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.

by the way...small bit of housekeeping...

I turned off the TypePad Connect comments, but that means that some old comments that were here have vanished. Sadly, there's no way I can salvage those, but please be assured it's not censorship, it's just a stupid technical limitation. I'm going back to Blogger's system, and that's good enough for me.

On that note, I need to go through and re-enable comments on old blog entries...I may miss one or two...if so, sorry! Just drop me an email and tell me which one I've missed, and I'll get it switched back on.

This one had me worried...

Sometimes you'll look at a drink and go "Errrr...I dunno about that." This one, I suspected might be far too sweet, cloyingly so. Still, the other ingredients might balance it out, so I decided to give it a go. I'm glad I did.

Gilroy Cocktail

1/2 oz lemon juice
1/2 oz dry vermouth
1 oz Cherry Heering (or other cherry-infused brandy-based liqueur)
1 oz London dry gin
dash of orange bitters

Shake or stir very well with ice, strain into a cocktail glass

As it turns out, this is definitely not cloyingly sweet. In fact, it's a remarkably well balanced drink...the dry vermouth and lemon juice strike just the right balance again the Cherry Heering, and the gin adds a little extra zip. The only odd quality is that, compared to some cocktails, it's a little more viscous on the tongue. That may just be because I opted to stir it rather than shake it (it was late when I made this, and the windows were open. I didn't want grumpy neighbors) but still, it's a very tasty drink. In fact, if you wanted to do this as a sort of cooler, I'd suggest pouring it, unstrained, into a Double Old-Fashioned glass and adding a couple ounces of seltzer or club soda. Could be tasty!

I love drinks with goofy names.

Sometimes, when paging through your drink guides and cocktail recipes, you stumble across a drink with a name so incongruous that you just have to make it. This is one of those drinks.

Sloppy Joe's Special

1 oz good gold rum (I used Bacardi 8, but if you have some Cuban rum secreted away that fell off a truck, use that)
1 oz dry vermouth (Noilly Prat & Cie is my brand)
juice of 1 lime
2 bar spoons grenadine
2 bar spoons curaçao (I swapped in triple sec)

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

I have no idea where the name of the drink originated. My source is a handy little cocktail app for my iPod touch that has collected dozens of drinks from various sources. This one was published in "The Gentleman's Companion: Being an Exotic Drinking Book, or Around the World with Jigger, Beaker and Flask" published in 1946. I won't link to it on Amazon because pretty much the only copies available are used and approaching $200.

In terms of flavor, the lime juice really tends to overwhelm this, and I didn't use much, only about 3/4 oz. I'd scale it down to 1/2 oz lime juice, just so you can taste the rum a bit more. Other than that, it's sort of a modified Sidecar with rum and vermouth. There's some subtleties there, but until you get rid of some of the lime, you'll never taste them.

EDITED on 8/1/09 to add: I've got a lead on where the name comes from...apparently in Prohibition-era Cuba, there was a bar called Sloppy Joe's. More info can be found here.

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!

Come let's mix where Rockefellers walk with sticks or um-ber-ellers in their mitts...

And I'm back! The show wrapped on Sunday, we struck the set immediately afterwards, and the head of the theatre group and the director said they got nothing but raves from the audience. My bruises are healing (it was a rather physical show for me, I was stuffed under couches and fell off balconies) and now, I'm ready to get back to the blog! I do feel, however, that it benefitted from not trying to get something posted every night (or at least that *I* benefitted from not having to get something posted every night) so I'm going to be trying the "posting several times a week" thing for a while longer. Don't worry, I haven't lost interest in this thing, I'm just trying to pace myself, like any good drunk.

I obtained, late last week, a copy of the new, Revised & Expanded Deluxe (Soopa-Genius!) Edition of Ted Haigh's invaluable Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails: From the Alamagoozlum to the Zombie and Beyond - 100 Rediscovered Recipes and the Stories Behind Them and I nearly wept unashamedly when I opened it and began to read. This book is pretty much my entire cocktail philosophy encapsulated between two covers: good spirits aren't cheap, but good drinks don't need a lot of them. The trend is towards goldfish-bowl sized vessels of cheap booze in garish colors, but classically, the drinks were small (usually no more than 4 oz) and well crafted. If you drink to savor rather than to get verschnickered, I truly believe you'll get a lot more out of your liquor-buying dollar.

And on the subject of dollars, that provides me with a nice segue to tonight's drink, the Park Avenue cocktail. The very name conjures up notions of gold-plated sidewalks, gem-encrusted parking meters, and small yappy-type dogs being walked by portly matrons. Happily, the ingredients for this cocktail are pretty easily come by.

Park Avenue Cocktail

2 oz gin
3/4 oz pineapple juice
3/4 oz sweet vermouth
2 teaspoons orange curaçao

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

It's a strangely tropical drink, for being named after a NYC locale...Ted Haigh suggests it was switched at birth with the Palm Beach cocktail (gin, sweet vermouth and grapefruit juice, rather more bracing than balmy in character). That said, it's still a damn fine drink, and one that I'd like to see more of, rather than the "Blue BahamaMama MojitoTiniRita™", or whatever they're calling the latest liquor-laden travesty they're trying to foist upon an unsuspecting public.

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!)

What can I say, I felt like experimenting.

So. Short and sweet because I've got to return some videos got eleventy-billion library books to read before they're due, and I want to make some headway on my days off from the the show. I made up a drink tonight. It's quite tasty and subtle and I think you should try it. I have not named it. If you try it and like it and want to serve it to other people, you can say it's just something you threw together. I give you full permission to claim it as your own.

1 3/4 oz orange flavored vodka
3/4 oz London dry gin
1 1/2 oz pineapple juice
1 oz Tahitian limeade
dash of Peychaud's bitters

Build over ice in an Old Fashioned glass, stirring well to combine.

