Happy National Rum Day, Rummies!

I couldn't let a momentous day like National Rum Day go past unremarked upon, could I? Additionally, it's special for me because a year ago today, I attended a hiring event for the awesome job I now hold. So, I figured, hey, let's kill two birds with one stone and celebrate both.

I'm going with a cocktail today that's a newer one, and the recipe comes from the creator of one of the ingredients. You may recall my adventures making falernum, that clove/lime/ginger/allspice cordial that plays such a significant role in Tiki drinks. Well, I exhausted my supply, and rather than spending a large amount of time making a new batch, I figured I might as well try someone else's. You may also remember Trader Tiki, now, thanks to some jerks who have a foot in the Tiki world and also call themselves "Trader," have forced him to rejigger his nomenclature. He is now operating under his own name, B. G. Reynolds, and his new site is Okole Maluna, selling almost all of the old goodies. He's ramping things back up to where they were, and I have no doubt all will soon be ship-shape and Bristol fashion. (I'll leave it to you to figure out who the villain is, though I have my own theories on who chose to Victimize our poor Mr. Reynolds)

Anyway, his falernum, while not soaked with overproof rum as mine was, is still damned tasty, and on the back of the label, he offers this recipe. I've modified it a bit, as I don't have any aged rum handy, but I don't think it suffers for my substitutions.

Mi Deh Yah Cocktail (modified)
1 ½ oz aged rum (I used Rum Matusalem Platino)
½ oz falernum (I upped it just a hair to ⅝ oz)
½ oz lemon juice (I used key lime juice, and scaled it back to ⅜ oz)
dash of aromatic bitters (Angostura for me)

Shake all with ice, strain into a small cocktail glass, and garnish with a whole allspice berry.

Quite the agreeable little tipple. If I were using my alcohol-based falernum, I'd likely scale it back a bit, but for this version, I quite like it! It's got just a hint of spice, tartness from the lime juice, and some great aromatics from that allspice berry floating on the surface. The perfect little drink for relaxing in a hammock on the beach somewhere.

"We're gonna make it the Las Vegas of Asia…"

I've been rewatching my DVDs of "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" lately, and grumbling about how all the brilliant shows get cancelled…"Firefly," "Studio 60," "Sports Night," while the long-in-the-tooth shows that are seldom (if ever) funny last for-frakking-ever. Anyway, I digress.

Ed Asner's character in "Studio 60," the Chairman of the fictional NBS network, plans to get in on a deal with a consortium of companies and turn Macao (or "Macau" if you prefer, as Wikipedia seems to) into a fantastical destination. Already noted for gambling and tourism, I guess they would've installed a Universal Studios park and a Hard Rock Café and declared victory or something, I dunno. But…it got me thinking…

I wondered what a Manhattan would be like with a slew of disparate influences on it. I mean, Macao was a Portuguese colony in Chinese territory, a port for any number of exotic cargos…what would that have done to, or how would that translate to, a whiskey and vermouth based drink? And so, after jotting down some notes, I came up with this:

Macao Cocktail

2 oz blended whiskey (I used Canadian Club)
3/8 oz dry vermouth
1/4 oz Trader Tiki's Orgeat Syrup
1/8 oz Trader Tiki's Don's Spices #2
1 barspoon ginger liqueur
2 dashes Acid Phosphate
Dash of Donn's Tinc
Dash of Angostura Bitters
Dash of Bittermens Burlesque Bitters

Stir all ingredients smartly with ice, strain into cocktail glass, and garnish with a brandied cherry and a flamed orange zest.

So first thing to note is that this is going to start off sweet. The syrups and the ginger liqueur will guarantee that. Which is why I brought some things in to counter that: the acid phosphate for one. Made and sold by Darcy O'Neil from The Art of Drink, this brings sourness without any citrus juice. (I was going for a non-cloudy drink here.) Secondly, Bittermens new Burlesque bitters is a blend of açai berry (sweet), hibiscus (tart), and long pepper (long. I mean, 'hot') which further complicates things. Plus you've got the other bitters, the vanilla and allspice notes from Don's Spices #2, the almond of the orgeat, the grapefruit and cinnamon from Donn's Tinc, and the little bit of heat from the ginger liqueur.

