oot-Fray oops-Lay

I picked up some cachaça the other day, although it's not calling itself cachaça. It's calling itself "Rum Toucano," but as it's not a rhum Agricole, and it's made from sugarcane instead of molasses, I'm calling it a cachaça. And so I decided to try it in a rather experimental way.

While perusing the recipes page for Bittermens bitters, after getting their Boston Bittahs and 'Elemakule Tiki bitters, I found a drink made by Ago Perrone, from Montgomery Place, called "Dolce and Cabana" as it was made with Cabana cachaça. Well, I had my Rum Toucano, and I didn't have any Lillet Rouge, but I did have some Dubonnet Rouge, another quinquana. And I had some bitters that Mr Perrone didn't when he invented the drink. So I did a few little swaps, and came up with this one. I call it "The Loopy Toucan," or, assuming I haven't mangled my Portuguese too badly...

O Tucano Louco

1.5 oz Rum Toucano (or other cachaça)
2/3 oz Dubonnet Rouge
2 dashes Bittermens Grapefruit bitters
2 dashes Bittermens Xocolatl Mole bitters
1 dash Bittermens Boston Bittahs
1 dash simple syrup (preferably made with demerara or unbleached sugar)

Stir all with ice and strain into coupe. Garnish with a lemon twist (expressed over the drink first, please) and a cherry or two.

There are a lot of flavors and noses in this cachaça vying for attention, lots of citrus, lots of spice. And by using so many bitters, and by using the sweet but complex notes from the Dubonnet, you really cater to all of them. It's a very complicated drink, with fruit and lemon and black pepper notes. It's almost like a nice añejo tequila with some sips, but quite different with others. I really kind of like this one. Not bad for just futzing around with swapping in what I had on hand. Perhaps on my next go-round, I'll replace the Xocolatl Mole bitters with the 'Elemakule bitters and see what the spices bring to the party...

The only rule is you have to listen to Arthur Lyman while you make this

Aloha, you boozehounds, you. Apologies for the delay in posting again...I just can't keep up with the pace I established last year.

Anyway, today I've got an excellent drink for you, and one that I can finally make properly thanks to a little bit of luck. A while back, I entered a giveaway that Blair "Trader Tiki" Reynolds was running on Facebook...one lucky winner would get a care package with all of his currently available syrups. Lady Luck was on my side, as I'd picked up her bar tab the night before (man, that girl can drink!) and I soon had seven bottles winging their way to me; Don's Spices #2, Don's Mix, Vanilla Syrup, Cinnamon Syrup, Orgeat Syrup, Passion Fruit Syrup, and Hibiscus Grenadine. So yes, for those keeping track at home, these were a freebie, but not because I'm awesome, or because the Trader was trying to butter me up, but simply because I'm lucky. Trust me, I'm nowhere near a big enough fish in the booze-blogging pond to merit freebies from anyone. All that being said, let's get on to the drink, shall we?

I went with one that would let me use a couple of the Trader's syrups, the Passion Fruit and the Hibiscus Grenadine. This is a cocktail that dates from about 1961 or so, at the Kahiki in Columbus, OH, and it's a blender drink (gasp!) called:

The Port Light

1 oz fresh lemon juice
1/2 oz passion fruit syrup
1/4 oz grenadine
1 1/2 oz bourbon (I actually used rye, but who's counting?)
8 oz (1 cup) crushed ice

Put all ingredients in a blender and process on high for 5 seconds. Pour it, without straining, into a tall glass, adding more crushed ice if necessary to fill.

(recipe adapted from Jeff Berry and Annene Kaye, Beachbum Berry's Grog Log, p.66)

Oh man, this is a beautiful drink. Tart, sweet, ice cold, what more could you ask for? The passion fruit syrup just punches you in the nose with a ripe fruit flavor when you open the bottle, and the grenadine is sweet and bright, with an additional floral tartness from the hibiscus. I used rye in this drink, because it's what I had on hand, but even so, the syrups and lemon juice more than hold their own against it. It's kind of a Polynesian Ward Eight, and sipping one of these on a summer night with fireflies twinkling and Martin Denny or Arthur Lyman on the HiFi is going to be a little slice of heaven by way of some exotic port of call.

I'm very much looking forward to trying the other Trader Tiki syrups when I can get enough varieties of rum to do them justice in all sorts of Tiki drinks!

(FCC disclaimer: the branded products named in this post were received at no cost to me, not for review or promotional consideration purposes, but as a prize in a random giveaway.)

