mbanu

Other than what? The Mai Tai? The Japanese isn't bad. It's a variation of the Old Fashioned. 2-3 ounces brandy 1/2 ounce orgeat A few dashes of bitters Build in an old fashioned glass over ice. Give it a few stirs and garnish as desired. The Royal Hawaiian is weird. But maybe a good weird. I'm still not sure what to think of it. 2 ounces gin 1/2 ounce orgeat 1/2 ounce lemon juice 5 ounces pineapple juice Build in a highball glass over ice. You can adjust the amount of lemon juice depending on how sweet your pineapple juice is.

The quote was a parody of a certain style of rhetoric that seems to get passed around in classic cocktail circles. Examples might include the Martini Republic's recent column on the virtues of the CocktailDB Whisky Sour (ratios 1 1/2 ounces whisky, 1 ounce lemon juice, and 1/2 a teapsoon sugar), magazine articles that throw around phrases like "Used to be a daiquiri was just a healthy shot of white rum plus half a lime squeezed right into a cocktail shaker (no machine) and just enough sugar to take the sour edge off. Nothing to it. That's how JFK and Hemingway liked 'em, and they weren't wrong." (with apologies to the author), or a recent eGullet post where someone explained away another's dislike of a Gimlet made with only fresh lime juice(!) instead of Rose's as the fault of "the soda-fixation of our culture".

"You call THAT a Whiskey Sour? Back in the old days they just squeezed a couple of lemons into some barrel-proof bourbon and they LIKED IT that way! They shook their fists at the sugar bag, of course, that was the tradition, but there was none of this sickly sweet soda-shop pancake syrup crap like there is nowadays..." Has anyone else got the impression that some classic cocktail fans seem to have an almost pathalogical dislike of sweetness and weakness in drinks, even when they are required in order to produce a balanced drink? What's up with that? Are they just taking Embury too seriously? Have they not actually made the drinks following the recipes they suggest? Some weird sort of masochism?

A Ramos Gin Fizz is still a Gin Fizz. It's just been dolled up a little. A few notes: * It's a long drink, not a short drink. That means don't skimp on the soda water. * Milk and citrus juice leads to curdling. Heavy cream and citrus juice leads to thickening. * The orange flower water is for aroma. Don't add it to the shaker, add it to the finished drink. * A little egg white goes a long way. Just don't forget to shake like crazy.

That'd be my suggestion, is treat it like an old-style genever when making drinks.

Well there's lemon phosphate (the soda drink made with lemon phosphate) and then there's lemon phosphate itself (Kinda like the difference between Kool-Aid and Kool-Aid powder). I think they were talking about the latter. http://www.cocktaildb.com/ingr_detail?id=85

The brand of the liquor doesn't really matter too much, as long as you have an understanding of what a good example of the spirit is supposed to taste like. If a person knows what a decent gin is supposed to taste like for instance, he'd know that Beefeater is a fine gin, but then so is Gordon's (but not Barton's). The main reason people stock multiple brands is because customers are brand loyal. *edit: Just saw your Mai Tai remark. Don't bother with the amaretto. Try this: 1 ounce aged rum 1 ounce Grand Marnier 1/2 ounce orgeat syrup 1/2 ounce lime juice Shake with more ice than you think you'll need, and strain. Garnish with some mint. The older the rum, the better. (The original rum used was 15 years old!) You can use other curacaos besides Grand Marnier, but make sure that they're liquor-strength! I don't know how things are in your area, but around here, there are a lot of low-proof liqueurs disguised as curacaos that are actually closer to being creme de orange.

The thing to remember about the average bartender is that he is driven by tips. So the sort of customer he wants is the sort who orders easy drinks that are fast to make and painfully expensive, who doesn't complain and orders a lot of them, ie, the person who orders Grey Goose shots and highballs with premium liquor. Classic cocktails and the people who order them won't give the average bartender a better return on his money unless they tip unusually well, so he tends to dislike them if they seem to keep him from serving the premium shot crowd.

With the sweet Vya, yes.

With citrus based drinks, the culprit is sometimes an electric juicer. With electrics, it's easy to overjuice the fruit and extract the bitter juice from the pith area of the fruit.

I did something like that, to great success. The trick is finding rums that are very different from one another. A few suggestions that will add variety: A bottle of the cheapest Puerto Rican white rum you can find at your local liquor store. This can serve as the "control" bottle. A naval rum, such as Pusser's Blue. A rhum agricole.

If you're looking for expensive rums that are probably worth the price, Cadenhead has a reputation. If you're looking for "interesting" rums for reasonable prices, I'd suggest Prichard's and Pusser's Blue.

Distilled to proof, aged 5-10 years, and made from a drinkable cane beer.

They're for savory cocktails, which are quite similar to cooking. Instead of tonic water and ginger ale, you're working with beef broth and clam juice. The entire area is pretty undeveloped. Most people would prefer to keep their steak and their vodka seperate.

