Craig E
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Posts posted by Craig E
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My first batch. Followed this Pinch & Swirl recipe.
The soaking zests and bark and spices smelled heavenly.
The end product is lovely. A little milder than I expected.
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While we're waiting on that, I tried the linked Millionaire.
Enjoyable, but my cheapo sloe gin (relic of the days before I knew what I was doing in a liquor store) did its best to prove the adage that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link.
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Had a fun rum tasting evening with friends tonight. Blind tastings of bottles we brought from home or picked up from the store. All sipped neat. We took notes, compared notes, tallied rankings, and then unveiled which was which. I printed out this flavor wheel for everybody, which, though it was made for coffee, was kind of useful for providing some vocabulary for our notes.
Round one was Spanish style: Plantation 3 Stars, Plantation pineapple, Ron Zacapa 23, Flor de Caña 4, Ron de Barrelito, Don Q Añejo. The clear winner was, maybe obviously, the Ron Zacapa, which I'd never had. My word, what a fantastic rum! Best of the whole evening, hands down. Stiggins Fancy came in second, and the others were quite far behind, with 3 Star bringing up the rear.
Round two was aged agricoles and demeraras, with Barbancourt 8 and Clement VSOP in the first category and East London Liquor rum and El Dorado 5 in the second. The Clement won the French-style contest handily, and the El Dorado was easily the better of the Guyanese rums. The El Dorado was also new to me and probably the biggest pleasant surprise of the evening for me. Definitely the winner for value. Makes me want to try their 12 and 15 year rums.
Break for potluck Carribbean-inspired dinner (mofongo, jerk chicken, pepper pot soup, kale salad if you must know). Yum.
Last round was English style: Myer's dark, Cruzan blackstrap, Appleton blend, Pusser's, and Smith & Cross. The winner here was Pusser's, which surprised me a bit. Scoring was tight among the other four. Myer's edged out Cruzan among the darks. This was the most contentious round, with some tasters not having the Jamaican funkiness (the "papaya," "new leather," "toasted coconut," etc. of the earlier rounds had now turned into "cat piss" for some participants).
Of course some of these rums are sippers and others intended for mixing, and their performance in, say, a daiquiri, would likely result in different rankings. It's an imperfect methodology but made for a fun evening.
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Speaking of Rafa, here's tonight's PPX, Cognac (brandy), rye, PX sherry, Cynar, mole bitters, Islay rinse, expressed and discarded orange peel.
My orange zest was surprisingly generous so in the first few sips orange oil actually tamped down the strong flavors of sherry, Cynar, bitters, and Scotch. Strong iced-coffee-with-sugar effect, especially in the finish. On the sip I got a familiar taste I describe as metallic though I'm not sure that's the best word for it. I'd expected something thick and dark but in actuality this wasn't so heavy.
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Yes, I completed a batch of pineapple syrup but it was too hot in the kitchen to bother using it in anything!
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- Lustau Pedro Ximénez Sherry (El Candado)
- Dolin dry vermouth
- Smith & Cross rum
- Del Maguey Vida mezcal
- Regans' orange bitters
Complex and fascinating drink, I guess not surprising since it's made of complex and fascinating ingredients.
Enjoying this first bottle of PX sherry. It comes with a cute little padlock on the bottle top! Tastes like fig/date concentrate.
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Wine sale at the local shop meant sherry/vermouth restocking. Both sherries are new to me. (I've been on the lookout for a PX sherry for a while now.)
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Last night I tried a Silver Nail, which brightens up a Rusty Nail by splitting the base with gin and adding a little lemon juice. I quite liked it. I prefer it to any of my attempts at a more traditional Rusty Nail which are never quite as good as I want them to be.
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Here's the calculator I was using. Handy because you can specify the target volume (e.g. how to make 1 oz. of 86-proof rum). I think I'd put in 80 proof (rather than 86) which is where my ~1:1 ratio came from. You're right though, 4:3 rum:water would match the Hamilton rum more closely.
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4 minutes ago, tanstaafl2 said:
I don't have Hamilton 86 proof Demerara on hand (I typically just keep the overproof version) but most reviews describe it as having more smoky woody character than either of these two. That seems consistent with what I get from the overproof version.
I've been wondering for a while now: As I understand it, Hamilton imports high proof rum from Guyana and dilutes it to bottle the 86. Am I getting essentially the same rum by adding water to my 151 (online ABV calculators tell me to use 1:1)? I've tried it in recipes that call for a regular-proof demerara rum, and it seems to work, though I'm not a pro taster and I haven't had the bottled lower-proof stuff to compare. But this home dilution scheme greatly appeals to the cheapskate in me.
