bostonapothecary

Tasted a few of those Scotland Yard variations last night, and though not a big scotch drinker, they were quite good and may have me leaning in that direction on occasion. ← does anyone have an opinion on johnny walker red label?? i've never given it the time of day but hear it is blended with a large amount of talisker and its youthfulness make it very good for cocktails?

so much good citrus is in season... i just ordered some sevilles and was gonna try making a very tiny batch of "creole shrubb" just to see how close i could get to the real deal... i've also got some bergamot peel sitting in peirre ferrand ambre... how do you know if your oranges are coated in wax and what can you do about it if they are? is a light scrubbing all you can do? if i'm going through a specialty produce distributor is it likely they not coated because they are sold to pastry chefs for their peel?

back at it with the apricot... the best drink i've had in recent months was an batavia arrack apricot sour (with egg white) this matched my mood perfectly which is important with a drink... i don't hear of enough use of arrack as a mixing spirit. it brings a high proof that i like (100) and some sort of terrior (the "arrackness") that contrasts delicate shades of fruit so well... i like this drink so much that i'm even ready to elevate the arrack apricot combo to higher levels than the divine flavor contrasts of black tea and lemonaide... an arrack apricot sour doesn't seem to exist in any books but if i wrote one i'd pen it in... 1.5 oz. batavia arrack van osten 2/3 oz. orchard apricot 1/3 oz. simple syrup 1 oz. lemonjuice fraction of a egg white chocolate bitters... i don't think i ever noticed the bitters. they were drizzled on top... i could smell the wine of the people next to me and lots of food... hopefully it had a subliminal effect...

seems like something that would be fun to play with. i've used gelatin to thicken things with out creating a solid like my "tart pineapple-irish moss syrup"... i don't know if you could rival the effect of a egg yolk (nearly negligable membrane holding in explosive liquid flavor) which is what the alginate tries to approximate... with out creating the recipe it seems like it would only produce nice perfect spheres of jello. seems like he used the technique and understood the drink really well in relation to everyone around here advising that violette should only be a tiny accent unless the drink's name be changed to something french and raunchy... i wonder if i could make some violette spheres... gently add them to a ramos-esque fizz and then serve it with a very thick bubble tea straw... the violette fizz sounded cool on paper but turned out kind of gross in practice. maybe it just needs the right medium... slurp it down and suck up some explosively flavorful spheres as you go... i think i can get some nice straws like that from starbucks and have it all ready to go by tomarrow...

1.5:1:.5:dash... so i made the "apry" cocktail with my subtle changes... it was a much better drink but still on the sweet side... i wanted to make a drink with the same proportions i took out of a book... the saint james and the simple home-made honey liqueur made the drink so much more complex and adult... i think a switch to the rothman orchard apricot would make the drink more pleasing to wider audiences unless the lemon juice content was raised... but then it becomes a different prescription... serving the drink on crushed ice woud be optimal. i added soda water to the rest of mine and thought it was quite nice. i wish i tried some champagne... i was almost thinking of diluting my brizard apry with some apricot eau de vie to get a sugar content i liked better. so i could use the product more like cointreau... does that break some kind of weird unwritten rule? i like making my drinks with simpler measurements that you can use a standard jigger for. this recipe is sort of standard but not on the second try when you realize you don't like it but you could... my next go try is gonna be 2:1:.5:.5 st. james amber becomes and incredible booze value when you add some sexy fruit to it... i use it more than even rye these days...

i just did a bobby burns for the boston globe... i made a vermouth that was bitter and complex but captured a certain sexy shade of fruit to contrast the scotch and its delicate smokiness... the fruit was not dark and heavy but a really summery flirtaceous shade of cherry... amonst the other botanicals wormwood and orris provided the delicate bitter notes... the vermouth reminds me of summer but to make the drink fit the season, to the cocktail, i added a smoonful of chestnut flower honey liqueur...

i just bought a pound of yerba mate, and i've just heard of a new higher grade for use in espresso decks... been hatching a plan for a while but i'm looking for just the right wine... stay tuned... maybe i will fortify it with aguardiente to pay respects to south america?

last night i tried the "apry" cocktail from cocktaildb as an option for the raiders of the lost cocktail apry contest... 5/10 canadian club 3/10 apry 2/10 drambuie 2 dashes fresh lemon juice stirred and served up... rothman and winters orchard apricot was used as the apricot liqueur... this drink looked cool on paper but is so over the top boring and tastes like sweet apple juice... it needs some creative license and some serious flavor contrast... i think i'm gonna keep trying this until it becomes delicious... my next shot at it will be 5/10 st. james ambre... if you replace its label with a canadian club label like they used to do in the olden days it sells for more money and tastes better... win, win 3/10 apry... i have brizard apry so i think i'm gonna use it... 2/10 chestnut flower honey liqueur*... things should not be taken literally so they mean the figurative dram-buie which = complementing booze + honey *750ml of maison surrene with 250ml of potent southwest france chestnut flower honey strained well after it dissolves... italian rodadendren honey might also be sexy as hell with some apry... can't wait till the end of this shift...

