bostonapothecary

amidst the wine and tom and jerry's i've been drinking leo engel's knickebein... i hadn't made it for myself in many months until john surprise made me one at No. 9... (apparently he too is into labor intensive high concept shots as well...) and after that i've had a dozen more while making shift drinks for my line cooks... knickebein 1 oz. chilled maraschino, noyeau, etc (literally for tradistionalists or figuratively for modernists). 1/2 oz. stiff gorgeous rye (substitute stiff gorgeous booze) floated yolk of an egg egg white merengue (noone thinks less of you if you prep in advance) spoon on bitters... (yours, mine, angostura...) this is all layered in those tiny piramid shaped shot glasses and drank with some ritual... smell it and appreciate it all... pause to reflect slurp the foam... pause to reflect slirp the booze... pause to reflect shoot the rest and pop the yolk in your mouth smile and thank god for the revival of free range chicken farming... proof that leo engel improved the bon vivants companion...

spiced bourbon or spiced cognac is a negligible difference. i use what i have on hand most of the time just like they probably did. this method is potentially less trouble and mainly just do to the fact that for many people, they can predict the outcome because the system for the batter is more popular in present times... so if you read JT's recipe but think its weird i give you can option you may be better able to relate to with hopefully the same outcome. before i gave my pastry chef my proposal for the batter, i gave him the classic recipe and he responded "why would you want to do it that way" and he immediately started making his own adaptations. he tried to refer me to the "settlement cookbook" which at one time was widely popular. apparently they rewrote many very old recipes for modern times and modern technique learned since the recipes were invented... its not good to rely on solely what you inherit...

i think you can go milk or water. my prefered way from the batch of batter i made was with lemonheart overproof add water then the batter... (if my mixological adventures could be sponsored by any one rum it would be lemonheart!) this all gets me thinking back to a great dessert wine pairing i did... passito panteleria from marsala paired with peaches poached in rose and an veneto inspired herb sabayon... so a drink for the delicate... dessert wine, hot water, tom and jerry batter... i think i will try it next time i get a chance... 'tis the season...

so i may be making tom and jerry's for three hundred people or so... therefore it better be good... which is making me slightly nervous. i never liked the recipe for the batter and thought maybe it was made under the artistic constraint that it could be produced ala minute and therefore might not be the best way to do it. in our modern world of herve this i thought it might be good to analyze the recipe and try a different approach to get the same sublime end result... to get a delicious, spiced, stable, batter of modern sugar tastes i basically ended up making a sabayon... using only the yolks (saving the whites for pisco sours) and having my spices previously infused into the rum. the resulting batter was awsome and integrated into the hot milk so well... to a hoard of purists will the end result still be a tom and jerry? i thought the new approach to the batter might be something that more modern day people could relate to... ask your pastry chef for some and you will need very little explanation... any thoughts?

i don't really like rules. its kind of unamerican. i like to create a roughneck cocktail bar experience driven by ingenuity of drinks and anything goes. nothing bourgeois with rules. having a bartender introduce you to a woman is a good custom but if i don't know the guy and his level of character hells no. introductions like that are an endorsement. i wouldn't endorse a complete stranger. if two people sit down next to each and you know both of them but they don't know each other you must introduce them to each other... sometimes i bartend in a wifebeater undershirt. i certainly don't uphold the snazzy vest. its a very posh place too but ironic ambience is always fun. i think there are just different kinds of cocktail bars. hopefully they all have good drinks...

i've used an art deco malt mixer to make a ramos. dry shake, add ice, malt mix... turns 90 seconds of shaking into 15 seconds of electric stirring... we have one free outlet behind the bar so we keep it back there and sub it out for a hot plate in the winter... you can make a merangue in seconds to put together a drink like leo engel's knickebein... great for drinks like the peanut malt flip... ramos... "mailard fizz" or any attempts to work with egg when you have a massively busy bar or potential ass kicker of a service bar...

i drank a rob roy with a new very avante garde vermouth i made a week ago... 2 oz. scotch (the very ends of a couple different bottles of blended scotch) 1 oz. cerasuelo vermouth* suprisingly good. i added no extra bitters because the vermouth is rather bitter and complex enough... though i think next time i'd try it with reagan's. everything was able to live and express itself. smokey scotchiness contrasted with a stunning complex fruit character driven vermouth. the fruit tones of the vermouth are supposed to be reminiscent of a sicilian wine called cerasuelo di vittoria (which i love with delicate smokey food)... its almost like beaujolais (but made from nero d'avola and frappato). the vermouth is also highly aromatized and gets a very sexy wormwood, orris, bitter among other notes... i fortified the vermouth with blue plum slivovitz... it seemed to add nice depth to the fruit character... its not a prime time crowd pleaser but i think i'm be able to make 3 liters disappear... my tasting panel didn't seem to get it but i think it was the scotch part they didn't like... ("cerasuelo" means cherry. the term is used for a light flirtaceous red in sicily and differently a deeply colored rose of montepullican d'abruzzo in abruzzi. i'm a fan of both...)

