[Drinks! (2013 Part 1)]

A drink of equal parts fresh pineapple juice, green Chartreuse, and Fernet Branca. Sensational. The pineapple mellows the sip such that you're caught off guard by the minty blast of the Chartreuse and Fernet in combination, and then you're plunged into the Black Forest of herbal notes from the Fernet, this time given a tropical tinge. What at first comes across as an easy drinker is a slow sipper for sure. This combination is worth investigating in other ratios; it forms the center of a more complicated drink I'm still tinkering with.

This sounds promising. The equal-parts combination is way too sweet for my tastes, but Chartreuse+pineapple is a great combination and mixing Fernet with it instinctively feels like a good idea.

My initial thoughts were : use either a dry vermouth or lime juice (or both?) to counteract the sweetness; or embrace the sweetness, throw in an egg and turn it into a flip somehow? Creme de cacao might be useful then.

However none of those seem like they will be certain to work out. No idea what might come out of this but I look forward to finding out.

[Drinks! (2013 Part 1)]

Today I spent the entire afternoon making homemade cocktail sweeteners. Results : new bottles of falernum, grenadine, orgeat, gomme, honey and simple syrups. Plus I did some pistachio and pecan syrup based on the orgeat recipe; more on those another time.

So, where better to start than a Mai Tai?

Mai Tai recipe

1 x dark Jamaican rum (Smith & Cross)

1 x rhum agricole (Clement VSOP)

0.75 x lime juice

0.5 x orange curacao (Clement Creole Shrubb)

0.5 x homemade orgeat

0.5 x pineapple juice

0.25 x homemade falernum

1-2 dashes homemade grenadine

Recipes used :

Falernum - http://postprohibition.com/diy/falernum-9/

Orgeat - http://www.artofdrink.com/ingredients/syrups/orgeat-syrup/

Grenadine - http://www.jeffreymorgenthaler.com/2009/how-to-make-your-own-grenadine/

This drink has made me very happy.

[Drinks! (2013 Part 1)]

Sounds fantastic. I will try this if I ever get more RinQuinQuin. I basically used it as a sub for Lillet, before.

Thanks, I'd humbly recommend it if you can. I find RinQuinQuin a really good option when coming up with cocktails - plays nicely with floral stuff like Hendricks gin and St Germain for example.

In fact while I'm on the subject, something else from my RinQuinQuin experiments :

Fleur-de-Lis

2.5 x Hendricks gin

2 barspoons RinQuinQuin

2 barspoons Noilly Prat Ambré

2 barspoons St Germain

Stir with ice, strain into a cocktail glass.

A sort of sweetened, floral Martini variation. I originally thought of this as a sweeter cocktail with larger proportions of all the minor ingredients, but ended up preferring this version.

Admittedly, acquiring bottles of RinQuinQuin and NP Ambré just so you can add a couple of barspoons' worth to this cocktail might be a bit much to ask, but it's worth a go if you own them anyway.

[Drinks! (2013 Part 1)]

Something I came up with the other day :

Kissy Kiss

2 x RinQuinQuin (peach aperitif)

1 x (pink) grapefruit juice

0.5 x Aperol

0.25 x pimento dram

Dash of Peychaud's bitters

Stir with ice and strain into a coupe glass. Squeeze a lemon peel over the top but do not drop in.

As it was intended to be a Valentine's Day cocktail, purely for effect, I floated a begonia flower on the drink.

I imagine RinQuinQuin is pretty hard to come by in most of the world (happily I stumbled across it in a local store) but I highly recommend it - a slightly bitter French peach aperitif which has a similar sweet/dry profile to a blanco vermouth. It's an excellent cocktail ingredient.

[Amer Picon & Torani Amer]

Would a bit of Everclear help the CioCiaro/Torani 50/50 mix to make it a bit drier and to push the proof closer to the original Amer Picon (which was 78 proof).?

Possibly - although the CioCiaro / Torani mix is already 70 proof - by my calculations you'd only need the final mix to contain 5% Everclear to make it up to 78. Never having used Everclear (it's not available here in the UK), I wonder if that would have a worthwhile enough effect? I suppose you don't need much of anything at 190 proof ...

[Amer Picon & Torani Amer]

Very nice report earlofego, and welcome to eGullet!

Did you also try Ciociaro on its own in the Brunswick cocktail, or did you feel that it needed the 50/50 mix with Torani to work?

Thanks FrogPrincesse! It's nice to be here.

CioCiaro as a substitute still makes a very drinkable cocktail. I'd personally have it below the Picon Biere and CioCiaro/Torani versions but if you add a dash of orange bitters, I think you've got a comparable drink. It pushes it just a little bit too far to the sweet side of the dial for my personal preference but I wouldn't put anyone off from trying it.

[Amer Picon & Torani Amer]

I think I might try the mix again, but using half-and-half Torani Amer and CioCiaro rather than all CioCiaro. Any other ideas?

First post here, but I'm the proud owner of Picon Biere, Torani Amer and Amaro CioCiaro, the latter two newly acquired, and all of which I've been experimenting with this evening.

I've never had the chance to try old-recipe Amer Picon, but I'd be impressed if it was any more pleasant than a 50/50 mix of CioCiaro and Torani Amer. That makes a great aperitif and I'd argue it's better than either drink on its own. I suspect from reading the thread that the original Amer would be somewhat drier though.

I can also recommend the Brunswick cocktail, as found on the "cocktail virgin/slut" website and taken from "Pioneers of Mixing at Elite Bars : 1903-1933" -

http://cocktailvirgi.../brunswick.html

The Brunswick

1.5 oz Cognac

0.75 oz Dry Vermouth

0.25 oz Amer Picon

0.25 oz Benedictine

Stir and strain into a cocktail glass. Website version adds a lemon twist, probably an improvement.

The Ciociaro/Torani mix is the best substitute for Amer Picon here IMO. It adds a body and warmth to the drink. Picon Biere is a close second. Torani Amer is the worst option in my book - the drink doesn't benefit from the greater dryness and bitterness.

For any Amer Picon cocktail my approach will be to use 50/50 Ciociaro and Torani, and just change the ratio according to whether it seems too sweet or too bitter.