And there’s a hand my trusty friend! And give us a hand o’ thine!

And we’ll take a right good-will draught,
for auld lang syne.

For our New Year's Eve post, I'm of course using champagne, but I'm doing a little something different with it. Not a lot of non-lushes realize that champagne makes a great mixer. You get the effervescence of club soda with the flavor of wine, plus hell, anytime the champagne gets broken out, it's a party in and of itself.

This drink has many many stories as to it's origin, but it seems most likely that it originated just after World War I. Some say it was first made with cognac, which I can see, because cognac and champagne would have a lot of similar flavors going on, both being grape-based spirits, but my version, which could perhaps be considered the British version (as I am an unrepentant Anglophile), is made with gin. Named after the rapid-firing artillery piece that proved so useful to the French in WW I (contrary to popular belief in the US, the French are not the cheese-eating surrender monkeys they're so frequently portrayed as), I present to you, the last drink on this blog for 2009...

The French 75 Cocktail

1 oz gin
3/4 oz lemon juice
2 bar spoons simple syrup
champagne to top

Shake the first three ingredients with ice and strain into a small champagne flute. Add champagne to top. Garnish, if desired, with a lemon peel spiral and/or maraschino cherry.

Rather than the single-minded sweetness that so often plagues champagne, this really is a complex drink. The gin adds a little crispness that's most welcome here, and the lemon juice and small amount of sugar syrup also tweak the flavor profile of your champagne, making for a really interesting drink. The only problem is that it's waaaaay too easy to down two or three of these in rapid succession. And then, well, the eponymous machine gun may feel like it's opening fire on your sobriety...but hell, it's New Year's Eve!

Thanks for sticking with me so far, dear readers. I hope to keep things lively and interesting for you well into 2010 and beyond.

And now I'm back, from outer space. Or at least Chicago.

Oh, and what a libation-filled weekend I had, too, friends. Mixing drinks at a birthday party, mixing drinks at a combination housewarming/holiday party, making a pilgrimage to the new Chicago Trader Vic's and befriending my bartender...oh glory and trumpets it was a swell weekend.

But now I'm back, and after a weekend with no small amount of Tiki drinks (three of 'em at Trader Vic's alone), I figured I'd go for something a little more, well, sane and easy to make. This is yet another classic from the Savoy Drink Book, and is yet another variant on a whiskey cocktail. This one, however, is called:

The Commodore Cocktail

2 barspoons simple syrup
2 dashes orange bitters
juice of 1/4 lemon or 1/2 lime
1 1/2 oz Canadian Club (the Savoy Drink Book calls it, so that's good enough for me)

Combine all in shaker with ice, shaking well to combine. Strain into cocktail glass.

Yep, another variant on a whiskey cocktail or whiskey sour, but still...I never really get tired of them. Even in the little tweaks from drink to drink, there's still enough variety to keep things interesting. In this case, the lime juice and orange bitters are strong enough together to keep it from getting too sweet, and the Canadian Club has just enough heft to add just a little spice to things. It's a nice, very reasonably sized and tasty drink for a civilized gathering.

And speaking of civilized gatherings, I'll have to tell you all some time about some of the fantastic spirits my host at the housewarming/holiday party was good enough to share with me...oh, mercy, those were good.

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.

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.

It's Halloween! This calls for a spooky-looking drink!

Ah yes, Halloween. A time when bartenders bust out their Bailey's, their corn syrup laden grenadine, and some sort of schnapps or another and make a shot that looks like brains. Lovely. Doesn't taste like anything you'd care to drink any other time, but it's got the panache you need for a good Halloween drink.

How about I give you something that looks appropriate and tastes good too? Here's an oldie-but-goodie from the 1930 Savoy Cocktail Book:

Albemarle Fizz

juice of 1/2 lemon (about 3/4 oz or so)
1/4 oz simple syrup
1 1/2 oz gin
seltzer
2 bar spoons raspberry syrup

Shake lemon juice, syrup and gin with ice, strain into glass. Top with seltzer and add two bar spoons raspberry syrup.

There you go. It's a modified gin sour, but with the added benefit of a little fizz, and the lovely, somewhat bloody look of the more dense raspberry syrup settling in the bottom of the glass. Tip tip hurrah, boils and ghouls!

"Keep your eyes on the road, your hands upon the wheel..."

