Can't get theah from heah...

This was another libation I served at Thanksgiving, and again, it will require a little prep for one of the ingredients. However, it's non-alcoholic, so little Johnny and Susie can have one, as well as Mabel, your tee-totaling great aunt, thrice removed on your mother's side. I got this recipe from the November/December 2009 issue of Imbibe Magazine, and they built it thus:

New England Buck (mocktail)

4 oz apple cider
1 oz lemon juice
1 oz sage and juniper syrup (recipe follows)
2 dashes orange bitters
ginger beer (I used mostly ginger ale and a splash of ginger beer base I had sitting around)

Combine all but ginger beer with ice in a cocktail shaker and shake to mix. Strain into an ice-filled double old-fashioned glass and top with ginger beer. Gently stir and serve.

Sage and Juniper Syrup

1 cup water
1 cup sugar
5 fresh sage leaves
10 juniper berries, cracked in mortar and pestle

Heat ingredients in saucepan until sugar dissolves. Remove from heat, let stand 10 minutes, then strain into a clean squeeze bottle or glass container. Keeps for up to a month in the fridge.

The cider's natural tartness plays with the really fresh flavors of the sage and juniper and makes something that's really unique and crisp-tasting. The ginger gives it a little warmth, too. It's really an appealing drink, and a good one to serve at any fall or winter family gatherings. It would also work well for, say, a brunch with certain family members who don't believe in mimosas before noon.

Lone Pine Mall serves this drink in their food court.

I was nosing around some of my cocktail guides, looking at the pages that I'd dogeared for future mixing and consumption, and stumbled across this old beauty. It's another one from the great old Savoy Cocktail Book, and it's called:

The Lone Tree Cooler

juice of 1/4 lemon
juice of an orange
1/2 oz dry vermouth
1 oz London dry gin
1 oz grenadine
club soda to top

shake all but club soda with ice, strain into tumbler, top up with soda.

This is really a nifty drink...the flavor is so much more than the sum of it's parts. I find it really hard to describe, but it's so simple to make, perhaps you should try it for yourself and see what you think? Yes? Hmm?

Yes.

In which I attempt to not get sued...

Tonight's drink is one where I get to use a name that I've been itching to use for quite some time...and one that I've been afraid of. You see, I'm naming it after a much beloved fictional character in a tremendously popular series of books. Now, the author and publishers have shown wonderful restraint in not going after, say, writers of fan-fiction who use their characters names, perhaps because there's no profit to be made there. I should point out that I really don't make any profit on this blog, either (current Google AdSense total for the first 5 months of operation: $1.35, plus one generous donation from a reader). So in that spirit, and recognizing that there's alcohol in the books as well, I hope that they'll be lenient about my introduction of a ginger-laced rum punch named after the most amusing ginger-headed clan I know of. I give you:

Weasley Rum Punch

3/4 oz berry shrub base
1 1/2 oz ginger liqueur (or ginger syrup if you want it to be a little less boozy)
3/4 oz black strap or other molasses-y rum
1 1/2 oz aged rum
2 oz seltzer
scant 1/8 oz homemade spice extract
2 dashes Bittermens Grapefruit bitters

Combine first three ingredients plus spice extract in a shaker full of ice, shaking well to combine. In an tall-ish glass, add two cubes of ice, dashing grapefruit bitters over the ice before pouring in rum mixture and topping with club soda.

It works as a Weasley because of both the "ginger" connotation and the color...it's pretty much a fiery red. I really like this drink's flavor, as it's an unusual take on the classic Planters Punch formula of 1 of sour, 2 of sweet, 3 of strong and 4 of weak, plus spice. The vinegar base of the shrub really works in a very subtle way, and the heat of the ginger plays with everything as well, as shrubs were traditionally topped with ginger beer. I like how the spices play with the smoky molasses nature of the rum, and the brightness of the grapefruit bitters really makes it all sing.

Now, as long as I don't get sued out of existence, I'll be happy! Ms Rowling, if you read this, please enjoy the drink as much as I enjoyed your books. (And please don't sue me!)

How 'bout a nice Hawaiian punch?

I'd stumbled across this drink a while back, and was intrigued by the notion of "Tahitian limeade." It turns out that it's limeade made by substituting coconut water for the normal stuff. I didn't add any extra sweetener to it, as I figured it'd likely be sweet enough when mixed with all the other ingredients. I just used about three limes worth of juice to an 11.1 oz Tetrapack of coconut water, shook, and chilled, though the typical proportions are anywhere between 3 and 5 parts coconut water to 1 part lime juice. I assembled the rest as follows...

