drcocktail

Oh crap. My bad. My very bad. Squeat, I owe you an apology. How to say this....the recipe on CocktailDB.com is *correct* but it ain't right, or vice versa. What I mean is, I changed a key ingredient in the book and -OUCH- it made all the difference. The original 1934 recipe called for grenadine, but during Prohibition in far-flung places they often substituted raspberry syrup, and THERE is the rub. I tried it with this drink and it was superb. Not just any raspberry syrup, either. I use either Knott's Berry Farm or Smucker's Raspberry syrups. They are thick and very very natural. I trust the original Blinker was no worse than mediocre, but I hope you'll try my version (which I promise will soon grace CocktailDB) for something far more worthy. I am sorry, Squeat. I urged you toward a boring cocktail. I hang my head in chagrin. Here's the GREAT recipe: Doc's Blinker 2 ounces rye whiskey. 1 ounce fresh grapefruit juice. 1 teaspoon raspberry syrup. Combine with cracked ice in a cocktail shaker. Shake vigorously until very cold & strain into a cocktail glass. --Doc.

Of the room and cabinets? I think I can arrange that. I'll grab some shots tonight. --Doc.

I highly recommend Old Overholt. It's less sharp than the Wild Turkey, while still being rich and full-bodied. It's not just ubiquitous for being common, it's ubiquitous for being good. Yeah, there are a new wealth of ryes out there today, for which I am grateful, but good old Overholt makes very satisfying Old Fashions, Sazeracs and Blinkers for me! I use Michter's for special moments, but I almost don't have to. --Doc.

Well, sort of. My database is public so the knowledge can benefit everyone. CocktailDB.com basically encapsulates my collection, though we are getting into territories of inclusion now (think bubblegum schnapps) where the database will represent what the collection does not! I am also constantly on the lookout for under-represented examples of glassware that historically (or currently) hold mixed drink forms. For instance I just acquired my first roemer and pub rummer from England, and am concentrating on obtaining original 19th century goblet, flip, and drip glasses in addition to the glass types already on display in the database. --Doc.

Hi everyone. I thought you all might like to know how a REAL nutcase stores his libational constituents. I just bought a pretty little house in Burbank, California last year. The "family room" was this large dark affair, so I did what I've always wanted to do...create a *library*. I tore out the indeterminate color shag carpeting and leveled the 3" sloping floor. I then added wood plank flooring. I knocked out the better part of a wall for light - and added a big window. This would become a centerpiece for what was to come! I designed and installed wrap-around built-in floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and cabinets on all walls - except where the new window was. That just got a lower cabinet. Cabinets below books...you get the idea. This gave me a very pretty room and the culmination to my nefarious scheme. Two towering lighted cabinets with glass shelves to either side of the new window and resting on the large base cabinet would hold my various drink glasses, from Delmonicos and Hurricanes to Roemers and stirrup cups. Underneath went my working booze -- the stuff I use most frequently. In all the other cabinets around the room went the rare stuff. All solid wood doors - it just looks like a library, but for the Dr. Frankenstein's mixology equipment atop the window cabinet between the two glasses towers. And the punch line: I am storing close to 1000 bottles, number growing all the time. Time for an addition! Dr. "Nutcase" Cocktail

Honestly, I had a great editor who did not fight me about the tone of the book or my "voice". She helped clarify for me things that, while seeming obvious to me, might've confused some who do not live and breathe cocktails. For this reason, there really wasn't anything of my writing that didn't make it into the book. The argument I lost was over the size of the bottle shots. I wanted them bigger and the glass-and-drink shots smaller. I also wanted to lead with the stories and end with the recipes. On those points, the publisher got her way. I had a major hand in the graphic design of the book, though, and I took the bottle photos (some of which were cut because of the @#$%!! large glass shots.) Still, they let me take their concept (new, trendy, kicky drinks) and stand it on it's head. They also, obviously printed it BEAUTIFULLY so it all seems like a tempest in a teapot now. The book is selling quite well, so I think there is mutual goodwill on all sides now. I DO feel I could do more volumes of this book since I am forever logging additional deserving-but-forgotten cocktails. And the stories never cease. --Doc.

Harm not one grey hair on my dear cocktail's head! Oh. go ahead. I futz around the the recipes myself to this day. They are, in a word, malleable. I'm so pleased that such fine egulleteers have seen fit to lavish my book in this manner and with nary a bribe from Yours Truly. At least between the Book, the website ( http://www.cocktaildb.com/ ) and the New York Times Magazine article of this weekend, I am released from at least *some* of my responsibilty to sheepishly explain my protracted absence from this great forum. Nonetheless, mea culpa - I have been away too long. What has happened during my sojourn? Is Steven whaling away on the gin these days? Is Balma compounding her own bitters and creating award winning recipes with them? Is JAZ still successfully keeping the ravening horde in line? (That would be us.) Again, many thanks for the compliments on the book. I was a labor of love, and I want to do it again! If there was one cocktail, discovered during book research, that I rate as worth the price of the tome, it is the Blinker. I will drink one to your health this evening! Best of best wishes! --Doc.

