bostonapothecary

has anyone ever used woodruffe in a bitter? i was thinking of doing some kind of may day bitter... i know they put the fresh sprigs in rhine wines and drink it on the first of may... beer brewers are also quite fond of it... supposedly woodruff develops its aromatic qualities as it wilts and keeps it when dried out... will have to play with it... maybe as a component of a peach bitter? She--"Fresh Woodruff soaks To brew cool drink, and keep away the moth." --_A. Austin, Poet Laureate_.

interesting article... if i made spherified balls of flavor i'd probably lie and claim it existed a hundred years ago... the tradition of a land you've never known... high concept things are cool but not when they are left to sit naked... everything needs a sense of humor and some cultural depth added to it... strangely the most pressing issue to me at the moment is my bartenders were diluting my lime juice with water... 50/50... they said it was too tart and they wanted to stretch it out... i was speachless... how do you grow when you have wierd individuals doing insane stuff likeing diluting your acid? i try and teach them about the concept of "the average of everyone's tastes"... when you make fifteen mojitos for a group of fifteen everyone individually will have different tastes but to be successful you need to hit the average... for sweet and tart history has shown that it is more or less one oz. of 1:1 simple to one oz. of lime juice... if you use your diluted lime juice you might please 5 of the 15 but you start to alienate the other 10... balance theories by emperical study and measurement & portioning technologies (jiggers) seem to be the most pressing issues in mixology...

more than a year ago i took a pisco i didn't really like (don cesar), infused it with dried cranberries plus a little agave nectar and left it in a spent louis XIII to mature in the sun of my kitchen window... the bottle looked stunning with light shining through bacarat and the red liquid... i think i remember tasting it eight months ago and not liking it... the pisco had some kind of intimidating heaviness... well anyhow, some sort of molecular stuff must have happened because its delishous now. far more integrated. the fruit seems much less intense compared to my fuzzy memory of it before and the intimidating edges of the pisco seem very different... a delishous, very adult fruit liqueur... i think i'm gonna save the rest only as a reward for doing the dishes...

Hmmm.... I wonder if they were Frank and Jack of the legendary Frank and Jack's? From "On the Town in New York" by Michael Batterberry: And, uh, oops! I didn't realize until I wrote up this post, that I had gotten the amounts for the Vermouth and Apricot Brandy flipped. Well, damn it, it looks like I have made a new cocktail. Maybe the FrankErikJack? ← i like diluting gin with eau de vie to make something like a martini... you get a good oppertunity to highlight the differenciation of gins... so apparently when i tried to make something like a vieux carre blanc our mixologist fore fathers were already covering it quite well... i only wonder if we are not putting enough focus on the vermouth? some dry vermouths seem to be woodier and some seem to be fresher in flavor...

We used to have the 100 yr and 150 yr Grand Marnier in addition to the regular ol' Cordon Rouge at work. We once did a semiblind tasting on all three side by side and everyone unanimously preferred the cordon rouge to the 100 yr, with the 150 clocking in as the faraway favorite. We no longer stock the 100 yr. Now it could be that some do prefer the 100 yr, but my suggestion is that since it isn't all that much more, go ahead and give the 150 a shot. It's quite nice (one of our wine distributors used to drink it like water). ← i was gonna try and make some and see what kind of results i got. bottle of high end cognac. peel of a couple seville oranges oranges. (in season now!) 34% sugar. (go slowly until you get what you like, grand marnier could use less sugar) pierre ferrand makes small format bottles that might be awsome for experimentation. (the musky character of Selection Des Anges might be really cool contrasted with some orange) i'd start building it piece by piece. maybe even sugar first. then add your orange peel slowly to get your desired intensity. age until next valentines day... save the juice of the tart seville orange for a st. james cocktail... its breaks tradition but i really like to use the mild agave nectars in liqueurs. they dissolve so fast in alcohol, and enliven flavors so well at small doses. a nice bottle of sophisticated hand made orange liqueur would be awsome to keep on the kitchen counter to sip when doing the dishes... ← If you're trying to approximate the profile of the 150, my advice would be to start with something exceedingly mellow (the real thing is based on 100% Grande Champagne Cognac) and maybe mix in a little tangerine with the orange peels; to my taste it has a very distinct tangerine flavor not unlike Van der Hum. Maybe some subtle spice/herb components as well, and yeah some kind of unusual sweetener, maybe even like a Pineau de Charantes. It would raise the proof slightly, but so what? If one was willing to invest in it, some very interesting combinations of orange/brandy liqueurs could no doubt be compounded. -Andy ← this is starting to sound awsome... you'd already be down in proof if you were diluting 80 proof cognac with pure sugar... so you would have to add lots of pineau de charantes to get the sweetness you want... but the less sweet and less alcohol it has the more you can justify drinking! a rainbow of orange sounds beautiful...