This drink, which I'm posting quickly upon realizing it's been more than 5 days since my last post, is called the Blinker Cocktail. "Blinker" was another word for "blinders" as a mule or horse might wear to keep them looking forwards. I'm not sure what connection that has to the drink, but hey, if Ted Haigh researched it, it's good enough for me.

The Blinker Cocktail

2 oz rye whiskey or, failing that, a bourbon with a lot of rye, like Bulleit
1 oz grapefruit juice
2 barspoons (about 1 teaspoon) raspberry syrup (it's available commercially, or you can mash 1/2 pint of raspberries and put it in to boil with your next simple syrup batch)

shake all with ice, and strain into a cocktail glass.

It's a nice balancing act this walks; tart from the grapefruit, sweet and tangy from the raspberry syrup, and spicy from the rye (or bourbon). But it works. And it's such a lovely color.

In which I create a drink and name it for a celebrity.

So, on the heels of the "RumDood's Revenge" of the other night, I decided to create another cocktail, but name it after a real celebrity this time. (Sorry, Matt...you're only famous in our mixology circles.) And I figured, who better to name it after than a person who's interest in classic drinks is quite well known. We've already seen David Wondrich name a drink for a broadcaster famous for "truthiness," so let's name one after another newscaster. Ladles and Gentlemints, I give you...

The Maddow Sling

1 oz Plymouth Gin
1/2 oz ginger liqueur (mine's homemade, but Domaine de Canton will work, too)
1/2 oz double-strength Earl Grey Tea
1/4 oz Cherry Heering
1/4 oz 2:1 simple syrup
1/8 teaspoon Fernet Branca
dash orange bitters
2 oz seltzer, to top

Build all except soda over ice in an Old-Fashioned glass. Stir to combine, then top with seltzer.

It's really a nice, subtle drink. Not one-dimensional, lots of flavors in there, but all working together. Ginger naturally pairs with bergamot and tea quite well, so that's the Earl Grey right there, the Cherry Heering brightens the whole thing, and that tiny bit of Fernet Branca adds a little more complexity. I quite like it, and if she's reading this, I hope Rachel Maddow likes it, too.

The one with a bad visual pun...

Every now and then, it's nice to revisit the classics... the drinks that elevated men from saloon-minders to barkeepers, from mixers to artisans. There are several examples of this...the Old Fashioned, the Gimlet, the Daiquiri, but one of the simplest of drinks is a cobbler. A Cobbler is basically a cocktail without the bitters, and with added sugar. It's usually made with cracked or shaved ice, but sometimes lump, and it's frequently nothing more than the spirit of choice, sugar (or a sweet spirit), ice, and fruit to garnish. Tonight, since it's unseasonably cold here in the Midwest (I'm currently at 59ºF in mid-July!) I opted to go with a whiskey cobbler. Here's how I made mine:

Whiskey Cobbler

1 bar spoon simple syrup
1 scant bar spoon triple sec
lump ice (or ice cubes, in my case)
2 oz rye whiskey (or bourbon)
2 oz seltzer
cherries to garnish

In a 9-ounce glass or so, combine the syrup and triple sec (or just stir 2 tsp of superfine sugar with a splash of soda water). Add ice, add your rye, stir gently, and add the seltzer. Garnish.

And that's it. All the soda and sugar and triple sec to is make the spirit not quite so powerful...but it's still very much the dominant flavor in the drink, just tempered a bit. It's a good drink to use a liquor you're partial to in, as you can really appreciate some of the more subtle characteristics that can get lost to the burn of the spirit at full strength. Definitely one to experiment with.

"Pineapple Princess, he called me Pineapple Princess all day..."

When warmer weather finally settles in to the Midwest, and the three months of bad skiing commence (as opposed to our nine months of winter), I start up my Exotica/Hawaiiana playlist and think about drinks with pineapple. Yes, it's cliche, but it's also damned tasty, and a fun plant in general. It's a bromeliad, meaning its relatives are as varied as ornamental houseplants and Spanish moss. It's also a distant cousin to the Torch Ginger plant. However, the pineapple is the most heavily cultivated one, and the tastiest (though I can't speak personally on the flavor of Spanish moss, or lack thereof).

So, our lovely pineapple, which lends itself so well to tropical drinks, is getting featured tonight, in a simple but elegant libation called:

Pineapple Fizz

1 oz pineapple juice
1/4 oz simple syrup (or superfine bar sugar)
1 3/4 oz Bacardi Silver rum

Shake all with ice, strain into a 6-8 oz tumbler, and top with seltzer.