"yanquee" 2 oz. st. james rhum agricole... 1 oz. raspberry shrub* 2 dashes of reagan's or peychauds *the shrub is made from organic raspberries, sugared to 25 brix just like many sweet vermouths, and the fortifying spirits are infused with black tea cultivated by sherpas in nepal... (same recipe as my blackberry shrub but different fruit) the rum on its own is highly intimidating, flabby, nothing but dirt and earth, and probably doesn't have many fans... therefore its perfect for the drink... the fruit from the shrub breaths serious life back into the rum and makes it highly enjoyable... the measurements and sugar contents make it the same as any manhattan out there and therefore very familiar... this turned out to be quite the crowd pleaser. people that would ordinarily not be able to handle the rum went for seconds... it probably needs a name more french less spanish... (i didn't name it)

There's also a piece about using fat washing for Jello Shots (really!) on the Food & Wine Blog: Haute Jello Shots, By Kristin Donnelly, Food Editorial Assistant ← i dry hopped some rum a while ago. it can be intense and intimidating. but if you do one short infusion throw out the booze and then do your second real infusion you will lose your most over the top pharmacudical type bitter and reveal more of the floral character... all in all fun. rum kissed by hops makes a good floridita... the bacon whiskey concept uses the "Enfleurage" technique... it is one method of making essential oils... dissolve something in a fat... (that smokey character is dissolved in your bacon) integrate it to an alcohol... the alchol pulls the stuff out of the fat... rack away the fat... i had great salad dressings this season with walnut oil and aged sherry vineger... i wonder if that oil is a shortcut for nocino... i'd drink that walnut cognac with a spoonful of pear liqueur...

today was a long day where i could metabolize lots of booze. first cocktail was the "paloma por mi amante" that others had written about... 2 oz. "tequila por mi amante" 1 oz. grapefruit juice. shake, strain over clean ice, top with sprite to make "squirt soda"... quite the crowd pleaser. the strawberry aroma is more intoxicating than the booze quotient... next we used the pisco sour format... i made it big for quite a few people.... i don't remember the measurements.... egg white... tequila por mi mante... wray and nephews over proof... lemon juice & simple syrup dry shake, shake with ice, strain and top with bitters... stunning... i tried to kick it up to normal proof with the overproof rum and got great results. alcohol was nearly unnoticable but there... mathemacitally anyhow... the overproof rum contributed this subtle, sexy, caramel like quality that really complemented the fruit character of it all... the angostura bitters made it really fit the season and its cinnamon like character made it redolent of squash to one drinker who wasn't told what they had... four months of patience in aging the tequila... totally worth it... somewhere in the day we drank manhattans spiked with a potent, aromatic, cherry stone, black and white truffle tincture... the co drinkers were freaked out... unknowing of the ticture and sort of well buzzed, they were wondering if chef was serving truffles across the room... 2 oz. rye. 1 oz. my sweet vermouth. 3 dashes aromatic cherry stone, truffle tincture... variation of a theme... so easy so delicious...

if i could toast any of the upcoming holidays i would use haus alpenz stone pine liqueur or their nocino... beautiful eclectic traditions. reflective of the season from my point of view...

didn't have time to put anything together... i was going to make some bathtup method "cologne's geneva" with cognac and juniper berries, citrus, etc... to be drunk in any classic manner... everything is sitting on my countertop. the best laid plans of mice and men... not worthy of MxMo but i've been enjoying seagram's cask aged gin in my espresso... a spoonful in a single adds some fun depth.

lingonberry juice! that is thematically so cool!

this was inspired by a lengthy discussion (and tasting) of high end merlots like pride, duck horn, bordeaux, etc, then led to related sexy contrasts within serious wines with black berry, blue plum, brambly-like fruits... my favorite wine of this character was a priorat which had a certain fruit character that almost seemed glossy... within were just the right extra details... "pantry cocktail" (attempt at a savoy style name) 1.5 oz. blanco tequila (for whispers of peppercorn) .75 oz. chambord (a brand! yikes!) .75 oz. verjus (unobtrusive acidity creates somewhat structure) .25 oz. aged balsomic (a spoonful maybe) 2 dashes aromatic cinnamon / cassia tincture (depending on potency) stir, stir, stir... do not shake! think glossy! double strain! lemon twist for top notes... bringing some of these wierd ingredients to the bar from the kitchen is lame... but from the pantry... fair game! chambord is 38.5 brix relative to cointreau's 36 or so... but with less alcohol... i think acidities of different verjus vary but it is less acidic than lemon juice... expect it to not be cloying but not the style of sour that is pleasently challenging...

i got liquor land in roxbury to pick up the alpenz line... (besides brix my favorite liquor store...) what a rum selection!

i always thought the diabolo was a parisian syrup flavored lemonaide... that cocktail doesn't resemble lemonaide... but i'd still drink it.

i had something thoroughly interesting last night at eastern standard... cachaca, benedictine, and luxardo amaro, lemon twist in a mysterious ratio... there was this raisinated character and it became reminiscent of an amarone to me... (i tasted so many amarone's this week. it reminded me of one that i really enjoyed and didn't buy) strange tones i've never had before in a cocktail... luxardo's amaro is so cool with notes of nuts and chocolate. i need to get my hands on some asap... i had ordered the last drink he had personally drank and liked... what good taste they have at ES...

