out of this with no ice. then do the same with ice. like, a minute or more for each. shake until your arms hurt and your hands go numb.

strain into a tall glass with a couple ice cubes in it. top with an oz. or less of soda water. give it a quick stir and add a straw. a delightful thick foam will appear on top of the drink.

i forget where i read this but the i like it: the r.g.f. should taste like drinking a flower. in a good way.

i had a ginger lime gin fizz the other night and it was freaking amazing. it tasted like lime sorbet.

also had a gin & tonic with wine soaked strawberries which was also delightful

fancy!

yeah it was a fancy place that we only went to because it was a special occasion -- bartender was all talking about infusing his own syrups and what not -- one drink on the menu featured "jalapeno simple syrup" which i was curious about bcuz i like spicy drinks, altho at that point you're really stretching the "simple" part of "simple syrup"

eh not really--just about every infused syrup is the same: 1:1 or 2:1 sugar/water plus a bunch of whatever flavor you want it to have. i made cinnamon syrup last week and except for the annoying and messy filtration process it was no prob.

RECIPE FORTY-FOUR: the art of choke

from the betacocktails.com ppl

1 oz. cynar
1 oz. white rum
.25 oz. green chartreuse
.125 oz. lime juice
.125 oz. 2:1 demerara syrup (or any sugar syrup)
fresh mint

muddle all ingredients with a couple mint sprigs, then stir with ice. strain into a rocks glass with fresh ice and garnish with more mint.

weird and impossible to categorize, i'll leave it to the now unavailable rogue cocktails book:

"Picture yourself in the limestone-walled courtyard of an Italian villa off the coast of the Riviera. You are surrounded by fragrant herbs and flowers, and the sea air is blowing gently. The sun is bright, but it's not hot, and you have nothing to do all day but relax and savor the sensations all around you. Drinking this cocktail is kind of like that if somebody suddenly punched you in the stomach just as you were beginning to doze off in the sun. In a good way."

what is cynar?

it's an amaro (bittersweet italian liqueur) made with a base of artichokes. it's dark and syrupy and <20% alcohol iirc.

that sounds v. interesting. I don't think I've ever had an artichoke in my life - only artichoke dip.

reminds me, I had my first negroni of the summer the other week. I had to teach the bartender how to make it :/

RECIPE FORTY-FIVE: jet pilot

an authentic tiki drink 4 u:

.5 oz. lime juice
.5 oz. white grapefruit juice
.5 oz. falernum (fee bros. is readily available in liquor stores)
.5 oz. cinnamon syrup (recipe below)
.75 oz. gold rum (puerto rico or similar)
.75 oz. demerara 151 proof rum (lemon hart)
1 oz. jamaican dark rum (myers, appleton)
6 drops herbsaint, pernod, or absinthe
1 dash angostura

technically this is a blender drink, but you can also shake with crushed ice and pour unstrained into a rocks glass or tiki mug. add straws.

cinnamon simple syrup:

3 sticks cinnamon
1 cup water
1 cup sugar

put the cinnamon sticks in a plastic bag and beat the hell out of them with the kitchen tool of your choice until you have mostly small pieces. bring all ingredients to a simmer over medium heat. cover and simmer for two minutes, then let the mixture rest for about two hours. strain and bottle. keep in the fridge (i added a little 151-proof rum to preserve).

to strain: get a funnel and a bunch of coffee filters. pour a little of the syrup into the filter resting in the funnel, then close the filter over and twist/squeeze the syrup through. this is messy and tedious, but what the hell.

hmm for straining the cinnamon syrup perhaps you could try using an aeropress?

http://broadripplecoffee.com/brcc/images/aerobie_aeropress.jpg

huh, yeah that would probably work really well

actually fuck it, every mixology straining thing calls for coffee filters or cheesecloth, but why couldn't i use my french press? u r smart dyao.

haha I dunno if I would use a french press - metal filter is not the same as a coffee filter. plus the cinnamon oils would get left on the metal sieve whereas it migth be easier to clean an aeropress.

i've never used an aeropress--but you can wash the french press filter so

my french press is old and scummy anyway

hah then clean it pretty well before using it - you might get rancid coffee oils in your syrup...

yeah--i think your average flavored syrup is robust enough to hold up to a clean but old metal filter ::shrug emoticon::

RECIPE FORTY-SIX: beuser & angus special

this the last word variant is a complete winner

1.75 oz. green chartreuse
.75 oz. lime juice
.5 oz. maraschino liqueur
.5 tsp superfine sugar
1 egg white (optional)

shake everything with ice and strain into a rocks glass filled with crushed ice. top with five drops of orange flower water and add straws.

RECIPE FORTY-SEVEN: speaking in tongues

1 oz. mezcal
1 oz. luxardo amaro abano (or ramazzotti or equiv.)
.75 oz. lemon juice
.75 oz. simple syrup
2 dashes angostura
2 dashes peychaud's
1 strawberry, quartered

muddle the strawberry in a mixing glass or tin. add the rest of the ingredients and shake with ice. double strain into an old-fashioned glass filled with ice (crushed or cubed acc. to preference). garnish with another strawberry.

smoky, sweet, v. refreshing.

1 oz. luxardo amaro abano (or ramazzotti or equiv.)

if I have to google it, it doesn't count as an ingredient, and I say this as a guy whose liquor cabinet has plenty of awesome stuff in it

lol n/m I see from upthread amaro is something you are way fond of, it just sounds totally "you can only buy it from a one-eyed sailor" to me

one eyed sailor sounds like it would be a pretty great cocktail

sailor still has his vision = he must be selling you some weak-ass amaro

xxp hate to say it, but at least in my state amaros are pretty readily available, and like bitters, you can never have to many. sounds like you need some more awesome stuff!

I am already thinking of what to ask them to make me at Drink on Wednesday.

I am thinking I'm going to ask for something refreshing and floral preferably in a lemon/lavender sort of way.

RECIPE FORTY-EIGHT: pegu club

huh, i didn't do this yet? well, it's a recognized classic tho you'll have to decide the right proportions for yourself. i think this is a decent jumping-off point:

2 oz. gin
.5 oz. lime juice
.5 oz. curacao or triple sec
1 dash angostura
1 dash orange bitters

shake and strain.

this is a relatively dry and tart edition, but i don't think it's out of balance. worth noting, i used a v. light gin (bulldog) and sours like this are extremely delicate and sensitive to ingredient changes.

RECIPE FORTY-NINE: paris manhattan

a delectable manhattan variant 4 u

2 oz. rye (or bourbon i guess)
1 oz. st germain
.5 oz. dry vermouth
2 dashes angostura

stir and strain.

this is a FANTASTIC use of st. germain.

St Germain is a weird thing! French but the passion fruit & papaya character makes it seem so much like it should be a tiki drink staple. Can be used for great good... or evil.

the above use does sound delicious, I'll have to try it

I had some interesting things tonight, including:

- Gin/lime soda/salt drink
- Quince/paprika/scotch/sherry slushie (omg this was so much better than the ingredient list would indicate)

uhhhh do you have a recipe for that second one?

st germain is indeed funny--for the longest time i couldn't identify it in drinks i had at bars because who the hell knows what "elderflower" tastes like? then i got a bottle and it was all "oh, it tastes like tropical fruit"

I don't have a recipe, it was at a new restaurant - it was such a strangely palatable drink!

yeah it's p. unfathomable

do you guys not get elderflower cordial?

i just brought back a bottle of st g from nyc!

i think this thread is good and i would like to participate.

pls do so!

i never made a lot of cocktails... some mint juleps recently... the occasional g&t or zubrowka + apple j.

i have a bunch of bourbon in my cupboard. and brandy. and pear william haha.

what should i make!

do you have any vermouth? (sweet or dry)

no, i should prob stock some tho

and get some more hendricks

you shld do both those things

vermouth is pretty cheap, and v useful

ya i wanted to keep some around the house for cooking purposes anyway

been having good luck extending the life of my vermouth by keeping it in the fridge and using those little vacuum seal wine caps.

how long do you think vermouth lasts? i keep mine in the fridge but i've had it for quite a while

as far as i can tell:

~ 3 weeks at room temp
a month plus in fridge
i'm at about 2 mos. in fridge and vacuum sealed.

that's it? i thought you could keep it around forever ever

nooooooooo. vermouth is not that alcoholic and it will turn. the result is not nec. disgusting, but taste tests i have done between fresh bottles and bottles that were sitting out were very enlightening.

so last week i infused half a bottle of new amsterdam gin with about 4 sprigs of fresh thai basil for 4 days. the result is interesting--it's got a strong vegetable thing going that could only loosely be id'd as basil. it makes for kind of a nice g+t tho--just made a bunch for my gf's friends who come over to watch true blood.

had a basil gimlet yday, would drink

RECIPE FIFTY: gunshop fizz

ok, this is weird and labor intensive but i swear it's worth it

2 oz. peychaud's bitters
1 oz. lemon juice
1 oz. simply syrup
2 strawberries, halved
3 slices cucumber
3 swaths grapefruit peel
3 swaths orange peel

sanbitter*

add everything but the sanbitter to a mixing glass and muddle. leave alone for 2 mins. shake w/ice, double strain over fresh ice into a collins glass. top w/sanbitter and another cucumber slice

*sanbitter is a san pelligrino product--a bright red soda that comes in tiny 50 ml bottles. check yr local italian market.

from the beta cocktails people--as you can see this is an experiment in using "non-potable" bitters as a base liquor. i've been wanting to make it forever and finally stumbled across some sanbitter. it was worth the wait--extremely light and refreshing, with a strong citrus tang and the bitterness from the peychaud's just slightly cutting the finish. awesome stuff.

simply syrup?

lol

that drink sounds awesome

hahah

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/20/dining/20tipsy.html?hp

my friend I am drinkin EL DIABLO and it has quickly become a favorite

1.5 oz good tequila
1/2 lime
1/4 oz creme de cassis
ice
ginger ale

fill glass with ice; squeeze 1/2 lime over. add liquors, top with ginger ale. IT IS SO GOOD. you can err on the side of "a little more creme de cassis" as I do 'cause that stuff is delish.

wd fuck with

nice! i just bought a little bottle of cassis last week. is this a silver tequila drink or a reposado tequila drink!

I'm using reposado. so drinkable and rad. I left off that when you squeeze the 1/2 lime, you just drop the squoze shell/peel in on top and pour the liquids in over that. lovely lovely drink!

i'm gonna get some reposado and do that up. here's another cassis drink that i found recently:

RECIPE FIFTY-ONE: gotham

2 oz. vsop cognac
1 oz. dry vermouth
.5 oz. creme de cassis
.5 tsp lemon juice

stir and strain, garnish with a lemon twist.

david wondrich, who is prob my favorite mixo writer guy, invented this as a cosmo alternative. as he says "i wouldn't exactly say i failed, but i'll certainly concede that the schedule has slipped a tad."

hmm! I have all those ingredients to hand! really only 1/2 a teaspoon of lemon juice though? that seems homeopathic.

i agree--i only made this once and i think the other ingredients would be plenty strong to stand up to some more lemon

ok so I have made me a GOTHAM and I have to say I like it! though to be honest, given that I have 1) some outstanding vermouth & 2) this amazing creme de cassis, I'd be hard pressed to not like a drink that spotlights both. I basically upped the lemon juice to "1/2 lemon" which was basically "a fat tablespoon," or maybe 1.5 tbsp. pretty damn good!

glad!!! what is yr vermouth btw?

damn that is some fancy looking creme de cassis

Negronis. Wonderful.

glad!!! what is yr vermouth btw?

Dolin. The wine store down the street sells several different Dolin bottles, all wonderful.

http://is7.itookthisonmyphone.com/m/00118/14b41af8-7bd9-4bc2-a861-76e40aff70b2/9b897c53-fe74-4f0c-acfa-25215d3d685e_568x426r0.jpg

Last night's bar.

nice bar btw! what's the bottle in front of the cointreau?

