Craig E
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Posts posted by Craig E
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Couple of recent keepers, both nicely balanced:
- 1 oz Rye
- 1 oz Cognac
- 1 oz Sweet vermouth
- 1/4 oz Maraschino Liqueur
- 3 ds Absinthe (I used a barspoon)
- 2 ds Bitters, Angostura
Stir with ice, strain into a cocktail glass, and garnish with a lemon twist.
Inventor Frederic Yarm described this as a Saratoga with the "improved" treatment. Also brings to mind faves like the Sazerac and Red Hook. Some very verbose labels on these ingredients!
- 1 oz Cynar
- 1 oz Dry vermouth, Dolin
- 1 oz Becherovka
- 1 ds Bitters, Bittermens Xocolatl Mole
- 1 bsp Jamaican rum, Smith & Cross
Stir/strain/rocks/lemon twist ( I used orange)
Unsure if I was supposed to float the rum--I stirred it in. This was a tasty autumnal drink. Flavors akin to boozier sippers but lighter octane.
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16 hours ago, haresfur said:
A simple martini variation, but I'm quite happy with it (and I have dry vermouth on hand that should be used up)
martini with pimento dram1 1⁄2 oz Gin, Tanqueray 1⁄2 oz Dry vermouth, Noilly Prat 2 bsp Allspice Dram Thanks, tried this tonight and quite enjoyed it. A martini crossed with a pink gin. The dram (I used homemade, from the Serious Eats recipe) comes in on the finish, reminding me of winter holiday festivity.
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Used my sage syrup (from a pre-frost harvesting from my garden) in a Tom Collins riff:
- 2 1/4 oz Uncle Val's Botanical gin
- juice of 1 1/2 small lemons
- 3/4 oz sage syrup
- club soda to top
- fennel bitters float
Yum!
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Tried Zachary Pearson's Sunny Disposition with some subs.
- 2 oz Blanco tequila (El Mayor)
- 1/2 oz Suze (Bittermens Amere Sauvage)
- 1/2 oz Dry apricot brandy (Rothman & Winter Orchard Apricot liqueur)
- 1/2 oz Lemon juice
- 1 ds Bitters, Boker's (Fee Bros. Cardamom bitters)
I recognize that the brandy spec'ed in the recipe is quite different from (namely, far less sweet than) the apricot liqueur I have on hand, but the comments on Kindred encouraged me to try the sub nonetheless.
This wasn't delicious and with the relentless bitterness of the Amere Sauvage it is not a crowd pleaser. But it was super interesting. Very green agave aroma, maybe even pickles. Sip is where the fruit enters, apricot but also white grapefruit. Then in the finish the raspy wooden bitterness joins up with the grapefruit. That long bitterness pushes you to the next sip. Fun drink inasmuch as the character changes strikingly between nose and sip and swallow.
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A new original:
- 2 oz Cappelletti aperitivo
- 1 oz Tattersall aquavit
- 2 dashes Regans' orange bitters
Served on the rocks with an orange twist. Sweet and refreshing but also interesting. Next night I tried the same but topped with an ounce or so of soda, which brought it into the territory of an Aperol Spritz.
I'm calling it Cap & Snaps.
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I'm a big fan of the Fernet & Jerry.
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Just followed suit with a Sour Liberal: equal parts rye, sweet vermouth, Amer Picon (Boudreau), lemon juice, and a dash orange bitters. Not bad. A little surprised at how much the acid tamped down the assertiveness of the amer.
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Dunno if you can find it where you are, but Minnesota-made Tattersall is excellent.
Broker's gin is a straightforward and reasonably priced but nice quality gin from England. And it comes with a tiny hat.
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From @JoNorvelleWalker posting history I think the reference is to Methode Rotuts, which I gather is an experiment in carbonating wine.
But on a hot day I think the dilution is a feature, not a bug.
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Came up with a new Negroni variant that I rather liked: equal parts Cappelletti, Jägermeister, and Beefeater gin. Intended a lemon twist but my citrus was dried up. Goes into my rotation.
