Spirited Remix

DLDGLG's Drink.Write Wrap-Up

2012-01-12T12:16:00.002-05:00

In December of 2011 I attended the Cocktail and Spirits Online Writers Group's Drink.Write event series, which was a host of events held for booze bloggers and enthusiasts in Washington, DC. The events, conveniently, were bookends to the 2011 Repeal Day Ball, a grand event which celebrates the repeal of Prohibition many years ago.

Before saying more, I'll simply direct you to Done like Dundee, Gone like Gandhi, a humble blog run by an admirable young chap named Anthony who, in addition to a full time job, moonlights as a bartender at the bar of Last Exit in the District's Mount Pleasant. His writing reflects his love of drinking but also his ability to sling drinks from behind the bar.

Anthony attended Drink.Write and has splendidly documented the tale right here, and it includes great pictures of all of us!

If you'd like to be kept abreast of any future Drink.Write events, you can email SeanMike Whipkey at seanmike (at) gmail.com.

Infusion #5: Umeshu, Part II

2012-01-09T11:55:00.004-05:00

Five months ago I let a few whole green pluots begin soaking in a bunch of soju. This was in a shoddy attempt to create my own version of umeshu, an East Asian plum "wine".

Because I'm on the other side of the earth, I settled for trying the recipe using an unripe version of some new-fangled cross-species instead of a traditional asian plum.

Much like seeing a movie before reading the book on which it was based, I can't tell you how faithful the final product is, but I can tell you how good it is.

It's good!

The infusion product ended up being a pale brown with almost a hue of green... ("before" and "after" pictured above) not bad considering that all this color was infused through the skin of the pluots.

The sweetness of the stuff is almost just right, between the initial sweetness of soju and the added sugar pulled from the fruit. Because of this, I only needed to add a bit of rich simple syrup in order to get it to my liking.

The final flavor is overwhelmingly of overripe plums... or even prunes, if you will. As someone who enjoys prune juice, I certainly enjoy this. A determined effort will reveal slight "green" flavors of sour plum and even perhaps the tannins that were once there. Sipping this umeshu certainly isn't a contemplative process where one strives to pick out flavors from a complex sip, but the process is, without a doubt, pleasant.

I would consider this umeshu infusion an overall success, though I have a feeling that my final brew is nothing like the real thing.

Guilty Pleasure

2012-01-01T21:13:00.005-05:00

Even your average fan of fine film or fine food might occasionally enjoy a Kevin Smith flick or a Twinkie, no? Even a student of fine cocktails might occasionally enjoy a less-than-fine drink, am I right?

There's nothing wrong with a guilty pleasure, so long as you consciously recognize why it's guilty.

To make you feel better, here are five guilty pleasures of the legendary Jeffrey Morgenthaler.

Mine? It changes occasionally, but my go-to is the Blue Hawaiian cocktail. My preferred recipe has varied over the years, but here's my current one. Don't judge me, just drink.

Blue Hawaiian

1 oz cream of coconut
1 oz blue curacao
1.5 oz light rum
4 oz pineapple juice
1 dash lime juice

Shake everything in a shaker with ice cubes of any size, and strain into a tall glass with crushed or cubed ice. Garnish with anything as long as it's orange to contrast with the blue.

The Cask: Round 7

2011-12-08T20:37:00.003-05:00

Well, I've gone and done it. Because of certain life circumstances (and an overall lack of confidence on how the aging wine was turning out), I let the Sauvignon Blanc sit in the barrel way too long. What began as a whimsical and haphazard experiment slowly morphed into an exercise in morbid curiosity. Well, it ends today.

If you'll recall, I poured a bit of the New Zealand Nobilo Sauvignon Blanc into my small barrel to see if would age poorly. It turned out to age quite poorly. The slight initial sweetness of the wine was overtaken by sourness. Much like how I slowly saw the aged apple brandy turn disgusting and then back again to great, I thought the same might happen to the wine. I was wrong.

I evacuated the wine and found that about 40% had been given to the angels (because of the long aging time... the longest so far in this series). The remaining mixture had a brown tint almost as dark as whiskey. The smell, as expected, was a confusing mixture of light white wine and heavy oak. The flavor was similar to the smell, but with an overpowering vinegary sourness that seems to cut the tongue. The overall experience is not unlike a dry vermouth, but with much more age and acid in it. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with this stuff yet.

I'm going to give the barrel a rest, especially considering that its wood is soaked in sour wine. I'm going to be leaving the bung removed so that the inside can thoroughly dry as it sits. Once that's accomplished, I'll consider refilling it.

Easy Christmas Bitters Made at Home

2011-12-01T16:35:00.000-05:00

Here is your chance to easily make your first bitters at home, if you haven't already.

Several times now I've written about making your own home-made bitters. The jist of the process is soaking a variety of herbs, spices, roots, etc. in alcohol to create a strong and bitter concoction which tastes delicious when added to spirits a dash at a time.

Well, I just realized a really easy way to make them: mulling spices. I'm talking about the packets of spices that you can find anywhere in supermarkets at this time of year. Occasionally you'll find a dissolvable powder that claims to be mulling spices, but I'm talking about the roughly chopped stuff that resembles (and can be used as) potpourri. The mix usually contains cinnamon, orange zest, cloves, allspice, and occasionally nutmeg.

What you have here is a pre-fabricated mix of a variety of spices begging to be soaked in alcohol. Simply pour the spices into a bottle or jar of vodka/grain alcohol. As we've learned, one wants to let the source soak in the booze for as long as possible... a week or two should suffice. When it's done, one only need strain the mixture through cheesecloth or coffee filter.

This soak will yield you a very potent tincture. All you need is to add some sort of bittering agent to your mulling spices in order to turn your resulting tincture into bitters. Derek Brown gives a short list of bittering agents here. You can also browse this list compiled by Darcy O'Neil to find a few more bittering options.

I added a few pieces of star anise to my mulling spices, along with some wormwood. Ten days later, I have my Christmas(y) bitters. A dash or two of the stuff to any drink gives it a nice merry touch. It's great in a rye Manhattan, and even better in a brandy Old Fashioned.

If you've never made bitters at home before, here is your golden chance to start. You can probably find some mulling spices on your way home. Look at the lists I provided to find a bittering agent you can procure. If you start now, you could have your easy Christmas bitters before Christmas.

Go to PKNY

2011-11-21T14:51:00.006-05:00

In the first visit to New York City of my adult life, I of course all but bee-lined it to PKNY, what people are already call one of the best tiki bars in the world.

The Shirt (myself) and the Skirt moseyed into the joint in the early evening of a Sunday night. We found that we were the only customers, and so we mused about all things tiki and otherwise with the bar's head bartender Valentin Gonzalez and a quickly-advancing minion of his, Kigan, who, I declare right now, will one day have a big name within tiki circles.

Considering the lack of thought needed to decide for myself that PKNY was on top of the list of places to visit in NYC, I found that it took a similar amount of thought to decide that my first drink would be a 1935 Zombie. PKNY serves several versions of the Zombie, with each one attempting to duplicate the minor recipe variations that came about through the years since its creation. The Skirt ordered PKNY's famous Pina Colada, which has been meticulously developed to be the highest quality Pina Colada that anyone's probably ever had. (Pictured below.)

We ordered other drinks, of course. They made a few off-the-cuff creations and were even able to work around my peculiar food allergies. We found ourselves the only patrons in the place for a good two hours, and so we simply drank and were merry with our tropical hosts. At the end of it, on the way out, the Skirt took a photo of me in front of the inconspicuous entrance... a photo I swear I can't even remember being taken. That's the danger when high proof booze is so freaking interesting to drink.

Go to PKNY. The breadth of their menu is the most impressive I've seen in a bar. They buy as few products as possible for their inventory, and they hand-craft the rest. Their recipes are more authentic than any bar I've been to. Their staff is knowledgeable and enthusiastic about their work. Their rum selection impresses even the well-educated rum enthusiast. Their decor is authentic, right down to their tiki mugs and the long straws meant for the communal Scorpion Bowls. Their drinks are incredible, and are a lesson in tiki drinks, and in cocktails in general.

Go to PKNY.

Infusion #6: A Food Network Monstrosity

2011-11-04T19:33:00.009-04:00

I love television. A great deal of my time watching TV is centered on the Food Network. I love the cuisine and personalities on the Food Network, but I’ve learned to disrespect most of the alcoholic beverage recipes that I see on the channel. Most of them contain some sort of soft drink (Sandra Lee is running out of ways to mix vodka and lemon-lime soda) and the rest are usually sweetened beyond balance and into the realm of mass commercial appeal.

But a few weeks ago I found my face even more contorted in astonishment than usual while I was watching Claire Robinson’s “5 Ingredient Fix”. Her show is a pretty good one: each prepared dish contains only five ingredients, and I’m generally pleased by her recipes, though I feel she dumbs her techniques down a bit.

Anyway, Ms. Robinson was infusing vodka. Normally I wouldn’t pay much notice, but this time she was infusing with squash. The recipe is for “Spicy Pumpkin Vodka”. I decided that it was so crazy that I had to do it myself.

The recipe is simple: one infuses 3 cups of vodka with 2 cups of pumpkin or kabocha squash, 2 vanilla beans, a stick of (cassia) cinnamon, and 3 pieces of candied ginger.

To prepare the squash, you lightly roast it in order to purge a bit of moisture and to get the flesh sweet, then cut it into small chunks in order to increase the surface area for the infusion. I used pumpkin, as I could not find any kabocha squash.

This infusion calls for an infusing time of 3 days.

At the end of the infusion, I was quite surprised with the result. I thought that the thick, dense flesh of the pumpkin would impart very little flavor to the vodka, but I was very wrong.

While the nose of the stuff is vanilla and alcohol only, the sip offers something more intriguing. The warmness of the cinnamon and the sweetness of the pumpkin combine immediately with sharp spiciness of the ginger to create a flavor very much like gingerbread, a flavor I’ve seldom come across in the spirit world. The cinnamon comes back mid-palate with the vanilla rounding it out. The swallow brings vegetal pumpkin and ginger notes that border on maltiness as it goes down.

Ms. Robinson insists that you chill this vodka and consume as a shot, but I found that doing so dulls all of the flavor into mediocrity. Sipping this at room temperature is quite enjoyable, and I bet it'd be great if you put a half ounce or so into a Manhattan.

This is a good little recipe, but it's not cheap to make. Depending on how cheap you can find your pumpkin or your ginger, and especially using 2 whole vanilla beans for 3 cups of vodka, the end product's value isn't high. Also, the yielded infusion is even less liquid than you’d think, since the pumpkin does a good job of soaking quite a bit up. But it’s a fun experiment nonetheless. Go out and make some now, just in time for Thanksgiving and Christmas parties. You can still find pumpkins and kabocha in the markets – I promise.

Egotistical cocktails, Part 1

2011-10-15T15:32:00.002-04:00

If the Old Fashioned was the spark of life that would eventually become the modern cocktail, then the Improved Cocktail was the amoeba. Jerry Thomas himself first documented it as more exotic ingredients become more readily available for use in mixing drinks in the late 19th Century.

The Old Fashioned cocktail, as we've said, is a way to season your spirit and to make it a bit more palatable. The Improved Cocktail builds upon that recipe to enhance the complexity just a bit. This time around, all you need to add to your Old Fashioned to make it Improved is a bit of Absinthe and Maraschino liqueur.

Improved Cocktail

2 oz spirit
1 dash simple syrup
1 dash aromatic bitters
1 dash Maraschino
1 dash absinthe

Stir with ice and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with lemon twist.

It doesn't sound like much, but Thomas knew what he was doing when he codified this thing into the printing press. I'll reiterate that I'm not fanboy of Maraschino or absinthe either, for that matter, and yet the Improved Cocktail impresses me every time I make it.

