bostonapothecary

today i picked up the "reserve" version of JM's rum aguardente de santo antao ($20)... the young version is cool and i highly endorse it but it may not be ready for prime time... this reserve version is phenomenal... its made from sugar cane but tastes like pisco... i still suspect its mouthfeel and hardness is due to the water its cut with... not exactly branch water... they also make some sort of cape verdean "ponche" that i have yet to pick up... small spoon of sugar .5 water 4 dashes bitter 2 oz. JM rum reserva especial i also saw a south african gin on the books (in stock!) from a small importer... anyone else come across this stuff?

2 oz. atxa patxaran 2 oz. something bubbly... patxaran is the coolest liqueur i've come across in a while... sloe berries in anise flavored spirit with a couple coffee beans and fraction of a vanilla bean... the basques are smart people... i usually find anise liqueurs so peasanty but this is very sophisticated stuff...

1.5 oz. gordon's gin redistilled with malta goya 1.5 oz. stock sweet vermouth dash regan's bitters this is one of the most amusing drinks i've ever had. 1.5 oz. gordon's gin redistilled with malta goya 1.5 oz. pastrana single vineyard manzanilla sherry .5 oz. something sweet (plymouth sloe gin) spoonful of cynar yum, simple frivolous cocktail... malty sherry juniper goodness... should have used yellow chartreuse because the sloe gin might have brought too much acidity considering there was already a huge amount of sherry...

yikes that stuff is expensive. i'm pretty sure they just redistill their london dry style gins with malta goya...

so i come across new liqueurs every day but what does it take so show something off well that is supposedly special? do you need to find a drink that uses alot of it or should it be a drink where everything else is super familiar? the gilroy uses alot of liqueur but would something familiar like whiskey, spoonful of the liqueur, and bitters show it off better? is simpler flavor contrast the key?

the gilroy from the savoy thread may be a nice choice.

any good cocktails for this pistachio "orgeat"? apple jack, peach brandy, pistachio "orgeat", angostura?

I've been watching the discussion on this drink and have one silly question. Why are you ruining good SCOTCH? Any serious Scotch drinker knows there is only one way to drink it in that way is neat! That's the only way true Scotch drinkers drink it. ← The only way to drink good scotch is The Way You Like It. If neat is the only way you go who knows what you might be missing out on? Neat spirits are lovely but purchasing the bottle entitles you to mix it with Cynar and Apry if you so desire ← i'd say the most masterful component of the drink is the cynar... everything else is successfully imitated... tonight to celebrate the completion of canning 1000 pounds of tomatoes i mixed up something old fashioned... 2 oz. hand made pear brandy (pears from a friends back yard, yeast, a still...) .5 oz. simplel syrup 4 dashes of angostura bitters definitely no garnish i think i remember hearing of the violet hour making eau de vie drinks of this style... the sugar definitely rounded out the roughneck style of my brandy. we never figured out the proof but was sure it was over 100. angostura was divine flavor contrast for the highly aromatic fruit of the brandy... if anybody comes across any clear creek pear i'd give it a go with some bitters and sugar...

Would Vya or Noilly Prat be best here. No Macallan right now. Highland Park 12, The Balvenie 12, Dalwhinnie 15 and Glenlivet. Any suggestions? ← Okay, we went with the Highland Park and the Noilly Prat. Very nice! Waiting for a name! ← boissiere has a really fresh taste from its wine and is more like Vya than the oxidized honeyed style of noilly prat... but to be honest boissiere compairs best to the fruit character of M&R... i'll promote anyone elses name. i can only make it a couple more times before i'm out of scotch...

i was trying to finish off some bottles so i mixed up this... 1 oz. macallan 12 1 oz. boissiere dry vermouth .5 oz. cynar .5 oz. brizard apry i think this really fits the weather today (too cold for my taste)... the 1/3 of vermouth is really integrated under the other loud flavors and is hopefully important to some part of the drink... the cynar is only faintly noticable because it isn't that large a contrast to to the scotch and apry. it does have a nice bitter that reminds me of nocino. all these strange nut flavors roll across your mouth... the stone fruit pit almond flavor being one of them... the drink reminds me of bual style madeira meets really old sherry... and its low enough in alcohol i can handle it before noon...