The citrus all plays very well together, the coconut water and the botanicals from the gin live together in perfect harmony (oh lord, why don't we?) and the Peychaud's extremely subtle notes waft through the whole thing, tying it all together. I like it. Hopefully you will do.

Now to read!

I'm only doing this because I love you all...

I have to get up rather earlier than I like to awaken on weekends tomorrow, in part because we've got a matinee, but also because I'm endeavoring to mow the lawn, shower and shave to ensure proper application of stage makeup, and grab something to eat prior to my 12:15 PM call. Show goes up at 1:30. So think of it this way...in a little over 12 hours from now, I'll be trotting on stage to do my villain schtick. We had a great audience tonight, which may explain why I'm still pumped. So instead of drifting off to dreamland as I ought, I'm giving you a drink...my ever-so-slightly modified take on The La Floridita Daiquiri. My only modifications are to replace the "juice of 1/2 lime" with some of my leftover Tahitian Limeade and alter the "2 bar spoons of simple syrup" to a scant 1/4 oz. Other than that, 'tis the same!

The La Floridita Daiquiri

2 oz good quality rum like Havana Club or Bacardi Anejo (I used Bacardi 8)
3/4 oz Tahitian limeade
1/4 oz simple syrup
2 bar spoons Maraschino liqueur

Blend all with ice until smooth and thick. Serve in a champagne coupe.

It's really quite nice how the sweet spice of the rum and the classic "funk" of the Maraschino play together in this. The tahitian limeade adds just a dash of acidity, but also a great tropical note from the coconut water. If you can, I highly recommend crushing the ice before blending with the liquid ingredients...it really helps things to blend more evenly, and makes for a finer grain in the finished drink. This one's definitely a keeper, and it's a good showcase for a favorite rum, as the other ingredients work to augment, rather than overwhelm the spirit.

apologies, all

Sorry for the dearth of posts in the last few days. We had our final dress rehearsals for the show and opened it tonight. I'll try to get a drink or two up over the weekend...

If you just can't wait, you can try my latest iteration of the classic Manhattan, one I'm calling the Golden Ratio Manhattan... it's a 2:1 ratio of whiskey (I've been using Canadian Club lately) to vermouth, and a 2:1 ratio of dry vermouth to sweet vermouth. So, if you wanted a nice big one, you could use 3 oz whiskey, 1 oz of dry vermouth and 1/2 oz of sweet vermouth. Add a dash each of Angostura and orange bitters, shake, and strain. There ya go.

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!

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.

In which I learn that good bitter lemon soda is apparently hard to find.

I decided to try another one of the bitter lemon drinks that I'd found in my research, so I figured I'd better try to isolate that flowery flavor I experienced in the previous Bitter Lemon Cooler. Sure enough, it's the Stirring's bitter lemon; there's not much bitter about it at all, really. I think in the future, I'll just get some pure lemon extract, add a couple drops to a good tonic water, and use that...it'd be cheaper, any way.

That said, I altered the recipe here a bit to try to get it a little more lemony and a little less flowery. It was mostly successful, but I still think the better the tonic water/bitter lemon, the better. Maybe I'll even try making my own tonic water one of these days, if I can get a hold of some cinchona bark powder...

Anyway, on to the drink:

Lemon Rum Cooler

3/4 oz lemon juice
2 oz light rum
1/4 oz overproof rum (bump it up to 1/2 oz if you're daring!)
2 oz pineapple juice
1/4 oz falernum

Shake all ingredients with ice, strain into a tall glass, top up with bitter lemon soda.

This drink fares a bit better, as the flavors of the rum and falernum are quite a bit stronger than the gin and vermouth. The extra lemon juice here makes a bit of difference, as the original drink only called for 1/2 oz. It's definitely got the potential to be more refreshing than the Bitter Lemon Cooler, but still, it's not as crisp as I'd expect it to be. Maybe I've just got irrational expectations of the bitter lemon soda. I dunno...

Oh my god! Social interaction! This is something entirely new!

Every month, a bunch of lushes cocktail aficionados band together and do a little something called "Mixology Monday," centering around a theme. This month's theme is "Ginger," and we know how much I love ginger. So I'm marking my participation in my first ever Mixology Monday with this drink that I just made up in my kitchen.

Koro Koola

1 1/4 oz homemade ginger beer base (I use Paul Clarke's recipe)
1/4 oz falernum
1/4 oz pimento dram
1/4 oz fresh key lime juice
1/4 oz Grand Marnier
1 oz Coruba Jamaican rum
2 dashes Angostura orange bitters
good quality ginger ale to top

shake all but the ginger ale with ice, strain into a good sized Old Fashioned glass, top up with an equal measure (about 3 1/4 oz) of ginger ale.

Koro was a tiki god who was sometimes referred to as the Midnight Dancer...sort of the party animal of the tiki gods, so he seemed a good fit for a drink that got my taste buds dancing the tango (ok, so it's not a Polynesian dance, so sue me). The nice thing about this is that the ginger, while definitely present, is happy to share the limelight with some of the other flavors, and the (relatively) low alcohol content (the pimento dram, falernum, Grand Marnier, and orange bitters are present in such small volumes that they're really pretty negligible, and there's only an ounce of straight spirit) means that you can knock back a few of these before you hit the dance floor and start to hula out of your pants (not advised in mixed company).

A summer drink, even though it's barely 60ºF here.

With the perhaps delusional belief that summer will soon arrive here in the Midwest, despite all meteorological indications to the contrary, I'm starting to experiment with warm weather drinks. Today's is the first taste of a new one for me, the Bitter Lemon Cooler. Previously hamstrung in my attempts to even locate Bitter Lemon soda that wasn't laced with my arch-nemesis, High Fructose Corn Syrup, I finally succeeded yesterday in locating a four pack of the stuff made by Stirrings. Imagine my frustration when, after procuring my elusive ingredient, I learned that bitter lemon is nothing more that lemon juice and tonic water mixed. I'm sure there's a bit more to it than that, but that's the long and the short of it. Next time I'll just try that! But at any rate, I started browsing around for drinks that use the stuff, and here we go.