That's all there is to it. It's a simple drink that really features the flavor of the pineapple. In fact, if you wanted to go for the ne plus ultra of freshness, you could muddle about 4 oz of pineapple chunks with your bar sugar/syrup, add the rum, shake, and double strain. You'd really be tasting the pineapple then.

Oh, and fun fact: my family has always, when noshing on fresh pineapple, sprinkled just a tiny bit of salt over it before diving in. It helps draw out and emphasize the sweetness, although now that I understand flavors a bit more, I'm more likely to use kosher or sea salt (maybe even black Hawaiian salt if I could afford it), just so I don't get that iodized flavor that table salt brings to the party. I'm happy it helps keep me from getting a goiter, but still, I don't wanna taste it on my fruit.

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.

Since I can't attend Tales of the Cocktail, I'll just have one of these.

In a few weeks, cocktail enthusiasts and historians will descend on New Orleans en masse to attend "Tales of the Cocktail," a five-day love letter to all things mixological. Being the poor boy I am, I will not be attending, though I'll be following the events that are summarized online with a great deal of interest and professional jealousy.

Meanwhile, I decided to mix up a drink of old New Orleans tonight, the Sazerac. It's gone through a few changes over the years...first made with cognac, but now more frequently with rye whiskey. Absinthe was used to coat the inside of the glass, though for a while, until it was legal again, a mixture of Green Chartreuse and Pernod were often used, or a New Orleans spirit called Herbsaint. And Peychaud's bitters were always a key ingredient.

Now, I don't have any absinthe yet, nor Herbsaint, nor Green Chartreuse, so what I've prepared tonight may charitably be termed a "poor man's Sazerac," but despite that, it's still possible to glimpse the combination of flavors that makes this libation so interesting.

Sazerac

1/4 oz absinthe or pastis, to rinse
1 bar spoon simple syrup
2 dashes Peychaud's bitters
2 oz rye whiskey

In a mixing glass, over ice, build the syrup, bitters and rye, stirring to combine. In an Old Fashioned glass, swirl the absinthe/pastis to coat the inside of the glass, discarding the excess (into your mouth is not a bad disposal method). Strain the syrup/bitters/rye mixture into the Old Fashioned glass, and garnish with a lemon twist.

The Pernod imparts a top note of licorice, but it's almost smelled rather than tasted in the drink. The sweetness of the bitters, the spiciness of the rye and the citrus zing of the lemon twist all vie for attention, but in the end, they all blend into an impossible to describe taste, but one that would be very easy to grow attached to. Three thumbs up for this drink, and, should I manage to procure Herbsaint or buck up and buy a bottle of absinthe, I will gladly revisit this to see how the ideal ingredients further enhance this drink.

(Special Note: in the photo below, you will see that there's a strip of lemon zest in the glass. For the love of all that is good and proper, don't drop it into your drink! Just squeeze it over the drink to express the oils and then toss the peel. Learn from my mistakes!)

This is not a drink for the timid.

Every now and then I stumble across a cocktail that sounds so odd, I just have to try it. This is one of those cocktails. It looks innocuous, and the name sounds pleasant, but then you look at the ingredients list and go "Wait...is that right?!" See if you can spot the point at which I started to arch one eyebrow and go "whoa!"

West Indian Cocktail

3 barspoons 2:1 simple syrup (the original calls for 2 barspoons granulated sugar, I've just made it so it dissolves better)
2 barspoons lemon juice
2 barspoons Angostura bitters
1 1/2 oz London dry gin.

Pour all over cracked ice, stir to chill, serve.

That's right. Two barspoons of Angostura bitters. Since they're a product of Trinidad, in the West Indies, that certainly qualifies it as a West Indian cocktail, but holy smokes! Two barspoons?!

Oddly, though, while you'd think this would make smoke come out of your ears and trigger the gag reflex, it doesn't at all. It's smoky, spicy, but still sweet and sour from the sugar syrup and the lemon juice. I'd almost swap out one barspoon for lime juice, just to add a little more nuance, but it's still pretty darned good. See? it's sometimes worth it to try new things, even if they sound insane. Don't try to get me to attempt base jumping, though.

P.S. In case you're wondering, yes, there is an "East Indian Cocktail," but since I don't have any sherry at the moment, that'll have to wait.

Should've saved this one for Columbus Day...

