Drinks! (2004–2007)

[Dan Ryan]

I'm working through an idea right now.  A Membrillo Manhattan.  Melted quince paste (I heated gently with apple juice concentrate and then whizzed with the stick blender), Maker's Mark, sweet vermouth, a dash of orange bitters.  First attempt was tasty, but the texture was awkward.  Need to find a way to make the reconstituted quince paste more liquid and less gelatinous.  Perhaps a splash of some sort of alcohol (I was thinking a wee bit of Applejack) after removing from the heat and a good straining through a fine mesh would do it.  The quince gives the drink a really good flavor and a bit of mouthfeel, which is nice, but currently there's some sludge left in the glass that's unattractive.

Any ideas or suggestions??

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Quince flavoured stuff with Zubrowka. Of course.

[raxelita]

Working on a plum rum thing for the fall, so far:

Plum compote syrup stuff: plums cooked down with a ball of cinn, star anise, clove, nutmeg and a touch of sugar.

Meyers gold rum

Dash lemon juice

burnt lemon peel

Shaken to hell and served up.

It's good; I want to put something like this on a Fall cocktail menu-- any suggestions to make it great? Dark rum maybe?

[KatieLoeb]

I think dark rum might overwhelm the "plumminess" of the drink. A nice gold rum could work.

How are you going to be able to source enough plum syrup? Are you just going to keep draining jars of compote? Sounds like a lot of work unless the kitchen needs the plums...

Nantucket Nectars makes a plum juice that's pretty tasty and fairly readily available I think. Might be easier to use.

I was contemplating a "Red Fruits Daiquiri" along these lines with rum, plum juice, pomegranate juice, Chambord and lime.

[raxelita]

We're going to make it all now from the plum bounty here, and freeze it in batches. I think the gold rum is best too, any ideas for a mid-priced good mixing gold?

Maybe orange would be better than lemon, back to the lab...

[cdh]

An Algonquin really hit the spot today. It is just autumnal enough to fit the early chill this fall, but is still sort of summery. Just right for this weather.

[KatieLoeb]

We're going to make it all now from the plum bounty here, and freeze it in batches.  I think the gold rum is best too, any ideas for a mid-priced good mixing gold?

Maybe orange would be better than lemon, back to the lab...

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My house gold rum for mixing is the Appleton's V/X. Very good flavor and reasonably priced.

How's that burnt lemon peel work with the drink? Burnt orange works great in many things, but I'd be afraid the burnt lemon might be too acrid. Does it work well??

[KatieLoeb]

Tonight's effort. A riff off of Ti Punch with the Rhum Clement samples I'm playing with of late:

Martinique Martini:

2 oz. Rhum Clement White Rhum agricole Canne Bleu

.5 oz. Clement Creole Shrub

.25 oz. Cane syrup

.25 oz. fresh squeezed lime juice

dash Fee Brother's Orange Flower water

Flamed Orange peel.

Shake together first five ingredients over ice until well chilled. Pour into a well chilled cocktail glass and garnish with a flamed orange peel.

[percyn]

Pyrat XO Reserve Rum - Fruity and nutty. Ideal with some lightly toadted almonds.

[Nathan]

I coined a drink this weekend that seemed to work well:

1 part gin, 1 part pear liquor, 1/2 part apricot brandy, shake well with ice...then add a touch of tonic water and pour into a martini glass.

[johnder]

1/2 part apricot brandy

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What Apricot brandy did you use? Brizzard?

[johnder]

Ok, tonights bizarro drink.

I was looking through the Jones cocktail book for drinks that could use some Parfait de Amore and came across the Windows Kiss and the Widows Kiss Variation

Widows Kiss

1 oz Apple Brandy

3/4 Yellow Chartreuse

3/4 Benedictine

Bitters

Strawberry

variation:

3/4 Parfait

3/4 Yellow Chartreuse

3/4 Benedictine

1/2 Egg White

While the Widows kiss seemed interesting I thought what if I did a version where I combined parts of the two.