Much like the Old Fashioned, you can swap the spirit for whatever you like (and the bitters and garnish, accordingly) and it will usually work. My favorite Improved Cocktail is made with my beloved Cruzan Black Strap rum. There's something about the pungency of the rum's molasses flavors that stand up to the strong absinthe and Maraschino like no other spirit I've had so far(except for maybe Scotch whisky). I also tend to like my Improved Cocktails on the rocks.

I wrote about humility a while back, and why I wasn't giving my own name to a cocktail that I thought didn't deserve one. Since then, I've gotten encouragement to shed humility by going ahead and naming cocktails that I've made, even if doing so seemed a bit exorbitant.

So technically you could call this an Improved Black Strap Cocktail on the rocks, but instead it will be...

ORIGINAL REMIX

Oklahoma

1.5-2 oz Cruzan Black Strap rum
heavy dash simple syrup
heavy dash aromatic bitters
heavy dash Maraschino
heavy dash absinthe

Build over ice in small tumbler. Garnish with orange twist.

Dick Farm Dunn

2011-09-03T20:01:00.004-04:00

For the last while I've been very interested in fruity wine varietals like Sauvignon Blanc and Zinfandel. One of the thing that keeps me coming back to Zinfandels is their fiery dry character that's in addition to their fruitiness. I've spent quite a bit of time trying to come up with a drink that helps highlight both the fruit and the spicy dryness of the wine, and I think I've finally got it.

Without going too much into it, I think this drink, which is lively and sweet but also brash and a bit biting in dryness, perfectly fits the man which it honors, if I understand everything correctly. If you don't have a real grenadine made from pomegranates, just use simple syrup.

ORIGINAL REMIX

Dick Farm Dunn

3oz Zinfandel
2 dashes grenadine
2 dashes triple sec
6 dashes aromatic bitters

Build in a wine goblet with cracked ice and stir.

RIP Ryan Dunn

Infusion #5: Umeshu, Part I

2011-08-22T17:37:00.003-04:00

A small project I’ve been meaning to tackle for years now is the ability to make one’s own plum wine at home… more specifically, umeshu. Technically, umeshu isn’t a wine at all (though it’s called so), but in fact a liqueur.

Umeshu might be the simplest infusion yet done on this site, though its simplicity in preparation demands patience for the infusing. Umeshu is created by soaking whole green plums in soju.

Green plums aren't just unripe plums (though they can be). Because this is an east Asian recipe, what can be assumed required is one of several varieties of Korean plum, most of which ripen to a light green color. Their taste is sweet, though perhaps not as sweet as some of the darker species that you can find. I myself don't have direct access to unripe Asian plums, but what I did find recently in my local store was less-than-ripe green pluots. I know that they're not nearly the same as for what traditional umeshu calls, but I'm going for it.

Soju is a Korean spirit that you'll find more and more nowadays, if you make an effort. It's a mid-proof mostly neutral spirit that is traditionally made from rice, though modern versions can be made from grain and sweet potatoes as well. Most soju also has just a bit of sugar added at the end of production, so the result is a slightly sweet liquor that is about 40 proof (on average) and very subtle in flavor. By the way, soju is not to be confused (which it commonly is), with shochu or baijiu, their Japanese and Chinese counterparts which tend to be more commonly made from rice only and are also higher proof.

The method of infusion couldn't be simpler: wash the fruits and soak them whole in soju for at least a few months. This method concerns me a bit. From my limited experience with infusing whole fruits in liquor, I find that the flesh of the fruits, shielded from the alcohol directly by their in-tact skin, tend to decompose a bit from the inside out. Similar experiments of mine have resulted in ammoniated aromas from the mixtures. But every description I've read of umeshu insists that it's smooth and inviting, so perhaps my fears are unfounded.

I'm making a small batch divided into two jars. Traditional recipes have you include sugar to soak in the liquor with the plums, but I'll just add simple syrup to the final infused product, as I often do.

If any of you know why this experiment will fail or what I'm doing wrong, feel free to tell me. See you in a few months!

A Malibu Old Fashioned, If I Must...

2011-08-11T18:51:00.006-04:00

Just a little while ago I wrote about the not-so-prolific ways in which you could get creative with making your own custom Old Fashioned cockails. I had been preaching this strategy long before I wrote about it, and one of my more wiley past suggestions has unfortunately reared its ugly head.

Dagreb, a fellow blogger, dug up an old suggestion of mine and foolishly decided to bring it to life. He claims that I suggested the idea of making an Old Fashioned out of Malibu rum. As I defended myself in the comments of his post about it, I told him that I either was very drunk (up to you to decide how likely) or that I suggested only adding bitters to the rum, since the sweet liqueur-like Malibu needed no additional sugar. Intoxicated (literally?) by the idea of coconut and pineapple combined, Dagreb whipped up a Malibu Old Fashioned anyway with pineapple syrup and aromatic bitters. The results were, not surprisingly, too sweet and undrinkable.

Allow me to provide a solution!

Malibu has recently released a new product: Malibu Black. This is far from the first "Black" titled version of a spirit to be released, but it's approach is a bit different. While Malibu is an unaged rum at low proof that's sweet like a liqueur, Malibu Black is almost a full proof, less sweet rum which uses aged rum as a base. Malibu black still has the candy-like coconut flavor (love it or hate it), but is a lot more sophisticated, and versatile, might I add. I essentially see no reason to ever buy normal Malibu again. Black's lesser sweetness makes it finally possible to mix it with cola without overly saccharine results, as Malibu suggests. If you haven't had coconut cola yet, you're really missing out.

I thought this the golden opportunity to make a Malibu Old Fashioned that didn't suck. I still treated Malibu Black like Malibu, in terms of its sweetness and heft, but the end result is that it's not undrinkable.

Malibu Black Old Fashioned

2oz Malibu Black
2-3 dashes lime bitters (substitute lemon or orange bitters)

Build on ice and garnish with a lime twist (substitute lemon or orange twist).

MxMo LIX: Wahine Censor

2011-07-09T10:42:00.006-04:00

Frederic at the Cocktail ~~Virgin~~ Slut is hosting Mixology Monday again, and this time he's chosen one of the more challenging types of cocktails: beer cocktails. I've once again lucked out by having a subject already in mind for such a post.

Shandy, in its most general sense, is beer mixed with some sort of sweet beverage. Depending on where you are in the world, that beverage can be fruit juice, sparkling lemonade, ginger ale/beer, or even hard cider.

I can't find any firm information on how shandy came about. I can see several reasons how it could have: to make beer sweeter and more palatable, to lower its alcohol content, to stretch out the beer and make it last longer, or to make it more refreshing (especially when fresh water wasn't always safe to add to the drink).

Regardless, shandy is delicious. You should really try it some time. It's especially good on a hot summer day. Light lagers are usually used, and along with carbonated beverages. The norm for shandy in the United States is ginger ale or ginger beer.

There's a certain unorthodox shandy recipe that's been my go-to for a few years now. I found it on the Tiki Central forums, which I've posted about several times before. This shandy is a bit harder, with a shot of gin and some lime juice. Rattiki, the creator of this brew, likens it to a combination of shandy and the Gimlet cocktail. (Though, we all know that real Gimlets are made with and only with Rose's Lime Cordial... right?)

A beer that Rattiki suggest for this mix is Negra Modelo, a dark and creamy Mexican lager which is not only a fairly untraditional beer choice for a shandy, but is also one of my favorites.

I've adapted Rattiki's original recipe for a single serving, though I recommend Rattiki's method of making a large bucket of the stuff (and also placing naked women behind it). I've taken a bit of poetic license with the garnish as well. Rattiki didn't really issue a name for it, and he never got back to me when I told him I was going to write about it, so I'll go ahead and give it a modest yet fitting name.

Wahine Censor

5oz Negra Modelo (substitute smooth wheat beer)
5oz ginger ale/beer
1.5oz gin
.75oz lime juice
.25oz grenadine
1 dash orange bitters

Build over the tallest glass you have, filled with ice. Float Cherry Heering. Garnish with a Maraschino cherry speared through a spent lime shell.

Old Fashioned: Your Syrup Need Not Be Simple

2011-06-03T20:27:00.002-04:00

I talk a lot about Old Fashioned cocktails on this site. It's because I really enjoy spirit-forward stiff drinks, and the Old Fashioned is the grandfather of them all. I won't talk about how, though, because Robert Hess does it best below. (Skip to the 4-minute mark.) Long story short: the word "cocktail" originally meant "Old Fashioned" (or vice versa).

What used to be an old-timey way to make a spirit more drinkable is still a way to make a spirit more drinkable. To make an Old Fashioned cocktail (hereafter OF) is simple: you begin with about 2 ounces of your favorite spirit, you add a dash or two of cocktail bitters, and a heavy dash of sugar syrup. The peel of a citrus fruit is often added. You stir with ice, and you drink.

The OF is way to celebrate a spirit; its bitters and sugar (and sometimes citrus peel) are a way of seasoning a spirit without masking it, much like you'd do with food.

For example, roasted chicken may be delicious, but few would argue that roasted chicken can't be elevated with just a bit of garlic and herbs; steak benefits from a bit of salt and maybe even pepper; many types of fish benefit from a squeeze of lemon; cooked broccoli benefits from a bit of melted butter. Many spirits benefit from a simple seasoning as well.

Traditional OFs are made with brown spirits along with Angostura aromatic bitters. When it comes to lighter spirits, there are plenty of bitters options as well, like the next two most popular types, orange bitters and Peychaud's bitters(which is a deep red bitters and tastes of muted anise). Other types include lemon, grapefruit, cherry, peach, rhubarb, celery, chocolate... and then there are interesting blends such as whiskey barrel, tiki, creole, and the list goes on. Yours truly has created his own coffee bitters and floral bitters, even. Cocktail Kingdom remains one of the authorities on purchasing bitters on the web.

The Kaiser Penguin humorously held a small contest to see which booze bloggers had the most types of bitters in their possession... be sure to check the comments in the post to see the tally.

The fun part begins when you start creating combinations for your OF. Which bitters should or could go with which spirits? A few examples: chocolate bitters with brandy; grapefruit bitters with tequila; celery bitters with gin; tiki bitters with aged rum; orange bitters with white rum; lemon bitters with pisco.

BUT WAIT.

Your bitters is not the only dimension with which you can be creative for your OF. There are tons of different types of syrups that you can buy and even more that you can make on your own. Using a flavored syrup is a way to add another layer of complexity to your drink.

Below are examples of syrups which can be found in your local grocery store, in the coffee and pancake sections. While you may chuckle at the idea of using such syrups in a cocktail, realize that a syrup is a syrup, so long as it uses high quality and natural ingredients. A little research on the internet reveals great places to buy syrups with a wide selection of flavors.

But be warned: the more complex your spirit's flavor is, the fewer layers of flavor it needs on top of it. It may be a fine idea, for example, to make a Famous Grouse Scotch OF with Whiskey Barrel bitters and clove flavored syrup, but your glass of Balvenie 12 may not need such a distracting mask over its face.

Don't be hypocritical here. If you have no problem with the layering of flavors in your bitters (there are over 40 in Angostura alone), then how could you be against adding another flavor via syrup, if you knew it was of good quality? If it was perfectly acceptable to add a flavored bitters to your spirits, then why would a flavored syrup be too much?

Be open minded when thinking about syrups for possible OFs. On a whim one day I picked up a bottle of Margie's banana syrup from my local grocery store. It's opaque and pulpy... almost like a cross between banana syrup and banana purée. My new favorite way to drink rum is mixed with this stuff, and it makes a killer OF.

I also picked up some cola syrup from a local Williams Sonoma. Its intended use is to be mixed with seltzer to make your own cola, but I mix it with spirits with great results. Even a syrup as powerful as my passionfruit syrup can be mixed into an OF. You can also make a syrup out of a favorite spice or tea by boiling (or simply soaking) it in water and mixing it with sugar.

Dave of the Sugar House Blog gives us a fine example of a good combination: mezcal, Peychaud's bitters, and cucumber syrup. Dr. Bamboo tweets his surprise on how well his ginger-mint syrup works in a whiskey OF... well I'm certainly not surprised! The combinations are endless, and you have the ability build your favorite flavors all into one cocktail.