i had asked the local brown-forman ambassador if he had any wray & nephews promotional material like shakers, bar mats, napkin & straw holders, etc... all they apparently make as promo are extremely cool calenders... the scene on the calender... a concrete bar on a jamaican street corner two roughnecks playing dominos while sipping over proof rum out of plastic cups... and then three of the most pornographic looking barely dressed women posing and following along wth the game... its even autographed by the models...! passion, tamara, shauna... what a brand image...! if i every get any of my liqueurs to market i'm copying their branding strategy... i'm gonna call my wormwood vermouth "krunk juice" and take it right to the club... overproof rum is still the most under stocked and under utilized cocktail tool... i love a spoonful floated on a drink for its aromatic funk or a single ounce to power a drink showcasing close to non-alcoholic mixers with intensity... (i miss my kola nut tonic... its still being reformulated because its dyes where banned in the U.S.)

sugar and yeasts... why don't you can it in the smallest jelly jars you can find...

last night, me and 150 fifty or so other people had some free cocktails, listened to some blues, and escaped the depression brought on by the afternoon's snow storm... brown-forman donated a huge amount of booze and i created a few cocktails featuring chambord and "unique acidity" to make it less "intense" a product... a barometer of the success of the drinks was a pretty even distribution of selection and flatteringly low bar sales... either noone wanted to pay for anything not free or they actually liked things...? i've never seen such a large crowd drink so little beer... we drank... kir imperial... "an introduction to the violet hour" brown-forman's korbel & chambord a requisite drink for the event... i snuck in some verjus and liked it better... you could make it less sweet by adding less chambord but i wanted to give flavor intensity so i balanced it with some verjus... seemed to go over well... trocadero... "antidote to the winter mistral" 1.75 oz. woodford (donated brand) .75 oz. home made provencial dry vermouth (for acidity and flavor contrast!) .50 oz. chambord 3 dashes home made aromatic wild cherry bark bitters garnished with "cerises au soleil" from provance... this drink was supposed to compared in sweetness and complexity to a manhattan... i was surprised at how popular it was... it was the band's favorite drink... though one smartass told me it was "disrespectful to whiskey"... i offered him woodford neat or on the rocks... he asked for another trocadero with an extra cherry... i was confused... not one person knew what the name referred to... if i ever put this on the menu i'd use a less distinguished whiskey... handmade components and all but it still needs to show more ingenuity to be a cocktail... pantry cocktail... "sneak a drink in the pantry" 1.5 oz. herradura blanco (donated brand) .75 oz. verjus (acidity! blanco is better than rouge but use what you got) .75 oz. chambord .25 oz. aged balsomic (more acidity! and sexy depth) 3 drops aromatic cinnamon tincture lemon twist (for citrus top notes) i served this in a tea cup so people wouldn't know you were drinking... verjus is some pretty cool acid and at 1:1 strikes quite the crowd pleasing balance with chambord... aged balsomic provides just a little more acidity and drasticly stretches out the flavors in your mouth... this was not popular with people that are scared of tequila and need to tell everyone stories of how it makes them violent... kingston snake charmer "a his or hers aphrodisiac cocktial" 2 oz. appleton's vx rum (donated brand) 1.25 oz. tart pineapple-irish moss syrup .75 oz. chambord barbados sorrel tea soaked bruleed pineapple skewers... my pastry chef was cool enough to keep cranking out the garnishes... they are really impracticle and need to be fresh or the brulee dies when the moisture in the pinapple starts to dissolve the sugars... this was the most popular drink yet very few people were on top of their game enough to catch the dirty double entendre of the name... the pineapple syrup was pretty wild. irish moss is incredibly gelatinous and can make things taste like the sea... i found it reminiscient of conch liqueur... (another great aphrodisiac) and pineapple miraculously (besides making certain body fluids taste better) has enzymes to stop gelatines from forming... a match made in heaven. god has a sense of humor... so in balance you get potency of that exciting aphrodisiac flavor and just the right "syrupy" thickness... no extra sugars were added but i did add a massive amount of citric acid to make it impressively tart... so much fun, hopefully a liquor company will want to do it again some time...

henry lyman's book is so interesting... i think i can really relate to him. his ingredients are avante-gard... kumquats during prohibition? his drinks names have a sense of humor... as he claims everything seems to capture "desperate or interesting" circumstances... i often find myself in similar predicaments... "this is inserted, not because it was good, but because it was all we could get..."

