Yojimbo
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Posts posted by Yojimbo
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I just picked up a bottle of Bitterman's Commonwealth, which is their tonic syrup at proof.
I tried a barspoonful last night with Tanqueray and club soda: I was hoping it would be a little less sweet, but I was too tired to really focus on the finer points of taste, will have to experiment more tonight . . . .
It'd be interesting to have someone with access to John's do a comparison between these syrups and the high-end bottled brands like Q and Fever Tree. Anyone willing, in the name of science?
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Rittenhouse BIB -- I've got several decent ryes but somehow had avoided the Rittenhouse BIB. Finally picked up a bottle on sale for around $18. Holy crap, is this a fantastic whiskey for the price. Perfect for Manhattans although I still prefer my Redemption Rye which is itself a fantastic buy.
Funny, I just got a refill on Rittenhouse after finishing my bottle of Redemption's sister rye, Riverboat, which was very good, but the Rittenhouse is just a classic that's hard to beat even as the price creeps up to keep up with its rising popularity. I'm not sure I even want to try some of the higher end ryes like Whistle Pig, because I don't want to know what I'm missing . . . . but I'll get around to it.
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Couple of days ago I picked up a bottle of Punt e Mes, plus Batavia Arrack for experimentation and making my own Swedish Punsch -- I know you can buy the Punsch as well, but where's the fun in that?
Also bought a bottle of Taylor's Falernum for a punch I was making for a school fundraiser with Denizen rum, pineapple and lime juice, and odds and ends. Decided to make my own falernum the day before to see if I could top the flavor of Taylor's, probably shouldn't have added so much Lemon Hart 151.
Fundraiser was last night: I carried all my stuff on the subway, got set up, the juice was delayed, and when it showed up way after the party had started, it was . . . ruby red grapefruit and orange juice instead. I did my best with what I had, mainly by putting floats of Blackstrap rum on top, but oh, the rum-anity!
Fairway, you are dead to me.
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Had a couple of Volstead cocktails at Clover Club today, and it turned me on, once again, to Swedish Punsch. Now that Kronan's readily available it seems like interest in making your own has waned, but is anyone still playing around with the recipes? For those who used demarara rum, I'm assuming Lemon Hart 151 would be too potent, but would mixing it 50/50 with a lower proof work? The notion of getting some of the LH funk into the Punsch is intriguing . . .
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Hate to break it to you, but there aren't too many shortcuts you can make on punch, particularly given the cost and time limitations you're stuck with. If you provide fresh fruits, will they juice them, or does everything have to be bottled? Fresh squeezed citrus is key, but do you really want to spend the morning of the big day squeezing 200 limes? Get the best quality fruit juices you can, include a bottle of orgeat with those juices to add flavor, and sneak a healthy dose of angostura bitters into the final product if they don't have any. Recipes are by the dozen on the web, go with something simple, and pour yourself something rare and special when the event's over and you can relax!
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I hate to hijack a thread, although I seem to be congenitally disposed to go off on tangents, so tell me if I should post this separately:
I'd be curious to hear whether people think Cardamaro falls within the expansive definition of vermouth being discussed here -- I assume it's technically not vermouth if the ingredients list doesn't include wormwood -- but is anybody subbing it for vermouth, or do you consider it really an amaro?
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Acknowledging the orthodoxy of Spliflicator and others that, when it comes to Manhattans, there is no substitute for a properly made one --
is it possible, psychologically speaking, to hold this truth as an item of spiritual mixological belief, but at the same time to acknowledge that "the best Manhattan variation" is second only to "the true, correct Martini recipe" in terms of potentially endless permutations based on individual preference, the mood of the moment, historic variances in ingredients and recipes, and pure whim?
And that being said (not that I'm expecting an answer) two recently tasty variations I've tried were:
1. Dushan Zaric's Employees Only formula that adds a barspoon of Grand Marnier -- particularly good to introduce newcomers to the Manhattan family
2. A variant on the Red Hook that I made for a school fundraiser of 2 oz. Rittenhouse, 1/2 oz. each Punt e Mes and Cio Ciocare, and a dash of Angostura, served with an orange twist. Without serious stirring, it was potent, but it mellowed wonderfully.
Hey, we got five boroughs here and neighborhoods multiplying and morphing as fast as the real estate flunkies can type, I say the more variations the merrier!
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If you're looking for cheap but good, El Dorado makes a white rum that is about $15 in NYC and has a lot more flavor than the mass market brands. I'd be curious to hear what more rum-savvy folks would say about Barbancourt blanc -- is it a young agricole, or an agricole-ish white rum?
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750's of Luxardo Triplum and the last bottle of Luxardo maraschino that DrinkupNY had in stock, at 10:00pm after Aikido practice and a few beers at the bar afterwards. You gotta have the basics, man, you just gotta.
