EvergreenDan

OK, maybe I'll keep posting Campari drinks. You can never have too many Campari lovers. Pink Pegu Club 2 oz gin 3/4 oz Cointreau 1/4 oz Campari (optional) 3/4 oz Lime juice 2 dash Fee's Whiskey Aged bitters Yes, I know this is a lot like a Jasmine, but I prefer it. I'm bad; I'll add Campari to almost anything. Good response from non-Campari lovers too. And as much as I liked the Jasmine, I like the Bitter Elder better, and would make it in preference. Bitter Elder 1 1/2 oz gin (Plymouth is specified, but I use Tanqueray) 3/4 oz St Germain 1/2 oz Campari 1/2 oz Lemon I got the Bitter Elder here.

This post is so sad. Good lesson for me. I'll start by making a 1/4-sized trial drink to avoid diluting the expensive ingredients with tears. I tossed a Brooklyn too. Maybe the Vya was at fault with that too. Hmmmm. It also raises another point of confusion for me. When you see "Apricot Brandy" I never know if the original recipe intended a liqueur like Orchard Apricot or a spirit like an eau-de-vie. I really wish that ingredients had much less sugar in them to let me add what I want. The flavors in that drink seem intriguing, but, oh my that's a lot of sugar and no acid.

I tossed a Jupiter tonight, made with Tanqueray, Vya, Marie Bizzard Parfait Amour and fresh orange. I started with 1 tsp each of the last two. Blah. Doubled it. Still Blah -- a Martini with sweet yuk in it. I added a couple of dashes of Regan's. Gack. Either I'm using the completely wrong ingredients or it's just not my cup of tea. Disappointed in my first attempt with my new bottle of Parfait Amour. Tasting it straight is certainly not encouraging.

Tried a Paper Airplane last night and loved it. Incredibly, so did my wife, the first whiskey cocktail to entice her. For something light (good summer drink), try this: Bitter Grapefruit 2 oz Aperol 1 oz Campari 1 oz Lime Seltzer / soda to taste Refreshing, bitter, and with a grapefruit taste that doesn't exit in any component. Weird. Bad night for me: two failed cocktails. Poured a bit of Lagavulin and all was right again.

Reviving an old thread because I just got a bottle of Clear Creek Douglas Fir Eau-de-vie, which enabled a Shiver from Chez Henri in Boston via cocktailvirgin: Shiver 1 1/2 oz Campari 1 1/2 oz Grapefruit Juice 1/2 oz Eau de Vie of Douglas Fir This is simply an unspeakably delicious drink. The Campari comes through strongly, absorbing the grapefruit into it own. The Pine flavor lurks underneath, and peek out at the end. If only the Doug Fir weren't so expensive. (It's tasty enough to drink neat, but at $4/oz that more than I pay for even my most favored single malts.) Is it bad if about 15% of the cocktails in my recipe database contain Campari?

Wow, I'd be crestfallen if I put as much work and care into this as you did and had reconstituted substituted for fresh juice. I bet you're glad to be done! It was fun following along with your tale.

I wonder if Cherry Heering were released in 2007 and St Germain in 1818, we'd all be oohing and aahing over Cherry Heering Sidecars and the like and letting St Germain cocktails slip into oblivion. I just tasted the two and St Germain has a very pure flavor and Cherry Heering is quite complex.

I'd add Campari as my next bottle. It's great by itself (soda or tonic, plus lime), goes into a some classics like a Negroni, Americano, Old Pal, Grapefruit/Campari Kir (Campari, Grapefruit, Orange Liqueur, Fizzy wine), Rosita, Jasmine, Boulevardier, Corpse Reviver #3). It's also great drizzled on a little sorbet (maybe lemon or grapefruit). It will also expand your palette and open a new bitter world. You may not like it the first few times you try it, though. If I were to make a bar for my needs, I could live with just: Gin Vermouth Good Scotch Campari Plus for guests: Tequila (or maybe Rum) Cointreau From this, I could make Scotch, Martini, Campari & Soda, and Gin & Tonic, plus a Margarita for guests. I can combine Gin or Tequila with Campari and/or Cointreau and/or acid and/or citrus juices and/or soda for more variations. The next two bottles would be bourbon and sweet vermouth, with would give me another neat option and a Manhattan and a bitter Manhattan (with Campari) and a Negroni and an Old Fashioned. I can make all sorts of girly drinks for guests by mixing with fresh fruit juice (orange, grapefruit, raspberry puree, etc). This would, of course, take all the fun out of enthusiastic drink-making. There is, I think, a critical mass of ingredients where suddenly you can make (or approximate) most of the drinks you read about on forums and in books -- at least most of the ones that would interest you. I don't have Apple Pucker, so no Appletini for me. I'll sleep OK tonight with that loss. But I do have Maraschino.