Kamehameha's Mighty Punch

2 oz pineapple juice
1/2 oz mango puree (I just made my own, simple enough. 1 mango gave me about 6-8 oz of puree)
1 oz tahitian limeade
1 1/2 oz amber rum (I used Bacardi 8)
powdered chipotle pepper

Shake all but the pepper with ice, double strain into a cocktail glass or coupe. Lightly dust with the chipotle.

The flavor, while fruity, is surprisingly delicate, which is really neat. The use of the powdered chipotle really works well, both visually and in terms of flavor; the red of the pepper complements the yellow/orange of the drink, and the heat pairs really well with the mango. It sort of tingles and warms as it goes down. It's unusual, but tasty. This is, however, another one of those drinks that I enjoyed, but not one that I'd drink all the time. Although that Tahitian limeade will undoubtedly see use in some other cocktails...I've got a couple more flavors of Dry Soda to play around with!

Another experiment...don't ya love 'em?

In the spirit of last night's "drink all the rye whiskey because we need the empty bottle" entry, tonight we've got a "drink all of the mini bottle of Grand Marnier because we need that empty bottle too" entry.

It may seem exceedingly peculiar to flash back to childhood when thinking about alcoholic beverages (unless you're a former child star, in which case it's expected, really), but I was thinking about Kool-Aid. Purplesaurus Rex, to be precise. That was, if I recall correctly, artificial grape and artificial lemon flavors. I was thinking about similarly unlikely combinations, and settled upon this:

Blueberry Cordial
1 heaping tablespoonful frozen wild blueberries (my local Costco carries Wyman's brand, which are superb)
3/4 oz Grand Marnier
1 1/2 oz London dry gin
1 dash Peychaud's bitters

Shake all with ice, let stand 30-60 seconds, shake again. Double strain into a small cordial glass.

There's really nothing that can match the flavor of wild blueberries. It's almost a flavor avatar of summer...that sweet, tart, musky, and above all, blue flavor that coats your tongue is unmistakable, and impossible to replicate. I used the orange notes of the Grand Marnier to emphasize the tartness of the berries, the Peychaud's to compliment their fruitiness, and the gin's botanicals to augment the "wild" nature of the berries. I'm very happy to say that it's a success...you get an emphatically blueberry experience in this drink, but one with a bit of depth and subtlety to it. I'm very pleased with how this turned out. If you have access to wild blueberries, try this one out and see what you think.

In which I enjoy being contrary...

I figured that, since today people are grilling out and mowing lawns and most likely drinking beer and wine, I'd go outside of the booze bubble entirely and make a non-alcoholic drink. That doesn't mean that it's gonna be boring, though.

I was at the store the other day, and I found a variety of four-packs of "Dry Soda", a company that makes not-too-sweet soft drinks in unusual flavors. I saw lemongrass, rhubarb, juniper berry, vanilla bean and lavender, and I picked up those last two. So I'll use them periodically either in cocktails or with non-boozy ingredients.

Today, I'm using the lavender soda and making an unusual lemon-based drink. I started by looking around the web at what ingredients people usually pair with lavender, and got some ideas...so I came up with this:

Lavender-Herb Raspberry Lemonade

3/4 oz lemon juice
3-4 raspberries
3/4 good sized leaves fresh rosemary, bruised
pinch dried thyme
4 oz Lavender DRY Soda

Bruise rosemary with the bowl of a spoon against a hard surface, add to lemon juice. Add thyme and raspberries and muddle briefly. Let stand for several minutes. Strain through a fine-mesh strainer, gently pressing with a spoon to get all the juice out, and add 4 oz chilled Lavender Dry Soda.

I gotta admit, for wing-and-a-prayer-ing this drink, it turned out pretty well. If I could do it over with some extended prep time, I would have put the thyme and bruised rosemary in some boiling water, then strained and frozen it until it was time to use. The herbal flavor is a little weak. But given enough lead time, you could make a rosemary extract, let it steep and use that for a concentrated rosemary flavor. Or, if you like the idea, but want booze, you could use a good, herbaceous gin, or a tiny bit of Yellow Chartreuse. But even as a liquor-free drink, it's still something unusual and tasty.

EDITED TO ADD: Yep, I tried it with steeping the herbs in boiling water, and it gets a LOT more flavor out of them. So take your bruised rosemary and your pinch of thyme, stick them in a tea ball or self-fill tea bag, and steep in about 1/2 ounce of boiling water, scaling up the water and herb quantities for multiple drinks. Let it sit for about 10 minutes, pull it out, and chill the herb tisane until well cooled. Then add it to the lemon/raspberry mixture, muddle, strain and mix with the Lavender DRY as before. Since every dried and fresh herb is different, though, I'd try the tisane before you plan to serve it out...that way you can test and adjust the strength of the herbal flavors.