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Audrey Saunders' Re-animator
- La Favorite Blanc (Rhum JM)
- Lemon Hart 151 (Hamilton 151)
- Ginger beer
- Demerara syrup
- Green Chartreuse
- Lime juice
- Angostura bitters
- Cholula hot sauce (Tabasco)
- Nutmeg
Nice drink on a hot day, though the rums get buried. Certainly doesn't taste as high-proof as it must be.
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1 hour ago, scubadoo97 said:
Figure the syrup is so thick that they will last a long time in the fridge without a loss of quality.
The last jar I saw warned not to store in the fridge because the syrup may crystallize. But I think the shelf life is still quite long on these.
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The pear flavor really sings in this Bartlett Tartlet, which is more or less a pear sidecar. Somehow more pear-y than just drinking the brandy straight! Delicious.
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Sea of Cortez: Blanco tequila, lime, cassis, and Cointreau. Essentially a margarita with blackcurrant liqueur added. I might try a little salt next time, if not on the rim then thrown into the shaker.
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Returned to the Broken Flower, this time with proper cinnamon syrup, and a photo.
- 1 1⁄2 oz Espolon Reposado Tequila (Cazadores)
- 3⁄4 oz Cynar
- 1⁄2 oz Lime juice
- 1⁄2 oz Grapefruit juice
- 1⁄2 oz Cinnamon syrup
- 2 ds Bitters, Angostura
- Grapefruit twist
Five stars!
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@Rafa's Honeywell, which is a way of making a Rusty Nail using seven bottles and two fruits!
I see why "honey" is in the name, as this is a very sweet drink. Out-of-balance sweet at first sip, though I realized that the recipe's (discarded) orange twist and (inserted) lemon twist are intended as the key to counter the cloying aspect, and the zests I had at hand were limp and ungenerous, unfortunately. With better citrus this would have worked still better, though it's still a dessert-time sipper. Complex orange and complex tobacco under the honey.
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Taking my first swing at brandying cherries, following the Serious Eats recipe (plus a vanilla bean).
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An interesting one: Matt Tanner's Cassis de Dijon
- 1 oz Cruzan Blackstrap rum
- 3/4 oz Cassis
- 3/4 oz Lemon juice
- 1 barspoon Turbinado simple
- 1⁄2 barspoon Dijon mustard
- Not shown: blackberry and lemon wedge garnish
Would've never come up with this myself! Sweet and tart flavors predominate. A more predictable drink would counter that with something bitter, but here instead we get savory/spicy mustard.
This is the second time I've tried Dijon in a cocktail. The first was Jason Schiffer's Crippled Creek, which similarly works it against tart flavors (in that case, pomegranate instead of blackcurrant). Both work well to my taste!
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20 minutes ago, blue_dolphin said:
I recall you had some great Negroni Happy Hours planned last year. Are you doing something this year?
Good memory! I have some menu ideas for a reprise, though whether it happens this year will depend on whether my wife, recovering from minor surgery, will be up to running the "front of the house."
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The Ultimate Negroni Guide is a fun read, with tasting notes and ratings of just about every variation you can imagine.
Only a few days 'til Negroni Week!
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@Rafa's Cassingle Revival #2 (bourbon, Drambuie, Cointreau, and lemon juice in equal parts).
Quite lemony - gave me pleasant flashbacks to a kind of Italian lemon ice I remember having as a kid. Dominantly sweet and sour, but zesty and complex underneath that.
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I'd only had it before in a icy Rusty Nail with god-knows-what Scotch at an airport bar that left me unimpressed, so I didn't think of Drambuie as something I really wanted nor needed, but I bit on a gift-box clearance (750ml + 2 rocks glasses for <$20!) today. And really enjoyed my first sip.
Restocked some rye while I was there.
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Bartender Journey is the only one I've listened to. The host is not really a "natural" at this but his earnestness has some appeal. The quality of the episodes varies wildly, based on who the guest is (usually industry brand ambassadors). I learned a lot about mezcal from the episode with Misty Kolkofen, for example, but the most recent episode, on cannabis cocktails, was a goofy low.
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Cocktails with Bénédictine
in Spirits & Cocktails
Posted
That sounds good!
To my taste there was almost as much papaya as pineapple in that rum. It's good stuff.