It's a complicated drink. It's polyglot. It's multicultural. But it's sophisticated. And nuanced. And I think it's a fairly good invention.

"Well, help yourself...because of the debt of honor to General Lafayette!"

"You know your own history, right?

You don't know who he is, do you?! What was it? The Spanish-American War? The French Banana War? What? The Revolutionary War! Hung out with Washington. Lafayette. Street named after him in New York. Forget it!"

Yes, only a warped mind would think "Oh, America's Independence Day! Let's reference a British transvestite comedian! It'll be brilliant!" Lucky for you, dear readers, you're dealing with a mind that is precisely that warped.

I've missed you! Have you missed me? No? Oh well. I've also missed being able to taste and being able to go ten minutes without coughing, sneezing or generally wanting to vacuum out various body cavities with a straw duct-taped to a shop-vac. Stupid sinuses. Stupid lungs.

Anyway, I'm rambling. Sorry. That quote above from Eddie Izzard really is germane to the post tonight though. Because I enjoy being contrary, and thought I'd post a drink named after General Lafayette. My understanding of this drink is that it's intended to be a blending of US culture and French culture (with a little West Indies thrown in for good measure) and so it seems fitting. On the 234th anniversary of the final approval of the text of America's Declaration of Independence (the signing didn't actually happen until August 2nd), I give you:

The Lafayette Cocktail

1 1/2 oz rye whiskey
1/2 oz dry vermouth
1/2 oz Dubonnet (rouge)
1 dash Angostura bitters (I added a dash of Bittercube's Jamaican Bitters #2, as well)

Stir all well with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

The rye is very much an American spirit, and the Dubonnet and dry vermouth, of course, are French. The bitters, well, they're of Caribbean origin, but we'll let that slide...some Colonial Americans were, too, after all.

Taste-wise, it's pretty much a dry Manhattan, but the quinquina nature of the Dubonnet makes it a little bit different. Still, there are definitely worse ways to toast the nascent events that started my country on the often rocky road to independence. Happy Independence Day, to my American readers, and I hope my foreign readers will raise their glasses, too...America may not be perfect, but lord knows we've tried, and that's gotta count for something.

I'm like a crackhead, but for ginger.

I made a trip to World Market today. And I bought a whole bunch of ginger stuff. Ginger candy, ginger cookies, sodas with ginger as an ingredient. Also the new cocktail glass featured tonight. And then I went to the grocery store on my way home to get lettuce for my pet rabbits, and lo and behold, there was a new ginger liqueur there, made by Stirrings. I can't find anything on their website about it, but they had some other liqueurs, as well; pomegranate, triple sec, peach, apple, and one other one that I can't recall at the moment. All proclaimed that they were natural, and all looked pretty good (although the apple liqueur was that alarming shade of green we've sadly come to expect from apple-flavored anything. Curse you, Jolly Ranchers!). So I picked that up and decided to experiment with it.

I can't find out what the base is, but I'm assuming it's neutral grain spirits, rather than the cognac that Domaine de Canton is made from. The nose, however, is a much sharper, stronger ginger than the Canton. It's got a little fire to it! I used a drink called the Chatham Cocktail as a starting point for this, but since I'm not using ginger-flavored brandy, I made this one mine. Named after an area that's now part of NYC's Chinatown, I'm calling it:

The Chatham Square Cocktail

2.5 oz Plymouth gin
.75 oz Stirrings Ginger Liqueur
.75 oz lemon juice
3 dashes Fee Brothers orange bitters (cheaper than Angostura's but not as good. They're what I've got on hand, though)
3 drops Peychaud's or Angostura bitters, for garnish

Shake all save for the Peychaud's/Angostura with ice, strain into a 7.5 oz cocktail glass, and gently float 3 drops of your choice of bitters on top.

The ginger is very very strong with this drink...kitty wants to play! I really like it, though, because it stands up well to both the Plymouth and the lemon juice. The orange bitters round out the citrus notes a bit, and depending if you go with the Angostura or the Peychaud's, you'll get a slight spice or anise nose from the drink as you bring it up for a sip. I quite like it!