OFs usually have a peel of citrus fruit for a garnish. If you really start getting wild with your OF flavor combinations, you may find that citrus peel isn't always welcome. When you have an unorthodox OF, you can have an unorthodox garnish as well. Here, I made an apple brandy OF with a cinnamon stick garnish, because I felt that citrus wouldn't go well with it.. You can always forgo the garnish as well.

Here are some of the wilder OFs I've made recently. I hope these inspire you to deviate from normal simple syrup and aromatic bitters, and explore the blank canvass that is the OF.

Rum & Cola Old Fashioned

aged rum
Sonoma Cola Syrup
Fee's Whiskey Barrel bitters
lime peel

(As I've said before, lime twists/peels are best acquired from a hard lime if you can manage to choose one along with the soft ones that you pick out at the store for juicing.)

Gin Old Fashioned

gin
Red Zinger Syrup
lemon bitters
lemon peel

Light Rum Old Fashioned

light rum
Margie's Banana Syrup
Angostura bitters
lime peel

Jack Rose Old Fashioned

apple brandy
grenadine
lemon bitters
lemon peel

Two Years and Counting

2011-05-26T22:01:00.003-04:00

I'm not going to spend too much time on blog anniversary talk, because I don't really think people care about that kind of ceremonial stuff.

Two years ago today, Spirited Remix shoved off with the first post of the Cask series, where I poured some un-aged Wasmund's rye spirit into my small aging barrel, thereby starting the still largely undocumented activity of personal at-home spirit aging. I still write about my adventures with my cask, along with other rants and musings that, apparently, a few people find interesting.

I'd like to thank anyone who's returned to the Spirited Remix because they read something they liked one time. I'm humbled, and I plan for my site's content to only get better and better from here on out.

Perhaps this milestone can be marked with my entrance into the mainstream media. I've been quoted in an article about flavored whiskeys in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette written by Bill Toland. While I'm certainly not an expert on the topic, I do feel that I take the subject of flavored spirits (and other newfangled things) a bit more seriously than your average booze blogger, and also you'll find that I've been getting pretty cozy with reviewing American honey whiskey liqueurs. (The review for the new Jack Daniel's Tennessee Honey liqueur is coming soon, btw.) I was happy to provide a few thoughts to Bill, and I thank him for the opportunity.

Thanks again, everyone. If you stick around, you'll find posts in the coming weeks about the Old Fashioned cocktail and how to make it work harder for you, more revelations in making homemade bitters, how to get a little crazy in making variations of Limoncello, and some reviews of both spirits and cocktails that you probably won't find many other places on the interwebs.

And now I leave you with a song.

MxMo LVII: Floral Bitters

2011-05-09T10:04:00.018-04:00

The month of May's Mixology Monday host is Dave from The Barman Cometh. His theme is "floral cocktails" and he says:

"As the sun starts becoming more frequent and the temptation to play hooky mid-week gets stronger, nothing brightens the day better this time of year than the fresh blossoms hanging from the trees on the street and popping up in your neighborhood gardens. Goodbye cabin fever, hello springtime!"

Dave must not suffer from any sort of botanical allergy, but otherwise, I couldn't agree more. Despite that all the blossoms are here and green is everywhere to be seen, Washington, DC's long winter still lingers with temperatures that have barely broken the 70's (F) and constant rain. Looks like we'll need some liquid persuasion in order to change the mood...

I'm going to be "that guy" and make my post about a floral ingredient instead of a cocktail. Sorry, Dave. I've been waiting to post about my floral bitters for a while now, and surely you can understand how I wouldn't pass up this convenient and serendipitous MxMo opportunity.

As I detailed earlier in my homemade coffee bitters post, I make bitters using a conservative method; I make individual tinctures and combine them in various proportions until I find something that works. This is a method that surely showed its merits in the process of making these floral bitters, because it took me months of combining and testing to arrive at a first decent iteration. If I had done it via single compound infusions, I'd only be on my 2nd or 3rd try. I'd estimate that these floral bitters were made on the 30th or 40th try.

The star and major component of these bitters is pomelo. The pomelo is a cousin of the grapefruit. It's much larger, its peel is green, and its flavor is similar to the grapefruit, except that it's milder, sweeter, and less bitter. But I'm interested in the pomelo's peel, whose flavor can vary a bit... but I've found that especially among the smooth-skinned Israeli variety of pomelo which is available in the winter, the peel's flavor is mostly floral with just a bit of grassiness as well as grapefruit tones.

I made the pomelo tincture just like any other: by soaking its peel and pith in high proof alcohol. On the subject of citrus infusions, most people will advise you to remove the fruit's bitter pith from the peel, but in making bitters, it goes without saying that I'm perfectly ok with having plenty of pith. And pomelos are infamous for having a huge amount of pith between their peel and fruit.

To support the pomelo with a more straightforward floral note is simple rose water. Rose water is a distillation of a mixture of water and rose petals. The result is a strong solution that smells like perfume. Rose water is very common in cuisine (especially desserts) all across the world.

Once again, I'm using a tincture of wormwood as my primary bittering agent. It also has some sour herbal tones to it that I felt would be useful.

The final ingredient is one that I tinkered with for quite a while. I tried tinctures of black tea, green tea, jasmine green tea, hibiscus, and even of green bean and bell pepper. In the end, I went with a lime tincture. I didn't want to add much fruitiness to these bitters, but I feel that the bitter side of the lime really adds to this mix.

In the end, these bitters are less complex than I originally wanted, but I'm satisfied with them as a first version... a Floral Bitters #1, if you will. The pomelo mostly acts a bass while the rose water tends to sing the high notes. The lime and wormwood both add a bit of sourness while the lime also provides a dark vegetal "green" tone.

I essentially made these bitters for gin. I've had great luck with gin Old Fashioneds, Martinis, and Gin & Tonics. I'm still working on how these bitters go with other white spirits like light rum or pisco.

A week or two after I finished these bitters, I learned that the bartenders at The Gibson in DC have concocted a similar brew called "Angel Bitters", which uses chamomile and also rose water. I told them to make me a Martini with them, just for good measure. They taste very much like mine, except that they seemed a bit peppery. Overall, it was a great drink.

Thanks again to Dave for hosting this fun theme.

The Cask: Round 6

2011-05-03T13:20:00.003-04:00

Having taken a bit longer than I thought, my gin is finally ready to be removed from my little barrel. If you'll recall, almost 2 months ago I put some Gordon's gin into my barrel that was still dripping wet from its occupant before that, apple brandy. I was hoping to make an apple-kissed aged gin, like the Seagram company does, and my experiment was a huge success.

My apple-brandied gin arrived having left the angels very unsatisfied; adding a bit of high proof grain alcohol has yet again proven itself as a surefire method to prevent liquid loss via evaporation. Even though this aging session was short, the gin loss less than I thought it would. I extracted over 1.5 liters this time around, which is pleasing indeed.

The Review
Apple-brandied gin, at-home aged

In the Glass

The color of the stuff is a light gold... darker than light rum, but lighter than a gold rum or whiskey... it's more like the pallor of genever. It swirls cleanly just like a young spirit should.

Smell

The smells come to me in stages: juniper, alcohol, and wood... in that order. Inhaling deeply gets more alcohol and the faintest aroma of apples.

Taste

Immediately I realize that this tastes less of gin than it did before its time in the barrel. The wood has again imparted a sweetness that's very much like all its previous occupants. After the now muted botanicals die down, the flavor of apples arises, and much more strongly than I anticipated. The swallow ends in a bit of dryness from the wood.

Ice Cube

The addition of water to this gin increases its sweetness and dulls its flavor. I could barely taste any of the flavors that I had before.

Mixing

This apple-brandied gin performs in gin cocktails with style. It's great in a 1:3 Martini, but the vermouth in a "fifty fifty" Martini tends to overpower this tame gin. It also does fine in a gin and tonic, but the amounts of gin and tonic need to be about equal. The drink in which this stuff performed best was my previously-posted unnamed drink, where the gin's dryness and flavor of apples added exactly what the drink seemed to be needing.

Conclusion

This round is really a perfect demonstration in liquor production. The concept of aging spirits was born in order to tame and mellow spirits whose flavor were a little too wily and aggressive. Whether its the grassy pungency of rum, the cereal-like corn of bourbon, the peppery assault of tequila, or the pungent peat and smoke of Scotch... all of these sometimes overbearing flavors can be mellowed and sophisticated during aging. It's no surprise to me that the well-balanced herbs and spices in my beginning gin are barely there in the final aged product. It was simply bound to happen.

As for kissing the gin with apple brandy, I really didn't expect so much of the apple flavor to come through in this final mix. I had previously drained the barrel of apple brandy before pouring in the gin, and so what remained was only perhaps a few drops of brandy, and what brandy that was present in the soaked wood. In the end, this aged brandy claims apples as one of its prominent flavors, and so I'm happy to say that I was completely successful in mimicking Seagram's Apple Twisted Gin product.

What's next?

I'd like to convey an interesting detail I found on the internets. Here you can find the website of small distiller in the state of Washington called Woodinville Whiskey Co. Among their products they offer an Age Your Own Whiskey Kit, not unlike the one I've been using to drive this Cask series. (Should you want to be like me, pick one up and have at it! A reminder that I'm using a barrel from Wasmund's Copper Fox Distillery of Sperryville, Virginia.)

An interesting note on Woodinville's site says that the small aging barrel can be "refilled and reused 5+ times." Well, I'm about to put my 6th passenger into this little barrel. I wonder if Woodinville knows something I don't about the lifespan of at-home aging vessels. Perhaps mine is on its last legs and I don't know it? It's certainly not showing me any signs of such. ONWARD, THEN!

Next up for the barrel is something about which I'm even less confident than I was about the gin: wine. White wine, to be more specific. I'm using a Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand called Nobilo. I've enjoyed this product for quite a while now... its crisp and sour bite is paired with an extreme fruitiness... depending on the day, I can detect hints of grapefruit and pineapple, and sometimes even lime.

I'm going to spike the 1.5L of wine with about 100 mL of grain alcohol, just to punch up the proof, since we know the proof will lessen.

I have no clue how this is going to work. I don't know if anything about a barrel needs to be changed when going from spirits to wine. I hope the wine's sugar doesn't gum up the barrel into a sticky mess. I don't know how well this Sauvignon Blanc takes to aging. I hope the bright fruity flavors don't become disgusting when aged. I have no clue how long this should age. If you have any predictions about any of this, feel free to lay them on me.

With fingers crossed, I bid you farewell until next time.

Easter Cocktails

2011-04-24T16:08:00.007-04:00

Easter means brunch and brunch means drinking before noon. Count me in.

A friend of mine hosted a merry Easter Brunch and egg hunt (we're young at heart) for about a dozen people. I arrived with a load of ingredients and set up a makeshift bar, prepared to mix a small menu of drinks. Aside from the mandatory and exceptional Mimosa, I was offering a few additional stiffer options. Overall, it was a great success.

Chambord & Tonic

1.5 oz Chambord vodka
3 oz tonic water
3 dashes rhubarb bitters

Build in a tall glass on ice.

Chambord vodka is one of the classier flavored vodkas you'll find, and bearing the name Chambord certainly adds to its pedigree. The slightly sweet vodka went great with the bitterness of the tonic water and the added sourness from the bitters. This is a great refreshing drink for a hot day.

Rum Alexander

1.5 oz gold rum
.5 oz coffee syrup
1 oz cream

Shake all ingredients with ice and strain into a cocktail glass.

I'm at it with the Alexander again, which is a great drink for parties due to its simplicity and crowd-pleasing character... a cream and coffee cocktail just seemed like it belonged at a brunch. The coffee wasn't as prominent in the cocktail as I'd have liked, but instead the light coffee flavor only slightly accented the great Flor de Caña Gold that we used.