1 oz Apple Brandy

3/4 Benedictine

1/2 Parfait

Barspool Homemade grendaine

Hess Bitters

Well, let's put it this way. It was interesting. Very complex, slightly overpowered by the Benedictine. I think a little citrus would round it out.

Before I try playing around with it some more, I am going to make the orignal recipe, but was wondering what they mean by strawberry. I am guessing it is used as a garnish, but I wonder what would happen it it was muddled.

So many questions!

[KatieLoeb]

Tonight's effort. A revisit to a former concept.

The Thai-pirina

half a lime, cored and sliced into small wedges

.75 oz. Ginger simple syrup

6 large fresh basil leaves, torn into small pieces

2.5 oz. cachaca

ginger ale

Muddle lime, simple syrup and basil in bottom of shaker. Fill with ice. Add cachaca and shake vigorously. Dump into a rocks glass and top with ginger ale. Stir gently.

Sip. Rinse. Repeat.

[raxelita]

That sounds great Katie. I've been looking for ways to drain off our bulk of cachaca. Right now we're doing a cachaca/cassis/lime soda, but it could be improved upon. Thanks for the inspiration.

[KatieLoeb]

That sounds great Katie.  I've been looking for ways to drain off our bulk of cachaca.  Right now we're doing a cachaca/cassis/lime soda, but it could be improved upon. Thanks for the inspiration.

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Let me know how it works for you. The key is really gingery simple syrup. I usually microplane the ginger into the hot syrup and let it cool. Strain and use ASAP. The kitchen at work makes ginger simple for us and slices the ginger thinly. That seems to work too, and is obviously a better solution when making big batches of it.

The cassis and lime combo sounds intriguing. I'll have to give that one a try too!

[johnder]

Last night I had many drinks -- one of the more memorable ones was a Vermont.

3/4 Gin

3/4 Applejack

3/4 Apry

3/4 Benedictine

3/4 Maple syrup

Pretty good although with the maple and apry it was a little too sweet. I think the Gin should be bumped up to 1 oz.

These drinks were with Donbert last night at his awesome cocktail soiree who I might add had an awesome booze colection.

[jmfangio]

Tonight's effort.  A revisit to a former concept.  The Thai-pirina

Katie - great minds think alike, or at least come up with the same silly puns. I made up a drink with the same name after I found some fresh kaffir limes at the Thai market. I just used a quarter of the kaffir lime (it's a very strong flavor), half a regular lime, lemongrass simple syrup, and since I thought it would be interesting to try all Asian ingredients, Awamori, a variety of sochu from Okinawa, distilled from long grain Thai rice.

Very nice flavor. I have a picture, but I'm fairly new to this forum and still need to figure out how to attach pictures to a post.

Next time I may add a little mint, and top it off with soda water. A Thaijito, perhaps?

[KatieLoeb]

Next time I may add a little mint, and top it off with soda water. A Thaijito, perhaps?

I love it! Or perhaps a faux-jito?

[Cachaca_Dave]

Something that I was drinking over at Donbert's "Cocktails Over Canal" on Saturday night was a very traditional Brazilian drink, the Mint Batida:

Muddle 6-8 mint leaves with 1 tsp superfine sugar and a splash of water. Add 4oz MdO cachaca, ice and stir well. Let it sit in the fridge for 15 minutes, strain over ice, makes 2 servings. Delicious

[eje]

I've been working on annoying layered cocktails from the Savoy Cocktail Book.

Out of frustration, I made one up more to my taste, based on something Katie Loeb recommended.

My idea was to call it the Angel's Loeb; but, I'd probably have to add cream to make it a true "Angel's" Cocktail.

Unnamed Cherry Rum Shooter

1/4 Cherry Brandy (Massenez Creme de Griotte)

1/4 Cointreau

1/2 Decent Aged Rum (Havana Club 7 year)

Drop a cherry (Toschi Amarena cherry) into a liqueur glass and pour ingredients carefully on top in order, so that they do not mix. Well, the rum and the cointreau probably will mix, but the cherry brandy should remain on the bottom. Garnish with a quarter of lime on top of glass. Squeeze lime in before imbibing.

