EvergreenDan

Yet another Negroni-template. You just can't go wrong. 1/2 oz Islay 1/2 oz Other Scotch of your choice 1 oz Cynar 1/2 oz Punt e Mes 1/2 oz dry vermouth 1/4 oz Amaro Sibilia (or dell'Erborista) Expressed lemon peel Lovely. Sibilia comes through on the end. Lemon on the nose. I thought of sherry in lieu of dry vermouth, but was scared. Maybe I'll be more courageous next time.

Now you can buy that 1.75L bottle of Galliano you've had your eye on.

Martini & Rossi?

Beekeeper's Apprentice - Sibilia, Yellow Chartreuse, honey syrup, lemon. Um. Yes.

Perfect Gin-Cin-Cyn (aka Cin Cyn), with Punt e Mes, Boissiere dry and a grapefruit swath. Great. This could be reinterpreted as a Martini, with just a dash of Punt & Cynar.

An ice bath can get the cocktail to no colder than 32*F. A cocktail with room-temp ingredients stirred on wet (32*F) ice for 40 seconds or so can get to about 8-10 degrees F below freezing. A drink shaken for about 20 seconds will end up a little colder. This assumed a well-chilled (frozen) glass. Drinks can get quite a bit colder than this by starting with ingredients from the freezer, by using cold ice (e.g. -10*F from a good home freezer), and/or by having higher-than-normal alcohol content. And then there's the whole LN2 thing. Your ice-bath Manhattans were probably a significantly warmer than a craft cocktail bar would serve. Maybe your guest prefer warmer-than-average cocktails? In a bar setting, there is a tradeoff between temperature and dilution. Given the constants of preparation (ice temp, ice wetness, shake vs stir, shake/stir time, chilled glassware), you can have one or the other. Often a drink will have a long stir not so much for temperature, but for a little more dilution.

Unless you chill in the freezer or stir with ice at service, your batched cocktails will be warmer than normal. Many prefer their Martinis very cold. The Manhattan is probably less demanding.

I tried 2 oz each Bonal and Agricole blanc (Clement), plus 1/2 oz lime and 1 dash Dandelion & Burdock bitters. Aromatically quite sweet. My wife loved it and I liked it. The whiskey permutations are perhaps stronger.

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No name, but Bonal & Rye is similar, but with an orange base. I tend to shy away from orange because it is so widely used. I prefer the Bonal as it. Try it full 50/50. It is not as sweet as you'd expect. I'm thinking about an agricole with it.

I'm pretty convinced that 1.5 to 2 oz each of spirit and Bonal Gentiane Quina, plus a strong dash of Boker's for bitterness and aromatic depth is a winning formula. An expressed lemon twist makes the first few sips special. This time with Tomatin 12, a scotch I'm trying out as a house non-peated mixing single malt. Last time was rye, which I may have liked even more. Maybe next time the peated Ardmore.

Experiment complete. Brigallet creates a bolder version than Amere Nouvelle, even after increasing the Nouvelle to 1 oz. Both my wife and I preferred he Brigallet. Also reducing the Luxardo Maraschino to 1/4 oz, keeping the Brigallet oz, was better balanced.

I've been on a Brooklyn kick too, using Bigallet China-China, 2 : 3/4 : 3/8 : 3/8. A touch sweet, perhaps. I'd like to try this with Leopold Maraschino, as 3/8 of Luxardo is a touch heavy-handed. I'll have to try it with Amere Nouvelle.

It's a Martinez, it's a Red Hook, it's Batshit good. 2 oz St George aged dry rye gin 1/2 oz Punt e Mes 1/2 oz Maraschino 1/2 oz dry vermouth (Bossiere) Stir, rocks, Luxardo cherry. I don't see this gin on the St George site. I'm not sure if the site is old or the the expression was a limited run. I like it a lot. It's different from Ransom, but seems to go in the same places.

Bobby Burn-ish, Rye, Laphroaig 10, Punt e Mes, Benedictine, dry vermouth, twist. Yum.

I haven't found either Neisson nor La Favorite, but I'll keep looking. Thanks. I was searching this forum for a comparison that someone (FrogPrincess?) wrote about those two and JM and maybe Clement. No, Cruzan is not agricole at all. It was just a white rum I had on hand.

I'm not in sync with this trend. I like the "bite" of a high-alcohol drink.

When I admitted Luxardo Bitter, but turned away Gran Classico is was on the basis of its floral aspect. I think it is just (barely) too far form Campari to be substituted for it freely. Or I could be convinced to the contrary. The lack of red dye also renders the drink a different color too. I'm not a big fan of calling every drink with tweaked ingredients by a new name. I'd rather see a variant-style name of some sort.

I like the mini clothespin holding the dill. Cute. I got a Martini with a golf tee holding 3 olives. I sorta liked the idea, but then wondered about the paint on the tee. The drink itself was predictably mediocre.

Personally I would allow like-for-like substitutions without a name change, so long as I knew what was in it. So I'd allow Luxardo Bitter, but not Aperol or Gran Classico. I would allow Punt e Mes but not Bonal. I would allow Ransom Old Tom and maybe Genever, but not cachaca.

I asked for a Ardbeg/Cynar flip, and got this luscious wonder: Islay Cynar Flip.

If 3/4 of the volume contains 3/4 alcohol, then after adding the simple, it would be 9/16 alcohol, or 56% max. I'd find a 112 proof amaro pretty appealing, particularly if not too sweet.

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