RECIPE FIFTY-TWO: queen's road variant

the things that happen when you accidentally buy a pink grapefruit and not a white one

1.5 oz. gold puerto rican rum
.5 oz. pink grapefruit juice
.5 oz. lime juice
.5 oz. honey mix (1:1 honey/water combined in microwave)
.5 tsp domaine de canton ginger liqueur
1 dash angostura

the substitutions are pink grapefruit for orange juice and domaine de canton for ginger syrup. an evolving drink with the juices coming out at certain points, and the bite of the ginger and angostura appearing other times.

i <3 pink grapefruit

CAD i was wondering:

if 1/2 lemonade & 1/2 iced tea is an "arnold palmer"

how would you envision an alcoholic "laura palmer" cocktail?

ideally you would rim the glass with cocaine but let's be reasonable

good question, lemme think abt it and get back to you.

so elmo i would propose making a tall whiskey sour with tea-infused bourbon. get some loose fresh earl grey tea, but it in an infuser or filter bag, and infuse a good bourbon with it for no more than a couple hours (taste every hour so it doesn't get too bitter).

then, in a tall thin glass (this should be a tall drink, conceptually), add:

2 oz. tea-infused bourbon
.66 oz. lemon juice (or half of a large lemon)
1 tsp superfine sugar.

stir, fill glass with ice, top with seltzer and ice and stir again.

nb i have not made this drink specifically (and have not done a tea infusion but everything online says this takes no more than a couple hours), but with a lack of good tea-related ingredients out there i think making something yourself is the way to go.

it appears i never posted the best sidecar recipe i've found:

RECIPE FIFTY-THREE: sidecar

2 oz. vsop cognac
.75 oz. lemon juice
.5 oz. orange curacao
.25 oz. simple syrup

shake and strain! and spend yr money on good cognac cause it's worth it.

been working on aerosmith's diablo recipe from upthread. made one with 2 oz. or blanco tequila--definitely too strong and too much. it's funny, this is definitely, definitely a recipe where you need to use an ounce and a half. today i made one with 1.5 oz. reposado, .75 oz lime, .5 oz. cassis. i am also shaking and straining it over fresh rocks before topping with ginger ale. this was a nice drink! i'm really, really curious about the rendition suggested here:

http://blogs.houstonpress.com/eating/2010/03/bobby_heugels_weekly_cocktail_3.php

he ups the cassis a lot and uses ginger beer instead of ginger ale while reverting to blanco tequila. i will try this once i buy some ginger beer.

RECIPE FIFTY-FOUR: east india trading co.

a boozy dark jamaican rum drink:

2 oz. appleton estate reserve
.75 oz. aged sherry (using an oloroso here)
.5 oz. ramazzotti amaro
2 dashes chocolate bitters

stir and strain; no garnish

RECIPE FIFTY-FIVE: rarely eagle (geddit?)

a warm-weather up drink with bourbon--quite refreshing!

1.5 oz. eagle rare bourbon (or any m.o.r. 90 proof bourbon)
.75 oz. lemon juice
.75 oz. st. germain
2 drops orange flower water

shake, strain, garnish with a lemon twist

RECIPE FIFTY-SIX: illuminations

man i've been too busy to blog many cocktails lately. if i make something it's usually a simple classic. but there's always room for new ones:

1.5 oz. reposado tequila
1 oz. lemon juice
.75 oz. sherry (i used oloroso)
.5 oz. maple syrup
.5 oz. egg white (maybe half an egg white if you don't want to measure)

shake once without ice, and once with ice, and strain.

this comes from a book called left coast libations that i was deciding whether to buy. based on this drink i am buying it. ridiculously balanced and it's hard to say what the star is, though i'm inclined to think it's an entire half ounce of maple syrup adding a really subtle but distinctive sweetness.

EGG DRINK PRO TIP:

frothing wands like this:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/316YPD35SFL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

cost TWO DOLLARS at ikea. they're meant for espresso drinks but if you want to fuck with eggs in cocktails this strikes me as vastly preferable to the messy dry shake that you're generally told to execute. you'll have a nice froth in a few seconds.

what's a good vodka cocktail? i have a bottle of vodka from a party 4 years ago languishing in my kitchen. not super into vodka but would like to try something new. something w/o fruit juice preferably. the vodka is ketel one.

There aren't many good vodka cocktails, but the Moscow Mule's a classic:

* 1¼ oz vodka
* 3 oz ginger beer
* 1 tsp sugar syrup
* ¼ oz lime juice
* 1 sprig mint
* 1 slice lime

yeah, that sounds good. thanks!

hey so i know that vermouth can go off but what abt things like campari/cynar/aperol, they're not super alcoholic so...? cad do you know?

i have heard anecdotally that aperol will be fine basically forever and ime with all three of the ones you mentioned it seems to be true--i have bottles of each that are between 10-14 months old and they taste good to me.

I am learning to make my own too, sick of being forced to drink other people's trendy bar beverages....they don't even bother to ask whether I enjoy their slimy tropical beverages or not.

xpost thx dude

can i make a whiskey sour with scotch instead of bourbon and orange juice instead of lemon juice?

You can substitute pretty much any alcohol in a sour - that's how we ended up with margaritas and daiquiris! But I wouldn't suggest subbing orange juice, it will be more sweet and won't have the tartness a sour requires.

There is a classic scotch and orange juice drink, though:

Blood & Sand
1½ oz Scotch
¾ oz Cherry Heering
¾ oz sweet vermouth
¾ oz fresh blood-orange juice

and a great Felten column on the same:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120069085754201267.html

WOW i was just coming here to ask what i can make with a blood-orange.

i've been having major revelations w/r/t stirred cocktails recently. it all started when i read some recipes where the bartender actually supplied what the volume of the drink should be post-stir (e.g., ~3 oz. of spirits after stir should result in a 4.5 oz. drink; i don't remember the specifics but post-stir volume added well over an ounce). so i got some room temperature tap water and measuring cups and all that good stuff and employed my normal technique--fill mixing glass generously with ice cubes, stir for a generous 30 seconds.

well damned if my pre- and post-stir volumes weren't extremely similar. i was getting some chill but very little dilution (and since chilling and dilution are interconnected, was I not even getting a proper amount of chill?)

the obvious culprit was ice. i've noticed in some establishments that the bartenders will crack large ice cubes by hand before stirring--this results in a weird in-between ice size, neither full cube (for shaking) or crushed (for various crushed ice drinks). it makes perfect sense of course--more small pieces of ice fill more space with ice surface area, resulting in more dilution and chilling.

i've tried this a couple times and while i haven't measured the results my glasses seem noticeably fuller. so yeah more to come but worth considering for the martini and manhattan makers out there. be curious if i died or just sayin or any of you guys have thoughts.

maybe my ice cubes are just lower quality or something (or maybe they're smaller) but i havent had this problem - i can tell that i'm getting some dilution just cuz when i'm stirring i notice the ice:liquid ratio changing. i definitely know what you mean abt getting some water in yr drink being important tho... i used to keep my gin in the freezer but once i stopped doing that it made my martinis taste a lot better, brought the flavours out a lot more.

hey cad if you feel like nerding out abt this - http://www.painkillernyc.com/category/research/experiments

(altho its abt shaken drinks rather than stirred)

thanks, that is really interesting and i'm going to need to read it a couple times for it to sink in! he mentions dave arnold and cooking issues in there--they have some fantastic posts on this stuff. i'll put them here when i'm home tonight.

att cad - i made this over the wkend + it was awesome -

CHARTREUSE SWIZZLE
2 oz green Chartreuse
1 ½ oz pineapple juice
1 oz fresh lime juice
¼ oz falernum

thats the most chartreuse ive ever had in 1 drink but it worked so so well

and after making it i saw that there were some recipes w/ diff proportions but by then i had finished off my bottle of chartreuse so i havent got to try them

oh nice! v. cool-looking recipe.

i'm always hesitant to crack those little 6 oz. cans of pineapple juice because i never use a whole one but this looks like it would be worth it.

i've made this before--it's basically a riff on the last word but it was nice:

beuser & angus special

1.75 oz. green chartreuse
1 oz. lime juice
.5 oz. maraschino
.5 tsp sugar
1 small egg white

shake and pour over crushed ice, top w/5 drops orange flower water.

i find crushed ice, egg, and the o.f.w. to be a bit confused-sounding and i think i made it without the egg.

yeah i know what you mean, using pineapple juice is kind of awkward. man i need to get more maraschino as well....

don't know if this has been discussed, but i just read in the current issue of bon appetit about how to make SMOKED ICE. their suggestion was to serve a whiskey/sherry/lemon drink over it. i really want to try this but i think it would make my house smell like camp because we have no good way to let out exhaust.

Glad just sayin pointed me here. I've been playing around with cocktails a lot in the last six years, and it looks like we've covered a lot of the same ground. I don't have much to add beyond a general "thumbs up, I dig your style," etc., except:

RECIPE THIRTY-EIGHT: shaddock

One of my favorite drinks, and the one that made me love genever (though there's nothing wrong with Death in the Gulf Stream either). But I end up making it with slightly different proportions. Sometimes I leave out the St Germain altogether (use twice as much Aperol instead), simply because it's one of the more expensive liqueurs and I don't use it for many drinks, so if I run out I don't always replenish it right away. But even apart from that - I bump the genever up to 1.25, even 1.5. The maltiness really comes forward.

Also a big fan of Gunshop Fizz type drinks - I use the basic blueprint of the Trinidad Sour (1.5 bitters, 1.5 sweet, 1 sour, .5 spirit) for all sorts of things until the Ango runs dry.

Also also - if you love chartreuse like I love chartreuse, Elixir Vegetal is worth having. You may have mentioned it already, I don't know - it's a long thread to take in all at once. It's like a concentrated, bitters-esque form of chartreuse.

hey thanks dude! really nice of you to say :D

i had never heard of death in the gulf stream--that's a deadly serious-sounding drink. i am out of genever but that's going to cause me to go buy some for sure.

i don't have elixir vegetal either--i've noticed it on cocktailkingdom but they sell a lot of odd stuff so i never investigated further. what do you find yourself doing with it?

and pls feel free to add recipes and whatnot to this thread if you feel like it btw!

Yeah, a lot of the bitters on Cocktail Kingdom a) aren't even bitters, they're tinctures (no bittering agent involved, but "blueberry flavoring" doesn't sounds as 2k11-sexxy as "blueberry bitters") and b) aren't legal in the first place. They're legal to possess, but most of the small bitters companies haven't gone through the cumbersome process of having their product approved for sale. But that tempts me sometimes, because I think, shit, maybe I should pick up some of the odder ones before they get caught.

So mostly I get celery bitters, chocolate bitters, orange bitters, and Peychaud's, which isn't carried here. I really want to try the Dandelion & Burdock bitters, but keep putting it off.

The Elixir Vegetal I've used in two ways - one, adding a few drops to anything with Chartreuse (a Last Word, etc), to boost the ... chartreusiness. Two, it really adds some complexity to simple drinks that already have a little bit of herbal character, like a gin and tonic, or a Dark and Stormy. And man, it smells good.

since i just got a new 1L bottle i thought i could use up the rest of the one i had w/ one of my favourite drinks -

intro to aperol
2 oz Aperol
1 oz gin
.75 oz lemon juice
.25 oz simple syrup
1 dash Angostura bitters

like bill and i were saying on the other thread, aperol is such a nice drink, really deserves to be more popular imo, esp w/ summer coming

it sounds so medicinal
i like that

If you want medicinal and Aperol, there's the 2 to 2, too -

1.5 oz Aperol
1 oz absinthe
1 oz lemon
.25 oz simple
dash orange bitters

... which can make that "this will last forever, I just need an occasional rinse for Sazeracs and Corpse Revivers and whatnot" bottle of absinthe go pretty quick.

that sounds so delicious! man.

want

yeah, both those recipes sound excellent. maybe i need to replenish absinthe too.

bill, i didn't realize the elixir vegetal was actually like a concentrated chartreuse from the same producer! that's really cool. and i'm pretty curious about the dandelion and burdock bitters. i did buy the boker's that that guy makes, and while i obv can't comment on "authenticity" (unlike the smug dudes who make the bitter truth stuff and were happy to do so) it is pretty good stuff--i spent like two weeks just making martinez variations using the boker's/

Nice! Yeah, what's his name who does the Boker's etc SOUNDS like he knows his stuff. And ultimately, the taste is more important to me than the authenticity - a revival of authentic Roaring Twenties gins and whiskeys is not something anybody really wants to see, after all.

Have you had Dandelion & Burdock soda? (I don't think you're British, but I don't know anybody anymore, so who knows.) It's kind of sort of root-beer-ish, which has me stumped for what I would end up doing with the bitters. I love Root - kind of sort of root-beer-inspired liquor, but it's base liquor strength, not a sweetened liqueur - but it's not very flexible.

oh wow, no not british and i didn't know it was a soda flavor. i am going to have to seek out a bottle though.

Along similar lines as Aperol, I think Pimm's is a barely-bitter liqueur that could be played with a lot more. Or I'm talking myself into thinking that, anyway, because I have a few bottled citrus juices (sudachi, yuzu, kabosu) I need to play with for my blog, and since I've got my girlfriend's birthday, visiting friends, and two weeks unpaid vacation all in the near future, I don't really want to go out and buy any liquor right now ... even though I'm out of Aperol, Creole Shrubb, and down to my last shot of maraschino, all of which would make sense to use with citrus.

