bostonapothecary

i'm still in love with linie aquavit .75 oz. linie aquavit .75 oz. triple-sec .75 oz. sweet vermouth .75 oz. lemon juice i made this last night for the kitchen guys. they don't really like triple-sec sours made 2:1:1 because there is not enough sugar so i tried here to add another minor sweet element as is seen in the corpse reviver no. 2. paired with rye whiskey or an overshadowing liqueur, the caraway in the linie doesn't really stand out as a distinct aromatic interval. this drink consciously tries to respect that interval while building depth around it. simple off the shelf parts, epic spatial effect!

1.5 oz. linie aquavit .75 oz. rhododendron flower honey* .75 oz. lemon juice *the honey is just diluted 1:1 with vodka to make a preserved syrup that has about 400g/l of sugar. heat nothing. only stir patiently. don't bother to filter. a killer sour. somehow the caraway within the aquavit was dramatically emphasized and awesomely contrasted with the unique expression of the single varietal honey.

i guess i'll bump this thread. i've been doing a lot of batching and its kind of fun and liberating... good cocktails in adverse situations. both of these bar smarts statements can be debunked which is cool because you don't have to worry about your drinks getting all wacky and unpredictable. citrus has a high "oxidation reduction potential". so does wine and even distillates. somethings doesn't really have a potential to reduce and somethings reduce to elegance which is a feature and not a flaw... oxidation has nothing to do with bacteria so alcohol does nothing to prevent it. but the rule of thumb still stands. citrus will not change detrimentally for quite a few hours but definitely less than a day. an oxygen free keg doesn't even help because the citrus has already absorbed a decent amount of oxygen via the act of juicing. citrus also doesn't increase in sourness. i've batched drinks up to 10 gallons and would never change my ratio from that of a single drink. batched drinks homogenize fast. even the sugar. if you can stir to dissolve a 1:1 simple syrup, homogenizing batched drinks is no big deal. epic drinks for the masses.

http://bostonapothecary.com/?p=108 this post about my catering adventures might help. i also always use crushed ice. i have a giant antique hand operated "alaska no. 1" ice crusher which used to be used in hotels to break down block ice into crushed. i can reduce 10 gallons of cubed ice to crushed in 10 minutes. the last event i did was cocktails for forty in a large studio apartment. i only had four sqr. feet of bar space and one bucket as a dump sink. i did four elaborate cocktails. two drinks that would typically be shaken, were kegged and pre-diluted. and i had two stirred drinks which were batched but not diluted. i used two weighted japanese stirring pitchers to keep track of the stirred drinks. no one waited for anything even though i was the sole bartender and i had time to explain the creative linkage of the drinks. because everything was batched it was cool to give people perfectly proportioned tastes of things effortlessly. i'm sure you can track down a friend with a home brew keg rig. we also do a kegged cocktail for all our buyouts at the restaurant lately. this is the standard recipe. 2.6 liters water 2.6 liters lime juice 2.6 liters 400g sugar/liter "basket pressed"-"ice wine" pineapple syrup 750ml kirshwasser (hiram walker) 4.5 liters gin (seagram's) 2 oz. angostura bitters this usually costs like $90 to make 90 4 oz. portions. delicious. indifferent to beer and cheaper than wine all the while using fresh juices.

thats not good. its my gin staple. now i have to buy a case of the old 102.

preventative medicine .75 oz. sour orange juice scant spoonful white sugar 1.5 oz. del maguey santo domingo albarradas flamed sour orange twist the character of these oranges is kind of crazy. tart and very high extract seeming. so flavorful. this bottling of mezcal is nice and meaty. though there is no bitters or liqueur this doesn't come across as lean as a simple lemon or lime sour. delicious.

i reused this drink for an event but batched it to be three liters and diluted it to 3.6 liters which was kept really cold and served over crushed ice. i had used up a couple ounces of the danzig so i filled it in with cape verdean cinnamon liqueur. the only thing i changed was to a cheaper brand of pineau des charentes. i switched from brillet to the 5 year old "chateau de beaulon" to save $5. well the brillet is worth the extra money. the beaulon is frail and dieing with a noticeable amount of over the hill white wine aromas. the fruit is also slightly raisinated and lacks the stunning cognac fruit tonality of the brillet. beaulon still make the cocktail work and for some reason an anisey component from maybe the danzig was brought to focus in the drink. people were asking for the "one that taste like anise". i totally never noticed it in the single serving version last week. kinda cool. kinda magical. i wonder how it came about because it was very prominent. did i overlook it before or did a particular dilution level "open it up"? or did my one significant brand change bring it about?

2 oz. st. james ambre 1 oz. sour orange juice .75 oz. taylor's velvet falernum .25 oz. brillet pineau des charentes 2 dashes angostura a wonderful sour with an exotic acid. i blended the falernum with the pineau des charentes to average down the sugar content so the drink would still seem tart. beautiful structure, epic aromatic contrasts.

