MattJohnson

After reading this topic yesterday, last night I tried a few. I had some left over basil and did this: 4 big basil leaves 2 oz beefeater .75 oz lime juice scant .5 light agave syrup dash angostura lightly muddled the basil to get the oils going, dumped all ingredients in. thoroughly cracked ice (ala Alchemist) and swizzled. Quite good. Only bad thing is how quickly they go down.

Baby Lima Soup with Chipotle broth http://www.101cookbooks.com/archives/baby-...oth-recipe.html I usually use bacon for the cooking fat and then chop it up on top as a garnish. Also, I've used many different beans. Lastly, subbing stock for some of the water never hurt - but its quite good as written.

That actually doesn't sound so bad.

That sounds awesome! I love the idea of the dill. Wish I could stop by and have a half dozen oysters and a couple drinks.

Believe me, I thought about it. Pretty sure the wife wouldn't have approved. Although I'm pretty sure there's an applicable saying about seeking forgiveness rather than permission...

The local store had a coupon for 10% for any bottle of booze so I picked up some Hendricks (a splurge for me). I read somewhere that it has a distinct cucumber note and I thought I could smell it when I gave it a go. So rather than an olive or lemon, I tried just squeezed a slice of cuc gently and dropped it in the tin while stirring (I didn't muddle) and I thought it turned out well. I thought it amp'd the cuc notes without covering up the rest of if. On the other hand, maybe I just really like cucumber.

No, you were right the first time: the ratio is 4 parts water, 2 parts honey, 1 part dried lavender. On a separate note, I tried the Elixir No. 2 last night, since it calls for half an ounce of brandy, and that's all I had left. On paper, it looks... implausible. 1.5 oz. gin, and a half ounce each of creme de menthe, maraschino and brandy, with a lemon twist? Uh, OK. In the glass, it worked pretty well, though I won't be rushing back to it anytime soon. As one might imagine, the creme de menthe (Brizard) pretty much dominated, though the maraschino gave it a run for its money. I'm intrigued by the combo of gin and brandy, though: I wonder what this drink would taste like with something like Genevieve or an aged gin like Citadelle Reserve, instead. ← why does the syrup recipe have so much water in it? if most honeys are 80% sugar going 1:1 would put you in the range of many commercial liqueurs... to get an elegant menthe-fruit contrast i've had luck mixing equal parts strega and stock maraschino. its less severe than going the creme de menthe route. seagrams distillers reserve gin is pretty cool and has a high enough proof that you can mix 1.5 oz. with .5 oz. dry sherry to gain that rich barrel taste but with more acidity to give a little extra structure to those sweet liqueurs. ← Having thought I made it wrong, but actually made it right, I'd say that if you had much less water, it might be difficult to keep the drink from getting too cloying. Although you could cut the water in half and reduce the amount in the drink, I suppose.

I'm curious, what are the ratios for the lavender syrup. Upthread, I misread and saw a 4:2:1 mentioned. I made some with that ratio and its quite tasty, but seeing how the ratio was intended for the drink (not the syrup), now I'm wondering if it could be better with the "correct" ratio.

I think I just got skittish about doing it on the counter. Had I done it out on the patio, I bet it would have worked. I'll give it another go.

I tried something like this yesterday. Onions, celery, a bit of carrot, serrano and jalepeno, garlic in a stock pot, sweat for a bit, add a chipotle in adobo, add canned tomatos. Dropped a whole chicken in and poached till done and covered with water. It was ok, the chicken didn't absorb as much flavor as I would have liked but the broth was great. It was under seasoned as well, which was part of the problem. I think next time, I'd do a marinade to season the chicken first. Added the broth to some dried beans I cooked up. That was pretty good. I'm hoping that having the chicken in the juice over night will improve it.

Made my first Juleps on Saturday. Had problems with crushing the ice. I had a rubber mallet (probably the problem) and it just didn't cut it. The ice just wouldn't pulverize. I was using kold draft shaped cubes (from those silicone forms). The neighbors must have wondered what on earth was going on. So I just cracked the ice with a spoon. My guests liked them well enough, although not being used to bourbon (Eagle Rare 10yr) , couldn't handle more than one.

I have some of these and love them. However I don't find less shards in my drinks. I typically strain through a little hand held sieve I've got. I really shake the bejeezus out of them, though - but I thought that was the idea.

In the absence of a lewis bag what do people use? I have some big linen dish cloths, I imagine folding that up should work. Pillowcase? I imagine my wife walking in while I'm beating a pillowcase with a rolling pin - should be funny. Looking forward to May. Mint Julep is our cocktail of the month.