Invariably whichever one is most expensive.

Still more or less accurate from a mixed drink perspective, although I'd put some sort of note on overproof vs. regular proof. Nope, not too simplistic at all. People will argue otherwise (especially tiki drink lovers, who tend to like complicated drinks so much that they add extra complexity whether it improves the drink or not), but it's really not rocket science. "light bodied rum" means any unaged or minimally aged rum with a light flavor. If you were being technical, it would probably be a high distillation proof rum. Puerto Rican rum is just pinned because Puerto Rico used to (and still does) make a lot of rum of this style. Usually the sort of rum the average person thinks of when someone says rum. "heavy bodied rum" means any rum that has a really strong flavor. Technically that would probably suggest a low distillation proof/barrel proof and/or long aging. "medium bodied rum" means anything in between, for instance aged Puerto-Rican style rum, most modern "Jamaican style" rums, etc.

I recently heard of a 161 proof gin called Hosch Wocht. Has anyone else ever heard of this before? Are the legends true?

Sazerac makes a Praline liqueur that's not half bad...

I think this is a touch simplistic when talking about scotch malt whisky. The raw ingredients do play an enormous part in the end flavour, especially on Islay! True, the flavor depends on what it's distilled from, but the concentration of that flavor depends on the different proofs. This is true of all liquor. Let's remember that unless your dram stipulates that it is single barrel or single cask on the label it is always blended. The main job of a distiller is to maintain the house style and that can only be achieved through blending. Blended whisky is not single malt cut with vodka, it is a blend of a variety of single malts with grain whisky, which is produced under the same laws as the malt. Granted it is produced in a column still but it must still be produced from malted barley and spend 3 years in an oak barrel. If you taste grain whisky, which is not likely unless you visit a distillery or find a rare bottling of Cameron Brig, it has a much lighter flavour but is still most definitely whisky. Sure there are good blends and not so good, but none of them are malt cut with vodka. Drink blends, there is nothing wrong with them!... ← Perhaps they are blending with rum, or aged rum-proof near-whiskey, but I still stand by the idea that you can dilute your whiskey at home, if all you want is good whiskey with a lighter flavor. I agree with you that when someone who knows what they're doing blends together a bunch of different whiskeys with minor things wrong with them you can get a blended whiskey that has everything right, with a lower price than single malt. But I also still stand by the idea that many distillers don't do that sort of thing. A lot of them just stretch good whiskey, whatever the makeup of grain whiskey, and some of the ones that make quality blended whiskey charge single-malt prices, despite the fact that a good blended whiskey should be cheaper to produce than a good single malt. Unless you know enough about whiskey to tell who is blending in a good way vs. who is blending in a bad way, I'd still say avoiding blended whiskey is a good idea, if possible.

They ought to just get their own appellation and start making overpriced brandy. It worked for the French, after all...

If you haven't tried yet, you might consider asking the folks at the straightbourbon.com forum. They seem to know everything.

Looking at the curriculum, I'm a bit annoyed that they're buying into the vodka myth, especially if the course is designed for professionals. Ultrapremium vodka is for upselling to people who seem like they'll believe in it, not for taking seriously. (At least not without a gas chromatograph readout of impurities in hand.)

I use a 0.5 ounce/1 ounce jigger. It's surprisingly fast and convenient for the sort of cocktails I make, although it's been a bit of a pain finding spares.

The things that gives whiskey it's "whiskey" flavor (whether that is a bourbon whiskey flavor or an islay scotch flavor) are the distillation proof, barelling proof, and bottling proof of the whiskey. The distillation proof is how strong it is coming off the still. If they distill it to a high strength and then cut it with water, the flavor will be lighter. This is why more flavorful whiskey is distilled to a lower alcoholic strength. The barelling proof is how strong it is when it goes into the barrel. The lower this is, the more oak flavors from the barrel come through to the finished whiskey. (This tends to drive the price up because the distiller needs more barrels to age its whiskey) How much age a whiskey will take and still improve depends on the distillation proof, barrelling proof and some other things, but generally most whiskeys made today continue improving until at the minimum 10 years. Most agree on that. After that, it depends on the individual whiskey. (and whoever is championing it) The bottling proof is how strong it is when they put it in the bottle. It should be as close to the barrelling proof as possible. (Granting of course that it should also be of a drinkable strength. Bacardi 151 is much closer to the barrel proof than ordinary Bacardi, but at that strength it is almost undrinkable without water, so most of the value is lost.) A warning about "flavorful" whiskeys, however: They're only an advantage if you enjoy the flavor that's being concentrated. If you don't like the inherent flavor of Islay whiskey, for instance, you'll doubly dislike it in concentrated form. I'd avoid blended whiskey for now. There are some arguments for it, but many whiskey makers simply use it as an excuse to stretch their supply of good whiskey with vodka. You can do that at home, if you want to. Hope this helps.

Dunno what they mean by that. Honestly it sounds like the best-constructed drink of the lot.