1 oz. laird's bonded apple brandy 1 oz. brillet pineau des charentes 1 oz. der lach's danzig goldwasser 1 oz. lemon juice 2 dashes regan's orange bitters goldwasser is sweet but not really sweet enough to make a sour without help, hence the need to employ the corpse reviver template and pair it with a minor sweet element (PDC). the danzig is also high enough in alcohol to keep the drink interesting. manageable structure, epic contrasts, i will put this on a cocktail menu someday.

1 oz. unaged cape verdean rum (think caesar pisco) 1 oz. trimbach prunelle sauvage sloe berry eau-de-vie 1 oz. lemon juice half barspoon of sugar stirred in bar spoon of danzig goldwasser 2 dashes peychaud's bitters a lean ass kicking sour. exactly what i needed. i'm addicted to the rum which has a weird hard character that is like gargling gravel. the prunelle is pretty cool. its very much like kirshwasser but with different tonality. i love its effect but i'll never give up on hiram walkers kirshwasser. the danzig is somehow lost to the pungent and strange character of the rum and sloe brandy. out of the bottle the goldwasser smelt very monastic like a chartreuse but it is supposedly "unchaste" and decadently contrasted with orange peels. hans hoffman said that "a plane is a fragment of the architecture of space". the spatial effect of my opposing planes is like a frank gehry building... epic spatial effect!

made quite a few drinks the other night trying to use some dusty bottles from the shelf. these were the ones i remember... a drink structured like a negroni with a subtly sweet and bracingly bitter direction... 1 oz. del maguey "chichicapa" 1 oz. campari 1 oz. villardi liqueur of jabuticaba i wanted a liqueur that could elegantly overshadow the smoky aggression of the mezcal and jabuticaba does it well with its foxy grapiness. the structure was familiar and the contrasts were wild... this was probably the favorite of the night. 1 oz. 1990 plantation guyana 1 oz. stock dry vermouth .5 oz. "china martini" (amaro from martini & rossi) .5 oz. canton ginger liqueur this was pretty cool and follows the "alto cucina" template i like to make. i'm always afraid of using liqueurs that have vanilla because it overshadows the nuances of delicate spirits so i don't think the rum contributed anything special. i kind of wish i used bacardi 8 year or glen fiddich. the strange amaro and the ginger liqueur were awesome together. china martini has a menthe-like character that coupled with ginger made the drink "botanically refreshing" in a way akin to fernet but not so intense and with different contrasts. the china martini has sat around for quite a while but now i think it will go fast... the last memorable drink put to use the batavia arrack. 2 oz. batavia arrack van oosten .5 oz. cape verdean cinnamon liqueur .5 oz. taylor's velvet falernum 1 oz. lime juice 2 dashes peychaud's bitters float of lemonhart 151 my standard style of elaborated sour drink... i'm in love with the cape verdean canella. its completely like a low art version of yellow chartreuse. i've also tasted a lot of cinnamon in my day and the tonality of this stuff in pretty incredible. they aren't just making it over there... they are making it well. its not like eating a "red hot" candy, its aromatic but not overly tannic or obnoxiously spicy. they must use some thoughtful extraction techniques. i wish that i used .75 oz. of cinnamon liqueur and only .25 of falernum because the drink would be more fun with lopsided contrasts. mezcal might also be cooler than top notes of guyana rum. an acceptable drink but it just doesn't live up to its emotional potential. too "balanced", kind of boring, needs a better sense of direction... will remake when my metabolism catches up.

interesting. have you played with any of the other concentrated acids like malic or tartaric? if the current crop of acids are as comparable as i think, their production may have rendered acid phosphate obsolete for good reason. cocktail boothby's "american bartender" details a "circus lemonade" which uses tartaric acid to the same effect as your basic recipe but comes across as only a deceptive trick to make money. i keep malic and tartaric acid around for home wine making, but have had lots of fun slightly acidifying orange, grapefruit and pineapple juice to make cocktail acids with strange fruit expressions. my favorite acidified trick is dry vermouth "as tart as a lemon". i use gallo brand because it is barely vermouthy and overwhelmingly elderflowery besides being really affordable. you can bring strange, impossible-object structural dimensions to drinks though the novelty is over most anyone but a wine maker's head...