Mixology Monday LVI Round-Up: Your Best

2011-04-12T11:53:00.003-04:00

It was a long haul, but we now have all 20 drinks posted. Some of you sneaky west coasters thought you could foil me by submitting your posts after I went to bed. Well, if you think I won't drink in the morning to try your recipes, you're very, very wrong.

The house DJ's finally in and is ready to spin this phat mix. Big thanks to all you other DJs who contributed your own tracks to help make this giant boss remix. I wasn't able to quite make and try all the mixes myself, but I got damn close. Let's drink.

I'm going to start the medley by drumming up the bass and establishing a melody with an original remix of my own. This one has indeed been in the works for many years, but I believe it's finally reached its evolutionary dead-end. It uses the heavy molasses notes of Cruzan Black Strap rum and brightens it up with a cornucopia of citrus fruits. If you have the ingredients to make this, I highly recommend you do. Let's get this party started. (Even my bear knows how to party.)

Jubilee at Sundown

1 oz Cruzan Black Strap rum
.5 oz white rum
.5 oz lime juice
.5 oz grapefruit juice
.5 oz orange juice
.5 oz simple syrup

Shake with ice and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with lime wheel.

Dagreb starts us off with some lite fare that would act equally well as an apéritif or digestif. Originally created as a stomach settler, Dagreb's Fizz, Orzata Buck? uses Angostura bitters as its primary alcoholic component. Luckily, I have my 10oz bottle of Angostura to help me deal out the dozen+ dashes needed to make the drink.

My thoughts: Much like a white countertop, I feel like the Angostura is staining my insides brown. It's rare that you come across a drink whose bulk of ingredients are supporting a bitters as a main flavor. As such, I'm tasting notes in the Angostura that I've never tasted before. The hero of the day in this drink is the lime juice... it manages to keep the spice at bay. Well done, Dagreb. I'll take one of these after dinner while sitting on the back porch, once the weather gets warm again. I used Trader Tiki orgeat and Goya ginger beer, the picture above is my own.

Our second track is from Evan McGinnis of the young Ginger Beer Blog. His mix is basically an elongated blood orange rum Old Fashioned. It's a simple idea, but a pretty interesting take. He doesn't even give it a name... you're killin' me, Evan! Evan is free to comment on this round-up post and let us all know what the name is. :) He also overachieves by providing us with a second mix of his, which is his take on the Dark 'N Stormy. Be careful what you call "Dark 'N Stormy", Evan... the drink's trademark is fiercely defended by Gosling's armada of lawyers.

My thoughts: This is quite a nice drink. If a full bodied rum is used and you make sure to use a fairly sophisticated orange soda beverage, the drink isn't too sweet and it really shows you how an Old Fashioned can be light and refreshing. I used Screech rum and Polar Orange Dry.

Next up is Rowen of the Fogged In Lounge. After a full month of remixing the Bronx cocktail, he decided he needed some rum in him, and I totally know the feeling. He puts on his tiki hat as he presents his long-time libation the Lava-Lava. Like a Mai Tai, the Lava-Lava combines aged rum from both the islands of Jamaica and Martinique.

My thoughts: This drink isn't quite what I was expecting. I was hoping that the rums would be more pronounced, but I need to remember that this is a fairly long drink, what with the 3oz of mango nectar. As I was mixing this drink, I had the sudden realization that apricot liqueur was BORN to go with mango. Leave it to Rowen to figure it out before me. The texture of this drink is fabulous. I could down them at a dangerous rate. It's strange... whenever I'm not sipping this thing, I feel the urge to pick it up and keep sipping. This can't be good for my liver. Rowen, it may have been my mango nectar choice which prevented the rums from singing, I don't know. I used Del Frutal nectar, and my rums were Coruba and La Favorite Vieux.

Caught off guard, Alex from the Malty Puppy went to work to create an original remix precisely for this MxMo event, and he delivered. ...And what's this? He calls for coffee bitters in his drink? Well, I'm glad I had made some, then. He suspiciously combines Fernet Branca and vanilla vodka, among other things, into a drink he calls the Herbalist's Coffee. He offers two variations of the drink as well.

My thoughts: Damn! This might be the sleeper of this MxMo. I nabbed some vanilla vodka, and believe it or not, I had a mini of espresso vodka on hand for one of his variations. The Herbalist's Coffee is fantastic. The nose of the drink is dominated by the Fernet, but the flavor is not. It was sweet and inviting, with the Fernet offering a great herbal note that wasn't too bitter. While I was afraid that vanilla vodka would be too sweet, it wasn't, and I'm even getting notes of chocolate in here. Alex's cream variation of the drink was almost as equally good as the original. His egg white variation, I found, was a bit too sweet for me. For the record, Alex, I added .5oz (15 mL) of gin to it, and it turned out great.

As requested, Ed of the Wordsmithing Pantagruel dug into his mixologic annals and dug up one of his old favorites. His Lumber Jill is a unique brew that combines the flavors of maple, Chartreuse, and ginger. Add navy rum to it and it's a drink I can't ignore.

My thoughts: This one's pretty interesting. I'm not getting as much maple as I'd like, but the Chartreuse and ginger beer is a fascinating combination that borders on savory. I think the lemon and orange were fantastic additions to the drink, as well. It's unique yet easy-going, like a self-confident nerd or goth in high school. I used Cracker Barrel pure maple syrup and George Bowman aged small batch rum (from my home state of Virginia, no less!), which I feel is a suitable substitute for the funk of Smith & Cross.

Keith of theSpeakista has one of the more curious concoctions of the event. And with my beloved Black Strap rum? I'm sold. Keith combines overproof bourbon, Cruzan's Black Strap rum, apple brandy, creme de cacao, and a coffee-infused sweet vermouth to make the Final Five cocktail. It looks like I'm going to have to flash- infuse some Antica with coffee and get at it. Sorry Keith, I don't have any Calvados in my cupboards right now.

My thoughts: This one is quite satisfying to me. The rum adds a depth and sweetness to the already deep and sweet bourbon. The coffee comes through with the vermouth, which struggles to show its flavor against the other powerful ingredients. This thing makes me want to sit in a big leather chair surrounded by old books on shelves. I used everything Keith called for except that I used Captain Applejack instead of Calvados.

The blogless Sam submitted a drink to me, and I gave it its own place on my blog. When's the last time you've seen apple cider combined with tequila? Sam's Si Se Puede Ponche combines those two along with hibiscus tea (jamaica ) and mezcal to make one of the most unorthodox drinks here on this list. He originally made the the drink to cheer up his overworked friend who was in the middle of defending his thesis for school. I can't think of a better friend to have than Sam, and I can't think of a more wonderful story for this MxMo.

The folks at Understanding Cocktails did it the right way: coming up with a great premise and varying it every which-way until they realized that simplicity was best. In the end they finally have the Flightless Cocktail. Oddly enough, after trying every spirit they could, they realized that it was vodka, of all things, that was best in the Flightless. This is a good example of how vodka can be used a vehicle to showcase other ingredients in a drink.

My thoughts: As they said, this cocktail is very tart. The taste is crisp and clean. The passionfruit and lime provide a great fruitiness that makes you think the drink isn't mostly vodka. The amaretto provides the sweetness and the slightest earthy undertone. I used Gordon's vodka. I also used passionfruit syrup as a substitute.

Felicia's Speakeasy is taking advantage of spring's accost by looking toward her garden for inspiration. An old favorite of hers is the Tomato Zinger, which combines freshly-muddled tomatoes with honey syrup, gin, and lemon juice. I'm not sure how Felicia can act so festive and springy in upstate New York at this cold time of April, but as I've learned as a dude who wears tropical shirts too often, attitude is everything.

My thoughts: I've never had a drink with muddled tomato before. I thought this drink would taste savory, but I was wrong. The tomato sings as the fruit that it truly is. I had some honey syrup lying around from my latest experiments with making mead, and both the syrup and the lemon help this fruity drink chirp like a cheerful bluebird on a beautiful spring morning. Bravo. I used Gordon's gin.

The ever-posting Frederic of Cocktail ~~Virgin~~ Slut has delved into his repertoire for an old drink that he created before he even began blogging. The remarkable part of this is that after almost 1,000 posts later, with his palate inevitably maturing, he still finds his old drink the Frigate Bird to be still as good as it ever was. The drink uses the traditional tiki ingredient Batavia Arrack, an exotic spirit even as tiki ingredients go.

My thoughts: I don't have any arrack, so I used a caney cachaca instead, Cachaca 51... I used homemade grenadine and Trader Tiki falernum. It turned out sweeter than I thought. The Heering and the grenadine combine to make a sort of berry flavor that's very pleasing, with the spiciness of the falernum occasionally coming through. The grassiness of the cachaca played with the tannins in the grenadine that lended almost a savory tomato flavor.

Inspired Imbibing's Adam has long been tinkering with the Calm Seas. Adam says that the soul of the drink was inspired by the Jasmine cocktail. He's used lime juice in this one, and has added a bit of elderflower liqueur for aromatic purposes. He also manages to make a beautiful lime twist, which isn't easy. (I've learned a tip for making lime twists: lime peel is much thinner than most citrus peel and so isn't ideal when trying to cut it off... the solution is when you're at the store trying to find soft limes for juicing, go ahead and also buy the hardest lime you can find... the firm limes tend to have a thick rind which is great for peeling.)

My thoughts: I used Gordon's gin and I didn't have any St. Germain, so I used, believe it or not, Bacardi Solera, which I've always thought had elderflower notes to it. The gin in the drink is the vehicle that delivers the backbone of the Campari and the tartness of the lime, but it's tempered by the orange liqueur's sweetness... and I can taste the elderflower note in there as well! This is a very nice sour that would serve well as an aperitif.

The legendary Tiare atop her Mountain of Crushed Ice serves up the Pineapple Deligh t, a concoction that goes quite well with the theme of her blog. Her remix uses muddled pineapple, rhum agricole and honey cream mix, which contains just a bit of butter. She also uses Ting, an ingredient with which I have a love/hate relationship, and it's all due to both Tiare and Rick at Kaiser Penguin.

My thoughts: Believe it or not, I actually had a bottle of Ting on hand. I didn't have any rhum agricole, so I used Leblon cachaca. The fresh pineapple in this is really great. Along with the lime juice and honey syrup, the pineapple joins in to create an almost floral flavor. I made the honey mix complete with the butter, and the butter really added an enjoyable element to the drink.

Doug Winship of the Pegu Blog takes a break from his lime juice and Angostura bitters and has graced us with a gin creation of his own. He's not making it easy for me: his Blue Beetle #2 calls for blueberry syrup, which I must make myself. I'll be sure to break out the good gin for this one, Doug.

My thoughts: I'm not a big fan of blueberries, but this drink doesn't really taste like blueberry. The blueberry syrup, gin, and lemon juice combine to form a spicy and floral mix that's somehow greater than the some of its parts. I wish I could convey the gorgeous magenta hue that this drink took on for me. I took pictures, but couldn't do it justice. I broke out my George Bowman gin for this one, Doug. This is a drink I'll make again on my own time.

Good Spirits News has given us a curious concoction called the Scotch Lassie. Not many places do you see Scotch whisky and lime juice paired. Along with those, this drink, which is based off of the Mamie Taylor, uses Domaine de Canton and sparkling wine.

My thoughts: This is a nice, dry, and fizzy. The bite of the scotch along with the ginger give a nice spicy spine that flows through the drink. My tongue keeps expecting lemon here, but the lime contrasts and keeps my taste buds awake. This is quite an easy sipper, not too sweet. I used Bench 5 Scotch and I didn't have any ginger liqueur, so I used half ginger syrup and half Cognac instead.