Bitter Lemon Cooler

1 1/2 oz dry vermouth
1 oz gin
1/4 oz grenadine
1/4 oz lemon juice

shake all with ice, strain into a tall, ice-filled glass, and top with bitter lemon soda, stirring gently to combine.

My first reaction when I tasted this was that it was surprisingly flowery. I'm assuming that came from the vermouth and the Bitter Lemon...but there's very little bitterness in this, nor sourness, which is surprising and a little dismaying, frankly. If I had it to do over again, I'd swap the gin to vermouth ratio, and add a little more lemon juice. This, as is, is just way too sweet to be an effective cooler on a hot day. That said, it's still drinkable, but it's more something I'd serve to a maiden aunt than drink myself.

Live and learn, I guess...

No photo tonight, but I will give you a novelty drink!

I came up with this utterly ridiculous drink about 5 years ago, when I was still working at my old restaurant, and we were entertaining the notion of movie nights in the bar. We were thinking about running trilogies every week, and the Star Wars series came up, and we started brainstorming what sorts of drinks we could serve. I suggested one solely for the name, and then we had to figure out what it would consist of. I present to you, the Flaming Wookiee.

Flaming Wookiee
serves two
2 oz amaretto
1 oz orange juice
dash of Angostura bitters

Shake over ice to combine, strain into two shot glasses. Float a layer of overproof rum on top of each shot glass and light.
Encourage patrons to extinguish before drinking.

Sometimes you've just got to cut loose, make a goofy drink and make no apologies. What would've been really bad is if we devised a "Flaming Anakin."

EDIT! A dear friend, code name "Earl," has pointed out a perfect confluence of events surrounding this drink. Not only are Star Wars Weekends occurring presently at Disney's Hollywood Studios park in Orlando, but we're also coming up on Gay Days in the Florida parks. "Flaming Wookie" is the PERFECT drink for the festivities! Drink up, me hearties, yo ho!

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.

As an introduction to home bartending, this can't be beat...

I most enthusiastically refer you to Bibulo.us, and their ongoing guide to the home bar.

Part I

Part II

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.

We got to move these refrigerators, we got to move these color Tee-Vees!

I pledged that I'd bring in a couple empty bottles as props in the show I’m doing. The only problem is that at the moment, I have no empty bottles. Only one thing to do!

They need a whiskey bottle, and I can oblige that with an empty of rye whiskey. In order to have that ready to go, I'm going to make a simple drink, but a good one. It's called the Approve Cocktail, and it's very easy to make. Three ingredients, a shake, a strain and you've just used up 3 oz of rye. Here we go!

Approve Cocktail

3 oz rye whiskey (or Canadian Club, if you prefer)
2 dashes Angostura bitters
2 dashes curaçao (Cointreau could be used here)

Shake all with ice and strain into a wineglass (well-chilled, if possible).

Lest there be any doubt, this is very much a sipping drink! While you've added a few aromatic notes with the bitters and the curaçao, it's still pretty much ice cold whiskey. Which is wonderful, don't get me wrong! You get the added spice flavors from the bitters and a tiny bit of bitter orange from the Contreau, and it really serves the rye well. I'd almost think, if you've got orange bitters on hand, that swapping a dash of Angostura for a dash of orange would improve it further, bringing the orange flavor to the forefront a bit more. All in all, not a bad libation. There's certainly bound to be worse ways to dispose of rye whiskey. I endorse, recommend, advocate, and yes, approve of this cocktail.

Tea for two, and two for tea...

I decided to go with another non-alcoholic drink today, using the other flavor of the DRY Soda that I picked up, Vanilla Bean. I thought it might be interesting to combine the mild sweetness of the soda with something a little more unusual, and started rummaging through my teas. I found a genmaicha that I thought would go well with it. Genmaicha is green tea (sencha) with toasted rice. It sounds weird, but it's really quite good, with sort of a nutty flavor to it.

And happily, it turns out my theory was correct, and that this does match up well together. I was stumped for a name, though, so I just googled what "vanilla" is in Japanese, and from my exhaustive research (read, five minute search) the best I can find is "banila" (バニラ) so I just called this thing:

Banila Genmaicha

2 teaspoons good genmaicha tea, or two teabags
1 cup water just off the boil
6 oz Vanilla Bean DRY Soda

Steep the tea in hot water for about 10 minutes, discard leaves/bags and chill. Once cooled, pour 2 oz of the double-strength tea over ice and add 6 oz Vanilla Bean DRY Soda.

The green tea and the roasted nature of the rice really make for a nice counterpoint to the sweetness of the vanilla. This'd make for a very refreshing summer drink, and pair well with most Pacific cuisines, I'd imagine. The great think about DRY's sodas is that they're not overly sweet...it's nice to not have my teeth start to itch from too much sweetener. Definitely a combination worth trying.

Yellow journalism, red drink.

William Randolph Hearst was a newspaper magnate who never let the facts stand in the way of a good story. He's got a drink named after him already, though, so we'll move along. One of his enduring legacies, however, was "yellow journalism," wherein legitimate news was soft-pedaled, and attention-grabbing, sensational headlines were elevated to above the fold. Perhaps the most egregious example was how the unverified (and as yet unproven) assertion that the USS Maine exploded in Havana harbor due to a bomb or torpedo, an assertion which helped to touch off the Spanish-American War. A popular rallying cry became "Remember the Maine, to hell with Spain!" Not terribly clever, but catchy. So much so, it seems, that "Remember the Maine" became the name of a cocktail. And it tastes pretty good, too.

