thirtyoneknots

The Waterford is not too shabby for under $20 or so.

Yeah I think what is needed for cocktail sherry is a Medium Amontillado, which will have been lightly sweetened (presumably with the addition of PX, as in the case of the Sandeman's Character). Contributes some body. Doesn't hurt that the stuff is delicious by itself, too. Imbibe! lists some Port drinks as well, lurking in the vacinity of the sherry ones. Port wine sangaree is not to be missed. Don't forget the nutmeg.

We've been discussing it some here, over in Spirits & Cocktails, as an ingredient, but I've also been exploring Sherry for its own sake, as well. Loving the Sandeman's Character Amontillado right now, so delicious with a snack or in a cocktail as well. And how can you beat $15/btl for wine that doesn't go bad (well ok maybe eventually it will).

Got to give another endorsement to the Bamboo. Oddly enough I had picked up a bottle of the Sandeman's Character Amontillado to try the week before all this discussion began but only recently got around to opening it. What a great drink to have while cooking, up or on the rocks. Extremely elegant, and I think the Character might even be a good candidate for a 'gateway' to the world of sherry. Such a pity drinks like this went out of fashion. I feel like the world is a lesser place for it.

If your taste-test didn't exhaust the bottle, try it again in about two months. Homemade liqueurs and such benefit greatly from some resting to help integrate all the flavors.

Couldn't say if it's in the Savoy, but make some Regent's Punch. Yumyumyum

A twist on the Jasmine I read about on Drinkboy some time back and has been a big hit for us: Bitter Elder 1.5 gin .75 St Germaine .5 Campari .5 lemon Although tonight I had my boss tell me that was a horrible name for a drink. Personally, I think it's pretty hilarious, especially when I get to tell the middle-aged regulars that the drink was named for them.

A little poking around on the internet yielded this page ... If anybody successfully orders from that link I'd love to know if it works. ← I ordered a few of the 1883 syrups from them (the Coffee Authority) and the service and delivery were great. ← Excellent news. Not sure if I mentioned it upthread or not, but to my palate, their passionfruit syrup is even better than the lost lamented Trader Vic's (blasphemy!). 10% passion fruit juice, iirc. Orgeat and raspberry are the other must-haves, and the pineapple is really good as well. Of course all of these can be made at home, but the way I see it there exists a place for extremely high quality commercial syrups somewhere between places that dont even know what orgeat is and those with large, full-time staffs who have the resources to make their own. I happen to work at one such place.

As far as I know the ones for pellet guns and such are alo longer and would probably not fit in the capsule. I guess you could find a way to improvise it but clearly there are other reasons not to do so. I've bought chargers at a local restaraunt supply place for like $4-5 for a box of 10.

Isn't "cocktail sherry" sweeter than that? Like an oloroso? ← I've only ever had one Oloroso (I think it was the Rey Fernando de Castilla Antique Oloroso) and it was awesome but I found it to have no apparent sweetness on the palate (though there is of course RS). Does the sweetness of Oloroso vary between producers?

← I wonder what kind of Madiera? So frustrating when recipes call for Sherry or (less commonly) Madiera without specifying the types, which can vary wildly in sweetness and flavor. ← the style of madeira that most commonly has an orangey character is a bual if the drinks goal was to have only comparative fruit elements... ← Bual would make sense sweetness-wise as well.

← I wonder what kind of Madiera? So frustrating when recipes call for Sherry or (less commonly) Madiera without specifying the types, which can vary wildly in sweetness and flavor.

Is it safe to say that the Sherrys called for in cocktails are always either Fino or Amontillado? (Unless specified of course).

I used to buy it at a local coffee shop, which is where I found out about them; Sweet Eugene's on Harvey Rd here in College Station. Last time I went in there to get raspberry syrup (about 6 months ago), they had all Monin products instead. Nothing against Monin, which is generally of acceptable quality, but they can't really compare to the 1883. I asked them what the deal was and the guy said the company went under or something to that effect and that they were disappointed by the forced switch. A little poking around on the internet yielded this page which seems to have a pretty complete selection of their line. I haven't tried ordering from them but the 1883 site is still up so it may have been a matter of distributor changes or something that forced the local guy to switch. If anybody successfully orders from that link I'd love to know if it works. -Andy

$30 is starting to reach into the upper levels of what you can spend on commonly available dry sherries or ruby ports. You should be able to find something serviceable in both categories for half that, or get a mighty fine example for about $20. Graham's Six Grapes, Cockburns Special Reserve, and Dow's Ruby are all respectable rubies (in descending order of price). I was reasonably pleased with the Savory & James sherries I started out with, and they can be had for about $10/btl. I've never been disappointed by anything from Sandeman's, so it might be a good place to start, though I don't have extensive experience with Sherry. Whatever you can't use up in cocktails or drink though makes a great wine for flambeeing, particularly mushrooms. Yumyumyum.