you either have the precipitation of pectin which can float to the top or you have the separation of terpenes. the terpenes come from part of your lemons oxidizing. many commercial products are "terpene-less". liquids are chilled and the terpenes come out of solution and then you just decant them to separate. the terpene-less result should be rounder in flavor with less of the angular character of the terpenes. i think that products like cointreau go through terpene separation to make them shelf stable. joseph merory's book "food flavorings" details terpene removal in the context of commercial liqueurs if anyone is really curious, but it seems as simple as chill and decant or ladle off. if you are concerned about diluting your alcohol with a simple syrup just skip the syrup and stir in the sugar patiently with a wooden spoon so you don't crack the glass. alcohol is a better solvent than people give it credit for. 100 proof can be over kill. many botanical concentrates for vermouth production use only 20% alcohol solvents. if you just want to drink your lemoncello straight, triple-sec's sugar content is a good one to shoot for. 250 grams of sugar in 850 ml of 80 proof infused spirits will yield an approximate liter of gorgeous 60-something proof liqueur.

i used to have a lot of fun with overproof spirits. you can do really cool things like averaging ingredients together to hit certain proofs while building synonymous flavor depth and adding minor acidity. cask strength macallan and la cigarrera's manzanilla go together really well. i try to keep around both lemonheart and goslings 151. the goslings has a unique banana like fruit aroma that is either really cool or terrible in drinks depending on how its contrasted. i would average either of them together with non-alcoholic clayton's cola nut tonic to make fun drinks with some wild flavors. i'm really into floatings the goslings onto drinks with mezcal bases because the aromatic juxtaposition of the two is pretty crazy. i was lucky to get a bottle of the force 53 cognac and fell in love stretching drinks like the sidecar to fit it. because its overproof you can use underproof eccentric orange liqueurs like the cape verdean to hit a reasonable alcohol level but pick up all the extra undiluted cognac extract. a relatively familiar structure (the non triple-secs have slightly more sugar) but with extra extract is a strange experience.

sounds like mezcal to me. on its own mezcal is definitely an acquired tastes but i've found a way to make most things i didn't like on their own really wonderful in a cocktail. with really angular uncontrasted flavors like the smokiness of mezcal a great strategy is to overshadow things somewhat in a drink. sloe gin, cherry heering and chambord over shadows wonderfully while st. germain, cointreau, and maraschino don't do it at all. a mezcal blood and sand might be a really cool start with just the right amount of protruding smokey character. one thing i really like to do if i don't want to over shadow the mezcal is to split the spirit quotient of the drink into mezcal and kirshwasser. diluting the intensity with a fruity contrast is usually always a winner. mezcal and a really round congac is also pretty tasty. good luck.

That is a fascinating flavor combo, at least on paper. I wonder if something in the Vieux Carre vein could be managed with OP rum and Mezcal...if I had any Mezcal I'd be very tempted to go try it myself right now. Edited because while Mezcal is from Mexico there's no such thing as Mexcal. wow, OP rum and mezcal vieux carre... hmmm. i can't metabolize that until tomorrow. I dig the Goslings but I'd think Wray & Nephew or Smith & Cross would be the order of the day here. i tried the smith and cross, mezcal vieux carre. it was drinkable but not really greater than the sum of its parts. i think the mezcal was the weak point and its brand of smokiness didn't really have affinity for the other elements. the smith and cross which was new to me is awesome stuff i'd try it again with S&C plus cognac, rye, or even kirshwasser. for some reason the bartender doubled the benedictine. this made the drink slightly sweeter than my usual ethic and overshadowed the other elements a little bit. i guess i just have to make this kind of stuff at home.

That is a fascinating flavor combo, at least on paper. I wonder if something in the Vieux Carre vein could be managed with OP rum and Mezcal...if I had any Mezcal I'd be very tempted to go try it myself right now. Edited because while Mezcal is from Mexico there's no such thing as Mexcal. wow, OP rum and mezcal vieux carre... hmmm. i can't metabolize that until tomorrow.

1 oz. lemon juice 1 oz. "ice wine" grenadine 2 oz. seagrams distillers reserve spoonful del maguey chichicapa 2 dashes peychaud's bitters thin float of gosling's overpoof rum a familiar structure but with strange contrasts. the tonality, both in color and flavor, of the grenadine is very seductive. mezcal and a float of over proof rum sounds like overkill but i assure you they were both necessary and quite amusing together. excellent grotesquery...

no offense but i'd say curmudgeonly. the manhattan as you described is often too high art. in the drink vermouth alone can be too complex for my mood sometimes... i love low art contrasts like a spoonful of apricot liqueur and/or punt e mes to add extra planes of dimensionality. i don't think these acquired tastes can be grouped with trendy. vitamin water could be trendy but not anything with such intense directions of alcoholic power, sweetness, and spectrum of enigmatic contrasts. i try variations to experience the work of an artist and see something abstracted in a new way. art starts with monkey business but the wrongness eventually gets overturned. frivolous novelty is pretty stimulating stuff. its awesome how easily reproducible recipes often are. i can take in the same liquid experience as some artist in san fransisco or NYC, sampling their monkey business and closing the gap of how overly easy it is to take in other art. audio, visual, good or bad. gastronomy (and cocktails as an important subset) are the frontier of art. drinks convey so much emotional response just in their acid, sugar structure alone. then there is so many untapped illusions of dimensionality through flavor contrasts. you can see the world abstracted in a new way with every drink. i will say though gastronomy doesn't have enough theory or foundation. the abstract expressionist painter hans hoffman said "you can't move around until you know the landmarks" this means there are different levels of control and sympathy as an artist. hopefully i can find one someday that can give me an experience like the first manhattan or aviation ever served. raw & uncongealed.