I have a whole slew of cocktail blogs that I read. Mostly for fun and enlightenment, but occasionally I'll poach a drink from them for later use. This one comes courtesy of "batgirl," a participant in the weekly "Thursday Drink Night" over at the Mixoloseum. It's a complex, but ultimately quite tasty little (ok, not so little) concoction called the Columbus Rum Sling.

Columbus Rum Sling

1 oz Appleton XO rum (I didn't have it on hand, so I mixed equal parts of Bacardi 8 and Coruba)
1/2 oz Myers rum (I subbed Cruzan Blackstrap rum)
1/2 oz London dry gin
1/2 oz Cherry Heering
1/2 oz Cointreau
1/2 oz lemon juice
1/4 oz simple syrup
1/4 oz ginger syrup (I used my ginger beer base)

Shake all with ice, strain, and top with tonic water. Garnish with grated nutmeg.

Holy Ferdinand is this thing good. It's also huge and strong, but good. There's so many things going on here that it's really impossible to pick any one element out, but it's tremendously satisfying.

Mystery cocktails

A band that an old friend of mine used to listen to would play a game periodically with their audiences called "Stump the Hippy," where someone in the house would shout out a song, and their keyboard player, the "hippy" in question, would attempt to play it. There's a variation on this you can play on your friends if you serve them this cocktail, especially those who take pride in their educated palates. There's so many different and unexpected flavors going on in here, that I think they'd be hard pressed to properly identify them all. It's quite tasty, though.

Creole Gimlet

1 1/2 oz gin
1/4 oz falernum
1/4 oz simple syrup
1/2 oz lime juice
2 dashes Peychaud's bitters

Stir all ingredients with cracked ice and strain into a small cocktail glass.

Like your typical gimlet, this starts off with just lime and gin. Then the falernum adds its crazy variety of flavors to it, and then the Peychaud's bitters have their say, and then the simple syrup sweetens everything up a bit, and you don't know WHAT'S going on. And it's delicious.

Sorry for the shorter than usual entry tonight, gang. I got back from my audition not long ago, and I'm wiped out.I do have one piece of housekeeping for you all, though. I've snapped up a couple domain names, so now you can just point your browser at www.urbanenotcosmopolitan.com or www.urbanenotcosmopolitan.net and it'll take you here. It's a little less typing, anyway.

On pink drinks that are not Cosmopolitans

Odds are, if you see someone drinking a pink liquid out of a cocktail glass, it's a Cosmopolitan. Especially if that someone looks like they're in the target demographic for "Sex and the City." There, are, however, many other drinks that are served up in a cocktail glass that are pink that are NOT Cosmopolitans, and tonight I feature one. It's called a Juniper Club Cocktail, and like last night's Ranglum, it comes via that remarkable cocktail blog, Oh, Gosh. As you might expect from a drink with "Juniper" in the name, it features gin, and it's similar to the Pegu Club cocktail featured previously. However, this one adds a little twist with the use of Peychaud's bitters.

Juniper Club Cocktail

1 1/2 oz dry gin
1/2 oz lime juice
1/3 oz Cointreau or some other good triple sec
1 barspoon Peychaud's bitters
1/2 barspoon sugar syrup

Shake all ingredients together and double strain into a cocktail glass.

The Peychaud's bitters make this really quite unusual. They're a bit sweeter and more elusive than Angostura bitters...they're also very red, which is where this drink's color comes from. I used my local Rehorst gin here, which is pretty strong on the juniper and other herbs, and through some strange transformation, one of the most prevalent flavors I get from this drink is a sort of coconut...which is very unexpected, but very welcome. I'd be very interested to hear how this plays with other gins that you may have on hand. Let me know if you try it!

"Son, I do say, son! Fetch me down my hangin' rope!"

Much umbrage and discord has resulted from the debate over the methodology of the proper mixing of a Mint Julep, but nearly all of it boils down to this question: do you muddle the mint prior to adding the bourbon or leave it unmuddled? Well, I've decided to solve this Gordian Knot in my own way, by offending everyone and deconstructing the whole damn thing into my take on it. My experimental technique (kids, wear your safety goggles!) does away with any mint leaves in the drink at all, and no granulated sugar, either! I made a special mint syrup instead! Now, unless you live in Wisconsin, odds are you won't be able to get the precise ingredient I used to add my unique twist on the drink, but you can order it for your next Derby day (or for this coming summer...it's good anytime!) and, if nothing else, I'll give you a guide to making something similar, though not quite identical.

