bostonapothecary

i thought i knew my booze but i did not know of this bonded apple jack... i must posess some! good looking out....! to sorta illustrate my philosophy... i used to be into booze and drink it straight or in simple cocktails like manhattans... then i started to think that so much of it must be adulterated sorta like gin... what you thought was grains, oak, time and blending wasn't always.... and i found lots of historical evidence to prove it.... i still love spirits adulterated or not but this shifted my interests back to mixology.... i will drink a vieux carre over a simple manhattan any day of the week.... i used to drink my expensive manhattans and savor that stunning spicy rye.... now i savor my vieux carre carefully mixed (with cheap booze) and marvel at the way it rolls across my tongue. each extra delicate ingredient and there are many....takes up wonderful flavor realestate on your tongue.... and i can make five of them for the price of my former manhattan. i love how one dash too many of peychaud's and a vieux carre can crumble...that is mixing on the edge! i've always wondered about the quality that jerry thomas had to work with...they probably had one brand of each and that is why they blended whiskey, cognac, and jamaican rum.... a challenge to some spirits historians that like booze.... i've been looking for the earliest example of sophisticated tasting notes in a book on drinks.... i've combed through harvards culinary library for quite a while. i have not found much. i know people have taken cocktails seriously for 150 years but we now may take the booze that goes into them too seriously and have lost our mixing ingenuity.

i consider them first rate. but that is contrary to the average perception you find out in the world....so i sorta try to embrace their relative position in the liquor world. i've been called a good mixologist for making gordon's taste so good but its really just that gordon's has an unfair negative perception for being cheap when it is really a pretty solid product. only a few people are in the know.... too many people think that price means quality and you shouldn't gamble with a hang over in the morning or be seen sipping a lesser brand. i try and remove that effect by not letting people know what they are drinking when its in a cocktail... just call it london dry... in ever liquor category there are stunning spirits for around 15 a liter. i'm nominating laird's applejack as the best cheap liquor ever made. its my secret weapon. i just infused it with chamomile and mixed it with a little manzanilla....the chamomile i known to cure the delerium tremons...

i use the worst spirits i possibly can find...and mix it back to beauty. when somebody asks me what kind of gin i want i say the "bath tub" stuff.... the best cocktail brandy out there is deville.... best gin is usually gordons and the best rye is overholt.... spirits that are not balanced on their own are best for cocktails...(so you can balance them with bitters and beautiful sours) and when your drinks are profitable enough you can buy some rounds for your friends without killing the numbers.... i also adulterate everything and admit to it.... I turn overholt into "african rye whiskey" with certain rare flowers that i've come across....they give a character like pipe tobacco.... then i use every trick in the book to synthesize 10 years of oak aging in three and a half days.... next week i'm going to turn bacardi silver into bacardi eight year with old "deceitful" liquor making techniques.... i'm going to embrace the deceit and use it in a version of the "old cuban".... jerry thomas used parts of the technique in the "bonvivants companion" i won't say where.... i also fell in love with "missippi punch" after reading about it in the "cocktail chronicles".... so many of the old recipes called from whiskey, rum, and cognac that i just started mixing them to taste and "letting them fight it out in the glass"... results are very encouraging. its my new well pour when i need some brown stuff. cheers!