Drinks! (2013 Part 1)

[EvergreenDan]

Rancho Gordo -- Fat Farm. Ha ha. But then "or maybe more" cracked up up too. I'm easily amused. That toddy sounds wonderful.

[Hassouni]

This kills.

Nemo Toddy

2 oz (or maybe more) Old Monk rum

1/2 oz (or maybe more) Smith & Cross rum

1/2 oz rich (2:1) Rancho Gordo piloncillo syrup

3/4 oz lime juice

3 dashes Bittermens xocolatl bitters

1" cube of ginger, grated on a microplane

Add the liquid ingredients into a mug. Put the grated ginger into a fine strainer and pour boiling water over it. Stir. No garnish.

What's a good approximation of Old Monk/

[Chris Amirault]

The Old Monk is so wacky... just use a softer Jamaican like Appleton V/X or 12, or maybe the Cruzan Single Barrel?

[EvergreenDan]

1 1/2 oz rye (Rittenhouse)

1 1/2 oz Lapsang Souchong tea (very strong)

2 dash Boker's bitters

Maybe not the perfect expression of the idea, but unsweetened cocktails are intriguing. Surely we need more than a Martini, no?

[emmalish]

I picked up some Tomr's Tonic the other day. I'll be honest, I only bought it because I liked the bottle - I've had a gin & tonic once in my life and I wasn't really a fan, but I'm trying to try new things and develop my palate. I've never used a tonic syrup before, so I followed the proportions from Tomr's site - and I'm really enjoying this. I could definitely have this drink more often.

1 oz Tomr's syrup

2 oz gin (I used Tanqueray)

3 oz seltzer

[Chris Amirault]

Snooped around for a way to combine Dolin blanc with that Pierre Ferrand dry curacao and found this "Bijou cocktail variation" on cocktaildb.com. Made it with Broker's gin and the half-Regan's/half-Fee's orange bitters and bumping up the vermouth to 1 oz, it's just a bit too sweet, so I'd go with something along these lines next time:

1 1/2 oz London dry gin (Broker's, though Tanqueray or Beefeater would also work I think)

1 oz dry vermouth (Dolin)

1/2 oz curacao (Pierre Ferrand)

dash Fee's orange bitters

dash Regan's orange bitters

Stir; strain; coupe; lemon twist.

[tanstaafl2]

Looking for a cocktail or two to use as an introductory cocktail to novices 9primarily women) who haven't been much into cocktails in the past beyond the sweet fruity vodka types and are not generally fans of spirits neat.

Can use any base spirit but brown spirits preferred if possible. Probably needs to be on the sweeter side. My inclination in this kind of situation is to reach for rum first but something using bourbon would be good as well. Looking for a "gateway" cocktail!

Seems like I have seen this topic at least touched on in the past but not having much look with searching for it. I have a few ideas but any additional suggestions or links appreciated!

[Hassouni]

An Outrigger, which is a Sidecar replacing the cognac with aged rum, and the lemon with lime

[emmalish]

I finally bought a bottle of maraschino liqueur, so tonight I'm trying a Last Word.

3/4 oz gin

3/4 oz green chartreuse

3/4 oz maraschino liqueur

3/4 oz lime juice

I might actually use up my chartreuse with this one.

[Adam George]

What gin did you choose?

[emmalish]

Based on past experience, I didn't think I liked gin. But I'm now discovering I may have just had some bad drinks previously. Right now all I've got is a small bottle of Tanqueray, but between this drink and my newly discovered love for gin & tonic I'm probably going to pick up another option soon. Any recommendations?

[Adam George]

Plymouth will offer a contrasting, softer option and Beefeater for a more citrusy, fruity London Dry.

Tanqueray is perfect in a Last Word, though. Nice and assertive.

[emmalish]

Good to know! I was really happy with the end result with the Tanqueray.

[Hassouni]

Last Word is one of my favorite drinks, and I found a place that sells Chartreuse for $47 so next time I'm in the area I'm buying some. Anyone tried a LW with Beefeater or Broker's?

[earlofego]

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.

[Rafa]

A Kingston Bijou, or Rough Gem if you prefer, with 1/2 oz green Chartreuse, 3/4 oz Punt e Mes, and 1.5 oz Smith and Cross. The Chartreuse dominated the first few sips and then retreated to the background, donating minty herbal notes to the grape of the vermouth and the hogo of the rum. The liqueurs seemed to mitigate the rum's fruit esters, drawing out interesting lingering leather as the drink evolved. Overall it was a curious, enjoyable, but unbalanced drink; I'd like to try it again with different proportions, perhaps with a less attentional vermouth. Maybe even a dry vermouth paired with yellow Chartreuse?

[Rafa]

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.

[emmalish]

Went to a bitters seminar last night at the Modern Bartender in Vancouver (great little store!). One of the cocktails they served us was a Trinidad Sour. Very tasty. Spicy. I didn't write down the recipe they used, but what Kindred lists sounds right...

1/2 oz rittenhouse rye

3/4 oz lemon juice

1 oz orgeat

1 oz angostura bitters

[Adam George]

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.

IMG_1665.JPG

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

[earlofego]

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.

[earlofego]

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.

[earlofego]

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.

[Rafa]

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.

I Tikified it: I cut back considerably on the pineapple and a bit on the Chartreuse, added a heft of lime, dry ginger beer (basically fresh ginger juice), a bit of falernum because the spice plays well with the herbal ingredients, and a bit of Lemon Hart 151. The result sounds like a mess on the page but is really promising, and not too sweet, on the tongue; I'm currently just tinkering with the proportions to make sure every ingredient is properly integrated and shown off. I built a web of flavor combos I know work well (Chartreuse-Fernet, Chartreuse-pineapple-falernum, Fernet-ginger, ginger-fernet...) and I ended up with something too austere and slow-sipping to work as the Zombie-style tall drink I'd originally intended, so I cut the proportions in half and am now serving it up. I've never worked on a recipe with this many ingredients and I can't say I'm in a hurry to do it again. It's gotten good reviews from guests, at least.

[KD1191]

Building off the Paper Plane template, today it was an Island Hopper

3/4 oz Lemon Hart 151

3/4 oz Noilly Prat Ambre (Cocchi Americano would probably be good here)

3/4 oz Campari

3/4 oz Grapefruit Juice

[Rafa]

For my pre-Oscars drink last night, inspired by a salad dressing I'd made earlier with passion fruit, I shook up a Port Light with Buffalo Trace, B. G. Reynolds' passion fruit syrup, and homemade grenadine. (The cocktail is normally blended, but I prefer the texture and dilution I get from shaking in this case.) Still in a tropical mood but wanting something darker and more dessert-y, I whipped up this:

1.5 oz Cruzan Black Strap rum

1 oz lemon

.5 oz falernum syrup (homemade)

.25 passion fruit syrup

3 drops Dr. Adam Elmegirab's Aphrodite bitters

3 drops Bittercube Jamaican #1

Plenty of ice.

A bit sweet for some, but it really hit the spot. The dark molasses flavor contrasted excitingly with the bright glints of spice and fruit from the bitters and syrups. Will make again.