Hi all, Balma knows (Hi Balma!) but I will recapitulate what's been going on with me: Movies, movies, movies! House renovations! 2nd lasers in for my new book Vintage Spirits & Forgotten Cocktails, due out late October. I am B-U-S-Y! But how can I turn down a bitters question!? Since you are still experimenting with your formula, Scott, you want everything to be as controlled as possible so to note differences when you lessen or increase quantities of constituents. So you are right, use distilled water as a control. Switch to whatever other kind of water strikes your fancy when all other aspects of the formula are to your liking. --Doc.

Big ole congrats! It can be lots of fun mixing when something tasty results! Your lemon-lime idea is very, very good. I hope you keep up the process. --Doc.

My secret weapon in Bloody Marys is the use of Vietnamese Sriracha sauce in conjunction with - or in lieu of - Tabasco. It adds a rich flavor to the other ingredients, well outlined above. Just start with a little. It's available at many better markets. --Doc.

Welcome! Everyone who knows me here knows I could go WAY overboard with such a list but for the way you put your query, and riffing off what others in the past have advised...poll your friends. You'll have lots of fun putting together an utterly popular bar selection if you email or call any friend you would ever consider having over and asking them "What cocktail(s) do you like to drink when you go out?" Make a list of such friends, make a list of the drinks, research the ingredients in the recipes, make a list of them - which will be your shopping list. Don't forget family and yourself! What you may find is that once you've acquired what will probably be a rather small cache of the alcohol necessary to make THESE drinks, these components are also the ingredients in other drinks. You can determine these spinoff drinks by typing some of the pairs or trios of ingredients you've acquired by typing them into the search mechanism at cocktaildb.com These recipes will spur further acquisitions of spirits to fill in the gaps in those recipes. The great thing is, you'll be working from a foundation of proven winners among those most likely to sample your hospitality AND introducing them to NEW drinks - which from an ingredient standpoint are variations of what you know they already love! Hope this helps! --Doc

And in this thread, finally I have my opportunity to mention one of the truly weird cocktail and general sipping ingredients. Meaty Mary? Well, I submit we must give Wincarnis its due. I have MY bottle. As much fun as it would be to provide its exposition, I'd rather simply imagine your reactions upon Googling it. --Doc.

It would if the term "wine" came to supplant the word "juice" in popular parlance. --Doc.

Yeah? I remember that edition too. Beard lent just that microscopic air of modernity to the book before it finally simply collapsed under the weight of all those cobwebs. Remember Permabooks? They took a cheap paperback sans cover and slapped a paper-covered thick cardboard cover over it. Presto! It's a hardback! --Doc.

No wait, Janet -- don't worry I promise not to read your post just to keep things on the up-and-up, ok? Perfect. Actually, since I started this interest, really, in the late 60s -- and none of the revival books would appear for another 20 years -- MY first book was Patrick Gavin Duffy's Official Mixer's Manual, a 1948 Permabook reprint of the 1934 original. No purty pictures, just recipes and commentary that seemed SOOO alien to me - and yet so redolent of the society movies of the 1930s. I STUDIED that book. I pored over it. It informed the tosspot I was yet to become! Again, --Doc.

Congrats! The band is playing, and I sip Champagne (ok, it's morning coffee) in your honor! I apparently just rushed, heedless over MY 100th post. Who knew I'd turn out so blabby. (Don't answer that.) --Doc.

Well howdy, Splif! Your name sounds vaguely familiar. And I KNOW you meant to whisper "gin, vermouth, & bitters!" No worries, hang out with us geniuses and we'll get you on track. --Doc.