"Ensign authorization code 9-5-wiktor-wiktor-2"

So, it should come as no surprise to regular readers that I'm doing yet another show. This time I'm working a little bit behind the scenes as a dialect coach, in addition to the on-stage role I've got. One of our actresses has to do a Russian/Ukrainian dialect (doesn't have to be perfect, just suggestive) and so I got to thinking about Russian drinks. I looked through my collection, and I found one that sounded intriguing (if slightly risqué), and I served it up at rehearsal tonight (relax, it was just a table reading...we weren't stumbling around on stage. We'll save that for performances!) I present it to you now.

The Vladivostok Virgin

1 1/2 oz London dry gin
1 1/2 oz vodka
1 oz grapefruit juice (canned is traditional)
dash of Angostura bitters (I threw a dash of my Jamaican bitters in, as well, just for kicks)

shake all well with ice. Garnish with a cucumber slice, or, failing that, a lime slice

Tart. And herbal. And vodka-y. You all know I'm not a huge fan of vodka...I sort of consider it the Muzak of the liquor world...there to fill space, but not really bringing anything to the drink. And here, it really serves to just dilute the botanical notes of the gin, sending it into the deep background. Still, though, the grapefruit juice does something kind of interesting, and makes an almost basil or tomato leaf flavor pop into the drink, and that's kind of cool, though I have no idea how it does that.

All in all, it's tasty. I'm not sure exactly what's virginal about it (maybe it looks like it's blushing?) but it's still a tipple worth sampling.

Oh, I'm gonna get letters about this one...if only for the name...

It didn't occur to me until literally this minute, as I write this post, what the name of this drink could refer to. And now I'm almost scared to post it. So let me get this out of the way right now. The name of the drink is "Roman's Scandal" and at first, I was thinking "Oh, how cute, it's sort of titillating in an ancient history sort of way." But then I thought, "Uh oh. What if it's 'Roman' as a first name, say, of a film director who did a very bad thing a few decades ago." Suffice it to say, I'm going to assume that this drink doesn't have anything to do with that Roman, and proceed from that starting premise.

Remember the orange-flavored gin I mentioned back in the "Flying Dutchman Cocktail?" The stuff I said was too esoteric, too hard to find, and too expensive? I found it, cheaply, on a trip to a Woodman's Market near where I work, and snatched up a bottle at a very good price. (Did you know Seagram's also has an apple-flavored gin? I'm a little scared of that...). And so I set about looking for drinks that I can use my 1.75 liters of orange gin in, and I stumbled across this one.

Roman's Scandal

1 1/2 oz orange-flavored gin
1/2 oz sweet vermouth
3/4 oz dry vermouth
1/2 oz kirsch
2 dashes Angostura bitters

Stir all well with ice, strain into cocktail glass or serve on the rocks, as desired.

I think this bears a similarity to the Martinez, with kirsch instead of maraschino, but it does a little something else, too, which I like. The orange gin doesn't really blare its orangeness at you, but sort of hangs back. There's really a depth to this drink that you usually don't expect from gin drinks...it's not as crisp as you'd expect, and has a surprising subtlety. I'm especially pleased with how the kirsch stays well away from the realm of the cloying, which it will zoom straight to, given half a chance. All in all, a most surprising drink, and one that I wouldn't hesitate to try again.

"If I...were king...of the foreeeeeeeeest!"

Yes friends, I'm actually posting within a few days of the last one. I feel bad about leaving you in the lurch for so long, and I picked up a couple nice deals at the liquor store today, so I'm mixing up a new one for all of you.

Tonight's drink is one that features a spirit I haven't used in far too long; rum. Rum was one of the first liquors I actually picked out as being something I liked. Before I really started to branch out into the world of spirits, rum was my old standby. I think it was, in no small part, an extension of my interest in Tiki drinks that made me gravitate towards rum, but I can now tell you, that rum is by no means the exclusive spirit of faux Polynesia.

That being said, rum's really an interesting spirit, one that's far too often taken for granted. Tonight, though, I've got a great showpiece for it.