Dan Chadwick posted his drink at Kindred Cocktails. Not only has Dan come up with best the MxMo moniker ever... a "cocktail nerd smackdown", but his drink's name is also quite formidable: the Arrack Attac k. Once again, Batavia Arrack rears its wonky head as it takes the lead in this drink. Dan also uses the Italian oddball Cynar, an artichoke liqueur. Like I asked, Dan said that he's been working on this drink for quite a while, and has given it to several guests, cocktail nerds or not, to a spirited response. Thanks a lot for submitting, Dan.

The ever humorous SeanMike of the Scofflaw's Den throws a loud and obnoxious guffaw at my "post early" advice as he posts in the final hour of Mixology Monday, Eastern Daylight Time. Joke's on you, Sean, because I won't be able to make your drink because of short notice. But curiously, I think I might have actually made the Derek back in 2009 and I remember it being great. Sean made the drink in honor of the great bartender Derek Brown here in DC. This is a light drink that makes you want to drink a ton of them.

Wow, I did not expect Jacob Grier to ever submit anything to the humble Spirited Remix. Jacob takes a unique tack on how he views his original drinks: "I find that my drinks are like children: Delightful when I first make them, but once they’re a couple years old I’m embarrassed to be seen with them. I mean, uh, I love them all equally and they’re all precious in their own way." Jacob's drink the Lazy Bear was created to honor the marriage of two of his friends at their wedding. The couple is still married and still makes the drink. What's more, the Lazy Bear is now on the menu of a restaurant in Portland. I'd certainly say this drink is a fine candidate for this MxMo.

My thoughts: Holy hell! The Whiskey Barrel bitters and the lime juice are combining to lend an overall bitterness to the drink that's enchanting. The funky rum is perfect for the drink, and the rye whiskey keeps it in check. The honey combats the sourness in the most perfect of ways. I don't mean to gush over the drink too much, but I can see why this is now served in a professional bar/restaurant. I used Sazerac rye and George Bowman rum which, again, I feel closely matches Smith & Cross.

The godfather of Mixology Monday himself, Paul Clarke, has decided to not miss another round. Paul has dug up an old combination of ingredients that he remembers enjoying but never codified them. In honor of his last-minute posting style, his west coast timezone notwithstanding, he's named the drink the 11:59. Paul complains that there aren't enough spirit-forward rum drinks, and by god, I can't disagree. The 11:59 combines aged rum with Punt e Mes, chocolate liqueur, and Chartreuse. Visit his post if you'd like to learn what the great Paul Clarke normally likes to drink in lieu of making his own concoctions.

My thoughts: This drink is really sophisticated. While I didn't have the Angostura rum, I thought my substitute suitably reproduced the vanilla flavor that Paul was going for. My vermouth substitute didn't really work, though... I feel it needs to be more bitter. With that said, I thought the chocolate would be overpowering, but it wasn't. All the ingredients here lie calm to meld with each other. Really effing nice. Instead of Angostura I used a combination of Zaya 12 and Margaritaville dark Jamaican rum (it's actually really good) and instead of Punt e Mes, I used Carpano Antica, Dolin rouge, and a dash of aromatic bitters.

Last up is Marc of A Drinker's Peace. He muses on how most of his creations are variations on the sacrosanct classics, and his house-named drink A Drinker's Peace Cocktail isn't far off from this formula. I find I have a lot in common with Marc. He's very long winded about how he made the drink and which products to not use in it, and then he even offers a secondary recipe for those who wish to make the drink without all the fancy ingredients (for people like me). His drink is flagshipped by aged rum, with a bit of vermouth, apricot brandy, and absinthe to complement. Count me in.

My thoughts: Marc called for an aged rum on the subtle side, so I used a combination of Mount Gay Extra Old and Cruzan rum that I aged myself in my own small barrel. I didn't have a remarkable apricot brandy, and so as he asked, I added it lightly. The result is very warming, and probably sweeter than his, because I used Carpano Antica vermouth. The apricot and the absinthe go really nicely together, and the unobtrusive rum acts as a vehicle for the accenting ingredients as opposed to dominating the drink. Very classy, Marc.

I can't thank everyone enough for participating in this month's MxMo. I think the list we have here is certainly one to take note of. If you see a drink here that looks good, you should probably whip it up and give it a try, because you can rest assured in knowing that it's someone's best.

MxMo: Si Se Peude Ponche

2011-04-12T10:20:00.006-04:00

A mixologist named Sam wished to participate in the upcoming Mixology Monday event: Your Best. Sam didn't have a blog, but he submitted to me his post nonetheless. I'm posting his drink here for all to see, as it deserves to stand on its own.

Last fall, a friend was in the process of defending his thesis, which dealt with the social dynamics amongst migrant farm workers in the Northeast United States. His life wasn't very pleasant at that moment, and I wanted to offer something as a way to cheer him up. And what better way to lift a friend's spirits than with, well, spirits?

I decided to make a punch, largely because communal culture was a central theme in my friend's thesis, but also because I really like making punch. I had also just then stumbled upon a recipe for homemade apple cider, which I was determined to involve somehow. Then it struck me that migrant farm workers are largely responsible for picking the apples, and what better way to honor them than to use the fruits of their labor, while also paying homage to their native origins?

Because my friend's field work had mostly involved Mexican workers, I chose ingredients commonly found in that part of the world. For a name I initially settled upon Migrant Farmworker Punch, but decided instead to make things more interesting and call it Si Se Puede Ponche. "Si se puede!" being the rallying cry of Cesar Chavez's California farm worker movement. The punch was a big hit and I have since made it a number of times, tweaking quantities and ingredients along the way.

Si Se Puede Ponche

1 part homemade apple cider (though, a quality store bought variety will suffice)
1 part hibiscus tea (I usually squeeze a few dashes of lemon and ginger juice in here to make a it bit more dynamic)
1.5 parts Reposado Tequila (I've used both the highly affordable Pueblo Viejo and Espolon to great effect)
.25 parts Mezcal (Del Maguey Vida employed here)
.25 parts vanilla syrup (homemade)
2 dashes mole bitters (Bittermen's)

My best,

Sam

Announcing MxMo LVI: Your Best

2011-04-02T12:32:00.000-04:00

Your house DJ, with legs trembling, has decided to throw his backwards hat into the ring. Spirited Remix will be hosting Mixology Monday... a Remixology Monday, if you will. The date shall be April 11, 2011.

The theme is quite simple: your best. Give me the best drink recipe you've ever created.

No, I'm not really talking about that awesome drink that you made under pressure and on the fly for your friends one evening. I'm not talking about that kickass nightcap that you whipped up using the last bits from those few bottles that you needed to throw away.

I'm talking about that one drink that you've worked on for quite a while. The one that you've carefully tweaked over time until you found that perfect recipe. The one you've made tons of times: sometimes alone in contemplation, sometimes for a guest so that you could get their opinion.

If you don't have a drink that fits the above mold, then perhaps this is your excuse to revisit your old "original remixes", as I call them, and decide or even tweak one to be your best. If you've never made such a drink before, then begin experimenting right now! I want to see what makes your taste buds tick. Use your favorite spirits or flavors. Show me what your "drink of the house" would be.

Maybe you have a blog and you've already posted it before; I don't care. Give it to me again. Let us have this MxMo be a review of greatness, a bass-thumping medley of original remixes. This is a time for pomp over humility. Toot your own horn. Begin by telling me about your drink and then finish by letting the drink do the talking(see point 2b below).

The process is simple:

1) Find or create your best drink recipe.

2) Submit the recipe to me via a comment to this post, or to my email: dj.hawaiianshirt at gmail.com. If you have a blog, post about your recipe and give me the URL by the same methods. This needs to be done by 11:59 PM of April 11, 2011.

2a) Try not to make it a simple variation of another cocktail, if you can help it. I've explored the subject a bit here. Despite the fact that I may call it a remix, I want it to be original.

2b) The earlier you post, the better. So long as I can secure the ingredients (without extreme price or inconvenience), I will make your damn drink and share my thoughts on it. If I'm already wasted by the evening of April 11 from trying other drinks, I may not be able to get to yours.

3) Wait for greatness. I should have the MxMo LVI roundup posted by fairly early the next morning.

Don't disappoint.

Fame ≠ Quality

2011-03-31T09:37:00.004-04:00

Have you ever made a drink recipe that you got from a book or online that's simply terrible? I know I have. And when this happens, my (and perhaps your) first thoughts turn self-deprecating... what did I do wrong? Did I use the right amount of ingredients? Perhaps the type of spirit I used wasn't of the right style. Were my ingredients fresh enough?

Surely an occurrence like this is more common when using new and green recipes from the internet, but what if it happens when using an old book... when you make a recipe that's supposedly tried and true? Surely you're the one at fault, not the recipe... right?

Rowen over at the Fogged In Lounge has just finished an in-depth exploration of this problem. He spent the entire month of March getting intimate with the Bronx cocktail. You can find the recipe for the Bronx in just about any respectable cocktail book, and yet among enthusiasts, the drink is hardly lauded. I am of the same sentiment; the Bronx, to me, feels flat and one dimensional.

Rowen took the time to make a multitude of variations on the Bronx to see what worked in the drink and what did not, which you can read about here. In his wrap-up of the experiment, Rowen concluded that what the Bronx was missing was essentially some type of bitters, which he finds tends to finally unite the flavors of the rest of the drink. Despite the fact that you'll probably only ever see the Bronx call for 4 ingredients, to quote Rowen, "The Bronx is really a 5-ingredient cocktail."

Even Erik of the Underhill-Lounge, in his run-through of all the cocktails in the Savoy, admits that the drink is better with bitters, and he even uses a bitter vermouth when preparing the drink.

This all goes to show an important lesson: Don't assume that a recipe is great just because it's in a book, no matter how prestigious. And a corollary to that: You're allowed to dislike whatever you want, despite what anyone says.

Rule: Mixology as Alchemy

2011-03-14T12:59:00.019-04:00

I know the post title is really lame and trite, but stay with me here...

The mixing of different ingredients into various combinations can invoke very distinct results.

Some spirit-forward recipes like the Old Fashioned or the (modern) Martini are meant for certain ingredients to "sing the lead" in a mixture, and they use smaller amounts of other ingredients in order to accent the lead singer.

Other recipes, I would argue, work correctly simply because they have some combination of ingredients that taste really good together. Examples I can think of are the Gimlet, the Mojito, the Margarita, or the Tom Collins.

Some recipes are based off of contrast. A good example I know of is the Oriental cocktail, where all of its ingredients battle over your taste buds' attention.

But once in a while you'll find a recipe that, without getting too poetic, borders on alchemy. I'm talking about a recipe where the product is truly greater than the sum of its parts. Recipes like these are often a big surprise because they're so unpredictable.

A prime example of this is an original recipe from Dave of the Sugar House Blog. His cocktail, the Crimson Dynamo, uses ingredients that I don't really like, but the resulting drink is something I find fairly palatable. (It's a faux pas to be a booze blogger and admit that you don't like a certain ingredient. But with me, it's usually a temporary state. You could say that these are ingredients I don't like yet.)

Campari is an herbal Italian liqueur called an amaro. Don't let its gorgeous red color and the word "liqueur" fool you... its bitterness is so overwhelming that most novices who drink it will grimace before spitting it out. It goes toe-to-toe with Fernet Branca as one of the most bitter brews on the liquor store shelf you can find. I don't dislike the stuff per se... I can even drink it alone on ice without a problem, but I'm just not in love with it. I find that most cocktails containing it aren't balanced, and they leave the Campari unchecked to bully around the other ingredients.

Maraschino(the "ch" is pronounced like a "k") is another Italian ingredient made from the cherries of the Marasca type. Completely unlike what most people in the western hemisphere may think is Maraschino, this stuff is completely clear and has a biting cherry character. The flavor is closer to cough syrup than anything a beginner might be expecting. It's a common ingredient used in vintage cocktails, and even in a few tiki drinks. I personally think that almost any drink that uses more than 1/4 ounce of the stuff is completely dominated by it, and in a way that's not pleasant.

