ChrisTaylor

My go-to sake supplier has a few new ones in stock. Most of them are unfiltered or sweetened. I wasn't in the mood for either when I went shopping. I don't know anything about the canned sake--there's no English-language sticker on it. I bought it on the recommendation of the salesman. EDIT A quick Google search for 'canned sake' turned up an article about this very sake. Funaguchi Kikusui. Apparently it's one of the better canned sakes. 19% APV. Also, 'suishin' apparently means 'drunken heart.' That's pretty cool. 17% APV. Supposedly it's a bit of a beast.

My favourite Australian cider. Most locally-made offerings are very sweet and/or taste somewhat artificial. The Henry products always taste like actual fruit. I visited the cidery recently, picking up a bottle of each of their current offerings--including a couple I hadn't tried before.

I finally got around to opening the small bottle of Sea Wynde I purchased a few weeks ago. Aroma: When I first poured it, I was hit with molasses but that disappeared quickly. Harsh. Nail polish remover. Palate (w/o water): Booze. There's this really odd ... medicinal quality to this. Like, yeah, something you'd be served on a tall ship out in the middle of the bloody Atlantic. There's this weird tang to it that reminds somewhat me of Vegemite. That's not something you want to be reminded of in a drink. Palate (w/ water): Molasses. Arse. Down the drain.

More Kizakura: tokusen hana/jumnai ginjo. Marketing babble -- all sics recorded accurately Nose: very clean. Palate: sweet, fruity, syrupy. Sticky ending. >_> It's okay. I mean, it's accessible.

I bought this because the bottle looked like some kind of cosmetics product Nakao Sake Brewery's Seikyo Ginjo Syare Bottle. Remarkably free from marketing babble--English, Japanese or otherwise. Nose is a bit dull but it's sweet and stonefruit-y on the palate. A very accessible sake that hits like a motherfucker.

Mixed two Martinis: one Bombay East-powered, the other Gin Mare-powered. I actually ... liked them. D&C specs. Noilly Pratt. The second one, Gin Mare, had Dandelion & Burdock bitters purely because that seemed like a good idea 2.5 ounces of gin into the evening.

Inspired by Craig, here's my first ever Mixology Monday entry. This month's theme is 'Drink of Shame'. Temporary name: Entering a World of Pain My 'drink of shame' was the Black Russian. Normal times, in Australia, a Black Russian is topped up with Coke. Because it's not like a Black Russian is overly sweet at all. The Black Russian was my first cocktail. In sexing it up, I wanted to retain its basic attributes: the sweet kind-of-fake coffee liqueur flavour, a bit of that Coke taste without the additional of actual cola and that boozy kick. I wanted something more complex than the classic but still recognisable and, dare I say it, appealing to someone that likes a Black Russian (with Coke). The split base came about when I did my first experiment. Rye by itself just tasted a little odd: the spiciness and bite of the 100 proof spirit pushed the drink off centre, like a Manhattan variation gone wrong. A split base of rye and cognac worked a lot better. I considered rum and genever as a base but figured the ... spiciness of rye and the vanilla-y, oak-y kick of some kind of brandy might work better. 0.75 oz rye, Rittenhouse 0.75 oz cognac 0.5 oz coffee liqueur, Ristretto 0.5 oz Ramazzotti 1 dash Xocolatl Mole bitters Stir. Strain into an old fashioned glass over a large rock. Accept that this is still a sweet 'dessert' drink.

I've shifted loyalties recently and I'm starting to regret it. The first date was impressive but the second and third were a bit dull. The batter was just sad. The chips mediocre. And, yeah, I still drive under the influence of frites. I even have a bottle of emergency Tabasco in the centre console.

So, now that my local supplier has run out of ~330mL bottles--although one of the guys reckons he can maybe order in a few more--I've moved onto larger bottles. Luckily, aside from a couple of popular brands--the samurai one I didn't like, for instance--the range of sakes available in the large format is different to the range of sakes available in the smaller format. I bought this one because it was a) reasonably priced and b) I liked the label. Only when I got home did I realise that it was from Kizakura. I remembered trying a Kizakura sake and I was worried I'd purchased the same product, albeit with a Japanese label instead of the English-language one. Thankfully, it's a different product: I'd tried the Yamahai. This is the Kurano Uta. And, hey, look, I'm getting all serious with the format of my reviews! Origin: Kyoto APV: 14.5% Grade: Junmai Initial temperature*: Lightly chilled English-language bottle nonsense: So let's see now ... Aroma: It smells very clean. A lot subtler than the palate is: rice booze. Palate: Wow. This is surprisingly big. Fairly generic, but not in a bad way. 'Generic' in the sense it has none of the more ... unusual flavours I've picked up (and often enjoyed) in other sakes I've tried. It's straight down the line. No fucking about. Rice booze without any one flavour popping out. A little bit of sweetness on the entry but a solid, dry sake. There's a bit of sharpness on the finish followed by this nice, clean rice taste. * If you take my reviews at all seriously, which you shouldn't, note that my general 'rule' is to drink the sake straight from the fridge. I let the glass and bottle to slowly come up to room temperature. The exception to this rule is if something on the bottle recommends I drink the sake warm.