Retraction: I totally stand corrected on the science. Shame on me -- I actually took thermodynamics ... over 3 decades ago. That said, I still like some drinks made very cold with low-dilution, and these are easily made at home using very cold ice.

It would seem from your observation about volume to surface area that packing the shaker with 0*C wet ice would dramatically increase the amount of water clinging to the surface and increase dilution for a given final drink temperature. To bring the ingredients from 20*C to (say) 3*C takes the same mass of 0*C ice melting whether there is barely enough ice or tons of ice, and therefore the same amount of water added from melting alone. It would seem to me that the best technique to minimize excess dilution from wet ice would be to use the minimum amount of wet ice needed to cool the drink the desired temperature, and shake for longer. Pre-chilling the equipment with wet ice and discarding it would also help, but that's independent. Drying the equipment (shaker, strainer, ice-chilled glass) would also help, but may be impractical. I think you have a trivial error in the example here because 0C ice cannot chill the drink to -5C, and the mass of cold ice in your example can't either (although more or colder ice could). However your example would be just as valid with the starting temps of 30C (man it's hot in here) to 0C. Needing to chill less (say 20C from 20C to 0C) proportionately cuts the dilution from wet ice melting. In your cold ice example, a 20C temperature change nearly eliminates dilution (except of course for the substantial melting that happens due to non-instantaneous heat flow in the ice itself). OTOH, this small error points out what may be obvious: you simply cannot chill a drink to less than 0C with wet ice. If you like sub-zero drinks (with little dilution), you simply cannot make them with 0*C ice, no matter what the technique. The simple solution is to not like those drinks. Alas, I do. At home, I have a preference for certain drinks unconventionally strong. I like Absinthe and single malt neat, with no water or ice, for example. And a high proof Martini with gin from the -9F (-22C) freezer and vermouth from the 40F fridge is a bracing, syrupy affair. Of course I don't expect this at a bar. And, yes, I've been told that the gin turns to mush in the freezer and my palette to stone with such strong cold drinks. Other cocktails made with room temperature ingredients come out stronger at home using very cold ice than they would in a bar. I happen to like them that way, and I can add a bit of water for any guests who don't or situations where the drink is too strong. Saying that the water is a vital ingredient of a cocktail when the bartender has no choice but to make it with that much water is kind of like saying humans saying they prefer to walk rather than fly.

I've had good luck with a Pear-Ginger Batida: 1 1/2 oz Cachaca 1/2 oz Poire William 1/2 oz Ginger Liqueur (e.g. Creme de Gingembre) 3/4 oz Lime 1/2 oz Stirrings Grenadine OR 1/3 oz juice from high-quality jarred baking cherries. Garnish with a piece of crystallized ginger or cherry. You might have to play with this as I'm going from a similar, but different recipe. You might try 1 oz Cachaca and Poire William if you want a bolder pear flavor, and I bet it would work with white rum if you don't care for cachaca. My mind is now thinking pear thoughts and Poire William + Luxardo Maraschino + tiny bit of ginger liqueur seems like a good idea, maybe with lemon for the acid.

Pama makes a very good batida: 2 oz Cachaca 2 oz Pama 1/2 oz Lime (or muddled 1/2 of a lime) It's not as sweet as some liqueurs, so you can use more, adjusting the lime as needed. At one point this was my wife's favorite drink. She also likes it with high-quality cassis, but use only 1 oz to compensate for the cassis's added sweetness. I have experimented, but I can also imagine a good drink with Campari, Pama, Lemon and perhaps Gin.