Craig E

Tonight tried a Sea Pea Fizz, more or less: 3/4 oz. each Herbsaint, simple syrup, lemon juice, and aquafaba, dry shook and shook and strained and topped with soda. Actually I ran out of simple and was too lazy to mix up a new batch, so I supplemented with honey syrup I had on hand and that worked quite well. Wife and I agreed, though we're not huge anise-flavor fans, this was a winner. No pic, but here's the musical accompaniment.

One Flight Up: Campo de Encanto pisco (Capel), Dolin blanc, lemon, simple, orange flower water, Angostura bitters, and egg white (aquafaba), layered over Campari and soda, with orange and lemon twists. A fun drink with bitter bottom through the straw, and creamy orangey sips from the top.

Latest, and most successful, trial at a Presidente. I learned from other threads here that blanc rather than dry vermouth is probably historically accurate, and in any event better tasting. Starting point for these ratios was the Cienfuegos house recipe I found on Kindred, but an anonymous commenter there suggested Smith & Cross instead of the demerara rum in the spec, which I tried. So it was 3/4 oz Smith & Cross overproof rum 3/4 oz Clement unaged agricole 3/4 oz Dolin Blanc 1/4 Pierre Ferrand dry curacao 1 barspoon homemade grenadine lemon twist Stirred and served up.

Brought back by a friend who was in Düsseldorf for business.

This sounds like one of those barriers that prevents refilling, in which case it's designed precisely to be impossible to remove. Does the rum pour through it (maybe even requiring rolling the bottle a bit)?

On a lazy whim I poured Cappelletti Aperitivo and pineapple juice together, and it wasn't terrible.

Just made up some homemade grenadine (tried out this part-reduced, part-fresh Pom recipe but with orange blossom water instead of peels), so tried out a Miss Scarlet: 1 1/2 oz gin 1/2 oz lime 1/4 oz Cynar 3/4 oz grenadine dash Angostura The little bit of Cynar is the key to deepening this tart and refreshing drink. The red tartness reminded me of cranberries--really this was like a grown-up version of the familiar Ocean Spray cranberry juice drink.

Nice color-matching!

I couldn't glean anything from the bottle or the distillery website that would suggest some process that might be the culprit.

As I mentioned elsewhere, I recently obtained some Serra Preta cachaca which smelled startlingly like olive brine, and, neat, tasted more like a dirty martini than anything else. Didn't seem to me like a caipirinha would work especially well, so I went searching for more suitable cachaca recipes and came across the Grande Elixir on Kindred: 1 1/2 oz. Leblon cachaca (Serra Preta) 3/4 Yellow Chartreuse 1/2 lemon juice 1/2 honey syrup Lemon twist I thought the chartreuse, with its herbaceous bent, would provide some suitable context for the savory elements of the cachaca. And it worked well, the cachaca giving some productive tension to the lemon and honey dominant notes. Drinking it, more than anything I thought of lemon zest which is bright but also a little bitter. The friend who brought me the cachaca from Brazil was apologetic on sniffing the opened bottle, but I told her it's unforeseen ingredients like this that make mixing drinks more fun, and often make the resulting drinks more interesting.

I used my homemade version, following the Serious Eats recipe. I haven't had the bottled stuff so I'm not sure how the intensity compares, but as I said this was quite a "drammy" drink. Next time around I might try dialing it back. This Dead Man's Mule is terrific, and also calls for 1/2 oz. which to me wasn't too much when up against absinthe, orgeat, lime juice, and ginger beer.

Tonight I made a Mustache Ride, a Lion's Tail riff from Brad Thomas Parson's Amaro book. 1 1/2 oz. Bulleit bourbon (4 Roses) 1/2 oz. Cynar 3/4 oz. lemon 1/2 oz. "Joey Sunshine's Maple Simple Syrup" (1/3 oz. maple syrup) 1/2 oz. St. Elizabeth allspice dram (homemade) cherry and lemon twist garnish Flavors work together well, though there's no question that the allspice dram is the boss. The sweetener is supposed to be this complicated maple syrup syrup with black peppercorns, fennel seeds, cloves, allspice berries, cloves, nutmeg, star anise, and bay leaf. Sounds delish but I have my suspicions that in this drink those extra flavors would be either redundant with, or blown away by, the pimento dram.