Remember the Maine

2 oz Bourbon whiskey (or rye, which I prefer)
3/4 oz sweet vermouth
1/4 oz Cherry Heering
dash of Pernod
2 dashes of Angostura bitters

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

Between the spiciness of the rye, the sweetness of the vermouth, the back of the throat tartness of the Heering, and the anise notes of the Pernod, you've got a lot going on in this drink. Happily, the elements work pretty harmoniously, as long as you don't overdo the Pernod. I wouldn't make a habit of drinking this every day, but it's one to keep in mind for an occasional tipple, especially when you want something a little different.

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.

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.

No, this is not a post about energy sources...

I will be the first to admit, I have absolutely no idea exactly what this drink's name means. I mean, I can guess at part of it, but the other half? Not a clue. Meet the Corn 'N Oil. Blackstrap rum, lime juice, and falernum. Tastes and smells almost like a molasses cookie, but better. And alcoholic. The blackstrap rum gives makes it look like crude oil, I suppose, but I've no idea where the "Corn" part of it comes in to play. Despite that, it's tasty. And simple (provided you've got your falernum on hand, of course).

Corn 'N Oil

3 oz Cruzan Blackstrap Rum (any blackstrap or dark rum will work, but for this application, I think Cruzan's tastes the best. Yes, I've tried several others)
1 oz falernum
juice of 1/2 lime

build over ice, stirring briskly to combine.

It really looks intimidating, but a sniff and a taste will set you at ease. This is easily one of my favorite drinks, just because of all the spiciness going on in it, between the dark molasses character of the rum and the spice cupboard appeal of the falernum. I love this one.

Okay, now I'm really confused.

I put a poll out in the field earlier this afternoon, and since two people answered it, I can call it unanimous. Tonight's drink is the Singapore Sling. Easy enough.

Which one, though?

There's more recipes out there for the Singapore Sling than you can shake a swizzle stick at. Some with club soda, some without. Some with citrus juice, some saying if you add citrus it's no longer classified as a sling. Some with gin, some with brandy, some with both. It's very perplexing. So I'm going to mix up one version of it tonight and perhaps revisit its variants in the future. Tonight's version is the one David Wondrich takes on in "Esquire Drinks":

Singapore Sling (Wondrich version)

2 oz London dry gin
1/2 oz Cherry Heering cherry brandy
1/2 oz Bénédictine

Stir all well with 2-3 ice cubes, pour unstrained into highball glass, and fill to taste with club soda (or ginger beer, if you're of a mind to).

In this one, I taste the gin more than anything. The Heering and the Bénédictine round it out a little bit, and give it some depth, but it's really relegated to the background. Don't get me wrong, it's not a bad drink, but it kind of lacks something. I'll be very interested to try some of the other versions and see what they bring. But first, I'll need to get a new bottle of Bénédictine, as this drink took the last few drops from my miniature "fun size" bottle (and since when is getting less of something "fun?"). Fortunately, my friendly neighborhood liquor emporium has a half size bottle that won't break the bank. Tune in next time, true believers!

I will readily admit that I'm addicted to ginger.

There, I said it. I love ginger. I love the sinus-clearing zing of it, I love the tingle in my mouth as I eat it, I love the fact that it can calm an upset stomach. I even eat ginger candy, for cryin' out loud. I love it. It's my most favoritest rhizome. Anytime I get to use ginger in a food or beverage, I'm there.

So tonight's drink is one that relies on having a good ginger ale at hand. Normally I'd suggest Vernor's, as it's chock full of nose-searing ginger flavor, but...BUT, dear readers...it's got high fructose corn syrup, and I avoid that crap at all costs. So. I will instead steer you towards Boylan's Ginger Ale...it's a little more conventional in its strength, and it won't make you cough if you get a whiff straight from the bottle like Vernor's, but it's got a true ginger flavor, and it's made with cane sugar, not that corn crap. Alternately, Reed's Ginger Brew is another good one. So, go get yourself a highball glass, and mix up a Gin Gin Highball.

Gin Gin Cocktail

1 1/2 oz gin
5 oz ginger ale
2 dashes Angostura bitters

Build over ice in a highball glass. Garnish if you so choose with a lemon peel.

This is just a nice, simple drink, full of botanicals running around and playing tag with the ginger, frolicking on the green fields of your tastebuds (assuming you never ever brush your teeth), and generally pleasing everyone. This is also a good one to use with some of your more untraditional gins, the kind that have all sorts of wacky botanicals in them. Ginger is in so many different cuisines and types of food (main course, dessert, etc.) that it can interact well with all sorts of flavors. This is definitely one to try.

Bonus "Food For Thought" post

Falernum is delicious drizzled over ginger ice cream. It would also work remarkably well on Bananas Foster.

I love happy accidents in the lab.

Last night I was playing around with Tiki drinks, because I just got this nifty little iPod Touch app called Tiki+ (link opens in iTunes), which features more than 150 tiki drinks that Jeff "Beachbum" Berry has dug up over the years. So I was looking through them for inspiration, and, well, I wound up going a little "mad scientist," what with a dash of this and a little of that, and just generally experimenting. And I'll be frank, sometimes when I just mix stuff together, it really really sucks. But sometimes you can surprise yourself, and I'm delighted to report that this was one of those times.

And, since I made it up, I got to name it, which is one of my favorite parts of the process. So, since it's just some random thing, I went with the Hawaiian pidgin equivalent of "whatchamacallit," which is "da kine" (it's been described as "the word you use when you don't use the word")

Da Kine Cocktail

1/2 oz pimento dram
1/4 oz falernum
1/4 oz orgeat syrup
dash of vanilla extract
juice of 1/2 lime
slice of lemon
1 oz white Puerto Rican rum (I used Bacardi)
1 oz dark Barbados rum (I used Gosling's Black Seal)
dash of orange bitters

Combine all ingredients in shaker with lots of crushed ice, squeeze in the lemon juice and drop in the slice, and shake well. Pour, unstrained, over the juiced lime half, into a favorite Tiki mug, or boring old glass.