I'll try to find some of that. I'll also try to play around with infusing it. Wonder if the store would take it back.

i like that rotgut kind of stuff. i just load it up with cocktail bitters... i feel like expectations of light rums are too high. its not exactly blanco tequila. it should just be affordable and thats about it. ← I wasn't expecting it to change my life. And I'm not one who must always have the high end everything because I have <sarcasm> such an amazing palate.</sarcasm> I'll pound a high life's with the best of them. But this stuff actually tastes bad. Not just "meh" or "not like much," but actually unpleasant.

Ugh, thats what I was afraid of. Man, I wish I hadn't bought 1.75. What does one do with this much crappy booze. I tried a daiquiri with it and it tasted like I made it with nail polish remover. Bleh.

Well, I think its a great name and sounds delicious. Kudos. I don't have strong feelings for or against the muddling. I say go for it either/both ways. And while serb hall doesn't muddle, I bet someone will say that some great supper club somewhere does. Tomato, Tomahto This weekend, I made an OF with gin and muddled orange peel. It was great. Love angostura and gin.

Just to lend my experience: When I just put my dried sour cherries in bourbon, I found that after a while, the juice tasted great, but the cherries had lost their cherry flavor and just soaked up the booze flavor.

My liquor store had 10% off any 1.75's so, being out of rum (and not really a rum drinker), I grabbed some cruzan aged light rum. Is this supposed to be a decent rum? I understand its not a high end spirit, but it really comes off like nail polish remover to me. Do I just not get it? Or is this pretty bad booze.

Heh, yeah. When I was in school there we used to go to a place called the Living Room (its something else now - they put tv's in! :cry:)and get the muddled fruit salad variety. They may not be "authentic" but I sure found them to do the trick. I'm actually kind of surprised someone hasn't opened a real deal cocktail place there yet. Seems ripe for it.

Just from personal experience, I'm not a fan of the "blending of tinctures" approach. I've played with taking recipes we use here and doing it as a series of blended tinctures and it just seemed the flavors were very separated, not as cohesive. I think it has to do with how the essential oils interact as they're being extracted from the herbs and spices. I consider bitters making like making a stew. If you were going to make a beef stew and took the potatoes, carrots, beef, herbs and other ingredients, cooked them all separately and then put it in a bowl to serve, each individual part may taste good, but it wouldn't really taste like stew. It's a personal philosophy. Some gin makers take base spirit and tinctures and blend before bottling. Some make a "tea" of all of the spices and distill together. I'm not going to say one is right or wrong, but I think that if you're just going to mix a series of tinctures to make a bitter - why not go the Pegu Club route and just add the individual tinctures you want at the time you make the cocktail? ← You'd know better than me! I was just brainstorming a bit. One has to do what produces the best results. So if/when I make bitters, I'll put beef stew in them, er, wait, I may have missed the point. Thanks for the reply.

I've never made bitters, but would it make sense to infuse the ingredients separately and then blend them? Might be easier to control. Or is there some interaction that you'd be missing?

Thats awesome! Sounds like a high-end version of how they make Old-Fashioned's here in Wisconsin (well, at least when you find some place that doesn't use a bottled mix ). Its interesting, when you go into many small town local bars, when you ask for an OF, they respond, "Sweet or Sour?" I generally make mine with a muddled citrus slice. Maybe its not the original, but its good. I had a locally distilled pumpkin spirit last fall that I subbed for the rye/bourbon. It was quite tasty.

I had been planning on posting something about this for a while. Because of a different thread, I've been mixing all my drinks in a tin since I don't have room in my freezer for pint glasses. The drinks get really cold (I've also been cracking ice for stirred drinks), however I find that they are almost too cold and I really don't start enjoying them until about halfway through. Even the Martini! I guess I really like tasting the vermouth and gin. Its getting to the point where I don't know if cracking my cubes (faux KD silicon molds) is worth it. It may result in a colder drink, but I may not want that. To get back on topic, I'm guessing bartenders want cracked ice and their hands are easiest to use absent a machine or pre-cracked ice.

Man, I love Pink Gin. There is something about the way the bitters harmonizes with the aromatics in the gin. I tend to stick with Ted Haigh's suggestion of using "six goodly dashes" of bitters. A simple drink, yet it's so much more than the sum of its parts--the chemistry just works. ← Yeah, I hear ya. I've been doing 5 dashes (my bottle's dashes seem to be getting bigger). Pink Gin is a relatively new find for me. Its amazing how well angostura plays with gin. Something else I've been enjoying is starting with the pink gin and slowly adding other things to experiment- cointreau, lillet, vermouth.