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Hmmm, I did a taste test between the two, and my impression was the Grand Marnier was thicker, more syrupy, and definitely had a stronger orange fragrance and flavor; the RC was thinner and had a more candy-like sweetness and flavor, with a definite spicy edge.
I will say the Royal Combier played pretty nicely by the capful in a 2-1 blanc vermouth martini, and I suspect it would work with light rum as well, but it's definitely going to be sitting in the back of the bar shelf for a while. And it was totally overwhelmed by tropical fruit juices in a tiki recipe, so I'm still down one bottle of Cointreau or Triplum.
Too bad there's no craigslist for opened bottles of liqueur!
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Still mourning the lack of a U.S. distributor for Whitley Neil; to my palette it was a classic London dry with an extra citrus-y spice to it from the African botanicals. How many of the new gins made it into Gaz Regan's Gin Compendium? I, too, would love to see an up to date comparison of new gen gins.
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I've been asked to do a "special cocktail" for my daughter's school fundraiser next month. Last year I did a variant on the Last Word, subbing St. Germaine for the Chartreuse and topping it with green tea to avoid slaying people before they bid at the auction. This year I impanelled a jury to test a few recipes, they chose a spin on the Red Hook with Cio Ciaro subbed for half of the vermouth, which puts it near to a Brooklyn Cocktail a la Spliflicator. Speaking geographically, halfway between Red Hook and Splif's neighborhood is probably somewhere in the Gowanus Canal, which may suggest a name . . .
Anyway, how can I streamline the mixing process, while still preserving some of the fun (for me and the guests) of having the drink made in front of them? Do I mix to order so as to show off my dubious skill with jigger and strainer, or do I batch the whole thing beforehand, pour it in a glass and drop in the twist?
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Racing to the liquor store to get supplies for a drinks testing that I posted about separately, I grabbed what I thought was a bottle of Combier because they didn't have a big bottle of Cointreau, and I was planning on using it at a fundraiser. Alas, my drinks made with the stuff were off, not enough orange flavor -- when I actually read the label I realized I had bought Royal Combier, which is half orange, half herbal. Dumb newbie mistake, but I also was working on about 2 hours of sleep the night before.
Anyway, I'm sure I'm not the only one who's bought/been given a bottle of something other than what they were hoping for -- any suggestions for what to do with this stuff? It was OK by the barspoon in a classic 2/1 Martini, but I'm at a loss for other ideas. Re-gift it? Donate to a local bar? Any suggestions would be gratefully received.
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The classic Brooklyn cocktail, with a twist:
2 oz. Riverboat Rye
.75 oz. Dolin Blanc
1/2 teaspoon each Maraschino and Bitterman's Amer Nouvelle (ok, it was more like a full barspoon each)
I didn't have an orange in the house, but a twist of clementine peel did just fine.
This was probably my closest experience to the actual cocktail, for some reason I've never stuck exactly to the formula when making this in the past, and the Bitterman's is probably closer to the original Picon than even the Cio Ciocaro I've been using, per Spliflicator's suggestion.
I like it so much, I think I'll have another.
Brooklyn should properly have Dry, not Blanc vermouth. Probably more accessible that way though.
Andy, my bad, I used Dry, but wrote Blanc by accident! Agreed, blanc would make for a softer, less sharply defined drink.
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The classic Brooklyn cocktail, with a twist:
2 oz. Riverboat Rye
.75 oz. Dolin Blanc
1/2 teaspoon each Maraschino and Bitterman's Amer Nouvelle (ok, it was more like a full barspoon each)
I didn't have an orange in the house, but a twist of clementine peel did just fine.
This was probably my closest experience to the actual cocktail, for some reason I've never stuck exactly to the formula when making this in the past, and the Bitterman's is probably closer to the original Picon than even the Cio Ciocaro I've been using, per Spliflicator's suggestion.
I like it so much, I think I'll have another.
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Having grown calamondins and a few other citrus trees with various degrees of success over the years, I'm curious to hear if anyone's using calamondin, or its juice (called kalamansi in some parts of the world), kumquats, yuzu or other unusual citrus varieties as actual ingredients in drinks, rather than just as a fancy garnish, i.e. sticking a kaffir lime leaf into your Thai-Green-Curry-Colada-thingie?
Citrus is never out of season in cocktails, but in winter it becomes more of a necessity when most other fruits aren't fresh.
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Every time I get a case of wine, mostly vinho verde for the spouse, I slip in a bottle or two . . .
this time it was Kiuchi No Shizuku Hitachino, which I've been dying to try since I first heard about it -- really nice, hard to categorize since it's somewhat single malt-like in character, but lighter, and the orange and coriander notes make it more like a genever.