today i was asked to make a cocktail with green chartreuse... .75 oz. green chartreuse .75 oz. vergano's "luli" (aromatized wine) .75 oz. gin (seagram's distillers reserve) .75 oz. lime (because its tarter than lemon) dash angostura... this was delicious and balanced and brought out all the elderflower fruit of vergano's wine... a few people thought st. germain was in the drink but its just vergano's gorgeous moscato wine base... lately i regard vergano's products as the best new entries of the year to the cocktail market... i haven't touched that bland lillet stuff in months... i usually can't enjoy many of the equal parts cocktails because i'm a high acid fiend but this was within my tolerances and went over well with others...

last night i needed a cocktail on the fly to follow a negroni... 1 oz. glen livet 15 1 oz. carpano antica 1 oz. nocillo (handmade in sorrento 17 years ago...) 2 dashes of peychaud's this went over very well. good feedback... "i want to fossilize in this tar pit" -roman

so as i was leaving work my boss surprised me with a bottle of carpano antica that he scored while in NYC. i didn't get to try it in any drinks yet, but drank a couple ounces and took some notes. the nose had a faded anise character with evident vanilla and a subtle orange peel kind of character... the nose to me seemed to be not that complex and had stuck aromas that come into focus and don't really leave. a coworker though she smelt a nutmeg/mace like character that was most satisfactory. over all i thought it smelt rather stodgy... on the palate you definitely get a vanilla character that you never see in other vermouths except noilly ambre. there is a raisinated "date" like fruit character that is kind of fun. i think other vermouths would benefit from fruit character more fun than orange peel... the antica is definitely a few shades more bitter than other vermouths in a quinine/wormwood kind of way. its kind of buried in there but the antica feels like it uses a rougher more grappa like and fun fortifying spirit. over all i'd say that carpano antica is not very complex. its not exactly over the top integrated and enigmatic like some of the others. you can recognize clear as day so many of its elements. but what antica does have is incredible "direction" and the balance of its loud flavors are a huge amount of fun. i definitely wouldn't demote the antica to an "americano" all in all delicious. i would love it try it in some cocktails but i wouldn't trade in my stock,cinzano, boisiere, or even cribari...

if you pair caperitif with lemon juice it would have to be sweet... if there was as little sugar as dry vermouth wouldn't the drink be far too tart, kind of flat tasting, and out of balance...?

i'm in love with macallan cask strength... i've been looking for the saint raphael for a while and have never seen it around here. is it common in california?

.75 oz. aquavit (o.p. anderson) .75 oz. rooibos & rye (redistilled) .75 oz. dry sherry (la cigarrera's manzanilla) .75 oz. chamberyzette (replica) bar spoon of benedictine 2 dashes of peychaud's float of overproof rum (lemonheart 151) this is the coolest drink i've had in quite a while. the eccentric ingredients are worth it because the flavor contrasts are so strange and so familiar at the same time... so rarely assembled in the same space... the character of the aquavit is the coolest contrast to the fruit of the vermouth... relative to the vermouth and bitters everything contributes some sort of cigar like experience but nothing really gets stuck in a flavor trap where together everything tastes simple like bad chocolate... delicious.

i've been feeling a lot of my drinks have been over engineered lately so i've been trying to enjoy simple things. 2.5 oz. bonny doon nectarine eau de vie 1.5 oz. lemon juice bar spoon of sugar single dash of angostura i bought a couple half bottles of these eau de vies quite a while ago because they were on sale for $10 a 375ml. this is some really cool unsugared flavored vodka... my understanding is that you can make great unfermented eau de vies of this style by redistilling the juice and peels of the fruit with high proof neutral spirits then blending down the flavor concentrate to your liking. if its as simple as it sounds you'd think these products would be more affordable and the producers would be more willing to disclose where the fruit came from and what season... isn't that what its about? anyhow the fruit beneath the lemon is ghostly and strange in a very pleasurable way... there is also a weird taste that seems sort of salty in the drink... i will drink the rest of the bottle in the exact same way...

so from where its legal i acquired a redistilled infusion of overholt rye and rooibos... the result is clear but still aromatically pipe tobacco-chocolaty... its slightly higher in alcohol than the original 80 proof. i mixed it 2:1 with my chamberyzette replica and some bitters here and there... the infusion now has a completely different texture that is unobtrusive like a normal spirit and the simple cocktail has a wild set of flavor contrasts going on... are there any other non sugared mono distilled products available that are interesting? for the O.G.'s out there... wasn't "wild spirit" similar?