The White Lion Cocktail

1 1/2 oz white/silver rum (I used Mount Gay Eclipse Silver)
1 oz lemon juice
1 tsp sugar (I used raw sugar, but that's just me. Bar sugar would dissolve a lot more readily)
1/4 oz grenadine or falernum (I had falernum in the fridge, so I used that)
2 dashes bitters

Shake all with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

Spicy, sweet, fruity, sour...this drink really hits all the notes you want a drink to hit. There's the acidity of the lemon, and the spice and lime notes of the falernum, the subtle tropical fruit notes from the rum (banana seems to be a popular note detected in the Mount Gay Eclipse Silver), all of these combine to make for a really interesting drink. I have no idea of the provenance of this drink, especially since one old drink book, 1888's "New & Improved Illustrated Bartender's Manual" by Harry Johnson (no laughing, please), has the White Lion as four ounces of rum mixed with raspberry syrup, curaçao, lime juice and seltzer, and served in a pint glass...quite a different beast altogether. All that being said, this would be a different drink entirely just by swapping the falernum with grenadine. Not a bad one, but very very different. If you feel up to making some falernum (and I highly recommend you do), try using it in this drink. I don't think you'll be disappointed.

Y'arrr, it be a ghost ship!

Battling my way through some sort of head cold, I bring you a new drink! Yay!

Tonight's drink is named after the ghost ship of legend, the Flying Dutchman. The good news, as Ted Haigh puts it in "Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails," is that this is a most interesting variation on what's normally a bland drink. The bad news is that you'll have to buy a new ingredient; orange gin. Haigh found Seagram's Orange Twisted Gin, which he says has an unfortunate name, but otherwise tastes pretty good. I've only been able to find that in 1.75 liter bottles, and I didn't really want to rush in to get one only to discover no uses for it. But I did find something at my liquor store (and on sale!) that I think will make an adequate substitute; Stellar Citrus Crush Gin. Apparently it has 6 different citrus fruit flavors in it, so I figured it'd do a comparable job.

Here's how to make it:

The Flying Dutchman Cocktail

2 oz orange gin (or the Stellar Citrus crush stuff)
juice of 1/4 orange
juice of 1/4 lemon
2 dashes Angostura bitters

Shake all with ice, and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish, if desired, with an orange twist.

Yes, it's a glorified gin 'n' juice. No, it doesn't taste like crap. It's supercharged with citrus, to be sure, but it's really quite tasty and nuanced. The bitters do a lot on that front, I'm sure. If you know of a place to get orange gin, grab a bottle and give this a taste. It's certainly easy enough to make, and innocuous enough that most anyone will like it.

Make way for the seaway...

I was bumbling around CocktailDB the other night, trying to find uses for dry vermouth. I picked up a second bottle for Thanksgiving, thinking that what I had on hand wouldn't be enough. Ha. Silly me. I had MORE than enough for my friends at Thanksgiving, and so I've been trying to use up some of this stuff...

Well, I fumbled my way through the database, and I landed on this one...at first glance it seemed like another Manhattan variant, but this one has 3 parts vermouth to 2 parts whiskey. Canadian, of course, given the name. I tried it and liked it, and am now featuring it here.

The St. Lawrence Cocktail

2 1/4 oz dry vermouth
1 1/2 oz Canadian Club whiskey
3/4 oz Grand Marnier
dash of Angostura bitters

shake well with ice, strain into cocktail glass.

What's interesting in this drink is how the whiskey plays backup to the vermouth...it's still well balanced, it's just not what you expect. The orange flavors of the Grand Marnier keep it from veering too far to the dry side of things, though, and make for a nicely tuned flavor. Give it a go...no passport required.

This drink is not kosher, halal or safe for vegetarians.

As I said, as long as I had leftover base ingredients from my Thanksgiving mixology experiments, I would share the fruits of my research and testing. And tonight, I have something that may shock, terrify and amaze you. Those of you with sensitive dispositions, please leave the room now. If you have small children...why the hell are they reading this blog with you?

Tonight's drink requires you to devote several hours over the better part of a week making one of the ingredients, and the guide for that will follow the main recipe. Believe me, though, it's well worth the effort. Behold! I give you...