Just keep in mind that it'll need to be partnered with some strongly-flavoured ingredients. The Teeling made short work of Punt e Mes and Campari in Boulevardier proportions. I'm not brave enough to try mixing, say, an Old-Fashioned style drink or some kind of Manhattan variation using potcheen.

This. I have no idea about the quality of the packaging materials the butcher/supermarket/etc used. It's possible she's used better bags than I have. It's also possible she's used cheap crap or that the seal isn't very good. I'm sure we've all had the bag that looked fine until it went into a water bath. Also, sometimes pre-packed meats can contain things I don't want in my water bath--e.g. those little absorbent pads. Depending on the packaging process, sometimes I don't notice them until I've unpacked the product. I have no idea what those pads contain but I'm not sure that letting them swim for 48 hours at 60 Celsius would be a good idea.

I mistakenly thought I'd mistakenly had this one already. Reading the thread, though, it seems I've merely had one that had a somewhat similar label. So, hey ... Tokubetsu Mansakuno Hana. Junmai, as per my wont. It's the first sake I can recall having where the label has tabulated info on serving vessel, serving temperature, suggested food pairings, etc. It rates the sake on a compass, too: I assume one 'east' is sweet and 'west' is dry. Unsure what north/south might be. Floral? Fruity? ll of this information might be helpful if I could actually read more than a handful of hiragana and katakana characters. Seems like they're oddly specific about the volume of the glass you should be using. Well, maybe. This one smells and tastes kind of ... boozy. And it is: damn near 4 standard (Australian) drinks. There's a warmth on the finish. It's dry. Interesting that the little compass has it only slightly west-of-centre. I think it's the booze that does it. I just finished eating fish and chips and I regret not opening this earlier (even though, hey, I ate in the car ... while driving) because it seems like it'd go well with salty food. I just seems a little closed. There's a bit of pepper, maybe. Maybe some old apple--you know, the way big supermarkets keep in storage year round, how it kind of dulls the flavour? That. Just a little. EDIT And, yeah, I just noticed/remembered that this is put out by the same mob that made another sake I tried. Looking back on my mini-review, they're clearly wildly different products. Wonder if they're meant to be contrasting styles of sake or if there's some kind of quality difference, a la Johnnie Walker Red/Black/Double Black/etc. EDIT 2 Oxygen seems to be getting to it. Adding to the above: a bit of bitterness on the finish (in a mostly pleasant way, not the nasty, brutish and short way of a couple of the shittier sakes I've tried). A bit of stone fruit. Just a little. If one of those 'poles' on the compass is indeed fruity/flora, then, yeah, there's a reason this sake is sitting damn near dead centre. This isn't, in my opinion, a great sake and yet it is a sake I'd consider buying again if I decided to actually get around to making sake cocktails. The flavour profile isn't great but the booziness would ensure it didn't get lost if mixed with a spirit and diluted. I've been banging on about the compass so, hey, here's a picture of it. Sorry that the writing's slightly out of focus: this sake's hitting me like the kind of boxer that buys a tiger and then debases himself by starring in a Zach Galifianakis movie.

Unnamed Sazerac variation (Poirezerac sounds like a dodgy European cop show): 2 oz Poire Williams, Etienne Brana .125 oz walnut liqueur, Evan's mysterious friend 2 dashes cardamon bitters, Scrappy's 1 dash Angostura bitters simple Stirred. Chilled rocks glass. Herbsaint rinse. Lemon twist squished, squashed and squizzled over glass and then discarded. The walnut liqueur doesn't seem to be adding much to the whole experience. I think I'll lose it next time. I don't think I'd lose much. Might also try, say, .25 oz Cognac (or genever, of all things--seriously) and 1.75 oz Poire Williams. Maybe. Although I kind of like the assertiveness of an unaged spirit.

I made another cocktail from that page, the Peloni, to try out the Braulio I purchased this evening. A pleasingly spicy, bitter, boozy drink. So far it's the pick of the cocktails I've made from that website.

By "style" do you mean varietal? e.g. placing the words 'pinot noir' in a more prominent place on the label than 'a wine from Central Otago'? I'm no expert on wine, but isn't that basically standard practice for New World winemakers? In Australia, at least, there's no one to tell you that you're only supposed to make certain kinds of wine in certain ways in certain places. You can make whatever you like, wherever you like. You'll (probably) mention the region on the label--Margaret River, Yarra Valley, etc--but always in a less prominent spot than the varietal(s) of grapes that you used to make the wine.

The rum was an impulse purchase: $3 at the counter. I vaguely remembered hearing the name somewhere. It's not a rum I've seen stocked anywhere around town. Based on the couple of reviews I turned up, it's meant to be terrible. Oh well. The three full-sized bottles are all new to me.

My MCaH has started to fall apart. The binding is of very poor quality. Yes, they're large, heavy books but you bind them accordingly. I've had heavy atlases and dictionaries that children have damn near attacked over the years in my classrooms and they're still holding up strong. MCaH, conversely, is treated with care. The original MC set seems to be holding up okay, though.