I'm not sure this quite qualifies as a Sidecar, tasty though it may be. Also, I will have to take issue with the notion that Grand Marnier is not a versatile liqueur. Maybe not so much as Cointreau, but how does anyone make it through Imbibe! without it? I have both it and Brizard Curacao and I like them both but for me, Grand Marnier can't be beat in those old drinks. For something Tiki-ish I think you can go either way, depending on how rich of a flavor is desired. Just because the original recipe intends a lighter and more neutral flavored Curacao doesn't mean that a heavier one like Grand Marnier isn't more desireable (at least for some).

Tried the Alton Brown recipe twice this week, choosing it due to already being scaled down a bit. The first time I had no cream available and could find nowhere open Christmas day that had it available (go me for forgetting it) so I improvised with half and half (1 pint h&h and 1 cup milk), switching the booze to 4 oz cognac and 2 oz rum (Hardy VS and Gosling's)--the original recpe appears to be sorely underpowered in that department. Delicious. The next day I tried it again with cream and Weller 107 (again with the 6 oz) and lo and behold we all liked the first try better. The h&h contributed and smoothness without being too rich and the roundness of the brandy/rum combo beat out the sharpness of the Weller (not that there's anything wrong with sharpness). The cream version seemed like something you could fill up on far too quickly and the extra milkfat coated the palate. 2% Milk might have helped but it seems slightly blasphemous (and absurd) to mix lofat milk with heavy cream. If I was going to triple the recipe for a crowd, I'd probably go with 2 cups brandy and 1 cup rum, for a little more flavor. Oh yeah, both times I also added about 2 tsp of pimento dram. Woohoo for eggnog. Any rules against making it til it warms up or is it confined to the Christmas season?

Thanks so much! Crazy spellings got me again.

Anybody know where there might be Heirloom Pork available in Houston (or better yet, B/CS)? Most places I call, including Pete's, I've had to explain what it is to them. Readfield in Bryan recommended a farm (Jolly View) near Navasota but I haven't had much luck locating any contact info for them. Any advice?

One word: Punch

See here for details. ← Ok yeah I thought I remembered that. The accent flavor of lime is even more of an accent, and even less sourness that way. Not that it's necessarily the best tasting accent, but it indicates that sourness was not necessarily a desired quality of the original drink, much like the Crusta.

FWIW, I think the whole point of the Crusta, as opposed to the Sour, was that it only had an accent of citrus--it was basically an old-school Cocktail with just enough lemon juice (say, a barspoon) to give it a flavor of lemon, without any of the attendant sourness. I think if one had to choose a model-drink for the Spirit+Sour+Bitters class (assuming it's strictly necessary to stake off yet another category), there would be no better candidate than the Pegu Club itself, particularly since it's a non-American drink. As far as I can tell, the bittered Sour wasn't a pattern that pre-Prohibition American bartenders turned to when inventing drink. A quick look through a couple of the cocktail compendia from the teens oly turns up the Raymond Hitchcocktail, and that uses orange juice instead of lemon or lime. ← This question may be impossible to answer but could greater levels of bitterness in the vermouths of old create a scenario where the Bronx or similar can be lumped here? I understand that the Crusta in its original guise was meant to be a citrusy "cock-tail" but I can't help but feel like the Pegu and those that follow are it's conceptual progeny, even if nobody was aware of it when dreaming them up. Also, maybe I'm imagining it, but didn't the original Pegu Club cocktail call for Rose's Lime? Quite a different drink that way I'd imagine. Would you then call drinks like the Leap Year or your own Gotham closer to the Crusta concept, or are bitters essential? Edit: correct redundancies

Yeah he bases the NO Sours after the Crusta, which originates there, though I think Dr. Wondrich makes an excellent case for those drinks being derived from the Daisy category in Imbibe! I like Joy of Mixology as a teaching tool, but I feel like the 'families' are too limiting and often devolve into sort of not making sense at times (Squirrels, anyone?).

Well yes, the Crusta was originally Cocktail + Citrus, but since nobody is really making those anymore (even in the nerd circles) then I think it's ok to expand the definition a bit. After all, Cocktail originally had to have bitters, but nobody here would deny that title to the noble Sidecar. At least the inclusion of both bitters and citrus stays true to the Crusta concept. Edit: tense agreement

I'd probably call that drink a member of the "sour" family, since it's basically Booze + Citrus + sweetener. Not sure if the bitters disqualify it, but it isn't really that different in concept than a Margarita or Sidecar, is it? ← I still like to maintain that sours+bitters = Crustas, eg Pegu Club and the like, even without the defining "crust" of sugar.