...Or perhaps not, now having read the whole thread. Guess who Nurse Cocktail & I had over for "dinner" last night? Why, Chuck Taggart & Wesley Moore! And I asked Chuck if he was familiar with eGullet! I'm an eGullet piker. Chuck's an old hand! And here he was in this very thread! Anyway, what I meant with my overly succinct rule was that Dubonnet only originally made the red. Kina Lillet ALWAYS meant the blanc (or blonde) - it's all they made until they tried to expand into Dubonnet's market. I just feel each was best at their original thing. Thus my law. We all had no Lillet (or Dubonnet) at all this particular evening of socialization, but we surely have in the past, and especially with the famous Lillet Tomlin we are bound to in the future. To do my own thread hijacking, our cocktail menu tonight WAS as follows: We began with a cocktail of my creation, La Tavola Rotonda. 2 oz Bourbon, 1 oz pineapple juice, 1/2 oz Campari, 1/2 oz Maraschino, 1/2 oz Torani Amer (or pre-1980 Amer Picon) 2 dashes Peychaud Bitters. We followed with a vintage cocktail from my new book. The Blinker Cocktail. 2 oz rye whiskey, 1 oz grapefruit juice, 1 tsp raspberry syrup (or 2 barspoons). Chuck then made US a cocktail named for some British friends of his. The Hoskins Cocktail with that famous Dale Degroff touch, the flamed orange peel. Very orangey, and delightfully so, all over. So be it. It was delicious -- and orangey! We followed with an inpromtu cocktail. I created it with 2 oz applejack, 1 oz lemon juice, 1 oz Campari (I'm on a kick!), 1/2 oz Clement Creole Shrub, a rum-based orange liqueur from Martinique and an orange twist. Then we cleansed our palates with some Marc. just a Port glass quantity apiece. Fabulous, not just the flavor but the scent. It was great to share it. I should say, all this time we were gorging on amazing cheeses, breads,papaya, and aged meats. This whole narrated experience took place over several hours. It was then dessert time. We managed that with sherry glasses of VOV Zabaglione on crushed ice. (All this isn't about Lillet, but as we hosted the author of the Lillet Tomlin, I thought it apropos - also the same sort of spirits & cocktail sampling as you foodies might describe for food courses, eh?) All great fun! --Doc.

This will not strike you like me at all, but I'm going to give you my rules: Dubonnet Rouge, Lillet Blanc. 'Nuf said. --Doc.

Just a quick note before guest drop by, I just perused the ingredients on my OLDEST bottle of Old House Orange Bitters. I hadn't thought about it before, assuming them to be the same as, in the main, they are. Here is that listing: Caffeine, caramel, amaranth color, oil (of) orange, tiincture (of) orange peel & the extracts of angostura, cascarilla, lemon peel, chiretta & ginger. Cool! One of my bottles actually called it angostura! I'm even more tickled by the amaranth coloring! What could go better than bugs and bitters?!! --Doc.

You'd be right if that were so, but it isn't These bitters were quite bitter, but they had a WONDERFUL depth - unparalleled among orange bitters I've tried. Sounds like bitter ole' fun, but some of those bottles are either not good anymore or too rare to open without having a second sealed bottle. There are really only 3 of such history and import that the test would be useful with their inclusion. They are: Field's - too rare to open unless I get a second one, Jung & Wulfe - not good anymore, and Legendre - for which I DO have 2 bottles, well-sealed though from 1934 are probably still good, and I MIGHT just be convinced! I hadn't felt the need before thanks to my cache of Fee Bros Orange Bitters and Old House. None of those other bottles list any ingredients either. I don't know, but might be workable to try both ways? I'm guessing a little bruised ginger root would be the way to go there, but as for rue, your guess is more educated than mine! I'm going to guess dried. Well, I know it was used in the 19th century as the "propellent" in the following commonly prescribed remedy: opium, salicylic acid (think aspirin), and caffeine. Can't get THAT anymore! --Doc. (edited for spelling and for dat ting I fergot)

Well these bitters certainly WERE...bitter. I love the sort of 19th century-style ingredients they chose. As Balma said, leaning to the medicinal. I love that. Also though, this is where i got my hint that a bit of ginger was a very good thing in orange bitters. --Doc.

Yeah, Angostura Bitters was so-named because it was originally prepared in a town originally named Angostura. Other bitters, notably the lost lamented American Abbott's Bitters used that point to their advantage - added angostura bark and called their product (Abbott's) angostura bitters - until Angostura Wupperman successors to Dr. J.G.B. Siegert MADE them stop under force of law. Good researching, LG. You might also note that cascarilla was a substitute for cinchona - from which quinine derives, and of course quinine, besides being an antimalarial (or perhaps because of it) was the bitter basis for (Indian) tonic water, and the quinquinas - such as Dubonnet, Raphael, and Lillet! Bitter agent, get it - THAT'S why they're aperitifs! The interconnections made a nerd like me SING! --Doc.

I am all about apple brandies. Even more than bitters, the grace of Calvados, the amazing American history of apple jack - and its relative obscurity so many places - all these have made me particularly attentive to the stuff. I wish American Calvados-style aged apple brandies were more to my liking, but they never seem to measure up to a good Calvados. Perhaps Calvador will alter that trend. I should say that Laird's of applejack fame does make a really good straight, well-aged apple brandy. Like their applejack, however, it is entirely of a different style than Calvados. I like to think of apple jack as apple whiskey. It seems more true to its flavor profile. All that said, I am REALLY curious about the whiskey. They describe it like a cross between Bourbon and Scotch. I'm betting it's more like a cross between Irish and Bourbon (which is the way I view some of the Japanese Suntory whiskies as well) but at $325 a bottle, I'm not likely to find out if I'm right any time too soon. --Doc.

OK, the vodkas might be nice, but WOW - did you check out the other products on their site? The Whiskey and the Calvados -oops I mean Calvador. I'm slavering over those! --Doc.