"Et Keanu Reeves, il n'a pas de cheveux, et Jeff Daniels est déjà mort."

Minor variations...they can change a lot just by changing a little. I mean, Hollywood's been doing it for years! "Instead of holding one person hostage, let's hold a whole bus load of them hostage! And instead of threatening to shoot them, let's make the bus blow up if it slows down!" "Brilliant! What's it called?" "I call it, 'The Bus That Couldn't Slow Down.'" "You've got a gift, my friend!"

So by changing one ingredient, we can change the whole tenor of the drink. Take for example, the Knickerbocker; rum, orange curaçao, lemon juice, raspberry syrup (or fresh raspberries) and a slice of lemon. Simple, straight forward, and a great balance of sour and sweet. What happens if we're out of rum? What do you do, hotshot? What do you do?

How about a flavored vodka? Now you know I'm generally against them, but I found a bottle of Svedka Clementine vodka for dirt cheap, and I just had to snap it up to experiment with in horrific and depraved ways. So I tried it out here. And you know what? It worked. I do, however, need to change the name. Since it's the same drink with a different kind of spirit, I decided to name it after a different hotel. So I went with the ritziest hotel in my hometown. I give you...

The Pfister

2 oz Svedka Clementine (or other orange vodka)
1/2 oz orange curaçao
6 raspberries
3/4 oz lemon juice
lemon slice
flamed lemon peel for garnish

In your shaker or mixing glass, muddle the raspberries with the curaçao and lemon juice, squeeze in the lemon slice, and drop it in, add vodka and ice, and shake to the tune of "What Made Milwaukee Famous." Double strain into a chilled cocktail glass, and garnish with flamed lemon peel.

You get that great tart lemon taste balancing the sweetness and earthiness of the raspberries, with a whisper of orange bringing up the rear from the vodka and curaçao. This one's a keeper. And it's such a nice color...

an ode to unusual beverages...

I'm participating in a round table discussion at my local library about the future of food in the United States, looking at how farming and raising livestock has shifted from family run endeavors to huge, vertically integrated agribusinesses. One of the discussion points is the notion of eating locally-produced foods, and one of the things I plan to bring up at our next meeting tomorrow, replete with samples (non-alcoholic, sadly. I can't imagine the library would want booze on the premises) is the notion of preserving food. Now most people think of preserving food as either salting, smoking, canning or making jellies. There is another route, however, and it's one that was tremendously popular in the American Colonies...you can preserve the bounty of summer's fruit harvest by making a fruit shrub. No, not "shrub" in the sense of a small plant...the name actually comes from Arabic, and the word "sharab," which simply means "to drink". A fruit shrub is just a liquid that's produced by boiling together water, sugar, the fruit who's essence you want to keep on hand, and vinegar. In my recipe, I use white wine vinegar, just to keep it palatable, although I'd imagine apple cider vinegar could work as well. In either case, the acidity of the vinegar plus the simple syrup base combined to keep the liquid from spoiling in the fall and winter months in the Colonies, and could then be used to add a touch of summer's color and flavor to the bone-chilling bleakness of, say, January in New Hampshire. In my experience, this works best with berries, small stone fruits like cherries, and cranberries. Tonight's drink, which will also be tomorrow's drink at my "Menu for the Future" session only without the liquor, was made with four berries; raspberries, blueberries, marionberries and strawberries. Here's how to make the shrub.

In a medium-sized pot, whisk together 1 cup of sugar and one cup of water. Once combined, add 2 pints of the fruit of your choice and reduce the heat, simmering for 10 minutes. Then add two cups of white wine vinegar and return to a boil for two minutes. Strain through a cheesecloth-lined mesh strainer, pressing on the solids to get out as much of the liquid as possible; this should result in about a liter of syrupy liquid. Bottle and chill before using.

Then for your drink, all you've got to do is add 2 to 2 1/2 ounces of rum to 1 ounce of your shrub mixture, building over ice, and top up with ginger ale.