extract is synonymous with essential oils. subtract ethanol, subtract sugar, subtract acid. its molecular junk. but awesome molecular junk. sometimes extract can be too high and become really in-elegant. but in cocktails and the realm of acquired tastes flaws often also become features so there aren't many rules... extract is also really important to tonality. sometimes we get this really watery orange juice or maybe lame pomegranite juice when you press fresh fruit. its watery which dilutes the extract. kinda boring. you can use methods to concentrate the extract to make a blend consistent with our expectations. this is what oj bottlers do. when i make an orange liqueur and i want to determine how many peels i want to put in to become comparable to cointreau or to clement's creole shrubb, i try to match their extract. sugar and alcohol are easy to determine via hydrometers but extract without lab tools is tough and takes blind tasting panels. quite a pain to evaluate something intense and mono-flavored. most of our pimento drams are lame because we don't have the right extract. dasher bottle bitters are not about being bitter. they are about the manipulation of bitter botanicals to create beautiful sets of extracts. unfortunately the law doesn't always understand this pursuit and recently makes producers create overly extracted (negative bitter!) bitter blends to be "unpotable" instead of simply being too high in molecular junk to be potable. extract is very important to the "sweet-tart" phenomenon in drinks. if you harness it and engineer your drinks to be a certain way you can really hit the average of an entire room's tastes (polarized tastes!) and make lots of money.

1 oz. seville sour orange juice 2 oz. laird's BIB .5 oz. green chartreuse half bar spoon of sugar stirred in dash peychaud's bitters shaken and garnished with a flamed seville twist i made this last night accidentally using rittenhouse rye instead of apple jack and it was palatable but all angles and no roundness... the roundness of apple jack really fills out the drink and adds a lot more dimension than the rye. the tonal effect of the apple brandy and the sour orange juice is pretty wild. these kinds of contrasts, encountered in a bar, could incite intense spontaneity.

if you increase the extract in a sour you change the "sweet-tart" perception thus making the drink more accessible to those that are acid averse. dasher bottle bitters are the best way to increase extract. cultures that aren't dry wine orientated seem to be acid averse. if the country was becoming a melting pot of people with different food ways a well extracted sour might have met everyone in the middle.

i agree about the vermouth. i tried it a few nights ago with 1960's style "bleached" vermouth from stock. i imagine NP or dolin is a drastically different experience. i enjoy the top notes of the lemon peel but it can be so intense it turns the drink into a jolly rancher candy sort of experience. i think the dry vermouth-grandmarnier juxtaposition is an awesome concept but the cognac holds the drink back by not offering interesting enough contrasting depth. if i made it again i'd start deviating by trying bonded lairds applejack or bacardi 8 year.

Any reason you did equal parts of all ingredients in the Satan's Whiskers? To make up for the Sour Oranges? The Savoy recipe is one of the odder ones in the book: I made this last night 1/2 oz of It. Vermouth, Fr. Vermouth and gin. A quarter ounce of Orange Juice, "Sour Lemon Orange" juice and Grand Marnier/Curacao. Found it much more enjoyable (curled or straight) than I had previously. i already tried it with the st. james and it was quite good. i took the recipe ("curled") from dr. bamboo's blog which seems to have gotten it from "vintage spirits and forgotten cocktails". i was attracted to the proportions because i really don't like uneven measures. i guess i didn't follow the bitters measure to the tee but that much extract is not my thing but who knows how intense orange bitters used to be. i really think you would have to do equal parts to make up for the acidity of the orange juice. i also differentiate curacao and triple-sec by sugar and alcohol content. triple-secs being higher in alcohol and lower in sugar. grand marnier is a strange product. i've gotten the sense that it may have started as a curacao but now is a triple-sec.

satan's whiskers .5 oz. gin (seagrams distiller's reserve) .5 oz. dry vermouth (stock) .5 oz. sweet vermouth (boissiere) .5 oz. curacao (cape verdean) .5 oz. orange juice (seville sour) dash orange bitters (hermes) stirred... (i'm happy with the resultant texture) a killer drink. quite the alliteration of orange elements. i really wanted to use sour orange juice versus something sweeter and more conventional so i went with a sweeter than triple-sec orange liqueur to add up to a more manageable sugar ethic. this doesn't have a lot of alcohol or even a high cost basis but it is quite satisfying. unique structure, contrasts, and tonality. i'd love to try it again with st. james ambre instead of gin...