Brok'da mout*, da buggah is ono**! This turned out to be a great drink in the spirit of all the Tiki drinks it drew inspiration from...sweet, sour, full of spice, complex in character. Oooh, man. You gotta make this. Drink more than a couple of 'em, though, and you'll be pau***!

*"Brok'da mout" = "It's so good, it broke my mouth"
**"Da buggah is ono" = "This wicked little thing is delicious"
*** "pau" = "done" or "finished"

It was hot today...I want a popsicle. With booze.

It was a most peculiar weather day here at Chez Casa Urbane Not Cosmopolitan...85ºF and windy. And it's still in the 70s well after sundown...so I don't plan to do anything too crazy tonight...I'm just gonna sit in bed, read, and sip on this little drink of my devising...I'm trying to power through that Svedka Clementine, so I mixed it with some seltzer and threw a few drops of homemade vanilla extract into it. Light, fizzy and it tastes like a Creamsicle. Simple, convenient, and refreshing. Can't ask for more than that.

See-Thru Creamsicle Fizz

2 oz Svedka Clementine or other orange vodka
5-6 oz seltzer or club soda
5-6 drops homemade vanilla extract (halve the amount if using commercial vanilla extract, it's much stronger)

Build over ice, sit back, and sip.

Apologies for the brevity tonight, gang. It's been a long day. I'll have some good ones up going into the weekend. Pinky swear.

"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...

You just can't leave well enough alone, can you?

I've got a fun tale to relate about this drink; I made it before I went on vacation last summer, and I think Nature decided to punish my hubris. My trip to Florida coincided with the arrival and subsequent quadruple-landfall of Tropical Storm Fay, and my entire vacation was spent dodging downbursts. The drink's name: Dark N' Stormy. The Atlantic has a cruel sense of humor.

Despite that, it's a wonderful, and very simple drink. Despite that, you all know I can't leave well enough alone, and I've doctored it a little bit. I'll give you the original, and then my take.

Dark N' Stormy (original version)

2 oz Gosling's Black Seal rum (or any dark/blackstrap rum, but Gosling's is traditional)
5 oz ginger beer (or as strong a ginger ale as you can find)
Large lime wedge (1/4 lime, or so)

Build over ice (rum first) in a highball glass, then squeeze in the lime

It's great as is, but I tinkered with it a touch and made this:

Dark N' Stormy (my version)

Juice of 1/4 lime
1/2 oz ginger beer base (recipe follows)
1/4 oz falernum
2 oz Gosling's Black Seal rum
5 oz ginger ale

Pour first four ingredients over ice, stirring to combine, then add the ginger ale, stirring gently to integrate everything.

The ginger beer base is more or less a homemade ginger juice, but one that doesn't require any juicer. It does require a bit of patience, however. I'm using the recipe from The Cocktail Chronicles, but I've scaled it down by about 1/3, just to keep it from going to waste:

3 1/3 cups water
4 oz ginger, finely chopped or sliced as thin as possible on a mandoline
2 oz light brown sugar (processed as minimally as possible)
juice of 1/4 lime
1/3 bay leaf

Boil the water, remove from heat and add the ginger and bay leaf. Cover and let steep for at least four hours but preferably overnight. Strain the mixture through cheesecloth, squeezing out all the liquid you can. Add the sugar and lime juice, stir/shake to combine, bottle and refrigerate.

You can use this to make your own ginger beer, mixing with club soda at about a 1:1 ratio of base to soda, or for ginger ale, at about a 3:1 or 4:1 ratio. It's wonderfully spicy.

Anyway, as for my variant on it, I think it's a great take on the original, if I do say so myself. The ginger and spice in the falernum really meld with the ginger beer base and ginger ale to make a deep, satisfying drink, and the fresh lime juice notes really make it pop. This is a fantastic summer drink...you could probably even serve it with a brunch (if you must. I hate brunch, but that's just a personal neurosis) as it's light and crisp. Plus, ginger is an excellent digestive aid, so it might even help you eat more. Just please, don't tempt the fates like I did and drink it before leaving for a vacation in the middle of hurricane season. It's not nice to fool with Mother Nature.

"I don't know, I made it up, I made it up!"

Much like elementary school students, or Agador in "The Birdcage," if I'm faced with the need to post an entry and no idea what to feature, I just make something up. Happily, the drink I came up with is much more palatable than Agador's "Sweet and Sour Peasant Soup." And it does not feature chreemps shrimps.

Halema'uma'u Cooler

1 1/4 oz London Dry gin
1/4 oz grenadine
1/2 oz triple sec
1/2 oz Maraschino
1/2 oz lime juice
1/8 tsp homemade spice extract
dash of Angostura bitters
tonic water

Combine all except the tonic water with ice in a shaker, shake to mix well, strain into a small tumbler with one solitary ice cube. Top up with tonic water, garnish with a thin bit of orange twist.

I was struggling for a name to put to this one, so I reached back in my mind to a decade ago when I visited Hawai'i. Most of my time was spent on Oahu, but I did visit the Big Island and nose around Volcano National Park. This was before Kilauea had started erupting regularly again, and I was able to hop around the caldera, and look straight down into the Halema'uma'u Crater, home to Pele, goddess of fire in the Hawai'ian tradition. I remembered that they used to have a Volcano House drink (a hot buttered rum) at the overlook before the lodge went dry (likely when it became part of the National Park) and it turns out I lifted a couple elements of that (Maraschino and some spice) without even realizing it. I basically started out planning some variant on a gin and tonic. I threw in a little triple sec, a little lime, a little bitters, and a little grenadine for color, the aforementioned Maraschino and spice, and Aia hoʻi! Turned out to be quite a nice sipping drink, ideal for looking out over the caldera (assuming you smuggle it into the park in a hip flask, or something). Just watch out for the erupting magma. And Agador's seafood chowder, come to think of it.

Hey gang, long time no see!