Islay is a type of Single Malt Scotch Whisky which is produced on the isle of Islay. Islay whiskies are generally known to be heavily peated, which is a process by which the distiller dries the fermentation's source of malted barely under a fire of burning peat. While the distilled spirit is aging in barrels later on, master blenders of Islay whisky are also known to leave the warehouse doors open to encourage the nearby ocean air to mingle around the barrels, which are surprisingly permeable. The result of all this is a whisky that is earthy, pungent, smokey, medicinal, and sometimes even tastes of iodine and seaweed. The stuff is so strong that Robert Hess uses it as if it were bitters. I love Scotch, but I don't even like Islay Scotch.

Imagine my intrigue when I saw Dave post a drink that uses only these three ingredients, and what's even better, he declares it as "everything [he] want[s] out of life." I smartly assumed that Dave is a man more sage than I, and so, hands quivering, I gave the drink a whirl.

Crimson Dynamo

1.5 oz Islay Single Malt Scotch
1 oz Campari
.5 oz Maraschino liqueur

Stir ingredients together with ice, and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with an orange twist.

The Islay base of this drink still makes it pretty challenging for me. Both the overwhelming flavor and aroma is of pungent iodine. But the sip is much less diabolical overall than I had expected. Amazingly, each of the three strong ingredients manage to keep each other in check. The whisky is by far the most wiley, but much of its flavor disappears in the drink, with only the occasional smokiness and medicinal iodine coming through to numb my tongue. The whisky and Maraschino manage to pummel the Campari's flavor mostly into submission, so that in the end it only offers bitterness and a peppery spiciness. The Maraschino comes all the way through, but is largely subdued by the other two gargantuan ingredients, and it provides the sweetness underlying the cocktail. Instead of these ingredients joining together in some awful cacophony, they join together in a harmony of temperance, and I am in awe.

Over the few years that I've been exploring spirits and cocktails, I've slowly and surely come upon an uncomfortable truth that I can't help but humbly accept. The DJ's 2nd rule of the house: You cannot always know how a recipe will taste by simply looking at the ingredients, despite how experienced you may be.

The Cask: Round 5, Aged Gin

2011-03-09T12:20:00.003-05:00

The apple brandy sitting in my small barrel has been there longer than any spirit before it. It's been almost five and a half months now, and there's a reason that it's been there for so long.

If you'll recall, I added a mixture of several products to the barrel this time around: Laird's Straight Apple Brandy, Captain Applejack, and sweet apple wine. Once the mixture rested in the barrel for a few weeks/months, what began to happen was something that I feared. The crisp fruitiness of the applejack began to take over the rest of the flavors, somehow. What had been an overwhelming flavor of apples was slowly becoming a somehow nondescript fruity tone, bordering on almost an artificial grape flavor. It's hard to describe.

Luckily for me, time was the remedy. As late as one month ago, that generic fruitiness still prevailed. But now, almost 6 months after the aging began, the mix has finally mellowed, and the result is great.

The Review
Composite Apple Brandy, at-home aged

In the Glass

I was surprised to see the brandy actually had legs that would stick to the glass as I slowly swirled it around. Clearly, the wood from the barrel has given it a bit of body and viscosity. The wood also gave it color; the apple brandy's dark hue is somewhere between bourbon and a heavily aged rum.

Smell

Just like the other results of the Cask series, the smell is all wood. But somehow, it's a different kind of wood. The rum and the brandy gave off an aroma of being in a wood shop, but the apple brandy smells almost like a bourbon, with a much more distinct and dark, earthy character. After a few moments of trying, I can finally sense the apples, and then faint vanilla, as barrels are so wont to give.

Taste

I was again surprised to learn that despite the apple brandy's modest legs in the glass, the texture and mouth feel were thin. The angel's share in this batch hadn't been as devastating as times passed, so perhaps this is something that I should have expected. The spirit is also pretty hot... my guess is over 80 proof, maybe even over 100.

The first thing that my tongue thinks is "sweet". When the sweetness finally subsides, I get a rich apple flavor, which is admittedly short lived, because the sweetness again takes over. There's no smokiness at all, which this barrel sometimes imparts. The end of the sip gives you a nice dry (even tannic) woodiness that's not surprising, considering how long the brandy aged. The aftertaste is nice and long, with only sweetness and warmth.

Ice Cube

Somehow, the only thing that ice/water does to this spirit is makes it even more sweet. The mouth feel and flavor do not change... only the sweetness.

Mixing

There's not much I would mix this stuff with. As a considerably old spirit, there's much more merit in complementing it rather than having it complement. As if you couldn't see it coming, I made a composite apple brandy Old Fashioned. I used Fee Brothers Whiskey Barrel Bitters, and instead of citrus peel, I used a cinnamon stick for a garnish. It goes without saying that the result was very, very palatable.

Conclusion

The barrel showed me that it's still "got it". Its ability to age might be slowing, but it's nowhere near depleted. The maturity of the apple brandy is bordering on the barrel's original passenger, the Wasmund's Rye Spirit. I'm pleased and encouraged.

So what's next? Something a bit unusual, that's what.

About a year ago I spoke of my fondness of Seagram's gin, but I also pointed out that they have flavored gins that are hard to take seriously. Well, one of these gins is flavored with red apples. Red apples and gin is such an interesting combination that I'm inspired to take this opportunity to make my own apple gin(sort of).

I'm not going to rinse the barrel of excess apple brandy... I'm not even going to let it air out. Fresh and dripping from evacuating the brandy, a handle of Gordon's gin is going in. (Hey, if it's good enough for James Bond, it's good enough for me.) Gordon's is a good middle of the road brand, I'd recommend it if you find that you can't find the beauty in top shelf gins.

In contrast to the apple brandy's long aging time, I expect the gin's aging time to be short. Much like Seagram's gin, I only want a bit of color and flavor added to the gin from the barrel. I just want to "toast" it, if you will. My guess is two months or less.

MxMo LV

2011-02-28T08:38:00.013-05:00

The DJ makes a last-minute slide toward home and issues one last tiki post before the end of Tiki Month!

Mixology Monday set this one up so I could spike it. (Two sports references in two sentences!) This month's theme is hot drinks, and our host is Nancy over at the Backyard Bartender.

Most hot drinks with alcohol just don't do it for me. I think it has to do with how alcohol's low boiling point makes it so much more noticeable in a drink that's warmed. For me, sips of such warm drinks have alcohol vapors that waft toward my nose and the roof of my mouth, and the result is that I'm forced to pay attention to the alcohol as much as the the flavor of the drink, which is far from ideal.

There are a few exceptions, though, and one of them is a tiki drink found in Beachbum Berry's Grog Log. Despite that tiki drinks are meant to "cool" you from imagination-produced tropical surroundings, there are quite a few hot tiki drinks, and they're worth exploring for the most part.

Flipping through the Grog Log, it's easy to do a double take when you pass the Flaming Coffee Grog. There are several things about the drink of note:

1) the drink uses hot coffee
2) the drink interestingly combines orange and lemon with said coffee
3) the drink has a unique method of preparation
4) you get to set it on fire

To make the Flaming Coffee Grog, one heats orange and lemon peels, cloves, Grand Marnier, and overproof rum in a small pan, and then one ignites it. Much like how the heated whiskey in a Hot Toddy would waft alcohol fumes vigorously and unpleasantly to the roof of my mouth, overproof rum wafts vapors into the air when heated in a pan. These free vapors easily ignite the rum when a flame is present, and the burning cuts down on the overall proof of the mixture, but also aromatizes the flavors in the peels and cloves. After ignition, one is supposed to spoon the mixture delicately onto the coffee, where presumably the flames will soon extinguish. Then, happily stir the drink and enjoy.

The overproof rum that this recipe essentially calls for is Lemon Hart 151. As of now(February 28, 2011), the stuff is discontinued (though there are rumblings that it will soon be produced again). Which sucks, because not only is it called for in countless tiki drinks, but worse, there is no other product like it. It is a dark demerara rum which is smokey, sweet, and damn powerful. Tiki Month matron Doug of the Pegu Blog just recently pondered about substitutes for Lemon Hart 151, as I've done as well. I'm lucky this day, because I still have a bottle of the stuff. But if you don't, you have several options. You can either choose to mimic the flavor by using another (lower proof) demerara rum, or you can choose to mimic the proof by using another 151 rum. One of my favorite solutions is to do both, by using a dark/black rum such as El Dorado Dark or Cruzan Black Strap, and then adding a few heavy dashes of grain alcohol to up the proof. Keep in mind that for tiki drinks that call for overproof rums, there's usually a culinary reason for it-- they're not just trying to get you drunk. Clearly, for the Flaming Coffee Grog, we need to imitate proof more than flavor.

I don't drink my coffee black. Usually because of coffee's acidity, I tend to need a bit of cream in my daily brew. This recipe has you mix coconut cream* with the coffee, which, in terms of fat content doesn't really approach the acid-cutting power that I usually need. But strangely, the Flaming Coffee Grog goes down smooth, even though its color is almost identical to black coffee. I guess the creators of this drink knew what they were doing.

I wouldn't feel too bad about substituting another orange liqueur for the Grand Marnier, if you felt like it; at .25 ounces, the difference will not be very noticeable. Today I'm using Patron's Citronge liqueur, and the result is delicious. In fact, I think a great variation of this drink would be to swap the rum with a good reposado or anejo tequila; you could call it the Grog Cafe Flameante.

Flaming Coffee Grog

.25 oz Grand Marnier (or orange liqueur)
.75 oz Lemon Hart 151
1 lemon twist
1 orange twist
2 cloves

1 tbs cream of coconut
coffee

cinnamon stick

Fill mug 3/4 full with hot coffee. Stir in cream of coconut. Combine rum, liqueur, citrus peels, and cloves into a small pan or pot. Heat lightly, then ignite. Spoon the rum mixture onto the coffee and stir with cinnamon stick.

*Talking about canned coconut products is treacherous terrain. This recipe calls for Coco Lopez coconut cream, but what was probably intended, as with so many tiki drinks, was Coco Lopez cream of coconut. For an explanation on what the hell that means, I'll defer to Giuseppe and Richard of the tiki bar Painkiller in New York City:

"Coconut water, coconut milk, coconut cream, and cream of coconut are all vastly different from each other. Coconut water is obtained by boring a hole into a raw coconut and extracting the liquid therein. It is light, clear, and refreshing. It requires no labor aside from opening the coconut. Coconut milk and coconut cream require a more intensive method of preparation.

Coconut milk is made by simmering shredded coconut with water or milk until it develops a frothy texture. This liquid is then strained through a cheesecloth. When the milk is cooled off and allowed to set, coconut cream (a much richer and mildly sweeter product with a more syrup-like consistency) rises to the top and must be skimmed off in order to extract it. Cream of coconut is simply coconut cream that has been subsequently sweetened. The difference in these coconut products with respect to preparation, viscosity, sweetness, and flavor are quite apparent. A sampling of each will clearly illustrate their differences."

The Reverb Crash and Tiki

2011-02-24T11:54:00.003-05:00

"Tiki" is an escapist sub-culture that came about in the western United States during the 20th Century, as early as the 1930s. It was largely a caricature of Polynesian culture of the South Pacific, which was an exotic and relaxing idea meant to be an escape from the average working stiff's day-to-day doldrums. This mostly manifested itself in restaurants, ones which were meant to resemble large thatched huts, with beautiful flowers adorning every room, torches on the walls, and masks and carvings everywhere you look. These restaurants served exotic takes on American and Asian cuisine, but what they eventually would be known for is their alcoholic beverages. Tiki drinks are often complicated concoctions of rum, fruit juices, and exotic syrups.

Keep in mind that this "tiki" culture is an American phenomenon. For example, while the flavors of a tiki drink seek to transport your mind to the South Pacific, the ingredients in the drinks are from this side of the planet: the Caribbean. Do you think native Samoans drink Mai Tais and Aku Aku Lapus? No, they are more often drunk by bewildered professionals with loosened collars (like myself). But don't let that take away from your enjoyment! You just need a little imagination and an escapist mindset, and you too can enjoy tiki just as it always has been.