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Ruirita
by Michael Dietsch- 2 oz Blanco tequila
- 1/2 oz Cynar
- 1/2 oz Lime juice
- 1/4 oz Simple syrup
- 3 ds Rhubarb bitters
- 2 dr Orange flower water (to rinse glass)
Rinse chilled glass with orange flower water, pour out excess. Shake, strain, up.
Made this with some homemade rhubarb bitters (a riff on this recipe) that I imagine might be more complex and more bitter than the Fee's called for in the spec (though I've never tried Fee's). Every sip of this was a really interesting pan down from bright, floral, tropical-fruity at the outset to rich, bitter, chocolatey on the finish, from the Cynar and bitters. I really get a kick out of drinks like this that have a definite transformation on the palate.
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The Sidecar is a classic cognac cocktail that could be a middle option between sipping and cooking.
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I think it's fair to say I've discovered (in the 1913 Straub's Manual of Mixed Drinks) the worst cocktail name ever:
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As a follow-up to the Stink Eye and Side Eye (2 posts up), may I present the Pink Eye.
- 2 oz gin
- 3/4 oz Punt e Mes
- 1/4 oz Campari
- 1/4 oz Amere Sauvage
- 1/2 oz half & half
- 1/2 oz cherry shrub
- Peychaud's bitters float
Again here, the name and concept came first. So what would have the look and flavor impression of conjunctivitis, but still be a good drink? 😄
This took a few iterations. The eyeball-like opacity comes from half-and-half, the initial sharpness from gin and, faintly, the vinegar of the shrub, fruitiness in the middle from the cherry and the Punt e Mes, some challenge in the finish from Campari and gentian liqueur. Peychaud's on top adds some anise-y nose but more importantly gives the broken blood vessel look. An ice sphere is conceptually indispensable.
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A colleague of mine challenged me to invent something new based on a name she thought would be great: Stink Eye.
I though something that had a late-arriving and persisting bitterness would be appropriate. The quasi-medicinal, "this is good for you" aspect of fernet seemed like a good vehicle to include. Layered that bitterness with some from Cynar, from Punt e Mes, and from black walnut bitters, on a more-or-less Manhattany template, choosing an agreeable bourbon as the base spirit. Brightened with some lemon oil.
So: stir 2 oz. Knob Creek bourbon, 3/4 oz Punt e Mes, 1/4 ea. Cynar and Fernet Branca, dash walnut bitters, strain and serve up with a lemon peel expressed and discarded.
I think the ratios seemed right on out of the gate! Worked just like I'd hoped: smooth but spirituous and somewhat sweet sip, fading out, then a rapid fade-in of nutty, herby, and bitter finger-wagging.
EDIT: @EvergreenDan asked about subs for fernet-averse drinkers, and one of my suggestions was Vecchio Amaro del Capo. He said that worked well and I tried it and agreed! That variant I'm calling a Side Eye.
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Two new-to-me tipples that I enjoyed last week. Both of these really brought out the best of these ingredients, many of which are personal favorites.
Flying Dutchman (Jardinière)
by Brian MacGregor, Jardinière, San Francisco, CA.- 1 1/2 oz Genever, Bols (Boomsma)
- 3/4 oz Bénédictine
- 3/4 oz Yellow Chartreuse (Strega)
- 3/4 oz Lemon juice
Shake, strain, up.
Nice complexity and groundedness. My wife and I were trying to put our finger on this pleasant underlying flavor, and the best we could do was to say it was like a smoky flavor but without the smoke.
Duplex (no pic)
by DavisSqPro, chowhound- 2 oz Punt e Mes
- 2 oz Lillet Blanc (Cocchi Americano)
- 2 ds Orange bitters
Stir, strain, wine glass, lemon twist.
This finishes a little syrupy as I'd feared, but the flavors are delightful—bubblegum, dates, herbs. That sounds kind of gross when I say it out loud but I really liked it.