so the book's introduction mentions a "tourney of skill" in 1869 happening in new orleans... i wonder if any newspapers record it happening... ← so wonderich gets to the bottom of it all on p. 256 (bijou) in "imbibe"... curiously that very large entry about johnson, harry misses the index... his bijou is an interesting drink on paper, i'd have the change the proportions to make it work for me...

so the book's introduction mentions a "tourney of skill" in 1869 happening in new orleans... i wonder if any newspapers record it happening...

last night a friend gave me three liters of "nocillo" from a small town near the amalfi coast... he claims it was made in 1991... it was intense in every way... the stuff must have been made with grain alcohol because it is quite alcoholic. the color is black like motor oil and the aromas of a couple glasses can fill a room. the mouthfeel is thick like there is alot of sugar but it doesn't taste cloying in any way... maybe if i measure the sugar content i can extrapolate an alcohol content assumming they used grain alcohol... my understanding is that "nocillo" as opposed to "nocino" is just a regional dialect thing...

That's clever - I was thinking of trying an immersion blender or something along those lines. Have you done it that way before? How does it compare to manually shaking the drinks? ← i'd say its even better... great for egg whites... so frothy... it doesn't seem to break down any more ice than shaking either... you get a very cold drink. whether it's quality will scale to a pitcher i dont know yet...

i'm doing an event for two to three hundred... and the weather is iffy... and i'm supposed to have three cocktails... i was planning on batching, diluting with water and chilling... then just pouring over ice... the booze is pretty premium stuff and the party is on a tight budget. besides my large starter batch i was gonna have someone in the kitchen mixing the future necessary batches and hoping to deploy them in 15 minutes... i was gonna mix, dilute with some chilled water then stir the batches in a large metal "shaker" without ice that sat in a larger bucket with salted ice water... i thought i could get a batch chilled pretty quick and waste very little booze with the unpredictable nature of the party size... two of the drinks should be stirred but the third drink should be shaken so i am gonna serve it from a large pitcher that i agitate with a malt mixer to get shaken texture... it seems like i'm taking huge amount of artistry out of the picture with all the prep but the party is more about the blues band and relative to the size of the crowd there is not a huge amount of space to get a drink... i hope it works out...

very excited... thanks to whoever participated in getting the books online!

i still firmly believe that creole shrub is the only orange liqueur worth mixing... but there are still lots of questions to answer to seperate it from other similar products... do you lose a bitter quality when the orange peels are distilled like in cointreau? both options have incredible amounts of sugar... any type of bitter quality would seem like a huge asset at those levels... also wouldn't a fortifying option with more character be more fun? i love the flavor and the rustic appeal of the shrub. i don't exactly know what the added effort of distilling the liqueur does but my limited experience makes distilled options seem over engineered... i think i should submit myself to a blind taste test and see which one i prefer... and then follow it up with a blind pegu club cocktail test just to make sure...

i thought that if you used a 1/4 oz. of fernet it would come into focus most in your mouth when the drink was at its coldest... and when the cocktail warmed even slightly it would evolve and other flavors would come into focus... i used that in my "prelude to a kiss" drink... using a pomegranite ratafia instead of the vermouth... 2 oz. gin 3/4 oz. ratafia 1/4 oz. fernet you can use most any fun sweet thing instead of the ratafia...

hmm. i've never really been exposed to caraway and didn't realize it was an anise... benedictine (which i often compare to pimento dram) often gets paired with the anises... so it doesn't seem like that crazy a flavor combo... but now i wonder why it was chosen over any other anise option... a regional or thematic significance?

has anyone tried kummel with pimento dram?? they seem to be paired together quite a few times in the cocktial database... some people must know something i don't about a cool flavor combo...

you guys are lucky you are at a point where you can analyze the art... i can't even get my guys to stir at all... i started printing "stirred" as an ingredient on the cocktail list to keep my bartenders honest... i get so many large tips for stirring manhattans and making them proper... up here i apparently look pretty good relative to most other people's technique... sad but profitable?? i use frozen pints for stirring because i have really bad ice... i started drinking more of my own drinks and realized i needed to keep more frozen pints around because with the ice i have its the only way to really get things cold enough and not diluted to death... i've notice though that sometimes i'm not getting enough dilution. my freezer with the pints seems to have a big spread in temperature and needs to be defrosted often... if its at its most cold things need to rest a little longer to dilute to normal level or so i've observed... tricky this cocktail mixing business...

i'm think i'm gonna make some of that.... do you recommend all 750's of the booze?

to each there own, but i can't understand why people like absinthe so much... i always thought of it as a low brow peasant liquor (though i have my own low brow bad habits). the anise is cloying and you can't taste anything else for a week... i've come across too many other good things to drink in life. maybe some people with worm wood fetishes can come up with a good commercially available (anise free) sweet vermouth...