bostonapothecary

tonight i was making and drinking the 3.3.3.... calvados.... (apple jack) triple sec.... (creole shrub) grapefruit juice.... subtle and delicous.... though it does come out on the sweet side and i'd consider it a sweet drink....if i make it for me i need an extra splash of lemon juice and orange bitters....

can't you get apry where you are?? you reminded me that i need to pick up another bottle... Culross 1 ounce white rum. 1 ounce Apry or other apricot brandy. 1 ounce Lillet. 3/4 ounce fresh lemon juice. charlie trotter loves apricots.... he has a great dessert that is a "study" of them.... i almost wanted to make a cocktail list insert that was a study of some particular flavor.... hmm. i have all this sauternes that needs a home....apricot brandy and sauterns.... perhaps with a very delicate gin.... cheers.

rum punch needs to be revisited.... i made a good one six months ago and upon rediscovering it found it aged really well. to me rum punch is all about creating a new spirit with as much depth of flavor as you can before it turns into fruit mud. the flavors should be expressive rather than integrated and roll across your tongue.... think new zealand sauv. blanc. and not meursault. you need to decide on a proof as well. alcohol supports and somewhat defines flavor so personally i like the high 70's or 80 proof. therefore you need to start with a 151. it basically comes down to lemon heart or wray and nephews. lemon heart is intimidating but in my last recipe i turned that black color into the most beautiful caramely amber.... acid also is a focus because it defines flavor. sugar more or less just carries it.... all attempts of making flavored vodka fail because acid is what defines most of the flavors and the vodkas don't really have any.... goose pear smells good because your nose doesn't need the acid but tastes horrible.... anyhow you gotta calculate mathematically how much volume of juices, tea, sugar, acid, etc. you can add to bring the rum down to your desired proof. don't quote me but i think a 750 of 151 comes down to the 70's after adding 2.2 cups or so. my last one was infused with green tea, three limes for acid. pineapple jiuce from a fresh pineapple and the peel of some lemons (for citrus depth and maybe some pleaseant bitter...but seville orange peel would have been a better choice) my next version is infused as well with powdered ginseng.... a couple things go in but alot comes out. the old recipes are kinda lame. but teach lots of valuable lessons. tea is the greatest additive on earth....but don't over steap it...sometimes only 40 minutes will do the trick....cloves are potent but awsome....lemon seeds have beautiful flavor because they are mucilaginous....if you add sugar i'd use cubes and rub them along the lemon skins to soak up the oil but i wouldn't add the peel itself. i think today's lemons might have a different bitter than they used to....mint is cool but the flavor seems to deteriorate.... bury it all in your backyard.... get back to me in six months.... then i'll take one straigh up with orange bitters.... i'll bring some cigars.... = )

some one claimed i made all these drinks from beer which i don't... but whatever, a newspaper wanted a drink and a picture to go with it so i made the best of it and took inspiration from this thread.... tlaxcala verde in a 16oz canning jar.... spoon full of anejo (only enough for flavor) 1/2 oz. agave nectar 1/2 oz. lime juice some sprigs of mint.... muddle it all gently....add ice.... top with indigenous mexican beer (tecate) the spoon full of anejo saves the day flavor wise. the ice keeps what is already cold super cold.... it turned out to be a good way to save a boring beer.... i wasn't too into it but i got an over whelmingly positive response. especially for the canning jar and the esoteric nature of everything.... cheers.

does anyone know if i can use a refractometer to measure the sugar contents of common liqueurs so i can match them precisely in the versions i make? i'm trying to take my liqueur making techniques to higher levels by studying products on the market and measuring their vital statistics.... sugar, ph, alcohol, etc.... i usually always cut my sugar contents below other products but am still seeking definitive comparisons. for any fruit liqeuer that might be used on the bar i'm trying to make a years supply when the particular fruit is in season and have it canned and ready to go. my blackberry shrub with black tea cultivated by sherpas is the chronic.... but i want to know exactly how it compares to chambord (diff. fruit i know) beyond just my qualitative taste comparisons.

my 1939 locke-ober cocktail menu has most drinks at .50 but locke ober was an expensive place even back then..... there is some crazy stuff on that menu....even 20 year old new england rum.... chateau y'quem was 5 or 6 dollars a bottle..... edit - moderator removed copyrighted image.

i had so many lame people at the bar in town for the boston marathon.... rampant bad taste, i ran out of apple pucker.... i thought of this thread and had them all drinking champagne juleps.... it was incredible how well it went over. what a crowd pleaser. i'm scouring the city for 12oz canning jars..... i'm gonna start making some real country drinks for the patio..... cheers!

virginia dram? does anyone still make that stuff? you'd think the mainstream would love it....i can't believe applejack doesn't have mainstream success.... my family makes the fermented stuff like peach wine....

from the 1932 cocktail book "so red the nose" has anybody seen this book??? this is from a snippet i found on the web.... i would have made the drink but i didn't have the gun powerd... = )

so the southside was just a common mint julep with the name of a place attached to it?

i've seen them served in canning jars.... i grew up drinking everything out of canning jars.... i always thought of it as a drink for country people....people who would have put lemons or limes in them if they were not too poor to afford them or came to town often enough.... i'm reminiscing and trying to remember the first time i had a lime as a child. i grew up in a menonite area of PA. we ran a little general store and i will ask my mother but i don't think we sold lemons or limes. the mint julep is apparently for uncivilized hicks like my former self.... moonshine from family in virginia.... everyone has sugar.... mint from the garden....