You'll need a little bit of prep time for this, say a couple hours, just enough to give the syrup time to cool down before adding it to your ice and bourbon. Or you can prep it the night before, and take a batch with you to your Derby Day celebration. You'll need to procure some Sweet Mint Organic Botanical Blend from Rishi Tea, plus some dried peppermint. Infuse two tablespoons of the Rishi blend plus 1 tablespoon of peppermint in 5 ounces of boiling water for about 5-10 minutes; the leaves will soak up about an ounce of water, so if you drop below 4 oz after removing the leaves, just add enough hot water to bring it back up to four. Add 1/2 cup of cane sugar to the still hot liquid, and stir until dissolved, ending up with about 6 ounces by volume. Bottle and cool until time to build your julep. If you can't locate the Rishi tea and don't feel like ordering it, but your favorite grocery carries Yogi brand tea, you can get by with their "Egyptian Licorice Mint" variety...2 teabags of that plus 1 tablespoon of dried peppermint should do it. Infuse as above.

Now, to build your drink, fill your Collins glass with cracked ice, add an ounce of your mint syrup, three ounces of bourbon (or rye if you live above the Mason-Dixon line, or if you just prefer rye), swizzle gently, top again with cracked ice, pour an additional 1/2 oz of your mint syrup on top, and let it sit for about five minutes before sipping. In case you're wondering just how much ice you'll need, the answer is "a lot," as I cracked an entire tray of ice for one Collins glass. On the plus side, the glass frosted itself after I swizzled it, which is always pretty damn cool! If you want to be really contrary, you can garnish with a mint sprig, but that'd be silly, after going through all that work to avoid using real mint leaves in the drink. Best to leave it ungarnished.

I must admit, prior to sampling this drink, I was worried that it would not have as much of a mint flavor as one might hope. Happily, it does. Plus, the addition of the other herbs in the infusion make for something a little more complex than your typical mint-sugar-water-bourbon Julep. If you really wanted to commit sacrilege and play up the licorice notes in your syrup, you could add a scant 1/8 oz of absinthe or Pernod or an anisette of some sort (or even Green Chartreuse). It would be a scandal if the word got out, but it would certainly bring a dollop of new life to that staid old grey mare of Derby tradition.

"Anyone who says I didn't create the Mai Tai is a dirty rotten stinker."

Thus sayeth Victor "Trader Vic" Bergeron. The Mai Tai is a classic, though sadly, much mistreated drink. The first problem with it was the base rum that Vic favored, a seventeen year old J. Wray and Nephew Jamaican, saw it's worldwide supply exhausted within a year of the 1944 debut of this drink. Then it saw it's orgeat switched from an imported brand to an easier to procure one. After that, it's seen one modification after another. Hell, even I modified it tonight (but I only try to change you because I love you, alcohol), and in the great scheme of things, my change isn't too egregious of one. So here's tonight's version of the drink!

Mai Tai

2 oz Pyrat XO rum
1/2 oz orange curacao
1/2 oz orgeat syrup
1/2 oz lime juice
1/4 oz Wray and Nephew White Overproof rum
1/8 oz simple syrup

Shake all ingredients well with tons of crushed ice and pour into your favorite Tiki mug (if you don't have a favorite Tiki mug, you really should get one. If you're pressed for time, though, you can use a Collins glass)

The name of this drink comes from the exclamation, in Tahitian, of the first people to taste Vic's concoction, Ham and Carrie Guld. On Carrie's first sip, she exclaimed (according to Trader Vic lore) "It's mai tai! It's mai tai roa áe!" She explained that it means "out of this world! The best!" And lo, the name stuck. And it should...it's a damned good drink. The original didn't use the overproof rum, and instead of simple syrup used 1/8 oz of "rock candy syrup" which is just simple syrup with some vanilla extract added to the mix. I opted to use the Wray and Nephew overproof to add a vanilla note, plus a little extra booze...the Pyrat is good, but it can underwhelm a bit in some mixes (though it's awesome to drink straight with a little lime). Contrast this to the Mai Tai served at your local TGI McTchotchke's GoodTime FoodDrinkery and you'll find there's a world of difference: the difference between expedience and craft. This little tipple, if consumed in the dog days of summer, just around sunset after a fun-filled day of yardwork, may just be the thing that saves your sanity and sends you, if only for a few minutes, "out of this world."