Since the golden age of tiki, many restaurants and bartenders have bastardized the idea of the tiki drink by making cheap knock-offs with crappy and often overly-sweet ingredients. If you're interested in what a real tiki drink can be, I encourage you to explore the drink guides written by tiki historian Beachbum Berry. A good tiki drink can be as complex and interesting as any of the best cocktails you've ever had.

Doug over at the Pegu Blog has spearheaded a tradition to celebrate tiki each February and is calling it Tiki Month. What better time to celebrate tropical drinks than in the dead of winter (in the northern hemisphere)? While I don't want to spend a whole month talking about tiki or tikifying my site's banner (even more), I would like to join in the festivities this year. Last year I abstained and opted instead to showcase Doug's epic post about Hawaiian shirts.

As I've said before on this blog, tiki drinks were my gateway into mixology, and let me tell you: it was a baptism by fire. Tiki drinks are notorious for being inaccessible:

1) Their construction is labor intensive; most of them require you to freshly squeeze at least one kind of citrus

2) They often require more than one type of rum, and since rum characters vary widely by where they're produced, you need at least a dozen or two varieties in order to capably adhere to recipes; it gets expensive

3) They require specialized equipment if you want to be efficient and/or proper, such as juicers, ice crushers, (real) swizzle sticks, and blenders

4) They often require rare (or even extinct) ingredients, such as orgeat, falernum, passionfruit syrup, cinnamon syrup, allspice dram, Cuban rum, and dark 151-proof demerara rum

5) They're complicated; a five-ingredient tiki drink is considered simple, and they sometimes have over a dozen ingredients

6) Because of all of these above, their construction is time consuming; between juicing the fruit, gathering all the bottles, measuring each ingredient, and then using specialized equipment, plenty of drinks take between 5 and 10 minutes to make, and some of them take even longer

7) Most tiki fans from which you might get help or advice will insist on using only the proper techniques, and that even the obscurest ingredient cannot be substituted

An online haven for tiki drink fans and snobs is the Tiki Central Forums. There, you can read and participate in discussion of tiki drinks and ingredients with casual fans, bloggers, and bartenders.

Years ago, Tiki Central held an original tiki drink contest. The runners up are worth mentioning, but the winner was a drink called the Reverb Crash (one of the coolest drink names you'll ever find) submitted by a community member named "kick_the_reverb" (real name is Ran).

The first post ever made on Tiki Central's Tiki Drinks & Food sub-forum was by Martin Cate himself, who I talked about on my spiced rum post, and it was to remind everyone of the Reverb Crash. Check the thread out, as it provides some interesting discussion about the drink.

The Reverb Crash is just a young whippersnapper compared to some of the older tiki recipes, and is even on the simpler side, but the Crash is of the same caliber as the classics. It's been a go-to for years in my recipe collection, and once you try it, you might see why.

The recipe calls for grapefruit juice, and Ran suggests using the fresh stuff in the refrigerated juice section of your grocery store. I myself have made this drink with grapefruit juice from a can, from a refrigerated bottle, and fresh squeezed from the fruit. All of them are good, but provide a slightly different character each time.

This recipe also uses orgeat syrup(pronounced "oar-zha[t]"), which is essentially an almond syrup that is sometimes flavored with additional things like orange flower water. I have yet to make my own successfully (perhaps that will be a future post), but there are several online venues which will sell it to you, and even more online venues that will give you recipes to make your own, should you dare. Unlike some, I'm not afraid to give you substitutes for ingredients: in a pinch, you can use amaretto liqueur instead of orgeat, or even normal simple syrup with a dash or two of the almond extract used for baking. These aren't great (or even good) substitutes, but I'd rather you try to approximate the drink than not make it at all.

The recipe uses a sprig of mint as a garnish. Like many garnishes, this one is not only aesthetic. Before inserting the (clean) mint sprig into the final drink, lightly rap it against the counter/cutting board/etc. so that the mint's essential oils will be agitated and made volatile. When drinking, be sure to use a short straw (or no straw) so that your nose must approach the mint garnish to take a sip. The mint's aroma will act as an olfactory addition to the Reverb Crash's flavor. Seriously.

Finally, this recipe calls for passionfruit syrup. I've used the stuff before on the blog, but this time I'll provide a very simple recipe on how to make it. Passionfruit syrup is simply syrup that is flavored by passionfruit. It is a very common ingredient in vintage tiki drinks. Much like the orgeat, it can be found for purchase on the internet. The nature of the syrup's strength of flavor varies widely by recipe, and my recipe might be the strongest, but also the easiest to make. All you need is passionfruit juice and sugar. Passionfruit juice can probably be found at your local Whole Foods or gourmet supermarket. And, as I've advocated before, don't forget about your local ethnic stores. Today I will be using Goya brand passionfruit juice from individual drinking cans. Unfortunately, there's no substitute for passionfruit syrup in the Reverb Crash.

Passionfruit Syrup

passionfruit juice
white granulated sugar
vodka (optional)

Pour any amount of passionfruit juice into a saucepan or pot. On low heat, reduce the juice's volume by half. (Tip from Alton Brown: record the level of liquid using a rubber band wound tightly against a wooden spoon's handle at rest at the bottom of the pot. It is then easily discernible when the liquid's volume is reduced to a desired level.) Carefully measure your passionfruit reduction, and dissolve into it an equal amount of sugar by volume. Bottle and refrigerate the resulting syrup, with some vodka if you like, which tends to extend its shelf life.

Let's get on to the damn drink. Unfortunately, the sweetness in every one of this drink's ingredients can vary, so you may need to adjust the ingredient amounts to find what you think is your own perfect balance. As for rums, Ran calls for a Cuban or Virgin Island light rum (think dry and flavorful, like the Cruzan Estate Light that I love) and Myers dark rum (aside from Myers, Coruba will work, and maybe even Gosling's Black Seal, Smith & Cross, or Appleton Estate Extra). This drink has a lot of sugar in it... definitely try to make it a once-in-a-while indulgence. It's worth every bit of trouble to make it, I assure you.

Reverb Crash

1 oz light rum
1 oz dark rum
4 oz grapefruit juice
1.5 oz passionfruit syrup
.75 oz lime juice
.75 tbs orgeat syrup

Shake with crushed ice* and pour into a large glass. Fill the rest of the glass with crushed ice. Garnish with a mint sprig.

*cubed ice can be used in a pinch.

Infusion #4: Why I'll Never Buy Spiced Rum Again*

2011-02-01T13:33:00.017-05:00

*Unless I want to specifically try a new brand.

Spiced rum holds a pretty ambivalent position in the minds of most people who are truly interested in spirits and cocktails. While it is a mainstay in most "nightlife" venues and bars, it is a relatively new kind of spirit which has few salient uses aside from mixing it in your favorite soft drink.

Worst of all, many spiced rum products aren't very good, anyway. Quite a few of them ride the same wave as trendy vodka which is driven more by marketing than quality, and it shows. A fine blogger by the name of Dr. Bamboo has done a detailed rundown of many spiced rums here, here, and here... I admit that he's a bit more generous with his scores than I would be.

Captain Morgan is the "Bacardi" of spiced rums, and it dominates the market. Sailor Jerry is a better product which has been gaining steam over the past few years. Foursquare is a premium spiced rum from Barbados which many rum fans love, but for some reason I can't bring myself to agree. If I were pressed to tell you any spiced rum brands worth buying, they would be Cruzan's new 9 (which the Drinkhacker quite likes) and Captain Morgan 100, which is a 100 proof version of the original... but it actually has a different and improved flavor.

Much like I said in my post about falernum, it turns out that spiced rum one can make at home is much better than anything you can buy. For this reason, I will no longer regularly buy spiced rum.

The recipe I use for spiced rum is very simple, and mostly inexpensive. The recipe comes from, of all places, the Wall Street Journal, detailed in an article here.

Spiced rum is an infusion, as simple as any other that I've made on this site. My last infusion was a compound infusion done in multiple stages. This recipe is also a compound infusion, but it's done in one stage.

The overwhelming flavor in most spiced rums is vanilla, and we achieve that by using a whole vanilla bean, the rarest and most expensive ingredient in this recipe. However, vanilla beans are now becoming easier to acquire via supermarkets; check your store's spice aisle... you'll probably be able to find a small jar with a few vanilla beans for less than $10.

There are various other spices in the recipe, and even some fruit. What is most important in this recipe is that you use whole and fresh ingredients, not their ground counterparts. The reason for this is so that you not only ensure that you have the freshest and highest quality ingredients possible, but also so that you can remove ingredients at will, should a single flavor become overpowering as you periodically taste the infusion.

Infusing doesn't make crappy rum taste better, so pick a good rum. A gold rum is standard, and usually one without too much overpowering character. For example, Cruzan Estate Dark is a fine choice, while Appleton Estate V/X may not be. Today I'm using my favorite gold rum, Cockspur Five Star. Cockspur is on the fruitier side of gold rums, and so I will be tweaking the original recipe slightly to take advantage of that.

Pictured here are the ingredients for my spiced rum. I've changed the slice of ginger with a peel of lemon, and I've throttled down the number of black peppercorns. Also, I've been known to put a peel of grapefruit in my spiced rum infusions... it goes great with the allspice. Before starting the infusion, I sliced open the vanilla bean, and I sawed off a chunk of the nutmeg with a bread knife.

Here's why you should use as whole ingredients as possible: 1 day into my infusion, I realized that my rum was going to be overpowered by allspice. I strained out the mixture (pictured below... pictured above is the plastic container I used for the infusion) and removed 2 of the 3 allspice berries before putting everything else back in the rum. When it was done, I learned that I had saved the infusion.

Homemade Spiced Rum
(adapted for the rum used & the DJ's tastes... click the image to the right to get the original recipe)

1 bottle bottle gold rum (Cockspur Five Star)
1 vanilla bean, sliced length-wise
1 three inch piece orange peel
1 three inch piece lemon peel
1 cinnamon stick
3 whole allspice berries
3 whole cloves
3 whole black peppercorns
1 quarter inch piece nutmeg

Combine all in container and seal. Let sit for 2-3 days. When desired flavor is reached, strain and re-bottle.

In order to whet your appetite on what a spiced rum drink can be, let us examine the recipe in the picture to the right. It is called the Henry & John, after (Captain) Henry Morgan and John Pemberton, the inventor of Coca-Cola. Call it a fancy "Cap'n & Coke", but it tastes nothing like it. This drink is created by Martin Cate, a modern day champion and authority on tiki drinks and bartending. Cate just opened up a new bar called Smuggler's Cove in San Francisco, a joint specifically designed to celebrate rum. And I must say, Henry & John is a drink on the order of some of the best rum drinks I've ever had.

Henry & John

2 oz (homemade) spiced rum
3/4 oz lime juice
1 oz brown sugar syrup*
2 dashes orange bitters
2 dashes aromatic bitters
2 oz seltzer water

Wrap a long piece of orange peel inside a tall glass, then fill the glass with ice. Shake all ingredients except the seltzer in a shaker with ice. Open the shaker, add the seltzer, then strain onto the ice in your glass with the orange peel.

*Recipe is in the image above.

Final note: be classy and save your prettiest booze bottles to house your finished infusion masterpieces.

Infusion #3: Winter Rum

2011-01-21T11:37:00.016-05:00

I talk quite a bit about infusions on this blog. If you're tired of it, you're welcome to leave, but if you're not, then you're in for a treat, because I'm "turning it up a notch" today.

Over a year ago I decided to see what would happen when I infused fresh cranberries into white rum. The result, obviously, was cranberry rum, and while it achieved a beautiful red hue on the order of Campari, very little flavor was added to the final product except for a nice acidic tartness. I concluded that fresh cranberries would make a great infusion if used along with other ingredients. Today I'm finally running with that idea.