Not bought, but brought back by a friend from a Brazil business trip! I've only sampled it: taste and especially nose has quite a strong green-olive brine character. Pondering the possibilities for mixing...

Eeyore's Requiem, a drink often discussed on these boards in the past. Had made it before but never with the right vermouth. Offers a subtle complexity, if you can call a drink with a Campari base subtle.

Here's a spicy Boulevardier variant, the Midnight Stroll. 1.5 rye, .75 Campari, .5 Ramazzotti, .25 PF dry curacao, dash Peychaud's, orange twist My wife suggested a pinch of salt wouldn't be out of order, and I think she's right.

El Dorado 8 (recalling @FrogPrincesserecommendation), Four Roses, and Wray & Nephew are new to me, the others are restocks. Happy to see the PF curacao available in a 375!

Last weekend I had the distinct pleasure of drinks at Attaboy in NYC. Among the drinks served to me was a Kingston Negroni, a familiar drink made new by using Gran Classico in place of Campari and Hamilton St. Lucian in place of Smith & Cross. That got me thinking about other ways to riff on this excellent drink. Tonight I tried S&C with Cappelletti and Dolin Blanc, equal parts, with a dash of saline solution. I used a grapefruit twist because I had a grapefruit going, but the brightness of a lemon twist might've been better. Worked out pretty well!

Tried out the Amaryllis which was posted by @David Santucci some eight (!) years ago. Or a version of it, since I subbed every ingredient. 1 3/4 oz. Tanqueray gin (I used Beefeater 24) 3/4 oz. M&R bianco vermouth (Dolin Blanc) 1/2 oz. Apry (R&W Orchard Apricot) 1/2 tsp. Hermes orange bitters (Regan's) This was nicely balanced, clean taste and a floral nose. I often find that apricot liqueur to be bullyish and lend an offputting medicinal edge to drinks, but that wasn't at all the case here. This was so spring-like that I would be tempted to call it light, though it's obviously rather spirituous.

The Real Horrorshow at Pouring Ribbons (El Dorado spiced rum, lemon, Yaguara Ouro cachaca, Lady Grey tea, cinnamon, Copper & Kings citrus absinthe, clarified milk). Drop-dead outstanding drink.

Last night had drinks with @Rafa, live and in person! Grateful to eGullet for introducing me to him. When in NYC don't miss out on the chance to buy a drink from him. Fantastic knowledge (as you all know) and fantastic sense of hospitality. I'd report on the actual drinks I had, but details are cloudy now.

I'm disappointed to see this series ending (or maybe better: regretful that I only caught onto it in month 94 of its 116-month run).

The other way around, the Neisson was spec'd. And I put in my Hamilton 151 full strength for what was intended to be a tamer demerara rum! I was pleased that the result didn't seem "raw" at all to me, but I guess the original specs would result in a smoother drink.

Here's a brand new cocktail, V for Vecchio, put together by a Reddit contributor: 1 oz Neisson Eleve Sous Bois rhum agricole (Clement Premiere Canne) 0.5 oz El Dorado 8 Demerara rum (Hamilton 151) 0.75 oz Vecchio Amaro del Capo 0.25 oz Pierre Ferrand dry curacao 1 barspoon St. Elizabeth allspice dram (homemade) 1 barspoon lime juice Stir on ice, double strain, garnish with 3 cherries and a lime twist. Always happy to see new ideas for using my Vecchio Amaro del Capo.

Thanks, I'll have to try that. The dry-vermouth version is on my list of classics that left me unimpressed.

Picked up Sasha Petraske's Regarding Cocktails, and tonight tried Ben Long's Gabriella. Pisco, lemon juice, simple syrup, muddled strawberry, served on crushed ice with strawberry and a pinch of salt atop. I crushed ice in a Lewis bag and then poured the shaken cocktail into a stemmed coupe, per the diagram in the book. I quickly realized that adding the ice would quickly overflow my little coupe, so I transferred it to a larger martini glass, which also was soon overfull. I sipped off half the drink to make it fit. Only then did I notice that the text specified a rocks glass, which makes far more sense--the diagram on the facing page must be a mistake the editor missed. Anyway, the book describes this as "a real crowd pleaser" and I can see that. It's really delicious.