Plus a bottle of Ferrand Ambre, because I'm running low on brandy, and this seems one of the better lower-price brands, somebody correct me if I'm wrong.
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I also want to ask, although it deviates from the liqueur question, what's a decent, affordable brandy for making sidecars and numerous other drinks? Would a $20 VS Cognac typically work well? I've been making my sidecars with rum, which Robert Hess dubs an Outrigger.
Hassouni,
Spliflicator and others have recommended Paul Mason VSOP, which I believe is a mix of French cognac and California brandy, Chalfonte also gets mentioned. Of course, it won't be the same as a true VSOP; but whether one considers a fine cognac a luxury or a necessity is, of course, a matter of personal conviction!
And just to keep the thread going, while I wouldn't call applejack or calvados as essential as a lot of what's been mentioned so far, it's hard to imagine fall and winter without something apple-ish in the liquor cabinet, and I think of Laird's BIB as almost in the same category as Rittenhouse BIB regarding the price/quality ratio.
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When I looked in my paltry liquor cabinet for more tequila, I found that my bottle of Milagro silver was gone -- though I would like to blame bibulous gnomes lurking in the corners of the apartment, I'm pretty sure I drank it myself. What caught my eye instead was Laird's BIB apple brandy, since I had a couple of inches left and needed to make room for a new bottle. 2 oz. Laird's 1/2 oz. vermouth, and the juice of 1/3 lemon was a bit unbalanced. Two dashes of Peychaud's nudged it in the right direction: it's not a classic like the El Presidente, but it works very nicely, and the Peychaud's gives it a rosy tint that looks good at this time of year. I have a feeling a barspoon of something, Benedictine perhaps, would put everything in harmony. We'll see.
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Hassouni, I can't add much besides hearty agreement to what others have said, but if you have that many rums you'll probably get into tiki drinks at some point, so a good quality orgeat (or homemade, for the hardcore, check out the orgeat thread
here) will be useful, and not at all expensive.
Much more expensive, but worth it in the long run, is a good quality absinthe. Like Chartreause, a little goes a long way and there's not easy substitute for the flavor, although people in the U.S. made do with Herbsaint for years. I assume you can get quite a selection of arak in Lebanon, but I have no idea how the flavor profile compares to Herbsaint or other pastis-type liquors.
Enjoy!
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We have a new contender for the old Picon: Bittermens just released their new lineup of liquors, one of which is a bitter orange/gentian aperitif very much in the style of Amer Picon called, appropriately, Amer Nouvelle. I had a chance to taste it and talk with Avery and Janet of Bittermens yesterday: Avery says they wanted to make a classic Alsatian-style amer, and that, contrary to the website description, the final formula does NOT include caramelized sugar, so the liquor is dark straw-colored rather than dark brown. I think this will do very nicely as a sub for original Picon, with perhaps a lighter, less sweet profile (I have no commercial interest in Bittermens, BTW, I just like their stuff!)
Curious to hear from folks who are in the position to compare old and new.
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The first experiment with tequila and Doulin Blanc may not be considered a proper experiment by many, since I used Cuervo Gold (hey, it was a half bottle handed off by a friend who was moving out, and I wanted to use it up). 2 oz. tequila to 1 of vermouth, a rough half ounce of Cointreau, and the juice of one quarter lime. The Doulin acts like a water softener for booze, smoothing out the rough edges of the tequila (which, I realize, may run counter to the intentions of most margarita drinkers) and adding a floral element to the orange/lime combo. Actually quite drinkable, but one may ask, what's the point? Still, I'm going to use Milagro Silver next time, lemon instead of lime, and see if the same El Presidente balance appears.
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md, if only! Yes, the eau-de-vie is going down on my list, but first I have to use up the rest of the Brizzard, probably a holiday punch at a party. The thirst is there, but budget and liquor cabinet space are limited . . . .
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What I DIDN'T get today: Whitley Neil gin. Went to Gotham wines because they had it listed on their website. Not only were they out, but a quick search discovered that it's no longer imported. I'm bummin'. The cape gooseberry and baobab added a dry, almost roasted citrus element that I totally went for.
What I will get tomorrow: more Casal Garcia vinho verde to keep up with my wife's total obsession with this wine, and a bottle of something for me to balance things out, probably Laird's BIB apple brandy.
Aperitivo Americano
in Spirits & Cocktails
Posted · Edited by Yojimbo (log)
Chris,
Sorry to go back a year, but do you still have a source for the Whitley Neill, or were you finishing a bottle -- I'm still hoping they start up U.S. distribution again.
And the thought of a Weeski with Redbreast and Cocchi is, like Thampik said, doing things in my head that are hard to describe, and it's not even noon here yet . . . .