We used to have the 100 yr and 150 yr Grand Marnier in addition to the regular ol' Cordon Rouge at work. We once did a semiblind tasting on all three side by side and everyone unanimously preferred the cordon rouge to the 100 yr, with the 150 clocking in as the faraway favorite. We no longer stock the 100 yr. Now it could be that some do prefer the 100 yr, but my suggestion is that since it isn't all that much more, go ahead and give the 150 a shot. It's quite nice (one of our wine distributors used to drink it like water). ← i was gonna try and make some and see what kind of results i got. bottle of high end cognac. peel of a couple seville oranges oranges. (in season now!) 34% sugar. (go slowly until you get what you like, grand marnier could use less sugar) pierre ferrand makes small format bottles that might be awsome for experimentation. (the musky character of Selection Des Anges might be really cool contrasted with some orange) i'd start building it piece by piece. maybe even sugar first. then add your orange peel slowly to get your desired intensity. age until next valentines day... save the juice of the tart seville orange for a st. james cocktail... its breaks tradition but i really like to use the mild agave nectars in liqueurs. they dissolve so fast in alcohol, and enliven flavors so well at small doses. a nice bottle of sophisticated hand made orange liqueur would be awsome to keep on the kitchen counter to sip when doing the dishes...

Toby, you are my hero! ← sound advice, all the money you save on lemon pledge wipes and feather dusters you can spend on better whiskey...

I really like Italian wines generally, and Barolo Chinatos specifically. I need to give the chocolate pairing a try some time. Would pairing Barolo Chinato in a drink with the Mozart Black Chocolate liqueur be too weird? Hmmm... Didn't someone here promise to find their grandmother's recipe for a red wine based vermouth? I'm going to have to track that post down. ← the chocolate pairing is an awsome experince. i've never had this mozart chocolate liqueur but i can't image one being sophisticated enough like dark chocolate to work... i've never had one that didn't have too much sugar. i just spent alot of time trying to blend my first chinato attempt. its kinda tough. cinnamon is really important but can quickly take over. my staff liked the result of the first bottle (i then tweaked what didn't fit in my bottles and learned the evils of cinnamon) they generally don't like bitter at all.... i on the other hand thought i got no comparable intensity yet i felt like a put alot of bitter stuff in there.... and the fruit! yikes. i don't understand how they get such incredible fruit on their chinatos. i was using an 8 year old ferrando canovese. when you add sugar, the fruits character darkens so intensely.... most all vermouth is white wine (and caramel). i wonder if they do specific pressings and fermentations for the barolo chinatos.... yikes more variables....

last night i had some barolo chinato (capellano) with chocolate... the bitter of the chocolate seemed to cancel out the "chinato" and reveal the stunning fruit of the wine while the zabaglione acompaniment in the dessert seemed to have the opposite affect canceling out the fruit and drawing into focus a a very classy "chinato"... the dessert really showcased the balance of fruit and embellishment that barolo chinatos have... hopefully in the next week i can attempt my "sfursato chinato"... IMO sfursat (raisinated nebbiolo) is even more epic and medicinal than barolo... it hails from the valtelina and the largest terraced agricultural system in the world, and becomes probably the most labor intensive wine in the world to make... unfortunately the wines, as special as they seem, do not always conform to modern tastes and meet the market... therefore perfect for my embellishment... i couldn't get anyone to drink them in the dining room but hopefully with some vermouth making skillz and an adventurous clientelle i can develop interest at the bar... 18% sugar like capellano quinine, wormwood, orris cinnamon, seville orange peel, bergamot peel black tea, fraction of a clove the fortifier? grappa? cherry eau di vie? arrack? i have a feeling this will be expensive to get perfect...

so i missed the cut off... oh well. varition of the bonvivants gin and wormwood... and then a variation of the lone tree... gin and orris (the root of the iris) smells and tastes like violets with a classy kind of bitter... the seagram's reserve gin is a great one for this... put them in a bottle together to your tastes... 2 oz. gin and orris 1 oz. sweet vermouth you got laying around... (stock's rosso) pretty good... good experience for picking it out in wines. i tasted a cabernet recently from the north fork of long island... something about it was so familiar. it tasted like a particular part of my handmade sweet vermouth... i started subtracting the components... it unmistakably became the violet flavor... and then... i asked the wine maker what kind of yeast he used... barolo yeasts from piemonte... so thats why it tasted more like a dolcetto... the yeasts can often dictate more flavors in the wine than the grapes... fun fun. next step. add a pinch of valrhona chocolate power, shake and double strain...

it was a movie from 1926... movie inspired cocktail names seem to be popular...