Basically standard in Australia. Would you like some $80 Rittenhouse to go with it? What about a $100 bottle of DM Vida?

Aside from the final post, any ideas for what to do with Poire William? Aside from take it neat, I mean. Namely: this stuff.

Of course there are regional variations: cultural factors (ranging from what perceptions of what service is supposed to be to, well, damn near anything) plus the amount of money waitstaff make prior to receiving tips. In Australia there is no expectation of a tip. The default is 'no tip'. From there people, in my experience, 'round up' rather than mess about with percentages. In fact, the only people I ever recall talk in terms of percentage in an Australian restaurant were migrants from the US. A $142 bill? You might throw in $150. Maybe if you have $160 on you--a pile twenties, say--you'll let them keep the change. Or maybe you'll just throw in an extra five, maybe a tenner. It's optional. And, seriously, if I throw down $150 for a $142 meal the 'change' will come back. It's very, very, very rare for them to act like it's a tip unless I tell them it's a tip or walk away from the table, leaving the change behind. It tends not to go down well when there's an assumption that the extra was a tip. When you pay by credit card there may or may not be a little space on the docket for you to add a tip. I've only seen that at fine dining places and high end 'casual' places. There are some places where it's seemingly not done at all. If it's a cheap and cheerful place? Forget it. I've never seen people tip at bars, even when we're talking about expensive bars that provide table service. A few places--coffee shops, some cheap places--might have a jar at the counter, if that's where you pay, but that's mostly for small change. You won't see too many notes in those jars. If Australians tip, it's usually indicative of good service or shying away from the social stigma associated with futzing about with small change when you're out with a group of friends. That kind of behaviour suggests you're a "tight arse." I suspect it's also influenced by the high cost of eating out, given the (relatively) high wages of hospitality staff. Worth noting is that in at least some places (I can't comment on how widespread this really is) the tips are divided 'fairly' between waitstaff and even back-of-house.

I just made this, subbing in lemon for lime because I didn't feel like a late night walk to the shops. First time I've tried coconut water, too. Everything tastes better with the addition of gin and Ango, right?

To some extent the shelf life of certain products informs my purchasing decisions. You mention sherry. When I buy sherry, which isn't very often, I tend to go for relatively inexpensive half bottles. I don't drink it often enough (on its own or as part of cocktails) to justify the purchase of large bottles. I've never seen small bottles of vermouth in Australia but I still think about my purchases carefully. I usually have one bottle of sweet vermouth open at a time (same with dry). I don't use enough of it to justify opening, say, Punt e Mes, Carpano, Dolin and Vya. At some point I'm going to get around to seeing if I get longer shelf life by decanting a freshly-opened bottle of vermouth into several smaller bottles and storing them in the fridge. Now, my rule here is probably going to offend some of the pros in this section: if it still tastes good then it's good enough to drink. You will undeniably lose some of the subtler flavours and aromas of <product x> after a few days/weeks/months. Nonetheless, if you're storing the product appropriately--in the fridge, in the case of a sherry or vermouth--then you may well be able to eek out a bit more life than the sometimes very conservative time periods you'll see mentioned online. Yes, you'll lose quality. No, you couldn't get away with this if you were running a bar (although some bars try). But unless you're interested in drinking a lot of vermouth very quickly or are ultra picky (or are, yes, serving drinks to people you want to impress) you can sometimes get away with using 'old' stock. In short, trust your palate. If it tastes shit, tip it down the sink and replace it with a smaller bottle/make more drinks with <product x> next time. But if it's still okay, even if it's lost a little of its edge? You won't be the only one.

Howlin' at the Moon: a genever-based Old Fashioned jacked with a little creme de cacao. I think you'd like this one, haresfur. Hadley's Tears: a two spirit base of Bols and Appleton V/X. Absinthe and Ristretto in supporting roles. It's interesting. I like it.

A sake from Kobe: Fukuju's junmai ginjo. Fresh stone fruit on the nose and on the palate in a big way. Then there's a satisfying, savoury dryness with just a touch of boozy bitterness. It's not the most interesting sake around but it's very drinkable. EDIT This is the first 'new' sake I've found at my local source, the dearly-loved Hong Kong Supermarket, in some time. At least in the ~300mL bottle size. I think I'm going to have to make a trip to the two Japanese grocers I know of that actually stock booze. And pay accordingly >_>. EDIT 2 Since last night's post someone pointed me in the direction of a local-ish sake retailer. Judging by the website Sake Shop stocks a few sakes I haven't tried yet. I also found another. These, combined with Elsternwick's Tokyo Deli, should serve me well. Shame that most retailers exclusively/largely focus on ~700mL bottles.

Nice menu. I see they stock Eric Bordelet Poire Granit. If they offer it by the glass, etc--a $160 1.5L bottle requires a lot of commitment, even though it's got a low alcohol content--I'd recommend it (along with all of his other products--most of all his Calvados).