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BTR

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Posts posted by BTR

  1. There are several rum drinks without juices or sodas in Dave Wondrich's Killer Cocktails: Bull's Milk (cognac, rum, simple syrup, milk, nutmeg); Sano Grog (bourbon, rum, grand marnier, sugar---garnished with lemon, though); Picador (rum, crème de menthe, bitters); 19-B (rye, rum, grand marnier, mint). None of them is particularly Manhattan- or Martini-like, though.

  2. I'm gonna bump this thread because I was just at a bevmo looking to get some pálinka or slivovitz and was disappointed by the fact that I could find very little information on the various Eastern European slivovitzes available (no Hungarian pálinka at all that I saw): there were representatives from Manastir, R. Jelinek, Badel, Navip (which I've had before and liked), Maraska, and Bistra (as well as Clear Creek's blue plum brandy), all of various ages. So I thought I'd ask about those or other EE brands when I got home ... and discovered I'd already done that years ago.

    Anyway, I *could* just go with Clear Creek (I *actually* just got some kirsch from Etter), or Massenez, but if anyone has any recommendations regarding the Eastern European guys (including others not mentioned; I know Zwack has some pálinkas etc., for instance), that would be swell.

  3. No, not bars in santa barbara---I've looked through the forum archives and been convinced that there's not much to be seen here. But some guidance on liquor stores would be nice; there's a bevmo that doesn't really do it for me and the two best options I thought I had (Bottle Shop and Montecito Vino) seemed both to be firmly targeted at people with more money than sense. (Though the former did have the bonded Rittenhouse.)

    Is there are particularly well-stocked spot I should be aware of? At the moment I'm looking specifically for the Laird's bonded apple brandy, which I could ask some place to special order, but it would be nice not to have to do that whenever I was after something a little out of the mainstream.

  4. If I'm not mistaken, Mirabellenbrand is made from yellow plums and Slivovitz from blue.

    Having only had kind of nasty slivovitzes I'm not really in a position to say what sort of flavor difference that makes, if any, but I'd imagine it's rather subtle.

  5. A friend of mine is having a French Revolution-themed cocktail party in honor of Bastille Day & asked about suitable drinks (she's come up with some of her own that sound quite nice, too bad it's going to be halfway across the country from me), and, having just bought some Lillet, I thought I'd try to come up with something using that. For some reason having it be the predominant ingredient, by volume, anyway, appealed to me, sort of like a reverse cocktail, except it's not the reverse of anything. After not enough experimentation I came up with this:

    1.5 oz Lillet

    .75 oz cognac

    .5 oz orange juice

    1 tsp Pernod (I have Herbsaint, but one would want to use something properly French, of course)

    2 dashes orange bitters (ROB)

    Which I found perfectly tasty, though I intend to tinker a bit. (Actual absinthe instead of the sweeter Herbsaint would probably be nice, but isn't really a realistic option.)

  6. From DC art writer Kriston Capps, the only cocktail that would be endorsed by a Futurist:

    After all the Dada shows last year and having just seen the Modernism exhibit at the Corc, mixology inevitably brought to mind Marinetti's La cuisina futurista. Years ago, there was a superb article in the New Yorker about Lacerba, a restaurant in Milan that features a selection of Futurist dishes—I thought about that, too. Hence, the Marinettini:

    2 oz gin

    1 tbsp dry vermouth

    2 tbsp motor oil

    2 steel ball bearings

    Though I considered olives in place of the ball bearings, my concerns were that olives would be too traditionally Italian for Marinetti's taste—the man rejected pasta, after all—and that the motor oil might have some deleterious effect on the texture of the olive. I'll try it both ways and report back. To be served with a small bowl of chrome hex nuts.

    He never did report back.

  7. The Brandy base of the Brizard, especially, makes it stand out.  It's more like an orange flavored brandy than a Triple Sec.  This tasting made me re-think using it as an ingredient.

    But this should be unsurprising, right? It *is* a curacao. Brizard's triple sec is a different product.

  8. As long as people go around saying "thats how it is meant to be made", then you can only refute such statements with historical facts. Refuting bartenders' tales with facts gives one a sense of smugness that winning the lottery never could!-)

    Of course, how it's meant to be made and how it ought to be made can come apart... Once you've found the original version of something, the very first recipe called by that name, then what? Maybe it's awful, but a later (or contemporary) version is excellent. Why assign pride of place to whatever happened first to bear the name, simply because it was first?

  9. If you're going to freeze, as jackal10 advises, just poke the skin of each peach a few times with a knife or fork beforehand to allow the alcohol to enter and fruit juice to exit.  The cracking thing doesn't really work with thicker skinned fruit like peaches and apricots.

    I take it, then, that you left the pits in your apricots, to no ill effect?

  10. Last summer I made some apricot liqueur with some spices---peppercorn and anise among them (I cleverly lost my list of what and how much). A few months ago it had a very strong anise smell, a mysterious sour-sweet tang, and an anise-apricot flavor; now there's a much more pronounced pepper heat with the same anise nose and an apricot aftertaste. Wonder what it'll be like by mid-spring...

  11. I'm inclined to take an etymological approach with "brandy" and just declare it to be any distillate, though (of course) colloquially used to refer to wine distillates. Wine brandy is gebrannter Wein, after all--burnt. German liquor stores distinguish between Weinbrand and Obstbrand; most of what we're calling eaux de vie are Obstbrände. (Though there are also Geists, infusions that are then distilled.)

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