the idea of averna and coffee seemed to appeal to me so i thought i'd try an adaption of Mrs. Walton's "Australian Coffee Cup". This style of drink has only ever been described to me by Italian people. I wonder how it ends up attributed to the Aussies... 1.5 oz. Averna 1.0 oz. Batavia Arrack (its all i drink these days. sub your favorite 80+/- proof) 3 tablespoonfuls of batter* 4 oz. soda water (made with my trusty sodaclub.com machine thanks to the recommendation of the velvet tango room.) *this batter was tricky. only because i wanted to use 3 yolks to 1 cup of tanzanian peaberry coffee brewed in my mocha maker with only three spoonfuls of sugar and a spoonful of "liqueur". the crema of the coffee seemed to create an intense froth and the batter never became very silky and stiff. it just ended up highly foamy but definitely functional. i think a different coffee would work better. the batter integrates into the drink really well adding body and complements the soda water. the flavors overall work really well... african coffee, averna, arrack... you can taste everything in relative harmony. this drinks seems to be rather refreshing... i'd be happy if it was given to me on a hot day... the drink and its batter helps you to harness the power of the chicken. i feel mightier all the sudden...

its 18% alcohol... but you might be totally right about it being chill haze. isn't chill haze what happens to ice tea when you put it in the fridge or it goes from hot to cold too fast? it seems to happen to our ice tea at work all the time. what exactly is happening?

one of the vermouth's i make louches. its kinda wierd. i'd prefer it not, but i guess you just gotta hype the "devil's water" effect... voodoo... i like a crystal clear sexy drink... i need to learn more about what beer brewers do to fine and filter their products...

reading this i though you discovered berta grappas that are somtimes near 80 a glass... i've found berta grappa to be more worth its price than high end cognac... on the low end i stopped buying poli or any of the others at the sub 100 a bottle level. stock's grappa julia is great to mix and cook with and i use it to fortify liqueurs but castello de regine's grappa di merlot is the only thing worth bothering with... there only seems to be the low end and the super high end with grappa...

averna is a tricky beast and one of my highest regarded amaros... my favorite averna cocktail so far is a apple brandy, averna, lemon juice sour... glorious... my first cocktail idea was to make something like an negroni... 1.5 oz. apple jack 1. oz. sicilian cerasuelo vermouth 1. oz. averna the first time i drank it i liked it. i must have been in some sort of mood where i'd drink anything (end of a double shift) because the next time i visited it i thought it was one of the most overly complex and challenging things i'd encountered... bitter on bitter is not for the faint of heart... to get it down i broke out a bar of 70% dark chocolate... results were one of the most reactive food and beverage pairings i've ever encountered... supposedl you can pair bitter food with bitter wine but i've never gotten it to work... the chocolate took credit for all the bitter in cocktail and all you tasted was the glorious fruit underneath... sorta magical... but with a catch... to get down this three oz. drink you had to eat an entire candy bar... yikes... next up is dark flavors on dark flavors with something to lighten them... african rye whiskey averna creole shrub or alpenze orchard apricot...? seems to need a ratio like a red hook and the whiskey coming through on the nose is beautiful... apricot isn't even light enough... a dessert wine like passito di pantelleria from the island of marsala can match the exoticism yet be very fitting... the scirocco is the african winds that moderate the temperatures of these islands... the african rye whiskey is fitting becaus its character and color is like distilled sahara dust... "scirocco" 2 oz. "african" rye whiskey 3/4 oz. averna 1/4 oz. passito di pantelleria 2 dashes bergamot orange bitters

doesn't anyone can anything? i come from a canning culture... most all syrups can be brought right to the point of boiling with out messing up the sugars and be hot canned... i'm sure a hundred years ago bartenders were very savy canners... i bottle an insane amount of stuff for our bar... and i've starting using alot of our syrups in non alcoholic lemonaides for the lunch crowd to keep the product turn over... the right routine keeps the labor pretty negligable... i've even found that vermouths i made need to oxidize to a certain level before serving them... gotten let them get some serious air before i lock them in time in a 750 ml beer bottle...

i would drink that.

i recently drank a real serious barrique aged salice salentino from puglia. usually they are young and fresh, rough around the edges and super expressive. this was more integrated (relative anyway) and despite the infamous varietal very classy and bordeaux like... the whole comparison reminded me of he seagrams cask aged gin i had collecting dust. i thought there must be a type of drink where its mellowness would make it superior to an untreated gin and better than a brown spirit... pick me up cocktail... 1.5 oz. seagrams cask aged gin 1 oz. hand made sorrento nocillo aged in bottle for 17 years (walnut liqueur) 1 oz. fresh espresso .25 oz. simple syrup .25 oz. maraschino liqueur the flavors lead into each other really well and you get the most delicate and sophisticated type of bitter. maraschino provides that subliminal touch... i tried this with and without the simple but in the end the consensus was that it added a little more life to the drink...