Edited September 28, 2006 by eje (log)

[andy west]

Hey... this is my first post but had to reply to this one as i have been making and selling this for over a year now - inspired by a cocktail i tried at the sadly now defunct Che in london (thai collins - with coriander syrup)

ok so i made

fresh coriander

fresh lime juice - approx 1/2 - 5/8 a lime

12.5ml gomme syrup

50 ml bombay sapphire gin (important to use a really light gin here as otherwise the juniper gets in the way - but the coriander in the drink is matched by coriander in the botanicals in the gin)

50ml fiery ginger beer

1 large red chilli, holes scored into sides with knife

make this up like a standard mojito - muddle the coriander, add lime, sugar gin, churn, fill with ice, stir and top with ginger beer

finally use the chilli as stirrer - the heat from the chilli will slowly leach into the drink giving a very slight warmth (think hint of spice not bloody mary!) which counters the slight sweet edge...

selling simply as the thai mojito but could do with a better name - sadly the literary aspect of cocktail mixing always eludes me! any name suggestions?

[KatieLoeb]

I've been working on annoying layered cocktails from the Savoy Cocktail Book.

Out of frustration, I made one up more to my taste, based on something Katie Loeb recommended.

My idea was to call it the Angel's Loeb; but, I'd probably have to add cream to make it a true "Angel's" Cocktail.

Unnamed Cherry Rum Shooter

1/4 Cherry Brandy (Massenez Creme de Griotte)

1/4 Cointreau

1/2 Decent Aged Rum (Havana Club 7 year)

Drop a cherry (Toschi Amarena cherry) into a liqueur glass and pour ingredients carefully on top in order, so that they do not mix.  Well, the rum and the cointreau probably will mix, but the cherry brandy should remain on the bottom.  Garnish with a quarter of lime on top of glass.  Squeeze lime in before imbibing.

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How sweet to name a drink after me! Maybe you could use my first name instead of my last though? Might sound more appealing...

It sounds yummy! Interesting choice of ingredients too. I like cherry flavoring in almost any rum or tequila concoction.

[raxelita]

Been working on some kind of gin-based balsamic up drink-- instead we came up with the intriguingly

addictive combination of:

(a squeeze of) reduced balsamic

meyers gold rum

lemon juice

simple syrup

soda

Tastes like a lemony sweetened iced tea. No one wanted to like it, but we all found it irresistable. Now for a name...

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Also, in efforts to make cheap cachaca palatable, I soaked chilies, jalapenos and a few bonnets for 3 days in the stuff.

It resulted in a knock you on your ass spicy caipirina (sp?) with the addition of lime, sugar, and seltzer. Will be adding to the menu.

[raxelita]

Apple-Cardamom Cider

To a highball filled with ice I added:

2 oz Wild Turkey Rye

Short squirt of dark cardamom simple syrup

Squeeze of lemon

Dash orange bitters

Topped with about 2.5 oz Possmans Apple Cider

Fall

[Peter Green]

In our Cairo days we had what was referred to as "duty free priviliges". This meant that each month we could drop down to the government store and buy four bottles and one case of beer.

Now, if that had been reversed, we'd probably be in better shape today. But we figured that we had to get what we could.

After a few years, all of us found that we had enough gins and whiskeys and cognacs and armagnacs, so we'd fill out the bar with the odd bits: parfait d'amour, creme de menthe, things that glowed in the dark.

The problem is, around year five, you've sort of silted up with this stuff.

So, one night, as we were playing spoons, we came up with the bright idea of having the loser do shots, but he would call the next shot.

What started out with tequila quickly changed over to kahluas, ouzos, schnapps, and then....the glow in the darks.

It all came to a sorry end (several hours in) when J, after five creme de menthes in a row (you tend to lose more the more you drink) stood bolt upright, declared he had seen God, and fell over.

You be careful out there.

[Peter Green]

For layered drinks, have you tried the TKO?

Kahlua on the bottom.

Ouzo in the middle

Tequila on top

I may have the tequila and ouzo mixed around.

It doesn't sound very appetizing, but the total works well together.