So I'm looking at the citrus-friendly liqueurs I do have, and the amaros (amari if you're like that) are mostly going to overpower exotic citrus. I mean, even Chartreuse - when you taste the lime in a Last Word or the lemon in a Final Ward, part of that's your mind filling in the blanks because lemon and lime are familiar flavors. But something unfamiliar, especially bottled, so that none of the oil is involved - I don't want to cover it up too much. I want it to be present enough that there's a reason to use sudachi instead of lemon. St Germain will be fine I'm sure, and Canton if I have any, stone pine, creme de cacao, maybe violette (maybe) ... but yeah, I think Pimm's could be interesting.

So that's what I'm drinking this weekend, whatever comes out of that train of thought.

what's your blog (if you don't mind sharing)?

http://okaycheckitout.blogspot.com

I just didn't want to mention it all over the place and look like I'm plugging. The cocktail content waxes and wanes, there's cooking stuff too.

nice! i am, um, checking it out (first observation--i live relatively close to you)

I'm in Nashua (NH, home of the liquor stores) - my girlfriend lives in Boston so I spend a lot of weekends there. There's so many higher-end cocktail bars in Boston that I keep meaning to check out, but man ... it just always seems cheaper to make drinks at home and spend the money on Korean ingredient shopping or something instead.

pimms is definitely great! i guess i just dont think of it as being underrated since im living in the uk, altho tbf it does only get used in pimms cups + nothing else + i can see what you mean that it could be used for much more

Exactly - I think it could be used in a lot more drinks. I've mostly seen it in Pimm's Cup variants where it's still the main ingredient - I don't know, maybe there's a reason for that and it'll turn out that the flavor disappears if you mix with it in other ways, but it's worth trying.

do you guys get the pimms winter?

Not in NH, and not at the place in New York I mail-order stuff from - I think some states get it, though. How different is the flavor?

i don't think we do, no. if so it's extremely rare.

pretty different iirc, i havent had any for quite a while tho, but its brandy based and the spices are just more 'winter-y' (not v helpful i know), at pubs they would serve it warm w/ apple juice

its sad they phased out all the other ones

Is the UK having the kind of cocktail revival we've had here? Even here it's not very big - the market for appletinis and jello shots will never dwindle - but it still led to a lot of things like creme de violette, pimento dram, bitters, etc., either being brought back or more widely distributed. (Although I think candy-flavored vodkas and rums are still the biggest-growth categories.)

hmmmm i would say no? i mean i'm in london + there are some high end cocktail bars but as far as ingredients go it seems like the US is doing everything. i cant even get hold of this rum - http://www.alpenz.com/images/poftfolio/smithcross114rum.htm which is apparently bottled here

and there's only a few liquour stores where i can buy stuff like aperol, despite italy being right there

Oh Lord, Smith and Cross is good stuff. Yeah, we benefit from Haus Alpenz working hard to import things here - a lot of the "revival ingredients" have come through them, without having the sameyness of tasting like they all came from the same guy. (Their violette is SO sweet, though.)

Smith and Cross is like ... I don't even know how to describe it. Any time Caitlin and I make something with it, we just sit there going "holy shit, THIS RUM." It's like if other rums are Campari and Aperol, this is the Fernet of rum. ... if bitterness were rumminess. It's not a great analogy.

haha oh man you've sold me on it. i emailed my liquor store the other week (these guys - http://www.thewhiskyexchange.com/) who are pretty good for everything + theyve said they're trying. it still just seems so weird to me that i cant get it.

It IS weird. I'll never understand liquor distribution/availability - it's still bizarre to me that you can get multiple kinds of absinthe in New Hampshire but only one kind of rye whiskey, just for one thing.

First Pimms experiment, built on the Corpse Reviver #2 -

absinthe rinse
1 oz yuzu juice
1 oz Pimms
.75 oz gin
.75 oz Cocchi Americano
And a couple Coca-Cola-infused cherries - absinthe-soaked or straight-up candied cherries might make more sense, I just saw these first and realized I hadn't used them in ages.

It's good! It's surprisingly bitter - the yuzu is contributing to that in part, I think. But I have the door to the deck open, I've got my shoes off, I've been alternating between work and the Red Sox - it's working for me.

I'm in Nashua (NH, home of the liquor stores) - my girlfriend lives in Boston so I spend a lot of weekends there. There's so many higher-end cocktail bars in Boston that I keep meaning to check out, but man ... it just always seems cheaper to make drinks at home and spend the money on Korean ingredient shopping or something instead.

― Bill, Saturday, April 9, 2011 1:09 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah i am in somerville. does the nh state store system special order stuff? you probably have scouted your fair share of stores in the boston area but let me know if you're looking for anything special--i have a pretty good mental list of what is available where for some weirder stuff.

re: boston cocktail bars--there are only a couple that are worth going out of your way for if you're a prolific amateur (maybe eastern standard, craigie on main, and drink in fort point). a lot of places have some nice drinks on the menu nowadays but by and large it's stuff you can make v. well at home.

Have you been to Deep Ellum? We pass it on the bus a lot, so I'm always like - hey, we could go there. But Eastern Standard is supposed to have an excellent burger, so that's also on our list.

New Hampshire won't special order anything unless it's something sold at another NH liquor store, i.e. something already in the system. They require a product-specific permit that has to be approved at a liquor board meeting - so if you're Uncle Ted's Vodkaplex with 32 flavors of vodka from acai-goji to zubrowka, you have to submit 32 different packets of paperwork. I can always tell when a new product has serious marketing money behind it, because that's the only time when something new shows up in NH within a couple months of its release. (Lucid absinthe, for instance, and anything from Captain Morgan.) You also need a special permit to ship liquor to NH, which is only supposed to apply to vendors - most places don't have it, so anything weird and regional is usually something I can't order - but I've actually been scolded even for having free samples shipped to me, which I think is actually legal by the letter of the law.

It's this whole big thing.

The other side of the coin is that domestic product that is carried here is usually pretty cheap! Maker's Mark regularly goes below $15.

My best Boston cocktail-related purchase: Becherovka! At Bazaar, the Russian grocery (which is an amazing place tout court). I haven't actually done much liquor shopping in Boston yet - I love Central Bottle but we were basically there for cheese; I know there's a place called the Cocktail Shaker or something like that but haven't been there yet, I'm afraid of how much I may spend. It's easy to limit how much I spend on bitters when they're mail order and there's no instant gratification, but taking a bag full of bitters home ... oh man.

oh yeah deep ellum is rad! i used to live near it. good food, good beer selection, very nice people, and their cocktails well-made. some different stuff on the list since i was there last. i'm not seeing the 1970s manhattan which, in addition to being funny (it was a canadian club manhattan on the rocks) was really tasty!

Okay cool - Caitlin lives in Allston so it's right nearby.

This isn't a Pimms concoction but I need to test these juices out - kind of a Last Word variation and definitely the best mezcal drink I've made -

1 oz St Germain
1 oz kabosu juice
3/4 oz black raspberry infused mezcal
1/2 oz Chartreuse
pinch of citric acid

The St Germain pretty much disappears completely - not in a bad way, but between the citrus and the black raspberry, it just blends in. What's nuts is how little the Chartreuse shows up - I didn't want too much of it because I didn't want to overpower the kabosu, but the mezcal plows through everything. It's a really good drink, but the kabosu is probably totally unnecessary - I should probably make a lemon or lime version for comparison.

So you wind up with this smoky tart raspberry drink with some herbaceousness buried in there somewhere. I'm definitely drinking it pretty quick.

bill are you using fresh yuzu or out of a bottle? i only have the latter

Bottle - I've used fresh yuzu before and would again, but that's partly because I make marmalade after juicing them. Bottled seems pretty decent so far!

yeah i have no point of comparison so was just checking

yr cola infused cherries have reminded me - do you think that ramazotti has some sort of cola flavour happening? i havent mixed it w/ rum but am thinking abt it

yeah i def get a cola thing from ramazotti

3/4 oz black raspberry infused mezcal

yeah def curious about how long you infused this

I haven't had Ramazotti! It's on my list of things to buy from DrinkupNY this year - barring financial calamity, my goal is to try all of the amaros they carry that NH doesn't (having already tried the ones carried here, i.e. Campari and Aperol). So I've got Meletti, Cynar, Fernet Branca, Cardamaro, Del Capo, and Rarbarbaro Zucca, and then a bottle of Becherovka at Caitlin's place. Oh, and Averna.

The black raspberry infused mezcal is very cool. I was all excited about mezcal, and then when I finally got a bottle, it was SO smoky. I mean, tequila itself isn't exactly subtle, but have y'all had mezcal? Shit. That smoke eats everything you throw at it. But I had a bunch of frozen black raspberries that I'd ordered because the farm stands here have stopped selling black raspberries, and there's been so much housing development that my mother no longer has a bunch of forest with wild black raspberries behind her house. So I was missing em.

Only it turned out the black raspberries I got weren't the ones I missed. There are two kinds of black raspberries - the little wild ones thimbles could wear as hats, and larger softer darker ones. The little ones are nice and tart; the big ones have no tartness, but a sort of wineyness.

So they didn't fit my craving at all, and they're tricky to use in pie because they're just so sweet. And my freezer is sort of ridiculous even when black raspberries aren't in there. So, two birds - after I'd made a batch of black raspberry bounce (raspberries, whiskey, sugar, couple months infusion) I made black raspberry mezcal (raspberries, mezcal, no sugar, probably about two months). It's very dark and winey looking even after you've mixed it into a drink, and the raspberry definitely comes through.

Please don't be enormous, Flickr -

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5063/5604456083_2d5dd972bc_z.jpg

nice! i like mezcal but it's easier to use in like half ounce accents than as the actual base of a cocktail.

(meant to say, if you're hanging out in allston you are v. near blanchard's liquors and the only stock of laird's bonded apple brandy i've ever seen)

Yeah, if you "dilute it" with tequila, you get a whole different thing that's much easier to work with.

It's ridiculous how hard it is to get Laird's bonded in New England, of all places - don't even let me on that soapbox. The blended stuff is so disappointing, I don't even know why it sells - especially since the bonded is not much more expensive and actually tastes like something. I have a bottle right now - from New York! - but I think I've passed by Blanchard's en route somewhere else. Do they have a good selection in general, or do they just happen to be the one Laird's cache?

decent selection--kind of hit or miss but they get some odd stuff. they have a big stock of the flor de cana white rum which can be weirdly hard to find and is well-regarded as non-cuban white rums go (i have a bottle but not yet opened). last time i was there i scored some of the 12-year old w.l. weller bourbon (that's the only weller expression still carrying an age statement and it's not common around here). used to have lemon hart 151 but i think that's gone now.

wow, bill, that sounds great.

i had a mezcal old fashioned a while ago that was really neat, and there's a place here called bourbon that does a nice mezcal drink. but yes, it is a very dominant flavor.

They might have the Lemon Hart again, apparently it's back in stock a lot of places? I don't know if there was an interruption in the supply chain like with Angostura last year or what.

A mezcal old-fashioned worked well the one time I had it, I just kept finding that any time I wanted an old-fashioned, I wanted whiskey - so the bottle kept sitting there. Mezcal's supposed to work well with Cynar but I haven't gotten them to play well - it may depend on the mezcal, of course. I'm using Sombra because it was cheaper than the Del Maguey single villages, and Vida wasn't available.

Speaking of Cynar, though (I'm all over the place - blame the drinks) - Cynar over cubes of frozen melon juice. Or huckleberry juice, but melon juice is probably more realistic, and cheaper. You can add a little gin too, but it really doesn't need it. Something about the Cynar and the melting fruit juice, it's just really good in summer. Ahhh, cocktails are awesome.

yeah there are some lemon hart rumblings--the remaining stock was bought and being distributed to like 8 states and then it's being repackaged and reformulated by the current brand owner?

i have a bottle of the 151 with a very, very small dent in it.

Reformulated, shit. I should really get a bottle while it's around. I mean, I know sometimes a reformulation doesn't mean much - Campari is just fine without insect-based food coloring - but I was like 11 when New Coke happened, so I'm new-and-improved-shy.

yeah i can't find where i read that but the brand was purchased by the guy who runs the ministry of rum website so hopefully he gets why it's an important product. per their facebook page they're looking for a new distributor for mass. which means we'll see it here eventually.

anyways, glad it's getting saved--there are enough unavailable products out there already!

Oh wow - Ed Hamilton. Well okay, I'm sure it'll be fine. I don't know if I've ever seen someone so fanatical/devoted about a specific spirit who wasn't a brand rep.

man lemon hart 151 is another one that it seemed i have no hope getting a hold of, but maybe that will change now? i really like the goslings 151 that i have

Oh, on the Smith and Cross topic - and this might apply to all decent overproof rums? but I don't know - one really good drink with it is half S&C, half Bonal Gentiane ... which granted, is one of those things that might not be easy to find in London since it's imported by Haus Alpenz here. On the other hand, even if that's the case, there are probably other French gentian-based aperitifs that would be perfectly good substitutes.