A lot of people, on learning what's in this drink, invariably pull a face at the mention of vinegar. In truth, it adds a tang to the beverage, but it's flavor is so muted by the sweetness of the fruit (not to mention the sugar) that it's really more like the flavor a bit of lemon juice might add than anything else. It's really a fun drink to spring on people...and you can make it with a ton of different fruits. I've even heard of a ginger shrub, which must look a lot like a chutney before straining. And, of course, like so many specialty foods and beverages, if you don't feel like making your own shrub base (which means you'll lose out on half the fun and all of the feeling of accomplishment) you can buy it online, most notably, from Tait Farm Foods in Pennsylvania. One of my favorite aspects of this is the feeling that I've refined something, that I've taken these simple ingredients and rendered them down and made this beautiful, fragrant, jewel-colored liquid from them. It's a simple process, but it produces a great, and long-lasting result; that batch of shrub will make more than 30 drinks. It may be a good idea to share...

"We shouldn’t have muddled! We shouldn't have muddled!"

One little secret that I can share with you from my time working as a bar-back: if you want your bartender to really hate you, you should order a mojito during the evening rush in the middle of the summer. At this point, I expect some of you are looking agog at your monitor and going "But why?! Why would that make them hate me?" Let me answer that with a little walk-through...You're the bartender, and you've been pouring beer and slinging G&Ts, serving up whiskey and Cokes, and even the occasional *shudder* Cosmo. Suddenly someone orders a mojito. The bar goes silent. A tumbleweed blows through the room. Somewhere, a lone crow caws. You turn around, open the bar fridge, pull out a bag of mint leaves, pluck off six or eight good ones, discarding half as many lousy-looking ones, drop them into a Collins glass, pour in some bar sugar and squeeze in a few lime wedges, and proceed to muddle them for the next two minutes, while the other drink orders pile up. Then you add the rum or cachaça and club soda, the spent lime bits, and hand it off to the person who ordered it. Then you turn back to see the scrum of other patrons who had to wait to put in their orders, and you spend the next ten minutes playing catch-up.

Okay, I may have ventured into hyperbole a little bit there, but my point stands...

The muddler, looking like nothing so much as a small baseball bat, is perhaps one of the most maligned pieces of equipment in the bar, thanks in no small part to the mojito. Even the Midwestern propensity to make Old Fashioneds with muddled up orange slices and cherries (and occasionally, blasphemy of blasphemies, brandy) does not provoke the ire of the bartender as much as a request for a mojito can, though perhaps that's because the Collins glass gives you less room to maneuver the muddler in, compared to the DOF glass. Now, not all bartenders will start twitching when you ask for one of these, though pretty much all those that I've worked with hated the process. Perhaps some like venting their aggression on the mint and sugar and lime. So it was with some trepidation that I approached tonight's cocktail, a drink calling itself "The Country Bumpkin" (hey, I don't name 'em folks, I just drink 'em), a drink which, like the mojito, requires the use of a muddler. However, this one, like the Old Fashioned, is made in the smaller, wider Double Old Fashioned glass, so it wasn't too terrible. Also helpful is the fact that you're not trying to grind up mint leaves with the action of bar sugar, but rather just crushing a soft fruit into a messy pulp. All in all, I doubt many bartenders would froth at the mouth were one of these ordered, though they may snicker at the name.

The Country Bumpkin is made as follows: Muddle four fresh blackberries and half a lime in the bottom of a Double Old Fashioned glass until unrecognizable. Add ice, a half-shot (3/4 oz) of sugar syrup (I actually went with homemade grenadine, figuring it'd complement the blackberries), a dash of Peychaud's bitters, and two shots (3 oz) of gin. Churn with a bar spoon and garnish, if desired, with a few skewered blackberries and raspberries. I also topped mine with just a little bit of club soda, just enough to bring the liquid close to the top of the glass, so maybe 3/4 oz or so.

This is an awesome drink. It's sweet (but not too sweet), it's woodsy, it's bright, it's nuanced, and it's pleasantly dark. The lush flavor of the blackberries contrast with the not-quite-bitter notes from the gin, with the sour of the lime juice balancing everything out. The Peychaud's bitters, which play so nicely with fruit-based drinks, take a backseat but still make themselves known, and the use of grenadine rather than just simple syrup adds another dark-fruit note that gets along very nicely with the blackberries. This is a complex but very nice drink.

If you wanted to add a little variety, you could use vodka in lieu of gin, maybe some 44 North, as it's infused with huckleberries. Or I could see using 2 oz vodka and an ounce of Chambord, though that would probably veer enough toward the sweet side that you'd want to add a little more lime. I could also see a version made with bourbon and some Cherry Heering (cherry brandy) as sort of a variant on the aforementioned Old Fashioned. And finally, you could just make a booze-free version of this by muddling the lime and berries together, omitting the grenadine/simple syrup, and just topping it up with 7up or Sprite or some similar lemon-lime soda. At any rate, this is definitely one to add to your summer drink repertoire. Now, if we could just do something about that name...