Oddly enough, the Camphor Julep was one of the more common medicinal, or pre-recreational, Juleps (it would kinda have to be pre-recreational, wouldn't it). P.S. The Latin says nothing about "excess"--so best to leave this one alone entirely, even for sniffing. ← that "pre-recreational" wording is really interesting. i've never heard that term.... i like to turn people on to the homeopathic angles of drinks.... it adds another layer of depth... beyond flavor, beyond history.... you may not give anyone a dose of anything strong enough to truely alter them but the placebo effect is strong in people.... "I FEEL BETTER ALREADY".... capsicum or chamomile at brunch for the shakes never ceases to amuse people.... anyhow Splificator, when you order a mint julep what do you personally hope to receive??

i've made very few mint juleps in my life and to an aficianado they probably sucked.... i lean towards things carribean like mojitos.... and for things american.... southsides.... to me in the summer you need citrus! maybe somebody can put forth a modern day recipe for modern tastes and maybe a picture of how a mint julep should look in the 21rst century.... i am supposed to make a cocktail to be photographed for the cover of a culinary magazine and almost am thinking of exploring the mint julep.... making it look like the wood carvings in one of those old bar manuels.... does tom bullock hold any street cred? his mint julep ended prohibition?? there is also a big homeopathic angle to the mint julep.... Pliny said: "As for the garden Mint, the very smell of it alone recovers and refreshes the spirits" "Tyndall showed the power exercised by a spray of perfume when diffused through a room to cool it, or in other words to exclude the passage of the heat rays; and it has been suggested that the presence of essential oils in the leaves of these plants serves to protect them against the intense dry heat of a desert sun all effectively as if they were partly under shelter." "An old Latin adage declares that 'Camphora per nares emasculat mares', (Camphor in excess makes men eunuchs), even when imbibed only through the air as a continuous practice. And, therefore, as a 'similar' the odorous gum, in small repeated doses, is an excellent sexual restorative." --Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure

enlightening.... does anyone think there is any salt added to orange liqueurs to tame the bitterness of seville orange to a managable level??? i made an interesting rum punch but got slighly too much bitter from the lemon peels.... i'm gonna add salt and report back.... this is progress.....cheers!

that sounds pretty good.... i love anything with an egg. i went to a great "easter egg" cocktail party last night at the green street in boston....i've never felt so revived by a cocktail before. egg is the most underrated ingredient out there. i was searching through this thread because of the reference to rosso antico.... is anyone else a fan? and how does anyone think it stacks up to other sweet vermouths?? i've gone through a couple bottles just drinking it neat. i just bought a couple more bottles of it so i'm gonna start mixing it up.... cheers.

they didn't explain it from a chemists perspective.... they basically said you can use it to align the perceived acidities of food and wine. it may only be a perceived acidity relative to the tongue and therefore a flavor trick.... someday i will play with it and figure out some practical ratios of sugar / salt / acid...

Um... Out of curiosity, where have you been reading this? To the best of my knowledge -- and I just asked some chemists -- table salt, which is to say sodium chloride, is not a buffer and does not have any effect on pH. ← "what to drink with what you eat" andrew dornenburg.... more or less all theory i use in cocktails i bring from wine....

i've been reading about using salt to lower the PH of dishes for wine pairing to match up better.... so in cocktails it may have the same affect. your daiquiri may be muted and you may not want to use it. in a margarita it may work better toning down the sharpness off the lime so that it can be tasted at the same time as the tequila and the **creole shrub**.... alot of chefs use salt in salads that have lemon juice and vineger.... the salt works to bridge the gap so that you taste them at the same time..... salting meats may be a whole different story and it has to do with hitting savory taste receptors or something....

a great article by jerry reagan..... the floridita is something i would never put on a cocktail menu just so i could surprise people with it.... this thread turned out pretty good.... hopefully if enough people read it, i can actually go out in boston and find a bartender that now knows to make one of many great floridita versions.... i nominate the vieux carre as the next drink that needs a thread.... cheers....

That's how you pronounce it in Spanish. There's no vowel equivalent in Spanish for the [ae] sound (as in "cat") we use in saying "dack-uh-ree." The vowels "ai" are pronounced as a dipthong ("aye"). Also, Spanish pronunciation does not migrate unstressed middle vowels towards the neutral schwa ("uh") as we do in English, so the "i" in the middle sylable is pronounced as "ee" (in fact, all the letters "i" are pronounced as "ee") rather than "uh." That gives you "die-kee-ree" (in the International Phonetic Alphabet: ['dai-ki-ri]). ← can't you also spell it "dykaree" or try giving them a "drakito"....

i always made my coffee cocktails with equal parts cognac and port.....and because i am me sometimes i like two yolk but only when they are small. it can be a very invigorating drink when you are tired but make sure it is super cold.... i became a big fan of raw eggs after trying all of "leo's specialties" at the end of leo engel's bar book....

i make mine with rum, lime, grapefruit, simple syrup, and a small spoon full of creme de cocoa.... sometimes i make them without any sugar or creme de cocoa.... but those are for me and no one else.... someone told me i should add a spoonfull of rosso antico.... maybe i will tonight.

the youngest pierre ferrand.... premeir cru? has so much notes of orange blossoms that i thought it was distilled with them.... and they abandon all those VS VSOP XO markings.... in a white ceramic glass it also looking really orangy in color. stunning stuff but i always wondered how those intense orange notes got in there....

double the rum and take out the sugar and that is my kind of drink....

what are your theories on how to mix orange flavor?? again i'm highly opinionated and i only mix it with clove and allspicey flavors.... i make any drink anyone asks for but personally i find it boring in so many classic drinks.... my favorite drink with orange is.... "sunset gun" clove whiskey creole shrub reagan's orange bitters the creole shrub's sugars elevate the clove in the whiskey from dull to vibrant....some mixology magic.... i can't find my notes on where i got the recipe but some genius deserves credit.... if anyone has an example of when orange liqueur elevates a flavor combo to magic i'm up for trying something new tonight....