So...I'm into rehearsals, and the play is going to be awesome. But you're not here for news about my theatrical career, you're here for drinks! And to oblige, I'm offering a tiki drink, from Don the Beachcomber's vault, way back in 1941. It's called the Test Pilot, and it's made as follows:

Test Pilot

1/2 oz fresh lime juice
1/2 oz falernum (use a scant 1/2 oz if homemade like mine)
1 tablespoon Cointreau
dash of Angostura bitters
1/8 teaspoon Pernod
3/4 oz light Puerto Rican or Cuban (-style) rum (I cheated this a bit and used Pyrat XO Reserve)
1 1/2 oz dark Jamaican rum (cheated this a little, too, and used Gosling's Black Seal)

Blend all with 1 cup of crushed ice for 5 seconds, then pour it into a double old-fashioned glass. Add a little more crushed ice to fill, and garnish as you like, though a cherry is pretty much all you need.

Now I know you're all going "a blender drink?!" And usually I'm not crazy about blender drinks, because they make noise and are a pain to clean up after, and generally imply that you're going to take inferior ingredients and make a liquor-filled smoothie out of them. However, it is possible to have good blender drinks, and the Test Pilot is a stellar example of one. First off...it's COLD. Which is always good. Secondly, you've gotten a little bit more air in there, and made some of the more inaccessible flavors open up a tiny bit. Third, you've got tiny bits of ice melting all at once, helping to dilute the drink...and it needs it...there's a fair amount of liquor in this puppy. The bitters and Pernod sort of skulk around like good little henchmen, making you aware that something's there, but not really identifying themselves. The two rums, the falernum, the Cointreau and the lime all chime in at various points, making for a tremendously complex but ultimately awesome drink. Do take it out for a spin, won't you?

Strike, yer colors, ye brazen wench! No, not you, mom...

Ah, Mother's Day, when mom's everywhere endure crowded restaurants filled with grumpy children (of all ages), sub-par brunches, and mimosas made with cheap champagne. I know it's the thought that counts, but I just can't stand the thought of enduring all of that just to show mom that she's important to me...she might get the wrong idea and think that I harbor a secret desire to torture her. I'm sure the Geneva Convention prohibits some of the conditions you can find in many restaurants on Mother's Day. Then again, my mom just like sweet rolls, coffee, and the paper. Must be a Midwest thing.

And speaking of Midwest things (how's THAT for a segue?!), this latest drink is inspired by a recipe from a Milwaukee-based music journalist, one that I found in Beachbum Berry's Intoxica!, a great source for all sorts of exotic drinks. I just swapped in two different varieties of rum and added some orange bitters. The interesting thing is, in it's original incarnation, The Marlin, as it was called, was blue. However, with the rums I used, it darkened and tended rather more towards green. So since I changed the rums and changed the color, I figured I'd change the name, too.

El Pirata Y el Perico

1/2 oz fresh lemon juice
1/2 oz fresh lime juice
1/2 oz Maraschino liqueur
1/2 oz orgeat syrup
1/2 oz blue curaçao (or use a good triple sec and add a little blue food dye)
2 dashes orange bitters
1 oz Pyrat XO Reserve rum
1 oz Gosling's Black Seal rum

Shake all with ice, and strain into an Old-Fashioned glass or snifter filled with crushed ice.

I'll admit it, I geeked out a bit and named the drink after a spot at Walt Disney World, an eatery that's closed as often as not. But it's got a great name, and considering its meaning ("The Pirate and the Parrot") it fits with this drink, as well. I mean, rum and tiki elements and as green as a parrot? Yeah, that works!

In terms of flavor, the lemon and lime do a great job of balancing out the sweetness of the orgeat, the Maraschino similarly baffles the tastebuds (in a good way, of course) and the two different styles of rum really add a lot of depth. If you wanted to experiment a little more, you could add maybe an ounce and a half of a good strong ginger beer or ginger ale to it...might make things even more spicy and delicious. Really, half the fun of modifying recipes is trying variations on them.

I'm my own grandpaw!

There's a drink that inspired the Martini, but looks like a Manhattan. It tastes like the illegitimate lovechild of both, though it predates at least one. And it's got another funny name. Well, funny for a cocktail, anyway. Ladles and Jellyspoons, meet the Martinez!

Martinez

1 1/2 oz gin
1 1/2 oz sweet vermouth
2 barspoons Maraschino liqueur
2 dashes orange bitters

Stir all ingredients well with ice, strain into cocktail glass. Garnish with orange twist and a flamed orange peel (if desired, but highly recommended)

As you may expect, it's a sweeter drink than the Martini, and not as knock-you-on-your-butt as a Manhattan. It's a well behaved little thing. That said, it's also not as boring as you might imagine. The botanicals in the gin complement the orange really well, especially the caramelized notes a flamed orange peel add, and the Maraschino's "funk" keeps it from being a one-note song. If you've got a small-batch gin, or one that's distilled with some unusual botanicals, I'd recommend using it in here...it'll make it a lot more interesting. If you want to play around with proportions, go for it...one of the earliest guides for this drink calls for sweet vermouth to gin in a 2:1 ratio! A little sweet for modern tastes, but tasty in it's own right. But don't settle for your grandfather's version...make it your own.

Master...THESPIAN! Acting! Thank you.

Dear readers, I've been cast in the show I mentioned. For the immediate future, plan on updates coming at minimum of thrice weekly, most likely weekends and once during the week. I'll aim for more, but it'll depend on the rehearsal schedule. The show opens June 19, so there's about 4 weeks of solid rehearsal time before Tech (aka "Hell") week commences.

If you're in the midwest and would like to learn more and see yours truly don the cap and bells and tread beneath the proscenium arch (metaphorically...there is no cap and bells) then visit this page for more info.

Thanks for reading, everyone, and I'll try to keep your whistles wet. This is gonna be fun!