Moderator note: The original Drinks! topic became too large for our servers to handle efficiently, so we've divided it up; the preceding part of this discussion is here: Drinks! (2004–2007)] i started my evening at the green street drinking cocktails and talking to an MIT astro physicist about oceanography... (his drink of choice was the de la louisianne) i had a corpse reviver no. 1 and it really reminded me of the season... clean and appley yet sort of sophisticated though i don't think there was bitters in it... i asked from the CRno.1 but then let them surprise me with a Diamond Back... delicious. perfect prescription because i was looking for something stiff and aggressive. i think it was made 2:1:1 rye:green chartreuse:apple brandy a great drink because all the spirits were allowed to speak. pretty intense but i'd definitely do it again.

i'm wondering if a tobacco input will even give a pipe tobacco output and if that is even the goal...? rooibos is like liquid pipe tobacco concentrate and i think you get better flavor out of it dissolving in booze than in straight water... i use it in my "african" rye whiskey which is just a novel little infusion for messing with cheap whiskey. the beauty of the liqueur relative to others is that the flavors really come alive with out the need to use sugar as a flavor enhancer. i was kinda writing a book about the fun i've had with liqueurs but i'll give this one up if anyone is game to try... 1 liter of overholt rye or rittenhouse... 2 oz. of rooisbos decorated with vanilla... let sit for two or three days and strain into a bottle that exudes curiosity. the beauty of the flowers is that they never become bitter so you can never over steep them... i used the infusion with and without vanilla and then again with too much... in a wine class to illustrate oak's role of pulling flavors together... it seemed to be a pretty good analogy... other flavors in the range people are looking for might be an animalic earth character... i just ordered myself a case of really intense salice salentino from sicily... its earth character is stunning with strange intensity (which i think comes more from particular native yeasts than the grapes themselves) so i was thinking of making minimalist vermouth from it. more or less adding only sugar to 25 brix and fortifying it with grappa bittered with wormwood and maybe orange peel, galangal, etc. i think i can preserve its intensity and use it to make really interesting manhattans. a nice cocktail to kick off truffle season with... a feral manhattan...

"mure et musc" 1.5 oz. gin (tanqueray) .75 oz. mure (black berry shrub) .75 oz. musc (benedictine) 2 dashes angostura a thorough lemon twist for fresh top notes... i thought all the flavors got equal footing. but i need to drink another to be sure... this should have enough alcohol to not seem too sweet. the shrub is 25 brix like sweet vermouth so the cocktail should seem more or less as sweet as "a de la louisiane"... i think "mure et musc" is a vintage perfume recipe. i've never seen it but i like the concept. it translates nicely to the palate. excellant sillage... [Moderator note: This topic continues in Drinks! (2007–2009)]

do the peach bitters have any nutty qualities to them? i've never got ahold of any... on sundays (if i miss the fish fry of the night before...), i stop into an italian place i know and have some sunday night bolognese... i always start that dinner off with a small pink gin... stimulates the appetite. need to negotiate for a derby sometime or atleast try adding the mint...

i have never had mead... that sounds real serious. the sweet vermouth is real simple. worm wood, gentian root, orris the root of the iris, galangal, pomegranite seed, small amount of coffee bean, bitter white wine until you can't stand it... embellish with the fruits of the season (probably how my technique differs)... strain, sugar to 30 something brix (because you will dilute)... cook out the alcohol and then refortify to 20 proof with grappa.

this afternoon we drank a widows kiss but made of green chartreuse instead of the yellow... (because we are poor and can't afford the yellow at the bar...) well it is so much better with the yellow... the green reminded me of certain white peasant wines and how they have a dirty finish that gets stuck in your throat... i think its from grapes oxidizing before they are pressed... anyhow it had its moments but just didn't compare to the yellow chartruese version... we drank more of that "prelude to a kiss" cocktail. it was well received. 86'd all of my ratafia... i need to make a big enough supply to age it properly. i did a tasting of batavia arrack van osten before and after... (i turned it into a liqueur). quite a few people did claim to see how the character of the rum showed in the liqueur. i need to find more cocktails for it... i tasted some of a large batch of vermouth i made a couple months ago. it is becoming quite different and is taking on some sort of raisinated character. it is still very sexy. very enigmatic. but some of its bitter components are evolving. i need to drink more of it, but it makes me wonder if standard vermouths develops in the bottle and what kind of aging they see during their trip from vineyard to glass... are vintage cocktial vermouths in the future? the 04 vya sweet vermouth is very much ready to drink... some woman preferred my vermouth to dubonnet. it might not have been fare comparison because the bottle of dubbonet has been open for 6 months or so... but so isn't every bottle of dubonnet...

clement premiere canne here is about 30 a bottle. i love their creole shrub. their amber is boring relative to the price... the "homer" and XO are beautiful stuff but very pricey. i think the premiere shows some fun terrior, if i saw it at that price which is bacardi money i'd pick some up. try it in a "ti punch"

dry vermouth and spoonful of coffee liqueur on top of something stiff and elegant...