Frederic

My bad. She uses apricot kernels themselves (which is the flavoring in almond extract) and recommended others to use almond extract in addition to the real almond aspect. From my question in a Reddit Cocktails AMA: https://www.reddit.com/r/cocktails/comments/5wpw47/cocktails_ama_5_jennifer_colliau_founder_of_small/

GrandTen here in Boston makes an aged peach brandy that got a bronze medal in the spirits competition that I worked (I volunteered to do the back end to support the tasters in the brandy/fruit brandy category). Also, I agree with the cheap orgeat -- it's water, sugar/corn syrup, bitter almond flavoring (made from peach or apricot kernels), and preservative. The real stuff is earthier and nuttier (without being marzipan-y with a texture from the ground up almond bits). Some manufacturers like Small Hand Foods use the extract on top of the natural process to mimic old school recipes that included some bitter almonds (which are poisonous but tasty).

Wondrich gave a talk at Tales the summer before that article and it probably spawned that piece. My notes from that talk (which cover different points of the drink's evolution including Italian business reports about how their products were being utilized in America) https://cocktailvirgin.blogspot.com/2016/08/all-americano-italy-and-cocktail.html

Most of the bars that I work at do not carry flavored vodka save for gin, so no. At home, I do have a bottle of Ketel One Citron that I bought for my New Years Eve 2003 party. I was lured in by the Cobbler shaker that it was packaged with. I still have that bottle and the shaker has held true after 15 years. The original Cosmo would have been made with random bar ingredients like vodka, Rose's Lime, triple sec, and a splash of grenadine (most like Rose's) as a pink Kamikaze. Toby Cecchini took credit for upgrading it to Absolut Citron, cranberry, and fresh lime juice. A lot of competing stories out there but his seems to hold the most weight (and he wrote a book called Cosmopolitan to lock it in).

My guests generally prefer drier drinks so I go with the one below (not too dissimilar to Hess'). I recently went to an USBG event that was sponsored by a vodka company (we went on a field trip capped off by a bar visit that served the sponsor's product); two of us went with Cosmos, and the squirt of lime juice versus the ounce of triple sec made the thing an undrinkable candy bomb to me. My go-to recipe at work is: 1 1/2 oz Vodka 1/2 oz Clement Creole Shrubb (or similar orange liqueur) 1/2 oz lime juice 1/2 oz Cranberry Juice Shake with ice, strain into a cocktail coupe, and garnish with an orange twist.

One thing I noted when I was on a Brooklyn kick was that the more mellow the rye, the better the Brooklyn since it allowed the Picon to shine. Rittenhouse makes a great Manhattan, but it overpowers this drink, whereas a softer rye such as Old Overholt lets other things shine a bit more. Upping the Picon is an answer (I saw many with a 1/2 oz, I usually stick with a 1/4 oz in a 1.5/1/.25/.25 ratio) but my bottle of Picon needs to last.

Also, if you have the first one and complained that there was no index by ingredient, fear not: this one has _both_ books indexed by ingredient followed by bar/restaurant. Plus, a philosophical treatise on the Daiquiri Time Out via an interview with the DTO founder, Andrew Deitz!

For syrups, I found that adding 1 oz of 80 proof to every 12-15 oz syrup (add the vodka to the bottle to sterilize it as you shake it around) helps to stretch syrups out to a year or so (as long as they're kept refrigerated and the cap isn't off for more than a moment each time). Otherwise, I usually skip recipes that require specialty ingredients that have single or few uses. Most of the bars providing those recipes have barbacks or bartenders who make it as part of their regular prep work (or some cases of produce-driven ingredients, the kitchen already has it prepped for another use and they give out their excess to the bar) and are perhaps doing it for hundreds of guests each week.

A little self-promotion, but I just put out the follow up to the 2012 Drink & Tell: A Boston Cocktail Book with Boston Cocktails: Drunk & Told! 850+ recipes, over a dozen essays on hospitality and drink trends, and bartender tributes.

Cheers!

After seeing this thread here after seeing the traffic on the blog, I went back and researched and updated my blog post. Embury had a tendency of upping the base spirit and decreasing the sweetener so his recipes match his preference for tart booze bombs. Perhaps a middle ground of 1 1/4 oz each rum and sweet vermouth, 1/2 oz lime juice, 1 dash Ango + optional barspoon of simple syrup would split the difference between the Angostura one and Embury. Don't know if I'm going to finish 100 Drinks v2.0. I made a resolution to finish v1.0 in 2009 and made it by the last week of the year. I'm at 79 on the 2nd version.

We put a Drambuie-containing Scaffa (room temperature cocktail) on the menu for a Women of the Wild West-themed night last week at the Blue Room in Cambridge, MA. It was originally created for a someone's birthday (who loves rhum agricole) and I figured that it would not get much traffic on the menu. Surprisingly, it was one of the top 2 or 3 drinks of the night and we came a jigger away from clearing a freshly opened bottle of Drambuie during the 4 hours of service. Madame Mustache 1 1/2 oz Aged Rhum Agricole (*) 1 oz Drambuie 1/2 oz Cynar 1 dash Angostura Bitters Build in a rocks glass, give a quick stir (no ice), and garnish with a grapefruit twist. (*) The drink was developed originally with aged cachaça, so feel free to substitute for a funkier drink. More 4-1-1 (including history of Madame Mustache herself): http://cocktailvirgin.blogspot.com/2013/02/madame-mustache.html

The company had an Unicum release party at Portland Cocktail Week last week. They also were heavily promoting there plum-infused Szilva. Not sure when it will be out, but so much more complex than Zwack which is heavily sweetened to dull the herbal notes.

I just wrote up the offical MxMo announcement that can be found at the link below, but Ed's description says it all. Should be a good one! http://mixologymonday.com/2012/10/01/mxmo-lxvi-october-15-2012-its-not-easy-bein-green/

As of today, the Drink & Tell: A Boston Cocktail Book is available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and soon elsewhere. Working on the Kindle and Nook versions. And it should be in some brick & mortar stores like the Boston Shaker! Here's the Amazon link: http://www.amazon.co...k/dp/0988281805