Drinks that should suck but don't

Much as bumblebees continue to confound all known laws of aerodynamics by not only bumbling this way and that but by actually becoming airborne in the first place, so too are there drinks that you'd think would taste truly vile, but manage to surprise you. Thus, a good rule of cocktails (and gastronomy in general) is "don't knock it til you've tried it." I offer tonight's drink, the Argentina Cocktail, as an illustration.

Picture, if you will, a 1:1 gin martini, that is, equal measures of gin and dry vermouth (purists should already be cringing). Add a quarter as much each of Cointreau and Benedictine, and a dash each of orange and Angostura bitters. Chill, and serve, garnished with an orange twist. Horrified yet? OK, now taste it.

Not bad, eh? In fact, it'll probably grow on you. It's another one of those drinks that sounds lousy on paper (or on screen) but has the potential to pleasantly surprise you. The dryness of the gin and vermouth sort of tempers the sweetness of the Benedictine, but the different herbal blends in each play quite nicely. The orange bitters and the Cointreau also complement each other, and the Angostura bitters just adds a few more spice notes to it. It's definitely a sweeter drink than some I've featured, but it stays just on this side of cloying. All in all, it's quite the pleasant tipple. Theoretically you shake and strain and serve it up in a cocktail glass, but I like serving some on the rocks, just to be contrary.

Argentina Cocktail

1 1/2 oz gin (the drier, the better)
1 1/2 oz dry vermouth
3/8 oz Cointreau or other good triple sec/white curaçao
3/8 oz Benedictine
dash orange bitters
dash Angostura bitters

Shake all ingredients well with ice, strain into cocktail glass. Or, to be difficult, pour unstrained into a glass of your choosing.

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.

Just a heads up...

Q: How do you get an elephant out of a theatre?
A: You can't. It's in his blood.

In addition to being a drunk alcoholic lush alcohol connoisseur, I'm also a theatre geek, and to that end, I'll be auditioning for a (community theatre) show in the next couple days. If I get the part, it'll most likely impact the blog a bit, but I'm hoping it won't knock it down too much. I'll aim for at least three posts a week, but hopefully more. I'll keep you posted on it...and if all else fails, I've got several drinks that I can review, even if there's no pictures (I taste test most everything before I post it...my liver suffers for you people!)

Anyway, I hope you all understand, and I look forward to letting you know what comes of my auditioning!

-C

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!

Adventures in Tiki Mixology

For years, tiki drinks have languished under the misapprehension that they are only sugary, syrupy confections made with cheap rum. And sadly, that became sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy, because with few exceptions, that's how they came to be made. The classic, exotic ingredients, with names like "pimento dram" and "falernum" were lost or just deliberately omitted, so that ingredients like commercial mai tai mix and corn syrup-laced passion fruit flavored goo and sour apple mix (!) could be added instead. Well, mercifully, there have been some devotees of Tiki culture who have kept the old ways alive, and others who have sought them out. And it's thanks to wonderful people like those that I can tell you about a great ingredient that you can make yourself; falernum.

Falernum, as I mentioned in last night's post, is a liqueur that's usually a rum base, and is flavored with lime, cloves, ginger, almond, and various other spices. And to make it takes about 20 minutes (just spread over two days). Using a recipe from Kaiser Penguin as a jumping off point, I started mine yesterday, finished it today, and made my first drink with it tonight. It's got two stages; the first one, what Rick at KP likes to call "Soak lots of tasty things in rum" and the second one, where you whip up a quick simple syrup and add it to the booze you soaked everything in during step 1. Here's what I used to make mine:

8 oz overproof rum (I used Wray and Nephew White Overproof)
30 cloves
1 nutmeg
1 tsp whole allspice
1 dozen assorted peppercorns (I went a little OCD and used 3 each of white, green, black and pink)
zest of 8 limes
1/2 cup julienned ginger

Quickly toast the spices over medium heat until they're nice and fragrant, then drop the spices, the lime zest and the ginger into the rum. Cover with plastic wrap, and let macerate for 24 hours. It'll look like a jar of kitchen scraps, but just roll with it.

for the syrup, combine 2 cups cane sugar and 1 cup of water over medium low heat, stirring until dissolved.

After 24 hours, strain your booze-soaked mix through a fine mesh sieve and/or cheesecloth, squeezing to get as much liquid out as you can. Combine with the simple syrup and add 10 drops of almond extract. Bottle and chill.

And with that, you've got falernum. A little goes a long way...I've yet to see a recipe that calls for more than 1/2 oz of the homemade stuff at a time (There are a few companies that produce falernum for purchase, but they tend to be a lower proof or non-alcoholic, and generally a little milder than the homemade version, plus you can't customize those).

So, the drink that I'm featuring tonight with the falernum is called the Ranglum cocktail, from a a bar called Le Lion, by way of a wonderful cocktail blog called Oh, Gosh. Since the original drink features a lower proof commercial falernum, I've dropped the amount a bit to factor in the stronger nature of our homebrew stuff.

Ranglum Cocktail

2 oz Gosling's Black Seal rum, or other dark rum
1 oz lime juice
1/2 oz falernum
1/2 oz Wray and Nephew White Overproof rum
1/8 oz simple syrup

Shake all ingredients with ice, and strain into an ice-filled Old-Fashioned glass.

As Strong Bad likes to say, "Oh holy crap." This is an incredibly awesome drink, and I think if I could just freebase falernum, I totally would. It's sweet, it's sour, it's spicy, it's molasses-y, it's all sorts of good and wonderful things, and it's all in one drink. Plus, there's a ton of booze in there...Gosling's Black Seal is 80 proof, Wray and Nephew is 126 proof, plus the falernum is probably somewhere around 55 proof...This is some serious happyjuice here, folks. Go make some falernum, for your own good.

"I wanna be a producer, lunch at Sardi's everyday!"