i was testing out my batch of "cerises au soleil" that i have aging in the sun on the patio at work. they are pretty good but i seem to have some browning on the cherries at the top of the jar that the imported version seems to avoid... i finally found some insight into how the people of provence do it (as well as those cools pears in a bottle)... i just finished the electronic addition of Artisan Distilling by Kris Arvid Berglund. Berglund provides a small and very useful guide for small distilleries that is definitely worth checking out. An interesting part of the guide describes the tradition of the pear in the bottle of eau de vie and what it really takes to make it stick. Apparently an 80 spirit isn't enough to really preserve a fruit and prevent browning. For starters Burglund recommends a 45% alcohol spirit. Then very surprisingly to me Burglund recommends filling the bottles with a 1% sulfuric acid solution and letting it stand for one hour. the bottles are then thoroughly rinsed with softened water. 1 gram of ascorbic acid is dissolved in every liter of fortifying brandy. After filling the bottles Burgland recommends to vacuum out the oxigen as well with something like a water jet pump or maybe a vin vac (i have no idea how you would do it to a canning jar). Another surprise to the story is that often the fruit has to wait in the jar quite a while before the eau de vie is even ready for it. to preserve it in the mean time a solution of 10g citric acid, 1g ascorbic acid, and 100 mg SO2 (=2ml SO2 solution 5%) per liter which can supposedly preserve the fruit for up to six months while the eau de vie is being produced. maybe i need to same process for my cherries... or at least the ascorbic acid.

i just stirred up a "manhattan cocktail no. 1" with creole shrub, potrero 18th century rye, angostura, boisiere dry vermouth, and cribari new york state sweet vermouth. pretty cool and i'm appeased. i'd say cask strength is a requisite. the angostura does seem to dominate the cocktail. these drinks are kind of cool but kind of muddy tasting. you don't really pick out all the varietals. i think if i changed to noilly prat dry i wouldn't know it... i think i would have liked it better with a nice assortment of exotic bitters instead of angostura. ← i thought i'd give this another try with some modern options before i hit the town... these savoy people had to be in the know on something and i think it was their loud proportions... 1 oz. macallan cask strength 1 oz. boissiere dry vermouth 1 oz. chamberyzette replica .5 tsp creole shrub .5 tsp luxardo marashino dash peychaud's, dash, raegan's, dash bee sting bitters for pouty lips... omg. so good. i think with more focused flavor choices you can taste everything... the more focused and transparent nature of the chamberyzette really makes a spectacular whiskey worth using. though i'd probably ditch the liqueurs. the color of the drink is also kind of sexy.

i just stirred up a "manhattan cocktail no. 1" with creole shrub, potrero 18th century rye, angostura, boisiere dry vermouth, and cribari new york state sweet vermouth. pretty cool and i'm appeased. i'd say cask strength is a requisite. the angostura does seem to dominate the cocktail. these drinks are kind of cool but kind of muddy tasting. you don't really pick out all the varietals. i think if i changed to noilly prat dry i wouldn't know it... i think i would have liked it better with a nice assortment of exotic bitters instead of angostura.

← i find myself making something really similar when i'm running around and barely have time to really enjoy something. the refreshing over the top nature of the whole thing really resets you and puts your mind at a more reasonable pace... i'd say a subtle smokiness is a requisite flavor contrast but i'd rather use cachaca or a martinique rum like saint james.

i just opened a bottle of boissiere "extra dry" vermouth... not bad at all. i rarely see it around and i bought the last bottle on the self. there is an elegant and subtle bitter which feels like a large amount of wormwood style sharpness. the fruit and body of it is very different than noilly prat. its definitely not honeyed and oxidized. a really fresh vino verde meets elderflower-moscat like fruit is present but definitely not in any annoying unbalanced way like so many dry vermouths... i think i'd buy this again in an instant if i saw it...

Tom said the name of the cocktail is Goodnight, Chris, and who am I to argue with that? Tom also made a terrific Toronto Cocktail at night's end. Ok, he said goodnight to me twice. Sue me. ← i had something avery inspired like that tonight at no. 9 after work... it was like a toronto but with batavia arrack in a snifter with burnt absinthe and VEP green chartreuse... it was pretty cool and smelled gorgeous, but i just can't drink things that sweet... i was really into the... 2 oz. cynar 1 oz. lemon juice .5 oz. simple syrup egg white. low alcohol but delicious... hopefully i got the proportions correct... i will make this again...

so my apartment has turned into a winery and because i need more space i'm finishing off old liquor bottles... old fashioned whiskey cocktail... 3 oz. black maple hill "premium small batch bourbon" 95 proof... scant spoonful of sugar 3 dashes angostura 1 dash reagan's too poor for a twist... is anyone else into the black maple hill bottlings? i haven't heard anything about them in quite a while. this was their cheapest bottling. i like it but i don't think i'd buy it again... but still a nice simple drink...