I love this thread, I don't get to geek out about this stuff very much. Wine and beer, I don't know much about except the brands I like - but I'm definitely a geek about cocktails.

i took & modified a recipe from the New Brooklyn Cookbook based on what i had at home.

The Brooklyn Rumble

2oz aged rum
3/4oz lime juice
3/4oz symple syrup*
1/2oz framboise**
dash of angostura bitters
dash of grapefruit bitters (i added this for the hell of it)

* i had premade a limeade concentrate which is half & half simple syrup to lime juice in the fridge already
** i used st george framboise agua perfecta, which is their raspberry eau de vie mixed w/raspberry juice. syrupy and sweet. really good. http://www.stgeorgespirits.com/aqua-perfecta-fruit-liqueurs/

pretty delicious drink. a lil on the sweet side. i'd prob cut the framboise next time.

i would cut the simple tbh--that's quite a bit of simple.

what rum did you use?

i agree about the simple. i don't think i used that much, mostly because the wife can't deal w/citrus juices for fear of acid reflux. but she didn't even have any of the drink, so it prob made the drink better anyways.

i used my good sipping rum. ron zacapa 23. i've got a few other bottles around that aren't that good prob but i've used in drinks and they've been ok. whaler's original dark and sailor jerry spiced.

i really want to buy that rum! need to clear some shelf space first tho

i know this is a really old post, but i felt like commenting

ok so i made the negroni this past weekend as CAD notated it at the top of the thread and thought it tasted horrid when using equal parts of the three liquors but a lot better with less campari/more vermouth. campari is maybe too bitter for my taste but now i have most of a bottle of it left over i'd like to try it in other things
― im armond white btw (donna rouge), Wednesday, March 10, 2010 10:09 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i've made this w/equal parts gin, vermouth and campari and wasn't the biggest fan, but with a ratio of 4 gin, 2 vermouth, 1 campari, it's pretty excellent.

probably said this elsewhere, but i didn't like rum until i tried that ron zacapa

yah i think rum is much harder to "use well" than gin or rye but when you do it's magnificent

I think the as-seen-on-television rums are also much worse, for anything other than a rum and Coke or Dark and Stormy (don't sue me, Gosling), than the gins of similar or lesser price points, too. You can make a perfectly good cocktail with Beefeater, Boodles, even Seagrams, but I can't imagine ever buying Bacardi or Captain Morgan again.

yup--and it's funny because on the balance good rum can prob be had more cheaply than many other "good spirits" (esp. when we get into aged stuff) but a few mediocre or worse brands dominate the market.

re: Ramazzotti discussion upthread, it definitely has cola flavors and it's my go-to amaro. A few years ago I started drinking Ramazzotti and sodas over ice as a summer drink and it's so great and simple, just a super delicious adult cola.

xpost yeah its crazy what a lock bacardi has on the market, i mean over here you can get havana club everywhere + yet still most ppl reach for bacardi.

and jaxon you should try steadily bumping up the campari level in that negroni, i bet you'll be on board w/ equal parts soon.

Ultimately the liquor industry is always going to be heavily driven by what 20 year olds use to get their dates drunk, and kids like to draw the Bacardi logo on their notebooks in math class. They also like pirates.

You also see a lot of general meatheadedness - there's a lot of real scorn out there for the idea that a drink is worth enjoying. "It's just supposed to get you drunk," after all. Bacardi's like Bud - safe to drink when giving a shit would mean you're a pussy.

then compare that to ppl spending a lot of money on premium vodka

Continuing on the Do Not Drink This theme, Do Not Drink ri(1) or (ri)1 or whatever that shit is called, because the committee of mooks who came up with that one do not deserve your dollar. It's made more annoying by the fact that it's a Beam product and the long-rumored Old Overholt Bonded is still nowhere to be seen.

Rye is a troubled category.

xp; the quadruple-distilled premium vodka nonsense is so frustrating! I have a Facebook friend who is as fanatical about trying different premium vodkas as I am about citrus fruit, and I want to grab him and shake him and tell him the emperor has no clothes.

I'm going to make a million dollars selling cornstarch-and-water as quadruple-distilled pure premium ketchup.

rye is getting better! rittenhouse distribution is slowly creeping up--apparently heaven hill is mashing rye once a month instead of four times a year to keep up with demand. hopefully buffalo trace is doing the same for sazerac.

hopefully that'll make it cheaper over here! it seems like such a reasonably priced spirit over in the US, but here it costs abt as much as a good single malt

oh and i just got some battavia arrack in the mail from a friend for my birthday - any ideas of what to make? it seems to be another thing thats made by those alpenz ppl

We need more ryes like Rittenhouse. I like a lot of the newer ones - I really like Redemption - and I like that there are more >90% ryes now. But the price point for some of them is nuts. It's one thing to introduce new expensive bourbons, because we have plenty of bourbons to choose from - or gins or rums or etc. But there are only ... what, four? mid-price ryes anywhere, right? Old Overholt, Jim Beam Rye, Wild Turkey rye, and Rittenhouse. Five if the baby Sazerac counts, and maybe it should.

We need more choices in good mixing stuff, not $40-60 bottles I'll feel guilty diluting.

But yeah, it's still a better situation than 5 years ago, or even 2 years ago. I just felt like ri was a step in the wrong direction - higher price, less rye character.

xp - I've never had Batavia Arrack myself! It's been on my wishlist for a while.

also pikesville

I've never seen that! Huh, from Maryland. Maybe they'll send me some.

oh and i just got some battavia arrack in the mail from a friend for my birthday - any ideas of what to make? it seems to be another thing thats made by those alpenz ppl

― just sayin, Monday, April 11, 2011 10:41 AM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark

i have a very cool arrack sour recipe--i will try to remember to post it when i'm home tonight.

fyi pikesville is also produced by heaven hill (in kentucky) with the same mashbill as rittenhouse. i believe it's one year younger.

xpost thx dude

That's probably why I haven't seen it - not much of the Heaven Hill stuff is carried here. I'm surprised I didn't see it when I lived in Indiana, though, but that was right on the cusp of this whole cocktail revival, and maybe it just wasn't carried at my local store.

yeah i've never seen pikesville in a store up here--some bars seem to get it but that's it.

Batavia arrack is pretty terrible unless mixed but there are some good classic punch recipes with it

what's considered mid range rye? less than $40?

a step above that, i got High West Rendezvous and it's pretty great. i do hide it from the guests tho, ha

most ryes seem to be either 15-30 or 50+. i guess i don't know how much redemption is. the high west stuff is all pretty pricey iirc. baby saz can be over 30 at times and it's not really worth that.

Less than $25, I'd say, but I guess it depends in part on where you live. Old Overholt, Wild Turkey, Jim Beam, and Rittenhouse are all under $25 - and are all in about the same price range as other-spirit brands like Maker's Mark, Knob Creek, Bulleit, Plymouth, Bombay/Sapphire, Pampero, Barbancourt ... over $40 and you're in the same price range as the Thomas Handy releases and the Papa Saz.

But there is a weird middle ground too - I think Redemption is $30, Templeton and baby Saz and one or two Michters releases are all more expensive than those but cheaper than the Handys. Maybe that should be the "mid-price" range, but it would feel weird referring to the Rittenhouse group as "cheap ryes" - basically it's a small enough spirit category that there aren't any cheap ones unless you count Old Overholt.

I just realized I forgot to include Bulleit Rye, which might be mid-range too, but Bulleit is already such a high-rye bourbon that, I don't know, I haven't gotten very excited at the prospect of this one.

You basically can't buy a bad rye unless you get confused and buy Canadian. It's the opposite of rum.

oh yeah, forgot michter's. i wonder where that stuff is coming from these days.

the following are all made by lawrenceburg distillers int'l in indiana, for those who like to be up on such things (age difference noted, too lazy to find proof difference):

bulleit rye (4 years)
templeton (5 years)
redemption (2 years)
the young rye in the high west bottlings (2 years)

funny that, in such a small spirit category, going to the source (the distillery) makes it seem that much smaller!

Yeah, I wonder how much of that is because there seems to be even less of a market for white ryes than for white corn whiskeys - a new bourbon distillery can sell its white dog for a while to have a little revenue while waiting for its release to be ready, but it seems much more rare for a distiller to do this with rye. I was thinking Deaths Door did it, but just doublechecked, and no, the bottle I have is malted wheat.

o ya, i'd mentioned in the brown vs white liquor thread that i'd recently tried a white rye and thought it was nasty. i'm having trouble finding out what kind it is though

I love white whiskey in general, but don't think I've had a rye one (and realize that despite the media hoopla, I'm in the minority in liking any of them). It's got to be less sweet than the corn, I'd guess?

Oh, here's a bottle of Buffalo Trace white dog that's corn/rye/malted barley, but the 125 proof ends up being its most notable feature, so I have no idea what white-rye-specific characteristics I might pick up on it.

i knew i read recently about rye white dog, and it's coming from our friends at heaven hill:

http://www.drinkhacker.com/2011/04/04/review-heaven-hill-trybox-series-new-make-white-whiskeys/

basically it's white evan williams and white rittenhouse. interesting--you should see if they'll send you a sample!

Shit, I'll have to email them. I've been sitting on a multibrand white whiskey review for a year because all those articles on white whiskey came out, and I just sort of felt like ... I'd be contributing to the hype, without adding anything to the discussion. I mean, even though *I* like it, it's not the next big thing - a lot of the people ordering white Manhattans and whatnot are clearly just trying it out once, it's not becoming a regular order for them.

(I infused some of the BT with huckleberries. Blue Dog!)

The idea here was to do something gimlet-like with kabosu juice -

1.5 oz gin
1 oz kabosu juice
.75 oz simple
.5 oz douglas fir eau de vie

Definitely good, especially given how warm the afternoon is turning.

holy crap @ douglas fir eau de vie

http://www.clearcreekdistillery.com/other.html

It's so good but I'm really torn at whether I'll buy more when I run out. It's not that flexible a cocktail ingredient (the best is I think called a Shiver, with Campari and grapefruit juice), but if you drink it alone, it goes that much quicker, and it's $50/375ml. At that price I could get Chartreuse VEP.

Haus Alpenz imports a pine liqueur that must be somewhat similar. They are truly doing the lord's work.

The stone pine stuff - Zirbenz or something like that. It's a different kind of pine flavor, and sweeter, but yeah, each is definitely the thing most like the other.

clear creek is so cool--i love their pear eau de vie

yo just sayin:

1.5 oz. batavia arrack
.75 oz. lemon juice
.5 oz. Maraschino
.5 oz. simple syrup
.5 oz. egg white
2 dashes Peychaud's bitters
lemon peel for garnish

follow all standard egg drink protocol

Ha, right after getting on Bacardi's case, I heard about this: http://talesblog.com/2011/04/12/tales-of-the-cocktail%C2%AE-announces-official-united-states-bartenders-guild-bacardi%C2%AE-pina-colada-competition/

I know Tales has to pay the bills, but a Bacardi-sponsored Pina Colada contest, at the same event that's previously seen the return of Creme de Violette and Creme Yvette, the release of Legendre Herbsaint, etc? It's a couple weeks late for April Fools.

i think plain white bacardi still had its defenders among cocktailians. maybe they're few and far between, but they're out there.

i wonder what these pina coladas are going to look like--wouldn't be surprised if a lot of them included some aged rum along with bacardi.

btw bill do you have thoughts on:

creme yvette vs.
haus alpenz creme de violette vs.
parfait amour

esp. for use in aviations? i need to suck it up and get one of these because they're vital to that drink, but i've heard conflicting things about all of them.

There will probably be some caramelized pineapple infusions + coconut water and so on.

I haven't picked up Parfait Amour yet because I feel like I don't need it AND creme de violette, and haven't finished the creme de violette. I started drinking Aviations when they were still made just with maraschino, because violette wasn't available yet - the first time I had a Blue Moon, it was with violette from an ancient bottle I bought on eBay.

Parfait Amour also sounds like it has more going on than just the violet, the way Creme Yvette does. And Creme Yvette vs Creme de Violette is weird, because on the one hand I think I like the first more, but on the other, if I could only have one, I think I'd get the Violette. The Yvette is more *interesting*, I guess is what it comes down to - but as limited as they both are, the Yvette is probably even more limited because of those extra flavors. It's delicious, it's just not nearly as flexible as the other Cooper product, St Germain, and it costs an arm and a leg.

I would probably go through both of them faster if I drank less whiskey and less genever - they don't seem to work with either of those spirits, or if they do, they require some other ingredient bridging the gap, which I don't know about. I tried a touch of violette in a whiskey sour and it just didn't work - the combination of flowers and malt isn't a successful one, I think.