Despite Andy's warning to the contrary, I went with Erik's suggestion and made a 2:1:1 version, changed and upped the bitters (1 Regan's, 1 Fee's), but kept all other ingredients as he listed. I can see the possibilities of Boodle's here, but, boy, this is a remarkably great drink. Another nice twist is to sub in yellow chartreuse for green, dry vermouth for sweet. At that point it really isn't a bijou anymore but it's a pretty great drink. When I first made a bjiou I mis-read the recipe and used dry vermouth. I made about a dozen of 'em that way before I went back and realized my mistake. It's obviously totally different without the sweet vermouth, haha, but still mighty tastey. The green chartreuse comes on a bit strong when using dry vermouth (still delicious) but when you sub in the yellow the thing starts to sing. I made it with equal parts. 1 oz Gin (plymouth) 1 oz Dry Vermouth (noilly prat) 1 oz Yellow Chartreuse 2 dashes Regan's Orange Bitters Garnish: Lemon Twist Stir/Strain ← that looks like my style. gonna try that tonight.

i'm afraid i drank it all.... it was fun while it lasted.... i'm gonna check in with all the people i gave bottles to and see if they can give whats left back.... else we will have to wait for the reformulation....

Interesting. Two questions: 1. Where do you get Clayton's 2. How do you think Clayton's would balance with an equal amount of sirop de citron (assuming that this is more tart/bitter than lemon syrup)? ← i got clayton's at the tropico supermarket in roxbury. its a very large ultra ethnic market... i probably went through 24+ 750's over the course of last year. they have a halt on importation because they used dyes that turned out to be banned in the U.S. i was told they are reformulating. its about as sweet as sweet vermouth. 25 brix or so... i don't think it would balance or you'd have to use 2:1/2:1/2 kind of measurement... a couple days ago i had some tart seville orange juice which was left over from making a batch of creole shrub... it was intensely tart and had awsome flavor. it made me wonder if many of the recipes calling for orange juice really meant a specific type like seville... there are quite alot of drinks where it would make a big difference from the ward eight to the st. james... i think i'm gonna get some more sevilles and see if those cocktails have better balance...

Woops! Thanks for the metric correction! I'll have to pick up some lemons this Saturday and give it a try. Erik ← i've gone threw quite alot of clayton's kola tonic but never had the roses... i don't think you could balance 1/2 of clayton's with 3/4 oz. lemon juice... it would be quite tart beyond the average of most people's tastes... clayton's is fairly complex stuff with lots of gingery notes. i don't really think it is challengingly bitter at all. i wonder if turn of the century tonics were comparable to jamaican "rootsman" tonics that you can get today. the are bitter, very complex, and usually have kola nuts as the dominant flavor. i just helped my pastry chef to make bergamot orange sorbet... pretty wild stuff. the unchilled base of a lemon sorbet might be somewhat like syrup de citron... you peel your fruit thin and blanch them a couple times to remove the bitter which is seen as a negative... you often candy the peels as well. then all the syrup you candied them in which takes in a huge amount of flavor from the peel gets put into the sorbet with the juice of the fruit and we added martini and rossi bianco vermouth which turned out to be a phenomenal combo... i don't know if we added more acid or not by way of lemon juice or citric acid... but even with all the sugar going in alot of care was put to minimize the pith bitter...

last night i drank a really interesting cocktail with some homemade stuff i had lying around... 2 oz. "african" rye whiskey 1 oz. pomegranite seed ratafia 1 oz. lemon juice i only regret this not having orange bitters or an egg white but alas none were to be found... this is a tart sexy drink of exotic ingredients... all ingredients show and it is long lived in the mouth... the leatheryness of the whiskey makes a great contrast for the fruit of the ratafia... the cocktail was so much fun because the flavors are fairly foreign to my mouth... alcohol, sugar, and acidity were all at familiar comfortable levels but there was something radically new going on that reminded me of the american experience and how cocktails should be a way to express it... frivelous almost silly ingredients coming together... roughneck potency... escapist fun... this isn't like burgundy, pinot gris, or any safe wines you know it would be more like salice salentino, a coturri zin, or anything that alienates half a market to thrill the other half... can't wait to do it again...

2 oz. saint james ambre 1 oz. lemon juice (plus a dash or two because its for me...) 2/3 oz. brizard apry 1/3 oz. simple syrup float of goslings old rum shake and double strain then float the old rum... this was a stunning drink. i let a couple people taste it who were really skeptical of my choice of ingredients. they couldn't believe how friendly and complex it was. i've decided i don't like that nutty nose of the brizard so the closest easy aromatic float at hand finishes the drink off nice... i used to use tons of bacardi 8 now the bottle is getting dusty... time to buy more saint james... i think i will try it in an old cuban next... old cuban with a little apry maybe? good cocktails have made this winter much easier...