The Bacon Old-Fashioned

2 ounces bacon-infused bourbon (recipe follows)
1/4-1/2 oz maple syrup (less if you use Grade B, which is stronger in flavor)
2 dashes Angostura bitters
orange zest
Urban Moonshine Maple bitters (optional, but if you have them, great)

Place orange zest in the bottom of an Old-Fashioned glass with Angostura bitters and maple syrup. Gently muddle to express oils. Add ice and bacon-infused bourbon, stirring gently to combine. Add two dashes Maple bitters to top.

Bacon-Infused bourbon (makes about 750 ml)

750 ml bourbon (nothing too pricy...I used Evan Williams)
4 strips of bacon
a 1-liter Mason jar with lid

Slowly cook bacon over low heat, in a cast iron skillet if you have a well-seasoned one, reserving drippings (which should total about 1 ounce). Eat the bacon or set aside to eat later. Allow drippings to cool slightly. Meanwhile pour the bourbon into your scrupulously clean Mason jar (rinse well with boiling water, and swish a little high-proof neutral grain spirits around inside if you have them) and add the bacon drippings. Store at room temperature overnight (or about eight hours) then move to the fridge for three days. Move to the freezer for one day, and then strain out solidified drippings. Run bourbon through a paper coffee filter, rebottle and refrigerate. Bourbon should keep for several weeks in the fridge.

Yes. Bacon-infused bourbon. No, I have not lost my mind. It really is fantastically good...the sweetness of the bourbon is the predominant flavor to begin, but then the smokiness of the bacon makes itself known. It's also wonderful for horrifying your friends when you tell them what you've made. Well, horrify or delight...the reactions usually go to one of those two extremes.

Aw, how can I stay away from you guys?

Ok, I stumbled across a drink that sounded too interesting to keep under my hat until after Turkey Day here in the US...I went looking for drinks that might use some of the 1/3 remaining bottle of Dubonnet in my fridge, and while this one takes only two barspoons of it, that's still two barspoons I don't have to contend with anymore. Plus, it's sort of unusual in its proportions, so that's worth something, as well. And third, it's got an interesting name, and thus I bring it to you this evening.

Alfonso (Special) Cocktail

1 dash Angostura bitters
2 dashes Jamaican bitters (or 2 dash Bittermens Grapefruit bitters...this is my addition but it works)
2 barspoons Dubonnet (or, lacking that, sweet vermouth)
1 oz London dry gin
1 oz dry vermouth
2 oz Grand Marnier

Shake well with ice and strain into a cocktail glass.

With two full ounces of Grand Marnier, you may think that a sweet citrus flavor would dominate, and it's there, make no mistake...but the bitters and gin and dry vermouth and even the Dubonnet to a degree help temper that, and while the predominant flavor is of course orange, it's still got enough other things going on in there that it's not too monotonous. It has some other citrus notes in there, some spice, and some botanicals. As long as you serve it in a scrupulously chilled glass after no less than 30 seconds of shaking, it's a great drink...it just functions best when ice cold.

I'd mentioned this one before, but now there's a photo!

A few weeks back, I gave you all my recipe for what I consider to be the perfect Manhattan, a drink that I've termed the "Golden Manhattan" to distinguish it from the "Perfect Manhattan" (equal measures of whiskey, sweet vermouth and dry vermouth). I've named it that as it reflects the golden ratio, at least in one small step. I make it as follows:

Golden Manhattan

3 parts whiskey (rye or bourbon)
1 part dry vermouth
1/2 part sweet vermouth
2 dashes bitters

stir all with ice, strain into a chilled cocktail glass with a maraschino cherry in the bottom.

I call it "Golden" in light of the ratio used: a+b:a::a:b, that is, 2 parts whiskey to 1 part vermouth, and 2 parts dry vermouth to 1 part sweet. I like my Manhattans a bit on the drier side, and up until two days ago, I used a dash of Angostura and a dash of orange bitters. Now, however, since I got my Bittermens, I've been putting in two dashes of the Xocolatl Mole, as the cocoa and spice notes really add a nice warmth and depth to the drink. If you have them on hand, I can't sing their praises highly enough, and they're not even paying me. But if you don't have the Bittermens on hand, a dash each of Angostura and orange more than do the job. This is really my go-to drink, if I can't figure out what I feel like having. It's incredibly satisfying and nuanced. I highly recommend you sit down for a quiet evening and figure out how you like your Manhattan...it's a fantastic drink.