The sensible answer here is probably "buy whichever one you can get the cheapest." They're all well-made products - I'm sure that's true for the P.A. - so if they sell minis of any of them, you can probably get by with that. Barring a mini, I think the violette is more than $10 cheaper than the Yvette, and it's not worth paying $10 for some added orange peel and berries. Okay Jesus, I just checked DrinkupNY and they sell Yvette for more than twice what they sell violette for - that is nuts.

Whoa - an equal parts Smith & Cross / Angostura drink: http://cocktailvirgin.blogspot.com/2011/04/mentirita.html

Smith & Cross works really well with Bonal in equal parts, so it makes sense. I'm out of Ango or I'd be on this.

topped with coke! that sounds fun. i'll make if i remember to buy coke.

this was my favorite drink to make for a while

Gin Basil Smash
One bunch of fresh basil, save one leaf for garnish
1/2 of a lemon
2/3 ounce of simple syrup (sweeten to taste)
3 ounces of gin

Stuff a bunch of basil & half of a lemon cut into four pieces into a shaker. Add simple syrup and muddle the lemon and the basil, smashing the ingredients and squeezing all of the juice from the the lemon. Shake vigorously. Strain into a rocks glass filled with ice. Garnish with a basil leaf.

apparently i accidentally cut the 'add gin to shaker' part

"set shaker aside, drink gin from a shot glass"

i'm going to try that when the farmers market starts back up and there's a lot of nice fresh basil available

hey, so i got a few fee bro bitters for xmas from a friend, but don't quite know what to do w/them. plum, grapefruit and aztec chocolate. i made this once. i thought it was pretty good (i think i went heavy on the bitters to really emphasize the chocolate). i don't think my friends liked it because they thought it was too strong, but they generally drink beer and wine and i like pretty spiritous cocktails and weird bitter flavors (the campari)

Bittersweet Autumn
1½ oz bourbon (or Basil Hayden’s)
¾ oz sweet vermouth
¾ oz Campari
2 dashes chocolate bitters
1 Drunken Cherry, for garnish

Sounds good - I like bourbon/Campari combos but haven't played with them much.

Caitlin went to a cocktail/science of taste event where they recommended using chocolate bitters with St Germain because of some similar flavor components. I keep forgetting to try it myself.

Have you tried the plum bitters? People have complained about some of the newer Fee's bitters not actually being bitters, but tinctures instead without any bitter components, and I figured the plum and rhubarb seem like the most likely culprits. Not that there's anything actually wrong with tinctures.

Grapefruit bitters, I would think Salty Dogs/Greyhounds, tequila, or those bitters-heavy drinks we were talking about upthread.

I'm getting a 14 pound box of fresh citrus from an orchard in a day or two, to grab the last of the fresh fruit while it's available - it'll be a mixed bag of whatever looked good to pick on Monday, probably a few lemons and a lot of tangerines and oranges, maybe some exotics. Thinking I should probably use some of them in cocktails, maybe freeze-concentrating them first.

i really like adding some bitters to g+t's--grapefruit bitters are a good choice for that. definitely tequila as well.

i don't know about the fee's but the bittermens mole bitters are awesome and useful in all sorts of stuff--old fashioneds, stirred drinks with aged tequila, drinks with dark rum, etc. etc.

o ya, i used the plum w/g+t's for a week when a friend randomly left some tonic at my house. the drinks seriously tasted like bubblegum.

where do i get all this bitters?

that bittersweet autumn sounds amazing today (stormy, rainy). want!

Housemade tonic seems to have become a thing at a few of the fancier local bars lately...anyone have a good recipe, or tried making their own? Kinda curious. Then again not really sure how one even goes about acquiring quinine, so..

http://www.feebrothers.com/Product.asp?Category=5

tehresa, as with most questions the answer in our area is Ace Beverage in DC!

between cocktailkingdom.com and thebostonshaker.com you should be able to order any bitters you can't find locally

haha i've googled a bunch of stuff and landed on their site a few times. must go at some point.
xpost

went to a supermercado catering to the hispanic population of my hood today and they had sugar cane and cheap mint and limes so i made mojitos. now chewing on the limey piece that did all the muddling and it is nom.

need suggestions for what liqueurs/mixers to get next. some things that have distinctive flavors but can also be used in a multiple of drinks.

i've got pimento allspice dram, roses grenadine, cointreau, pear eau de vie, raspberry liqueur, herbsaint, fernet, some coffee liqueurs, martini&rossi sweet vermouth (rosso). and a few bitters (listed above)

i bought a really tiny bottle of st germain. made a drink or 2 w/it but wasn't totally sold on it. a bit too sweet/girly.

should i get some sort of crème (cacao, menth, cassis)? benedictine? maraschino? lillet? a different type of vermouth?

ok this might end up being a couple posts long but to start:

from a classic-leaning perspective, the following will be most useful:

sweet vermouth
dry vermouth (buy the smallest bottles you can, seal them with a vacu-vin and keep them in the fridge. i like dolin sweet and noilly prat dry in terms of things you can find in half bottles)

cointreau (you got this covered)
maraschino (luxardo)
benedictine

grenadine - ditch the roses and seek out one of the many homemade grenadine recipes that exist. the easiest by far is to dissolve 1 cup of sugar in 8 oz. of POM juice over heat.

liqueurs after that:

chartreuse (both green and yellow tho green is more common and more versatile--the most expensive liqueur that's really in regular rotation but it's worth it)
herbsaint (for sazeracs, also as a quick substitute for drinks calling for pernod or even absinthe)
allspice dram - v. common in rum drinks
creme de cassis - is pretty great and you can frequently get a good imported one in a half bottle
apricot brandy - i like haus alepnz
st. germain - overused but works really well with whiskey and tequila in carefully-made recipes. see here: http://stgermaincocktails.wordpress.com/

I think the best sweet vermouth option for my palate is Punt e Mes - which is kind of unfair/misleading, because it's more bitter and flavorful than most vermouths, so is maybe more like "its own thing, but something you can substitute for sweet vermouth." I pretty much only use it in Negronis and Manhattans, but there's not much else I do with sweet vermouth anyway.

I would go with Cocchi Americano before Lillet Blanc. It definitely makes a better Corpse Reviver, and it's not expensive, especially for a newly available product.

The cremes can all be fun, but unless there's a specific drink you love - or a specific flavor you love that you want to build drinks around, which happens with me and Starbucks coffee liqueur - they're not essentially, especially since you have three fruit options as it is, so there's not an obvious flavor gap to fill.

Maraschino is probably the most canonical ingredient you're lacking, if only because the Aviation was emblematic of the cocktail revival for so long. I love it, and a drizzle of it can be good in a whole lot of things, but the main drinks that really require it are the Aviation and the Last Word (and its variants) - and for the Last Word you also need green Chartreuse. Cherry season is coming up in a couple months, though, and making your own maraschino cherries is easy enough.

Wait - you don't have Chartreuse? It's one of the most expensive of the bunch, but if you develop a taste for it it becomes essential.

xposts!

cosign on punt e mes as another s. vermouth option and on cocchi americano

oh bill! i now possess the dandelion/burdock bitters. will report back when i get around to playing with them.

I like all three of the Dolin vermouths, but really any of the better vermouths should be first on your list, they'll completely change your cocktails. Bitters are good buy beyond Angostura/Peychaud's/orange they're more variations than building blocks.

Maybe you just didn't list having it but Campari is a must of course! If you already have it then Aperol is great, especially with summer on the way. Cosign on Chartreuse, too.

so how do you deal with the fact that good vermouth supposedly does not keep well? i don't think i'd ever use enough of it fast enough to justify spending money. or do you guys think they do keep alright?

i think it was a jamie boudreau video i was watching that informed me the shelf life of vermouth is much shorter than i thought.

like i said---vacuvin, fridge, 375ml bottle--you will get 4+ weeks out of it. i do dump the last quarter of my share of bottles tho :/

if you use a vermouth that you also enjoy drinking straight (lookin at you, punt e mes) that helps a lot!

Yeah, vermouth keeps fine in the fridge. The perishability of vermouth has been kind of overemphasized in the last couple years to break people of the habit of leaving it on the back shelf in the pantry for years. It only keeps poorly in comparison to liquor, insofar as liquor can be kept at room temp - and even then, liqueurs have enough sugar and particulate that they're changing and aging too, just slow enough that it's not likely to matter.

It's like with spices. The cinnamon you have in June isn't the cinnamon you bought for those cookies at Christmas. You shouldn't keep it forever or you'll forget what was ever good about it. That isn't a reason to not buy cinnamon.

Oh and yeah, Campari and/or Aperol are musts!

For that matter, if your vermouth is just about to get some grey in its whiskers and you're really worried about this, premixing a bottle of Negronis or the like will make something more perishable than gin but less perishable than vermouth, and the aging effects aren't totally bad things. Barrel-aging cocktails gets a lot of play lately, but the barrel's not responsible for everything happening there.

so, any liqours i should refrigerate? i have a wine fridge w/ temp control and the vermouth's already there, but i'm wondering about the anis (peruvian) - it seems sugary -would this be better off in a fridge?

i don't refrigerate anything that's not wine or wine-based (vermouth, sherry, etc.)--even things with extremely low alcohol content like cynar and aperol seem to do fine sitting at room temp.

Probably only anything that was already old when you bought it, although I've been told that Campari, St Germain, and Creme de Violette all lose some color and flavor with age - I have trouble keeping Campari and St Germain from running out, and haven't noticed any problems with the CdV. Practically speaking, I think for most liqueurs the aging is only a concern when you hear something's ending production and you're trying to figure out if it's possible to stockpile it.

(... sadly this is also true for attempting to stockpile Pepsi Blue.)

if you use a vermouth that you also enjoy drinking straight (lookin at you, punt e mes) that helps a lot!
― call all destroyer, Monday, April 18, 2011 2:20 AM (57 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i had a bottle of this. i pretty much only drank it straight
http://tastingtable.com/entry_detail/sf/1061/Sutton_Cellars_gives_a_European_tradition_a_West_Coast_spin.htm

Generally speaking alcohol content correlates to shelf life, but as Bill mentions, everything ages to some extent (usually for worse). Stuff that's especially prone to oxidization - wine based products - will be a problem so that includes not just vermouths but port, Lilet, etc.

hey CAD, do you buy exclusively online or do you have a store you go to? I discovered some tiny specialty bodega in the South End on Shawmut that seemed to have a bazillion different bitters on the shelf and was wondering if you knew about it

hey i actually buy most stuff in stores (the boston shaker in davis, liquor world in porter) but am always looking for new places--do you know what the store you found was called?

I don't think I had been bright enough before to piece together that DJP is probably D@n. (Every time I say something like this I feel like I'll sound like an idiot if it isn't.)

On aging and booze - another factor is whether something is distilled or infused. Like, gin is probably going to age so slowly in the bottle that evaporation actually becomes an issue before oxidation does. But St Germain allegedly ages as fast as it does - losing some of its floral character I'm told, but again I haven't hung onto any St G long enough for this to happen to me - because some of its flavor is infused, so you have solid particulates in there that can precipitate out, things that would be filtered out by distillation. This is definitely true of home infusions since we don't have high-quality filtration systems - I made an old-school punch of mostly rum with tea and lime juice, kept it in the fridge because I forgot about it, and it went from an amber-colored liquid to a completely clear liquid with tea sediment at the bottom of the bottle. Vermouth is wine-based, infused, low-alcohol, and sweetened - a lot of strikes against its shelf-stability.

There is probably something about all this in McGee.

you are right about djp.

i have heard a lot of aging claims about st germain--my bottle is 8 or 9 months old, and it seems fine. i guess the only thing to do would be to buy a fresh bottle and compare them.

google is amazing, I would have had to go back and look at the store to find the name without it: http://www.southendformaggio.com/

apparently they have a Cambridge location, too

Sunlight has a lot to do with oxidation too, right? As pretty as the St Germain bottles are, they also tempt stores that do this kind of thing to display them in bright sunny windows, which can't be good if they sit there a while. Not an issue in NH's purely utilitarian liquor stores.

(ps: hi dere poster formerly known as Tep!)

(Hello! Yeah I don't know if I'd said that on this thread yet. Still getting my sea legs.)

This is making me want to crack the seal on the bottle of mezcal that spent several years in a storage building with no climate control in MS. It and a bottle of cognac came as bonuses tucked down into the boxes in an auction lot of old books I bought. Problem is, I don't know what good mezcal would smell or taste like, compared to messed-up (skunky?) mezcal. Maybe it'll burst into flames on contact with air.