I picked this cocktail earlier today, and was wracking my brain trying to come up not only with a decent title for tonight's post, but also for something I could use in the photo to decently illustrate the abstract concept of the drink's name. I mean, what kind of props can you use for "Fancy Free?" Then, as I was looking over my bookshelf (which overfloweth, and really needs to be augmented somehow with another one, though where I'd put it I haven't the foggiest notion) I spotted one of the "making of" books I picked up like a good little theatre major as soon as it was released: "The Producers." And a little light over my head went "ding!" and Matthew Broderick started singing in my head. I've asked him repeatedly to stop that, and go and bug Cameron Frye or something, but he never listens.

Anyway, Leo Bloom (in "The Producers," not in James Joyce's "The Dubliners") has an extended dream sequence in which he fantasizes about all sorts of wonderous things that will surely await him when he becomes a Broadway producer. Apparently the fact that his soon-to-be-partner, Max Bialystock, has to schtup little old ladies to raise capital for his shows has not sunk in yet. Anyway, he frolics through a big number, replete with showgirls (fresh from the casting couch, natch) and generally convinces himself that yes, he will be a producer, granny-schtupping be damned, because it's gotta be better than his current accounting gig (no word on if this was in the days running up to April 15th or not). So I figured, yes, that'd be a good evocation of "Fancy Free" and would supply me with enough filled space to be a decent start on a blog post. So here's the "Fancy Free" cocktail:

Fancy Free

2 oz bourbon
1/2 oz Maraschino liqueur
1-2 dashes Angostura bitters
1-2 dashes orange bitters

Stir well with ice, strain into a chilled cocktail glass, garnish with a cherry.

Remember last night now I waxed rhapsodic about that indefinable woodsy flavor that Maraschino brought to the Aviation? There's more of it tonight in this, playing wonderfully off the bourbon, and when the spice and orange join in from the bitters, oh...so good. The only thing that would make it even better would be a flamed orange peel garnish. On that note...

A flamed orange peel garnish sounds scary, but is really quite easy. Just take a vegetable peeler and slice off a half-dollar sized bit of orange peel. Hold it above and behind your drink with one hand, and hold a lighter in the other, positioned between the peel and the drink. Spark the lighter, and squeeze the peel towards your drink. The orange oil will ignite and land on the surface of your drink. Then just rub the orange peel around the rim of your glass, and plunk it into your cocktail.

With that addition, I think this would be utter perfection. If you're a fan of bourbon at all, please go out and try this drink. It's incredibly good.

In non-Maraschino related news, I started making a batch of Falernum tonight, a crucial ingredient in a good number of Tiki drinks. Falernum's a Caribbean liqueur flavored with lime zest, ginger, cloves, almonds, and a variety of other spices; mine has those ingredients plus some allspice, a nutmeg, and a few peppercorns. Tomorrow all the ingredients get strained out of the overproof rum they're soaking in, and get mixed with some simple syrup. I've been wanting to make this stuff for quite some time, now, and I'm very excited that it's almost ready. So there's more Tiki drinks forthcoming, which will be perfect as the weather warms up. Stay tuned!

Imagine Sally Struthers is asking for your help to feed the children...on second thought, don't.

Readers, all 6 of you...I beg your indulgence, as I realize this is extremely gauche. I'm doing a one time pledge drive on here (for this purpose anyway)...you see, now that absinthe is once again legal in the US, I'm very interested in exploring the grand old drinks that contained it by tradition, but then had to substitute some sort of pastis once it was outlawed. However, absinthe, by virtue of being the current "IT" ingredient, is not cheap. Therefore, I humbly do beseech you, help me help you help me to help you learn what absinthe works with and what it doesn't by supporting this website with the numerous links on the right side there [gestures politely]. This blog is made possible by the generous support of viewers like you.

Tomorrow: another drink! I haven't decided what yet.

Thanks for reading, everyone!

Life is just a bowl of sickly-sweet, sugar-soaked cherries.

Pity the poor Maraschino cherry...it has to endure the endless shame of being considered nothing more than a artificially-colored, sugar-drenched decoration for ice cream sundaes and the occasional cocktail. An ignominious end for what was once a much more interesting foodstuff.

Pre-Prohibition, a Maraschino cherry was a far more complicated (and alcoholic!) item; it was, in fact, a Marasca cherry that had been soaked in Maraschino liqueur, itself distilled from Marasca cherries, pits, skins, stems, fruit and all. And its pronunciation belied it's Old World roots; [mar-uh-SKEE-no] (I'll spare you the actual International Phonetic Alphabet spelling, because while I'm that geeky, I'm betting most of you are not). But then the Great Experiment rolled around, and even mere cherries soaked in liquor became too much to tolerate for the killjoy tee-totalers, and by the time everyone realized how miserable life was without booze, the cherry had been transformed into it's modern day incarnation; tooth-itchingly sweet, eye-gougingly red, and a pale shadow of it's former self.

However, I'm happy to say that Maraschino liqueur can still be had if you're willing to look (and pay) for it. And to that end, I've procured a bottle of Luxardo Maraschino, and will be doing interesting things with it, the first of which is tonight's cockail, the Aviation.

Now, the original Aviation made use of a very rare ingredient, crème de violette, made from the eponymous flower, giving it a pale, blue-violet tinge, much like the sky in which actual aviation takes place. Since it's so hard to find, most modern takes on the Aviation do without, and are thus made of three simple ingredients: gin, Maraschino, and lemon juice, in a 4:1:1 ratio, like thus:

Avation

2 oz gin
1/2 oz Maraschino liqueur
1/2 oz lemon juice

Shake well with ice and fine-strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

This drink actually marks my first run in with Maraschino liqueur, and I'm delighted to say that it will definitely not be my last. The cherry flavor, what you'd expect to be most prevalent in this drink, is actually really subtle; the Maraschino brings flavors that are almost sweet and woodsy to the drink, even a little bit of an almond note. It's really hard to describe, but it's not at all what you'd expect. I think cherries soaked in this stuff would be nothing short of awesome. I very much look forward to trying Maraschino in more drinks...

"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.