Lebkuchen? Gesundheit!

I was casting my mind around to see what I could do with some of this ginger liqueur I made, and I though perhaps something with a lot of spice notes could be interesting. I remembered a great cookie my mother and I made years ago called "Lebkuchen," a traditional German cookie that's related to gingerbread. It seemed like we threw the whole spice rack in there, so I set out to invent the alcoholic equivalent of it, and came up with this:

Lebkuchen Cocktail

1 1/2 oz ginger liqueur
1 oz aged rum
1/2 oz bourbon
dash Angostura bitters
dash pimento dram
dash homemade spice extract

Build all over ice, stir to combine.

This is really kind of uncanny. It tastes almost exactly like a spice cookie...the allspice of the pimento dram, the myriad spices in my spice extract, the ginger, the silkiness of the rum, the sweet spiciness of the bourbon; they all combine into a drink that greatly resembles the cookie of my memory. It does not, however, pair as well with milk.

I have been informed that today is International Rum Day!

That means, of course, a rum cocktail. And I'm going to take a page out of Matt "RumDood" Robold's book and modify an existing drink. Earlier this year, he took an El Presidente and turned it into a Machado Cocktail. Well, I'm taking his Machado and turning it into what I'm going to call:

RumDood's Revenge

1 1/2 oz aged rum
1/2 oz dry vermouth
1/4 oz orange liqueur
1/8 oz pimento dram
2 dashes Angostura bitters
splash of grenadine

build over ice in a Double Old-Fashioned glass, stir, and garnish with lemon twist.

This drink turned out to be so ridiculously smooth it ought to be illegal. The aged rum is so incredibly mellow, the dry vermouth keeps it from veering too far to the sweet, the orange liqueur and lemon zest brighten it, and the bitters and pimento dram add a smoky, spicy complexity. Oh, Sweet Saint Seryn the Merciful*, this is a good drink.

*Saint Seryn the Merciful is patron saint of brewers, bakers and distillers...my kind of people.

"And now the purple dusk of twilight time steals across the meadows of my heart..."

With that line, Hoagy Carmichael set the scene for his most memorable (and often undeservedly mocked) song, "Stardust." While the prose may seem a little purple by today's standards (pun intended), it's still a beautiful song, especially when it's performed by someone who can sell it. So, start this video playing and listen to the song as you read the rest of this entry about one of my new favorite cocktails.

I stumbled across this drink while reading one of the many mixology blogs I peruse. That blog got it, in turn, from Tales of the Cocktail's 2008 session, and it was the namesake drink of The Violet Hour, a cocktail lounge in Chicago that I really need to visit on my next trip down there. It's based on a Manhattan, but it makes a couple changeups that really take it to a new level.

The Violet Hour

2 oz bourbon (I used Bulleit and did not regret it)
3/4 oz sweet vermouth (Noilly Prat for me)
1/4 oz dry vermouth (Noilly Prat again, though I've heard Cinzano is good, as well)
1/8 oz (or more, to taste) Cruzan Black Strap rum
3 dashes bitters (Fee Brothers if you can get it, otherwise Angostura works)

Shake all with ice, strain into a chilled cocktail glass

It starts off like a Manhattan or a Brooklyn, the bourbon and vermouth really dominating, but then, as you swallow, there's the terrific molasses and spice notes from the rum, even though there's only a tiny bit in there. It really makes for a great drink, and would likely do even better come autumn or winter. In fact, when the weather starts to cool in October, I think I'll remake this, but in lieu of the bitters, I'll add just a scant 1/8 oz of maple syrup, while halving the sweet vermouth. That, I think, will make for a really interesting drink.

And with that, I leave you to sip this cocktail, steeped in the classic tradition, and listen to, as Hoagy said, "the music of the years gone by," even if it was never composed, and exists only in your memory.

Beware the heavy-handed pour!