I remember hearing that the first few batches of St Germain were notorious for shelf life issues but supposedly it's not as much of an issue now.

google is amazing, I would have had to go back and look at the store to find the name without it: http://www.southendformaggio.com/

apparently they have a Cambridge location, too

― fat fat fat fat Usher (DJP), Monday, April 18, 2011 11:11 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

oh yeah i know where the cambridge one is! i should check this out. looks like a cool shop in general.

wmc you should def crack that mezcal. unless the cork is fucked i'll bet it's ok.

it was just funny, I was lurking on this thread and watching the fascinating bitters conversation, and then on the way to a dinner party a friend pulled me into this store and the first thing I see is like 5 different bitters I've never before seen

a rare cad original:

1 oz. blanco tequila
1 oz. campari
.5-.75 oz. blanc/bianco vermouth
1 dash bittermens burlesque bitters (this was prob overkill)
1 strawberry, sliced

muddle strawberry with liquids, shake with ice, double strain.

sort of a combination of two things i found--a strawberry negroni and a tequila/blanc/campari thing. it's not the most, uh, refined drink around but i kinda like it.

Burlesque bitters! I want to hear about these.

hah i'm still trying to figure out exactly what they're for myself. i think i've tasted them by themselves more than any other bitters i have. they're definitely flowery, and the flavor is brief and kind of sharp. the bottle recommends amari and tequila, among other things, yet the launch cocktail (which can be found on the bittermens site) is an old-fashioned with bourbon, applejack, and grenadine. it's ok but not exactly an approachable cocktail imo.

It's post-thunderstorm muggy out and surprisingly slightly too warm - I have the door to the deck open and the thermostat says it's 80 degrees - and I am drinking Cardamaro Vino (a wine-based amaro) over cubes of frozen blackberry juice. Not a bad way to clean out the freezer.

hey, so if I want to start experimenting with fancy drinkmaking without really following recipes and I have some decent gin in the house and am totally open to pretty much any drink of the spectrum of sweet to bitter, what types of bitters should I start playing around with

(IOW, are there any that are relatively "safe", meaning the resulting drink will likely be potable no matter what I do)

fav bitters with gin: orange, celery, grapefruit. also i basically no longer make gin and tonics without these guys:

http://bittermens.com/products/boston-bittahs/

That's a really good question - I'm not sure I have a really good answer. Bitters right now are sort of like ... if Coca-Cola and Dr Pepper had been the only two sodas for the last eighty years after Orange Crush went out of business, and now all of a sudden everybody else has realized they can make soda too, but the market is in total chaos, without firm boundaries ("this is what grapefruit bitters is supposed to taste like") and without the sort of standardized pantheon of flavors.

Other people may have better answers. These are my thoughts -

Angostura bitters - this is the one bottle to always get, unless for some reason you really love Peychaud's more. But even I love Peychaud's more, and I still say go with Ango as #1. It's the Coca-Cola, the Heinz ketchup, the pepperoni pizza, the standard-setter and standard-bearer of bitters. Even though I like the medicinal quality of Peychaud's more than the spiciness of Angostura - I grew up drinking gentian-heavy Moxie! - I think that Angostura is a more balanced and more flexible product. You can use it in just about anything you'd use bitters in and other than in a Sazerac, it's never going to betray you. There's a reason there are half a dozen off-brand duplicates of it, an army of Pepsis.

Peychaud's - but Peychaud's is awesome. You can't make a Sazerac without them, and if you add them along with Angostura to any very simple drink - the classic spirit/sugar/bitters drinks - you get something much more complex. (Sometimes more complex than you want.)

Orange bitters - other than the first two this is really the only "classic bitters." Once in a while you see an old recipe calling for peach bitters, but very rarely, while orange bitters were common enough that they were used in Martinis. One reason for this is probably because citrus rind is so heavy in oil, and the oil has such a pronounced flavor, that orange bitters made with 19th century methods will have a more recognizable flavor than cherry, rhubarb, peach, or other fruit bitters made with those methods.

Anyway, the various brands of orange bitters are pretty different. I like Angostura Orange, but a lot of people don't. Regan's was the only thing available for a long time, and then Fee's was introduced. Of course, they're also the easiest to make at home, though this isn't the time of year for it.

Call those the Big Three. I would say that unless you develop a strong preference for a specific bitters, to the point that you're trying to build drinks around it, those are the three you'll use the most often. Grapefruit bitters might come next, or chocolate bitters - chocolate might not work with gin, I haven't tried it, but is surprisingly flexible by and large. Or maybe Dolfin and Dagoba have just conditioned me to accept any flavor combined with chocolate.

Most bitters are either going to be variants on the herbal/medicinal smorgasbord that is Angostura, or are going to have such a specific flavor that you'll only want to use it in a couple of drinks. Celery bitters definitely fall into that for me - I like them a lot but use them hardly at all, and if you just add a dash of them to some random drink, you aren't going to get the "oh that's kind of cool" transformative effect you can get from the Big Three.

That was shorter in my head.

good post. from my experiences of 'what do i do w/that plum bitters??' and you wanting to use gin, i'm sure any fruit flavor you like and a g&t will be cool. you'll only need a dash or 2 to transform your drink.

otm

2 stories i guess: last weekend decided to make real grenadine. had roses on the shelf, but wanted to see the diff. realized the best thing to do w/the roses to get rid of it was make shirley temples. got some 7up and the wife and i were in serious nostalgic heaven. made the grenadine from morganthaler's recipe with orange flower water and realized how amazing it tasted. made a few drinks (jack rose and el presidente), but wasn't too stoked on them. need to do some tweaking.

i went to TJ's today to pick up a lemon or 2 to make drinks w/tonight and noticed there were grapefruits and oranges in stock. said wtf, i've never really experimented w/the beachbum berry tiki drink iphone app i bought, tonight's the night. the most labor intensive and ingredients in a drink i've ever made. realized it's kinda hard to juice a grapefruit (and a rather large orange) if all you've got is a lemon juicer. realized i needed to cut everything in 1/8ths to fit. the first drink i found w/everything i had on stock was actually a punch. split the recipe in thirds.

Blood of the Kapu Tiki
1oz fresh lime juice
1oz fresh grapefruit juice
1oz fresh orange juice
1oz grenadine
1oz simple syrup
3oz rum
dash pernod (i used herbsaint)
dash angostura

swizzle with crushed ice until frost appears.

my first sip was ridiculously sweet and tart. it made me rethink the fact that i'd spent so much time on this kind of drink. but, luckily i'd just read two amazing articles* on ice and dilution and i realized that i didn't have either crushed ice or enough ice on hand (shitty freezer that doesn't have enough room for much of anything). so i added what ice i had on hand, a tiny bit of water and swizzled the shit out of this drink and gosh darnit, it's pretty fucking tasty.

* this essay on dilution of ice and drink making is so ridiculously nerdy and long, but so worth it.
http://www.painkillernyc.com/research
* this one's not as informative, but cool about how you can make diff sized ice at home
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703789104576273114034005624.html

nice! thrilled you decided to make some grenadine. jack roses are pretty hard to balance so keep trying.

re: ice--i do not regret spending 100 bucks on an electric ice crusher and if you have the kitchen space you should not either. barring that, a canvas bag and mallet will do the job as long as there are no close-by neighbors.

well, i think first maybe i need an electric ice maker. seriously our freezer is balls. it's bottom loading pull out and half of the space is taken by some ungodly contraption and weird sliding shelves in there. every time we need to take something out or put something new in, it's a crazy hour long puzzle of frustration. i've only got this tiny ice tray in there and if i know i have friends coming over, i have to start making ice a week or 2 in advance to throw in a ziploc.

Jack Roses are so frustrating because every time I make homemade grenadine, I feel like the sweet/tart balance is SLIGHTLY different from the last time, and it's really a drink where everything needs to be just right. I mean, you can make a daiquiri with all sorts of proportions and be pretty much fine, but a Jack Rose is more tattoo than tie-dye.

I have the same problems with Monkey Glands - I think I've had two excellent Monkey Glands. One is enough to let you know they're possible, two is enough to make you crave one later. But it's like there's no such thing as a good Monkey Gland, only excellent ones and mediocre ones.

xp ok that's weird! i will commence being thankful for my regular-ass freezer and ice trays.

well, i've never had a jack rose made for me, so i actually don't know what it's supposed to taste like. all i know is that the 2 i've made weren't very good. also, have no idea if the calvados we have is any good (Menorval Calvados Prestige). bought it years ago for some dessert, long before i started making drinks. website claims it's best for cooking, so that says something right there.

hmmmmmm that could be part of the prob. even the lairds 80 proof could be an improvement.

don't worry too much about what it's supposed to taste like--esp. with a drink with three ingredients, just go with your instincts/gut.

totally know what yr saying w/the water content of tiki drinks, my gf's a big fan so we make them quite often (and have too many types of rum) and i used to ignore it when some drinks said that you shld blend... this was a mistake, like you said, they were way too sweet. Also we got a cheap hand cranked ice crusher and its worked p well

And jaxon i thought the el presidente was really good! I used this recipe from rum dood which i think is a lil different from the traditional ratios -
1.5oz aged rum
0.75oz dry vermouth
0.25oz curacao
0.5tsp grenadine
Maybe worth giving a go

I know it's a cliche already to find the flaws in mint juleps, but I'm trying to enjoy one right now because the mint in the supermarket was the freshest-looking I've seen (in a supermarket), and it's just ... eh. I think that I really need a cocktail to have either a tart component or a significant bitters presence - I've always liked Manhattans or gin and tonics more than martinis, for instance, even before I knew anything about cocktails.

Okay yeah, I dumped some citrus in and it's great now - the mint just comes alive.

it just isn't hot enough out yet :)

Well there's that, too. I try to psych myself into thinking it's summer by drinking summer drinks even though I haven't even planted the garden yet.

Would a mint daiquiri work, maybe?

at that point u are basically in mojito territory--not a bad place to be

A bartender made me a champagne julep a few nights ago - holy wow.

niiiiice

still wondering what my next purchase will be. considering chartreuse, asked bartender to make me a Last Word. gonna be honest. wasn't totally felling it. wife got a Ninth Ward and it was pretty fantastic. making me rethink not wanting to get St Germain.

The Ninth Ward cocktail created by Brother Cleve

1-1/2 oz Bulleit Bourbon
1/2 oz St. Germain Elderflower Liqueur
3/4 oz Fee Brother's Falernum syrup
3/4 oz fresh lime juice
2 dahes of Peychaud's bitters

Shake on ice and strain into a cocktail glass.

and speaking of ward drinks. this is one i get regularly at the bar around the corner and have made a few times at home

Ward Eight
2 ounces rye whisky
3/4 ounce lemon juice
3/4 ounce orange juice
1 teaspoon grenadine

Has anyone tried Thatcher's elderflower liqueur? How does it compare to st germain? It's half the price at bevmo.

i've seen scattered positive comments online but never tried it.

went to the alameda flea market this weekend looking for cocktail glasses. found some that i'm pretty stoked on.

http://img546.imageshack.us/img546/5153/taill.jpg

made a Rattlesnake for the inaugural cocktail. love this drink.

The Rattlesnake

2 ounces Wild Turkey rye whiskey
1 ounce lemon juice
1/2 ounce Grade B maple syrup
2 dashes Peychaud's Bitters
1/2 ounce egg whites
-- Lemon twist, for garnish

shake once w/o ice to breakdown egg. shake again with ice to chill. strain

oh nice--i got a couple antique-looking glasses over the weekend from a friend who is cleaning out a house. they're actually a little big for cocktails but still v. nice looking.

that recipe reminds me of this which i love and had posted previously in this thread:

illuminations

1.5 oz. reposado tequila
1 oz. lemon juice
.75 oz. dry sherry
.5 oz. maple syrup
.5 oz. egg white

shake once w/o ice to breakdown egg.

yeah! The dry shake has helped cocktails immeasurably over the past few years.

so once i square off some of the work i have to do over the next couple of weeks i really want to start committing myself to cocktailism. first order of business is actually acquiring barware though - any recs on a good starter set? the oxo 7-piece set looks nice.

that set being: http://www.amazon.com/OXO-SteeL-7-Piece-Barware-Set/dp/B0001YH18O/ref=sr_1_7?s=home-garden&ie=UTF8&qid=1304439276&sr=1-7

hmmm...obviously the compact storage is nice. the two main probs i see are

1) no muddler--that seems like an obvious add
2) the jigger is marked @ .75, 1, 1.5. i don't get that. .5 oz. and .25 oz. are very important measures, esp. if you're mixing one drink at a time.

this guy: http://www.amazon.com/Oxo-Grips-Stainless-Angled-Measuring/dp/B000BGW3MQ/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top is the best but also seems to be unavailable.

also missing a boston shaker!

hahaha yes!

The only special cocktail equipment I use is a cobbler shaker and a graduated shotglass (I have a jigger, I'm just used to the shotglass). The back of my citrus reamer works well as a muddler, so even though it's a pain to clean, I keep putting off getting an actual muddler.

But things like the bottle opener, citrus knife, bar spoon, those seem like things most people already have in their kitchen. (I mean, not a citrus knife specifically, but you don't need a special knife to cut limes.)