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Found this Professor's Row recipe on Reddit, and was able to approximate it:
- 1.5 oz Del Maguey Vida mezcal (El Rey Zapoteca anejo)
- .5 oz Averna
- .5 oz Apry apricot liqueur (Rothman & Winter)
- .5 oz Fino sherry (La Guita manzanilla)
- 1 dash black walnut bitters
- 1 dash orange bitters
Though I'm not the biggest mezcal fan, I really liked this. (It helped that I think this mezcal a friend brought back for me from Oaxaca is high quality.)
This was rich (maybe darker with my substitutions?), smoky, tobacco-ey. The finish was chocolatey, reminding me of mole sauce.
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Stumbled across the recipe for the Kal Katz, a 1932 recipe from Havana that traveled via Tom Sandham's book and Frederic Yarm's blog to @Rafa's post on Kindred Cocktails. An unpredictable mix of ingredients:
- 1 oz light rum
- 1 oz dry vermouth
- 1 oz pineapple juice
- dash creme de menthe
- dash maraschino
Clean and open, with flavors playing together well. Would no doubt be still better with a higher quality creme de menthe than what I have in stock. Likably interesting.
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It could work at a smaller volume for sure, but in my experience the richness was balanced by the upfront acidity of vinegar, the bite of the Amer (following suggestions on Kindred I replaced the water in Boudreau's recipe with vodka, so it has some assertiveness), and the dilution of the ice. Also, the juice from my Egbert's cherry jar is less thick and syrupy than something like Luxardo (though it's still plenty sweet).
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This seems like as good a place as any to post a new invention I came up with for reddit's Are You Afraid of the Dark cocktail challenge. The idea is to get as black a result as you can imagine (without resorting to coloring tricks like charcoal).
I surveyed the dark stuff in my bar and came up with:
- 1 1/2 oz Cruzan blackstrap rum
- 1 oz Amer Boudreau
- 1/2 oz balsamic vinegar
- 1/4 oz syrup from brandied cherries
Stir; strain; one big rock.
As I mentioned on reddit, this is kind of a bizarro-world daiquiri. I quite like the prominent balsamic flavor: it occurs to me that balsamic's darker acidity bears an analogous relationship to lime juice that blackstrap rum does to a white rum.
I take it as a proud measure of my growing mixology skills that the proportions I tried out first seemed spot-on—a first!
The complaints upthread about Cruzan Blackstrap's unsubtle tendency to take over drinks are true to my experience too, but here I thought the other ingredients hold their own against it.
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Overhead light in my bar is on the fritz but I didn't let that deter me.
Tried Panic Button
by Dewberry Hotel, Charleston, SC- 1 1/2 oz Bourbon
- 3/4 oz Averna
- 1/2 oz Campari
- 1/2 oz Cherry Heering (Tattersall Sour Cherry)
- 1/4 oz Lemon juice
- 1 twst Lemon peel (Expressed)
The recipe calls for a small ice ball in the coupe as a "garnish," which seems gimmicky but I dutifully executed.
The result: I got a strong Angostura bitters flavor from this: the woody, cherry, clovey, bitter flavors that I know and like from Ango-heavy drinks like the Trinidad Sour came immediately to mind.
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I'm not a super infusion expert but I'd guess that when your concoction has the taste you want, you might be better off removing the solids. Flavors and preservation can be compromised by stuff sitting in there too long. (Extraction is accelerated by the sous-vide process but it continues at room temperature.)
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Big restocking and stocking up at the wine sale. Most excited about the 3 that are new to me: aged rhum agricole, genever, and madeira.
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London cocktail bar suggestions?
in Spirits & Cocktails
Posted
I’m back in London for a bit and thinking my cocktail bar target list is outdated. Anybody have suggestions for top places to go nowadays? Not into gimmicky showmanship, overpriced hotel bars that are only about posh ambiance, nor overcrowded hipster scenes. So far I’ve been to Oriole, and Trailer Happiness and whatever Mr. Lyan’s latest thing is called are on the agenda. In past trips I’ve liked Satan’s Whiskers, Blind Pig, and White Lyan. What shouldn’t I miss?