I was planning on making something entirely different tonight...a great drink I heard about from Tales of the Cocktail 2009 called The Violet Hour. However, my pouring hand had other plans, it seems. I was attempting to add 3/4 oz of sweet vermouth to my bourbon, already in my mixing glass, and, well...I overdid it. So I'll be featuring The Violet Hour some other time (get it? Hour? Time? Huh? Oh, forget it.) In an attempt to salvage the drink, I turned it into a variant of another bourbon and sweet vermouth concoction, the Fanciulli cocktail. The story behind the name is explained in detail in this article from the Wall Street Journal a few months back, so I'll just show you my variant, which I think holds up pretty well to the original.

Fanciulli Cocktail (variant)

2 oz bourbon
1 1/2 oz sweet vermouth
1/4 oz dry vermouth
1/4 oz Fernet Branca
3 dashes Angostura bitters

Combine all with ice, stirring well until thoroughly chilled, strain into chilled cocktail glass.

Normally, this drink is just the bourbon, the sweet vermouth and the Fernet Branca, in slightly different (and mostly smaller proportions). Reluctant to let my precious Bulleit Bourbon go to waste (even though it was on sale, no sense wasting good whiskey), and having already mixed it with the bitters when I overpoured the sweet vermouth, I tried to temper it a bit. The dry vermouth countered it somewhat, and the small amount of Fernet augmented the bitters and balanced it out. All in all, this version holds up pretty well to the original, and for a simple variation on the hoary old Manhattan cocktail, it really has a fresh new angle to it. For a mistake, it's, happily, a most palatable one.

Gotta take the bitter with the sweet...

Those of you who have read this blog for a while know that I like to make variations on drinks, swapping out one ingredient for another, seeing what results. Often, the experimentations are the result of stark realities...I don't have any oranges, I'm out of Jamaican rum, I've got three nearly empty bottles that I need to use up, I took a strip of zest from a lemon for my Sazerac, and now I need to use it before it dries up...that last one was what prompted this drink. The original is called the Income Tax Cocktail, which is basically a Bronx cocktail with bitters added. However, I don't have any oranges in the house, and I had a lemon that needed to be used, so I pondered...what's even more apt to put a sour expression on your face than an income tax...why, payroll taxes, of course! How else can you lose a third of your earned income with a few microseconds of calculation time?

Now, let me be clear, I'm not one of those rabid anti-tax goofballs who thinks that nothing good comes of paying state and federal taxes...I willingly concede that there are vital things that my money goes towards; roads, vital infrastructure, that whole "providing for the common defense" thing. But nonetheless, it is a bit disheartening to see that disparity between "Gross Income" and "Net Income" on the check stub. With that in mind, I give you my take on the Income Tax Cocktail:

The Payroll Tax Cocktail

1 3/4 oz London Dry Gin
3/4 oz sweet vermouth
3/4 oz dry vermouth
juice of 1 small lemon, squeezed directly into the shaker
2 bar spoons of 2:1 simple syrup
2 dashes Angostura bitters

Shake all with ice, strain into a cocktail glass, and garnish with a lemon twist.

Without the simple syrup, this would be unpalatable, as sour as grandpa's face at Thanksgiving when he learns you're out of Scotch. With it, it really is a nice cocktail...sweet, sour, a zing of lemon, a bracing bit of gin, a hint of spice from the bitters. Yes, I would drink this experiment again, with no hesitation.

Celebrate the independence of your nation by blowing up a small part of it!

Today's drink post is a quick one so I can go and, er... not light off illegal fireworks, yeah...that's the ticket!

I read about this one yesterday on Imbibe Magazine's blog, and thought "that sounds interesting...let's try it!" The thing that might make some of you gasp is that it combines liquor and beer. And not in a "Boilermaker" fashion, either. See, our Founding Fathers, in addition to being bewigged and remarkably prescient, were hard drinkers, of a fortitude that we can merely aspire to. Water, in the days before treatment plants, was not always the most potable thing around. Beer, wine, rum and whiskey, by virtue of their alcohol content, were safer bets. And so the builders of this nation drank. Morning, noon and night. As Imbibe puts it on their blog entry, "With breakfast, they drank beer and wine; with dinner it was claret and Cognac. And they drank rum all the time." The average was 8 ounces of alcohol a day. And from those building blocks, James MacWilliams, bartender at Canlis Restaurant in Seattle, came up with this:

The Declaration Cocktail

1 oz rum (something with good fruit notes in it, I used Bacardi 8)
3/4 oz rye whiskey (something strong and spicy, though Old Overholt worked for me)
3/4 oz brown sugar syrup (MacWilliams suggests 1:1 brown sugar to water, I actually used 2:1 demerara sugar to water)
6 oz of chilled beer (mine was local New Glarus Brewing Co.'s Fat Squirrel, which is like Newcastle in that it's a nut brown ale-type beer)

Build in a 12 oz glass with a few cubes of ice, stirring to combine. A dash of Angostura bitters will not go astray, either, and makes it a proper cocktail.

It's really remarkably good...everything works quite harmoniously, the nutty nature of the beer complimenting the spice of the rye and the sweetness of the rum, rounded out with the sugar syrup...it's well worth trying. Seriously. I cannot tell a lie.

Happy 233rd birthday, America. Celebrate responsibly. And try not to blow off any fingers.

There are many drinks with this name; this is the non-crappy one.

For a time, the big three of the Ivy League Universities had a drink named after them. The Princeton was gin, ruby port, and orange bitters; the Harvard was cognac, sweet vermouth and Angostura bitters. There are, however, multiple drinks vying for the title of the Yale Cocktail. Most of them sound abominably horrid, like gin, dry vermouth and blue curaçao (allegedly to replace the créme d'Yvette that used to color the drink). In his "Savoy Cocktail Book", Harry Craddock eschewed the novelty of color in favor of something that actually didn't look like Smurf urine and taste nearly as bad. Instead, he combined, well...let me show you...

Yale Cocktail

1 bar spoon orange bitters
1 dash Angostura bitters
1 1/2 oz London dry gin (use one with a little backbone)

Shake all with ice, strain into rocks glass, top with club soda, garnish with lemon twists.

Now this version is good, don't get me wrong, but club soda is a little dull sometimes. So what I did, since I can't leave well enough alone, is top the drink with tonic water instead of club soda, and garnished with a paper-thin slice of lime, the gin and tonic's natural ally. Oh, this is a wonderful drink, friends and neighbors. The bite of the gin is tempered with the sweet-spiciness of the orange bitters, and the dash of Angostura enhances that further. The tonic water keeps it crisp and refreshing, rather than merely diluting it, and its effervescence is just icing on the cake. Oh, how I love it!

With apologies to Schlotzky's Deli; Funny Name, serious drink.

One of my cocktail-making heroes, Paul Clarke over at "The Cocktail Chronicles," recently celebrated the anniversary of his blog by embarking on a quest to mix up 30 cocktails in 30 days (he succeeded, admirably). In his research, he came upon an old drink from New Orleans, named after the street upon which it was invented, at the Iron Horse Tavern in the 1850s or 1860s. It's called the Tchoupitoulas Street Guzzle, and in its original form, was a shot of Cuban rum with a split of ginger beer. Paul, upon tinkering with the drink, decided that it would be best to reintroduce this as a short, refreshing, quick drink, one to be guzzled and then moved on from, rather than savoring and sipping slowly. To that end, he concentrated the flavors so you get the full effect and sensation of it, but one that can still be downed in a hurry, the better to get back to work after your surreptitious tipple. Hey, things were very different in the 1860s...

Tchoupitoulas Street Guzzle

1 1/2 oz a good, strong, smooth, vanilla-y rum, say a Cruzan Single Barrel or a Bacardi 8 (I think a good mix is 1 oz of the Bacardi 8 and 1/2 oz of Coruba)
1 1/2 oz ginger beer base
1 oz seltzer
2 dashes Angostura bitters

Shake all but seltzer with ice, strain into a small chilled tumbler, add seltzer, stir briefly, and drink before it gets too warm.

The sharpness and heat of the ginger beer base is tempered slightly by the smoothness of the rum and the fizziness of the seltzer, but it's still a powerfully flavored drink...and for that reason it's wonderful. You get a fantastic blast of flavor, and then you can move on to whatever you need to do next. I'm a big fan of this cocktail, regardless of whether I can properly pronounce it or not.