(xpost) jiggers are great if you need accurate measurements in a fast paced environment (like an actual bar) but at home I use a small graduated glass and it works just fine, similar to this: http://www.amazon.com/Harold-21GM-Mini-Measuring-Glass/dp/B0000CFO3W/

I'd also suggest:

- boston shaker (w/ regular strainer, a julep strainer is nice too but not necessary for a basic set)
- bar spoon (min 11" w/ twist)
- muddler
- tray for making big ice cubes, like: http://www.amazon.com/Tovolo-80-5521-Jumbo-Size-Silicone-Ice-Cube/dp/B00395FHRO/
- zester or microplane for garnishes (citrus and nutmeg)
- small paring knife for garshishes (probably already have this)
- a set of squeeze bottles for when you make syrups etc. http://www.amazon.com/Squeeze-Bottles-Set-3-8-oz/dp/B0026K7FZK/

probably missing a few things

this guy: http://www.amazon.com/Oxo-Grips-Stainless-Angled-Measuring/dp/B000BGW3MQ/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top is the best but also seems to be unavailable.

― call all destroyer, Tuesday, May 3, 2011 12:56 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

i should note that the plastic version of the above guy is still around and it's not bad, just don't melt it in the dishwasher like i did.

my microplane grater is on the other side of the country right now, pretty much my favorite kitchen utensil ever

jaxon's rattlesnake in one of my new glasses (in bad light on a phone camera). this is a lovely drink!

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5185/5685353507_907f833bfb.jpg

So a boston shaker is one of those lidless cocktail shakers that fits snugly with a bar glass? I never knew the name for that.

yup, it refers to the metal tin + glass combo

wanted to buy some tequila for cinco tonight (pueblo viejo reposado), ended up buying a bunch of things. super stoked. st.germain, dolin dry, a 1/5th of g.chartreuse, lillit blanc

made dale degroff's margarita. one of the best i've had

1½ oz Tequila
1 oz Cointreau
¾ oz Lime Juice
¼ Simple Syrup

and then made this from upthread and it was fantastic.

RECIPE FORTY-NINE: paris manhattan

2 oz. rye (or bourbon i guess)
1 oz. st germain
.5 oz. dry vermouth
2 dashes angostura

i guess i didn't like st.germain in the gin drink i made a while back (maybe i'll grow to like it, it's such a big bottle), but i think it goes so well w/whiskeys.

wld totally try that paris manhattan

yeah that was a cool one! maybe i will make it tonite.

so maybe i need to get some st. germain.

i want this.

holy shit i actually still have a meyer lemon which means i can make that

do you also have pear brandy on hand?

yeah i have clear creek pear brandy. it's delicious!

awesome!
catoctin is where i'm doing the bottling workshop next weekend.
hope i don't spend $300 before i leave!

have also decided i want everything on this menu.

oh interesting--catoctin is again their pear brandy, clear creek's is more an eau de vie. recipe should still work tho.

you're going to have a blast and looking at their products i could pretty easily be tempted into coming home with one of everything.

the fact that they mention non-alcoholic versions on their menu is really rad imo.

mocktails are going to be a thing over the next couple years i think.

I'm making a small liquor run tomorrow -- checked out the rum poll thread for rum recs; I might get a whiskey as well, but I know zilch about it and don't know what I'd like. Maybe some rye.

what are you planning on doing with the whiskey?

Is there something versatile enough for cocktails or straight sipping? I saw Eagle Rare mentioned in the whiskey thread.

cocktails AND straight

yeah if you're not super-versed in american whiskey eagle rare would def be a nice choice; knob creek as well.

i use rye in 90% of my whiskey cocktails but i rarely sip rye, so if you're getting one bottle i'd go w/a bourbon.

i'm realizing that last sentence is sort of illogical; what i'm saying is i'll take bourbon as a mixer over rye as a sipper

otm

Eagle Rare was on sale, $10 off. Got that, Jim Beam rye and Mount Gay rum.

which mount gay?

Eclipse (gold)

An emergency rush job and a royalty check landing in the same week mean that I have a little money to play with, so I'm looking at DrinkUpNY for the stuff I can't get in NH. I need to refill maraschino and genever, so there's that...

Does anyone have any thoughts on Barolo Chinato, esp. Cocchi's? I've had a couple glasses of a non-Cocchi BC in the past, but that was 15+ years ago and I was drinking completely different things. $45 seems steep.

Are The Bitter Truth's lemon bitters legitimately *bitter*? Cause if it's just a lemon tincture, I can make that. Shit, I can make that by accident.

Clear Creek cherry liqueur vs Combier Roi Rene Rouge cherry liqueur vs Cherry Heering vs Rothman & Winter cherry? I like Clear Creek in general.

Esprit de June liqueur?

I'm leaning towards preemptively reupping my Smith & Cross and Punt e Mes, but all of the above are alternatives I'm considering.

no experience with a lot of those items (cherry heering is the only cherry liqueur i've used, and given the rate at which i use it that's not going to change soon), but i have tasted the tbt lemon bitters on their own. they're definitely "bitter" (and tbt is not the type of operation that would make "bitters" without a bittering agent) but i do question their utility--unless you're a hopeless bitters addict there are much better things to do with 20 bucks.

Yeah, that was my impression of TBT based on what I've had. The utility, I don't know. Lemon bitters could be summery, but so is an actual lemon after all.

Cherry liqueur is one of those things that I always think could be amazing if done right, especially if it were bright and tart - but what I've had always goes more towards the cooked cherry flavor.

Man, reading about Barolo Chinato makes it sound like it would go really well with either gin or genever.

(One of these days I need to buy Benedictine again too. I'm watching 10 right now, and the bar has about eight bottles, four of which are Benedictine, Cointreau, Beam, and Cutty Sark. It's like an Iron Chef challenge: go forth and mixologize with these things.)

ok i've been doing this as a serious hobby for a while, and i have no idea how it took me until last week to encounter the southside:

2 oz. gin
.75 oz. lemon or lime juice (lime is the prevalent version but both work)
.75 oz. simple syrup
1 dash angostura
2 big mint sprigs
more mint for garnish

lightly bruise mint sprigs in mixing tin, add liquids, shake and double strain. slap spare mint of drink and garnish with a nice-looking mint leaf.

what an approachable, pleasant cocktail!

of=over

to make good on my earlier promise, i went on a bevmo run today (and btw, OMG BEVMO<333). got some rittenhouse 100, sauza anejo, noilly prat vermouth, angostura and peychaud's. (i still don't have actual mixing equipment, tho.) prolly gonna crack open the rittenhouse for a nightcap later.

noticed when I threw a splash of vermouth in tonight's dinner that I'm almost out! This means now I can get a "good" vermouth - which?

dolin!

dolin sweet, noilly praat dry

has anyone tried this - http://blogs.sfweekly.com/foodie/2010/07/gran_classico_an_ancient_lique.php

have not tried it. i see it around a lot and it's good to read a little bit about it (though the line about "small-batch production" is kind of nonsensical). i kind of swore off buying amaros until i finish ones that i have.

you have some good self control. i havent even seen it here, i just liked the sound of it tasting like campari, but more so. btw in that column they say 'dry vermouth (blanc)' arent they 2 different things? i've seen this in other recipes where they've said dolin blanc and then called it a dry vermouth... dolin blanc is sweet right?

I have a bottle of Gran Classico, it's pretty delicious. Deeper and rounder flavor than Campari but with a sharp lift in the finish that's quite drawn out (that's the wormwood, I guess). I haven't really used it in anything yet. Sort of imagine the heft of flavor like Carpano Antica is to a lighter vermouth.

WTF can I do with Drambuie? Is there a cocktail that this stuff tastes good in?

the rusty nail - 3:1 scotch and drambuie

(nb never tried it but it's the only drambuie cocktail i know of)

btw in that column they say 'dry vermouth (blanc)' arent they 2 different things? i've seen this in other recipes where they've said dolin blanc and then called it a dry vermouth... dolin blanc is sweet right?

― just sayin, Monday, May 30, 2011 6:35 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yup, dolin blanc is sweet. i see that mistake a lot.

the rusty nail is sort of the only "standard" drambuie cocktail. use a blended scotch and i'd start with a 4:1 ratio and add more drambuie if it's not sweet enough for you.

but there are tons of things you could, in theory, do with it. here are some starting points: http://www.drambuie.com/view/the-taste/

came across a liquor store in silverlake today that had about forty kinds of bitters for sale, all with tasters - tried a memphis bbq flavored one (bet this would go well with whiskey). they also had many, many bottles of dolin and bols genever, both of which i'd been unable to find anywhere else, and an entire shelf of absinthe - definitely making a return trip!

also i am completely over the campari aversion i wrote about upthread, love this stuff now

^_^

yep. It's a grower. Negroni has become my drink of choice pretty much. Love the slightly medicinal taste it has.

had last night: plymouth, st. germaine, fresh ginger, twist. SO good.

for the first time in my life i own a bottle of angostura bitters. but now.... what do i do with it??

make a manhattan or old fashioned!!!

hey tehresa when u say fresh ginger could you elaborate? muddled ginger pieces or something else?

hmm i guess i will need to also purchase my first ever jar of maraschino cherries

i may go for a negroni

rusty nails are p great fwiw

i am not 100% sure (it was at a restaurant) but there were definitely a few pieces floating in there... but not enough to give it as much ginger flavor as it had... so i'm wondering if it was juiced/strained/something?

i've boiled ginger before to make tea... i imagine if you chilled and strained it you'd get something similar to what was in this cocktail.

hmm, interesting. i've never really messed around with muddling it but the fact that there were pieces tells me that might be what they did? you can juice ginger but my understanding is it's a complete pain in the ass. i just made some ginger syrup which i now need find uses for.

bitters tastes good in nearly anything IMO. I probably overdo it a bit though. I've been drinking old fashioneds with bulleit rye but when that runs out I guess I'll buy some scotch and try a rusty nail. although I've also been planning on making some of my own maraschino cherries so maybe I'll stick to the old fashioned for a while.

i feel like you wouldn't really get enough flavor out of muddling ginger... that's why i thought it'd been boiled and crudely strained? or maybe a tiny bit muddled in...

damn i think i used all the ginger at home or i would work on this tonight

btw the pieces in the drink were TINY

grated?

almost like teeny tiny dice?

if you boil ginger pieces you'll def get little solids that could be missed by a mesh strainer.

for tehresa, here is an experiment using the pegu club formula:

2 oz. plymouth gin
.5 oz. lime juice
.25 oz. st. germain
.25 oz. ginger syrup
dash angostura
dash angostura orange

(ginger syrup: bring to a boil 1 cup water, 1 cup water, 2 inches of peeled/sliced ginger root. simmer for 2 mins, steep for 2 hours, strain)

this is pretty good imo!

oops one cup water, one cup sugar that is

thanks. i think this was my first gin drink in maybe a year? i don't even have any in house. i might start playing with it again, though i think i'd still try for a ginger water over syrup bc the st g is more than enough sweet for my taste. on the other hand, I had a blast making flavored simple syrups 2 summers ago so maybe I'll give it a go again.

so the liquor store near my workplace sells 750mL bottles of chartreuse for $35, which is about twenty bucks cheaper than i can find elsewhere. they also look like they've been sitting there for years (the bottles are dusty and i can't quite tell if some of them are meant to be yellow or green). should i avoid? i mean it's 80 proof liquor so i can't imagine it goes bad, per se...

i wouldve thought it would be fine... surely

the green is north of 100 proof, the yellow is 80. so that should help you tell if they have both (the bottles are extremely similar-looking!) that's a pretty amazing price and the stuff should be fine. worth a gamble imo.

The color might be off, but I'd bet it's fine. I know I'd snatch up a couple!

ok, just wanted to make sure. i probably won't be making another liquor run until my next paycheck but i doubt anyone's gonna snatch 'em up before i do. thx!

...as it turns out, they're all yellow. copped one today, will try later.

i also bought a bottle of fernet-branca and am trying it right now (neat). just had some weird proust/madeleine thing where i could smell my elderly italian relatives' cologne. that being said, i like it!

woah! yeah i love fernet branca but usually its not something that ppl are into the first time they have it.

i just made some ginger syrup which i now need find uses for.

this is one of my friend's fave cocktails

http://www.cocktailchronicles.com/2009/01/19/strong-medicine/

that's a Penicillin btw

thank you! i will try that.

oh! forgot to say, i boiled ginger with water and have so far mixed it with seltzer and a bit of lime juice -- delicious. i think i will use that for any gingery cocktails i want because i just can't handle too much simple syrup in my drinks.

what's a good substitute if a recipe calls for irish whiskey? bourbon? a non peat-y scotch?

yeah a non-peaty scotch or makers imo

hmm. in the house are a few ryes, a few bourbons, glendronach (kinda gross, we stole it from the inlaws) and hibiki. last one's prob my best bet, huh? even tho the wife saw me looking at it and said (don't u dare touch my whisky, ha)

what bourbons?

tho i think that most likely the hibiki is your best bet

i guess just one. henry mckenna. o, and found a caol isla, but that's like the smokiest whiskey ever (and so damn good)

looking for things to use my g. chartreuse in; just made a Jewel Cocktail

2oz gin
1.5oz green chartreuse
1oz sweet vermouth
3 dashes orange bitters
marischino cherry (don't have any)

pretty good. think i'd prob use a lil less vermouth next time. i've also seen other recipes for same cocktail that use equal parts gin/chart/verm.

the bijou! one of my local places makes that. i just checked my copy of savoy and it's equal parts in there. never made it at home tho.

ya, same ingredients as bijou, diff proportions.

what are some cocktails u make that use green charteuse? everywhere i read about it people say how they can't keep a bottle of it at home, but i'm having a hard time finding recipes that call my name.

also, what do you guys do about pineapple juice? make your own from actual pineapple? seems so labor intensive.

did you check this thread? the chartreuse swizzle, the beuser and angus special, and the last word in particular are great drinks that use a good amount of the stuff.

re: pineapple juice there are a few choices. the most commonly-recommended one is to go to the supermarket and pick up some of the dole 6 oz. cans. whole foods also sells a larger bottle of pineapple juice for like 4 bucks if you plan on using more of it or just lie drinking it. i don't think anyone attempts to make it fresh unless you own a pretty serious juicer.

ah, thought people claimed unless you made your own it was gonna be shit

hahah no they always say that the one juice that is ok out of the can/bottle is pineapple. which may just be an admission that juicing a pineapple is a huge pain in the ass.

yeah im a big fan of the chartreuse swizzle - you need to use a lot of crushed ice for it, or it wont work properly, but if you get a taste for them then yr chartreuse wont last long

Discovered Maurin Quina this weekend, a cherry brandy-fortified white wine with a lot of quinine - it's like the amaro version of cherry cough syrup, but ... in a good way? I mean, it's definitely more medicinal than most vermouths, maybe comparable to Punt e Mes. I forget the proportions, but we ended up using that, Aperol, lemon juice, Cheribundi tart cherry juice, and Smith & Cross rum to make this cherry rum punch that hit the spot.

re: Chartreuse, I'm a huge fan, it's like comfort food for me - but I nearly always make some variant of the Last Word. You can sub out any base liquor for the gin, and I often sub another liqueur instead of the maraschino.

I mentioned curiosity about Barolo Chinato earlier - finally got around to buying and trying some. It's very good, but I don't think I can justify the over $40 - i.e. two Rittenhouses - price again. Maybe if I were less invested in cocktails, I would feel differently, but I think I get more value out of two bottles of liqueur or a bottle of Chartreuse.

Speaking of liqueurs. Also got Rothman and Winter's peach liqueur, which ... is it new? It's not listed in the Haus Alpenz portfolio, but neither are a couple of other recent products - they've gone from having the website list upcoming products a year in advance to lagging behind. Anyway, it's good stuff - recognizably peachy, good for summer.

the price has definitely scared me off given that i don't know a lot about what i would actually do with it. can you describe a little more what it's like/what it might be good for?

btw, last word variant i made yesterday--chartreuse, lime, smith and cross, r&w apricot.

Yeah, I started to describe the Barolo Chinato, backspaced what I'd written, and forgot to write something better! Hm. Well, it's recognizably a fortified red wine. The way Dubonnet Rouge is, for example - the red wine flavor is going to be there in whatever you make, and that limits what I can see doing with it. Like, you can make a Manhattan variant, and make it any of a dozen ways by adding a drizzle of a liqueur or a shake of bitters, and then ... what else is there, really? Dubonnet Rouge lasts a hell of a long time for me because anything you make with it is going to taste like Dubonnet Rouge - moreso than that's true of Cocchi Americano, let's say.

And I suppose that's not a problem if you love the thing in question - maybe I should think of Barolo Chinato (or Dub R) as comparable to Punt e Mes, something that can stand up to the Campari in a Negroni. But it tastes both more subtle and more winey than Punt e Mes. Less bitter/bracing, too. Sweet - maybe not as sweet as a liqueur, but sweeter than I'd want to drink straight.

Before I really *discovered* cocktails, I drank a lot of port, and I think if I had never diverted onto the cocktail road, Barolo Chinato would be right up my alley. It has some complexity, you can sip it, you can have a cigar with it (I have not yet tried it with chocolate, which is supposed to be a good pairing). I've just ended up in a place where I see most bottles of alcohol as ingredients, and this one isn't really best-suited to that.

It is good with rye. Just not good enough to justify the price.

thanks, that helps--the dubonnet comparison in particular because i'm really not a big dubonnet guy.

maybe i can find a bar that's working with it around here but in the meantime it's def a simple value proposition--a bottle of this would be two bottles of punt e mes or cocchi. even carpano is cheaper!

Do I need to refrigerate velvet falernum? It's only 11%, but made with a rum base.

i have often wondered this! i have never bought it but the answer to that question would play into my decision to do so.

i have a bottle of this, and i dont put it in the fridge but thats just cuz im running out of room in there... i should prob taste it to see how its going

just made this. it's pretty amazing. way more mellow than i was expecting from the ingredients. i remember you guys mentioning chocolate goes w/chartreuse and tequila, so i added the chocolate bitters and it worked really well.

Kama Sutra

2 ounces añejo Tequila
1/4 ounce mescal
1/2 ounce green Chartreuse
2 dashes Chocolate Bitters
1 flamed lemon peel for garnish (this smelled awesome btw)

Instructions: Place Tequila, mescal and green Chartreuse in a mixing glass. Add ice. Stir for 15-20 seconds and strain into a cocktail glass. Add garnish.

there are a couple of other non-citrusy tequila drinks on the second page of this article
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/05/03/FDDT179ORE.DTL

i had this amazing cocktail the other day - a "ginger long island iced tea" at some fancy schmancy restaurant. it was a revelation, but unfortunately, i do not see the recipe anywhere on the internet so far. and there's not even a recipe for long island iced tea at all on this thread!

it tasted like a regular long island ice-t, but maybe had some actual fresh ginger in it. also it was a hair lighter and tea-y-er than your typical long island, so i wondered if it maybe had a splash of actual iced tea in it? like high quality earl grey or something. seriously, this drink was the bomb. anyone know how to make one?

there are several possibilities--gin or whiskey infused with tea, ginger syrup, ginger liqueur, muddled or pressed fresh ginger. i'd go ahead and guess that the recipe does not look much like the standard l.i.i.t. recipe at all.

actually, the original long island iced tea is being ceremonially buried at tales of the cocktail this year: http://offbeat.com/2011/07/01/tea-and-tales-of-the-cocktail/

ha, the long island iced tea will never die! it's the same price as other cocktails, but has like 2-3 times as much booze in it, and is still pretty tasty to boot, and will thus be the drink of choice for cheapskate alcoholics for all eternity.

i was thinking there may be some infusion going on with the g-liit, they do a couple other infusions at this place for other coctails. and the ginger tasted really fresh and authentic, it was part of what made the cocktail so damn good. do they put vodka in those things as well? vodka's kinda the go-to booze for infusions.

i'd buy the ingredients and try to duplicate it in my home, but knowing myself all to well i'm pretty sure i'd wind up drinking every bottle of liquor in its entirety the night i brought them home, and since there's like 5 different kinds of booze in it i'd probably put myself in a coma

the long island iced tea is a great choice if you really like getting drunk but really hate cocktails

love this photo. ran with a writeup on the bartenders at Heaven's Dog (great cocktails, terrible restaurant)
http://blogs.sfweekly.com/foodie/2011/06/fun_with_cocktails_at_heavens.php

http://blogs.sfweekly.com/foodie/sfweeklydion-2.jpg

first home experiment with egg white/dry-shaking: a variant on the hawaiian cocktail that goes like:

1.5 oz gin
.5 oz pineapple juice
dash orange bitters
egg white

creamy, VERY light, i.e. not much of a taste but i'm also realizing i forgot to shake the pineapple juice before pouring

made this last night. like a mojito, but i don't tend to like drinks w/soda water in them. i served it up and loved it.

The Whiskey Smash
2 oz. whiskey
1 oz. simple syrup
1/2 oz. lemon juice
A handful of mint
Instructions:
Muddle the mint and lemon juice, then add the syrup and whiskey. Fill your shaker with ice. Shake it hard. Strain. Serve over ice and enjoy!

mmm

the double strain is key here but yeah total classique

ya, double strainer is next on my list

http://theideagirlsays.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/lettuce-stuck-on-your-teeth.jpg

does agave nectar have a distinctive enough of a flavor that you can't just use simple syrup?

nah. the theory is that it has a nice synergy with tequila, and that may well be true, but at the end of the day you are just trying to sweeten your drink.

I have a nice synergy with tequila

hah.

i made a manhattan tonight w/ dry vermouth and blood orange bitters and threw in a pitted fresh cherry. it was really nice. and the rye-soaked cherry at the end was delicious! i hate maraschino, but this was good.

also what are those sour maraschini called? i like those just not the waxy bright red sugary ones.

just bought some st. germain and a li'l guy of benedictine

Using Luxardo maraschino cherries or making your own (not that difficult!) is such an enormous improvement that the red #5 ones should never be used. Even just simmering cherries in simple syrup an preserving in any kind of alcohol is great for all kinds of things.

yeah it seems like it's reasonably easy to make your own so i am thinking of maybe making some and preserving in rye or bourbon since the ones soaked in rye last night were so delicious by the end of the drink.

i also read jamie boudreau's make your own bitters post last night and man, i wish i had the time/space/bottles/ingredients but it honestly just seems like a TON of work for something i use so rarely so maybe i'll just buy a few bottles of special flavor bitters.

There are so many great bitters available at retail for pretty cheap now that making your own isn't quite the thing it was a few years ago. Still very impressive though.

There's some Spanish brandy available around $10/bottle that's great for preserving cherries and more. Best thing about cooking fruits in sugar and spices is that you also get a huge excess of flavored syrup to use.

so it's been a fun week as my copy of the newly-released beta cocktails showed up. lots of measurable amounts of bitters, smoke, salt, and room-temperature cocktails--some of which are pretty easy to make with a decent home bar. here are three that i've enjoyed:

defend arrack:

1.5 oz. batavia arrack
.75 oz. lime juice
.75 oz. apricot liqueur
1/8 oz. allspice dram

shake and strain. this doesn't really taste like any of its components--it comes together like a citrus fruit that doesn't exist.

racketeer (not in this book but in their earlier volume, rogue cocktails)

1 oz. rye
1 oz. mezcal
.5 oz. benedictine
.5 oz. carpano antica (or whatever sweet vermouth you have)
.25 oz. yellow chartreuse
3 dashes peychaud's

stir and strain into a glass that you rinsed with islay scotch. this one gets you lots of smoke but it's got all kinds of dimensions.

ashtray heart:

1 oz. smith and cross
1 oz. dry vermouth
1 oz. punt e mes

stir and strain into a glass that you rinsed with mezcal. grapefruit twist. all i can say about this one is that the name is completely appropriate. smith and cross plays really well with the fruit in the punt e mes.

book looks rad. i notice they have some recipes on the website too. are all of them there? is buying the book necessary?

i am soooo into smokey cocktails lately. that kama sutra i made upthread w/chartruse, tequila and mezcal was my favorite for a while.

i got some Leopold Brothers Maraschino for my birthday. never had luxardo, so don't know the difference, but damn it's good. been sipping it straight on rocks. it's pretty sweet, kinda fruity, not at all almondy like i thought it would be. made a few cocktails with it, but can't really discern any flavor it adds to the drinks besides a bit of sweetness.

i just bought some tamarind paste which i plan on using for cocktails soon. really looking forward to making this one. (also recently had one w/tequila, mescal, cumin, black pepper & tamarind that i'm gonna try and recreate. super savory, but super amazing)

Black Daiquiri
Crushed ice
1 1/2 ounces aged rum
3/4 ounce tamarind syrup (see NOTES)
3/4 ounce garam masala syrup (see NOTES)
Whole cloves, for garnish

NOTES: To make tamarind syrup, combine 3 ounces of tamarind concentrate and 2 ounces of water; stir to mix well. Cover tightly, and refrigerate until chilled through.

To make garam masala syrup, combine 2 cups of brewed garam masala tea and 1 cup of sugar in a medium saucepan over medium heat, stirring until the sugar dissolves. Bring just to a slow boil, then reduce the heat to medium-low and cook for 5 minutes. Transfer to a heatproof container and let cool to room temperature. Cover tightly, and refrigerate until chilled through.

cad in that 'defend arrack' drink, does apricot liqueur = apricot brandy?