What I'm doing is what you could call a compound infusion, not simply because of how many ingredients I'll be using, but because of how I will be doing it. When I talked about making bitters a while back, I spoke of a conservative method of infusion whereby one infuses alcohols separately and then combines them into a perfect blend via trial and error. Today, I'm using a different technique with the same soul: instead of infusing all the ingredients at once, I will be doing it in stages. With this method, I can halt each infusion handily at the moment when its flavor is perfect, and then continue with the next so as to best balance the combination of tastes in the final product.

I'm going with three infusions this time: dried berries, fresh cranberries, and cinnamon, and I'll be doing it with rum. Why rum again? Because it's what I know best and because it's so versatile. I promise to do a non-rum infusion soon.

I've used Cruzan Estate Light in several infusions, and I'm using Cruzan again this time, but I will be using their Cruzan Estate Dark product. It's really more of a gold rum than a "dark" rum, but its flavor is dry and peppery as opposed to fruity and sweet, which makes it a perfect candidate for the base of a "winter rum".

The first infusion was with the dried berries. I used all natural berries from Stoneridge Orchards, which is a combination of cherries, blueberries, cranberries, and raspberries. Infusing dried fruit into your liquor yields a very different result than fresh; the flavors are dark, earthy, and oxidized as opposed to bright and fruity. It also imparts more sweetness than usual. I put about a dozen berries in the bottle of rum, and less than 24 hours later, I decided it was already done, and strained them out.

Next up is the fresh cranberries. Like last time, I'll point out that you really need to rupture each berry so that the hollow inner surface area of the berry can add to the infusion.

About 15 crushed cranberries went in, and it was done about 36 hours later. Also like last time, the color of the rum has turned a beautiful red (pictured left), and there is now a tartness that balances out the sweetness imparted by the dried berries.

Lastly is the cinnamon (pictured right). Using a whole stick of cinnamon (and not the ground stuff) guarantees the cinnamon's quality and ease of extraction, and trust me when I say that shortly after being put into the rum, the stick unfurls and allows the liquor access to its whole surface area. As you can see, the berries so far have soaked up quite a bit of the rum that we won't get back. So sad!

The cinnamon only needed about 24 hours to impart what I wanted. The Winter Rum is complete (pictured left). The final result is interesting in that all of the infused components can be tasted individually in the rum. It has a very warming characteristic to it, which I suppose was what I was going for. The dried berries give an underlying sweetness, the cranberries lend a tartness that keeps the rum from being too boring, and the cinnamon applies an overall earthiness that really gives the rum its warmth. I'm satisfied with this experiment, though I would have wanted to infuse the dried berries for less time. For any of you trying something similar: go easy on the dried fruit.

You could use something like this in almost any application of spiced rum, or even in the stead of any gold rum to add a decidedly wintry spin on any cocktail. My application will be simpler.

Winter Rum & Ginger

2 oz Winter Rum
2.5 oz ginger ale or ginger beer
1 dash aromatic bitters

Combine ingredients over ice in a tumbler.

Next time you're at a bar where you don't trust the bartender, order a spiced rum and ginger ale; although cola is more traditional, I find that ginger ale better complements spiced rum, whereas I feel cola simply trounces it. Ginger ale is also well mixed with any old decent gold rum. Try it next time when you're out of ideas on what to make to drink.

This rum combines very well with ginger ale. The dried fruit flavors and cinnamon go especially well with the aromatic bitters. The concoction is pictured above in a beautiful gold-rimmed glass (of 4) that I found at an antique shop. The outsides (and insides) of the glasses are curiously adorned with miniature reproductions of pages and ads from old Montgomery Ward magazines.

MxMo: See You on the Flipside

2011-01-14T09:00:00.030-05:00

This month's Mixology Monday is hosted by Cocktail Assembly, and its theme is the flip. Flips are a style of drink, just like sours, fizzes, punches, or crustas. The modern flip is defined as a base spirit, a little syrup or liqueur, and 1 whole egg, shaken with ice, strained into a glass, and a little fresh grated nutmeg on top.

Yeah, that's right... a whole egg, yolk and all, shaken into a cocktail. The construction and appearance of flips are very much like the Alexanders that I've been making. Their consistency is creamy, and their weight is heavy. The original flips, which were once created with warm beer, were essentially small meals unto themselves.

Click here to see the final MxMo roundup!

Although I'm a huge fan of food that breaks American norms and taboos, I've never been a fan of flips. It's not really the risk of sickness, but rather the taste of raw eggs... I just don't like it. I like my eggs cooked until they're rubber, and I tell every IHOP server accordingly.

But, Mixology Mondays have driven me to undertake daunting tasks before, and this shall be no exception. I will give the flip another earnest attempt, because even when I dislike something, I've always been known to give it another chance. I can safely say that there's no food or drink that I'll permanently avoid.

Because the formula for the flip is just about as versatile as the Alexander, I have a lot of room for creativity to maximize my chances of success. I figure that a good strategy is simply to create a flip that uses my favorite things... surely I couldn't dislike it then, right?

Well then, I can safely say that my favorite spirit is probably Cruzan Black Strap rum, which is an aged rum mixed with molasses. It tastes of brown sugar and maple syrup. I could sing its praises for hours, but that will be for a later post. Interestingly, I recall coming across quite a few flips on Frederic's blog Cocktail ~~Virgin~~ Slut which use Black Strap rum.

But instead of following one of those recipes, I will be mixing the rum with falernum. Falernum is a dark syrup that is flavored with almonds, ginger, cloves, allspice, and limes, and is primarily used in tiki drinks. One can acquire falernum in several ways. You can buy falernum syrup, the most popular of which is Fee Brothers... there are various websites which will sell and ship it to you. There is also an alcoholic falernum: Velvet Falernum Liqueur. Of the two, I have only tried the Fee Brothers falernum, and while it is ok, I have irritatingly found, as I often do, that making your own is superior to what can be bought in every way.

A small amount of Googling can find you a recipe to make your own falernum. One that stands out is Kaiser Penguin's recipe. Most do-it-yourself falernums involve infusing things in rum(pictured to the right by the Penguin himself), and then adding sugar syrup (thereby creating an alcoholic falernum), a process that takes a lot of time. However, the Kaiser Penguin has also posted a rum-free falernum recipe that can be made in minutes, and quite honestly, is delicious. It's now the only recipe I use.

On the subject or raw eggs, you may have a consideration: did you know there exist pasteurized eggs? They're not easy to find, but I found some at a local Whole Foods, and I bet you could find some at your nearest premium (super)market. Pasteurized eggs contain no chance to get you sick when consumed raw, unlike normal eggs. While that chance was still small, it's nice to know that you could be consuming a 100% safe cocktail.

I'm going to add a dash of aromatic bitters to my flip, because then it will actually be a flip version of the Corn N' Oil cocktail. Here we go!

Corn N' Oil Flip

1.5 oz Cruzan Black Strap rum
.5 oz falernum
1 dash aromatic bitters
1 egg

Shake ingredients in a cocktail shaker filled with ice*. Double-strain** into a cocktail glass. Grate a bit of fresh nutmeg on top.

*You may need to shake the ingredients first without ice, then with ice. Sometimes the cold prevents the egg from properly frothing during shaking.
**One double-strains their cocktail by using the regular cocktail strainer, but also running the liquid through a wire mesh strainer as well. This is usually done to remove small ice shards, but in this case, we want to remove any chalaza that might be in the egg white, which is a small cord of connective tissue that may not disintegrate in the shaking.

I daresay that pasteurized eggs taste less "eggy" in cocktails than their normal counterparts. The egg offers additions in the department of texture and substance, but it really offers no flavor in this iteration. The fattiness of the yolk deadens a lot of the flavor that would be in the cocktail; the Corn N' Oil has a very bold flavor while the Corn N' Oil Flip is quite subtle. The addition of the nutmeg is great, but perhaps offers too much flavor... it shouldn't be as prominent as it is. Overall, I don't dislike this flip, but I just don't love eggs in my cocktail. It's certainly good enough such that I would give flips yet another try some day soon down the road, which I consider a great success.

The Alexander Ratio, Remixed

2011-01-04T12:26:00.008-05:00

The cold weather can drive one's taste buds to yearn for warm flavors. Well, I don't know of any flavor warmer than cinnamon, and I don't know of a hotter liquor than Goldschlager.

Almost a year and a half ago I wrote of the ironclad Alexander cocktail type. What? You haven't been experimenting with it like I asked? WELL DO IT NOW. I'll wait.

This here is a drink that myself and the adorable DJ HawaiianSkirt have been working on for a while now. It's still not perfect, because even cream can't tame the alcoholy kick of the Goldschlager, but damn if this isn't tasty. The Cognac provides just enough of a counterpoint to the Goldschlager such that it's not simply a "Goldschlager milkshake".

ORIGINAL REMIX

Hugo Bar Cocktail

1 oz table cream
1 oz Goldschlager
1 oz flavorful brandy, or Cognac

Shake ingredients in a shaker full of ice and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish in some way with your favorite cinnamon candy. (jelly beans pictured here)

Review: Woodchuck Winter & the Amber Stonewall

2010-12-30T11:26:00.008-05:00

A popular alternative to beer in the United States is hard apple cider. Simply put, hard cider is beer that's been made with apple juice as a source of fermentation instead of beer's barley mash, but don't be fooled... cider isn't simply an alternative to beer, but a great drink in it's own right. (For a way to make a simple cider at home, check out my review of Spike Your Juice.)

As I understand it, cider is a much more popular drink in the UK than it is in the US. Truth be told, cider is rarely drunk by American beer drinkers as an alternative, but instead usually drunk by small cadres of cider fans. There are various kinds of cider around certain regions of the US, but Woodchuck is a brand that you’ll find almost nationwide. Luckily for us Americans, it’s a great brand, and they make great products.

Woodchuck's flagship is their Amber variety, a simple cider made from red apples. It's sweet and delicious. They make a Granny Smith cider, and one called 802 Dark & Dry, which is mixed with caramelized sugar. They also have Raspberry and Pear ciders, though consumer be warned: these are simply flavored apple ciders, not ciders of a different fruit.

Recently I learned that Woodchuck makes limited release seasonal ciders. While most websites pertaining to beer and spirits are dreadfully out-of-date when it comes to documenting their products, woodchuck.com is different. It tells me (albeit in marketing-speak) that they sell barrel-aged Winter, honeyed Spring, blueberry Summer, spiced Fall, and even Private Reserve Pumpkin cider!

But depending on where you live, they may be quite difficult to find. Even wine and beer authorities in my area such as Ace Beverage and Total Wine were unable to handily make a special order for me. But, for some reason, Harris Teeter has always had a superior Woodchuck selection, and that is where I haphazardly found a pack of Woodchuck Winter.

The Review
Woodchuck Winter

From the website:
"Somewhere between a delicate snowflake drifting down to your tongue and a hard-packed snowball to the teeth, the power of this winter Cider is a balanced culmination of Premium French and Traditional American Oak, giving the cider great complexity and broad characteristics that neither style could produce on its own."

I don't mean to give anything away, but I really had to compare side-by-side the Winter cider to Woodchuck's Amber cider in order to be able to discern some of the former's characteristics.

In the Glass

Like any cider, when poured into the glass, the Winter developed nowhere near the head that beer fans are used to. Once settled, the cider's color is a few shades darker than the Amber.

Smell

The smell of the Winter is delightfully apply, as expected, though its aroma is less powerful than the Amber.

Taste

This is the point where I realized that I needed to bring in the Amber cider for comparison and start over. The flavor of the Winter cider seemed undetectably different than the Amber, if perhaps a little less sweet. Disappointed, I cracked open some cold Amber and took a few sips. When I revisited the Winter, the differences finally arose.

The flavor is definitely less sweet, probably more on par with the Woodchuck 802 Dark & Dry. I finally taste the woodiness of the cider's extra aging... it's a very faint dry flavor much like the characteristics I taste in my own Cask-series spirits. I'm also able to detect a little bit of vanilla in the mix.

But alas, after a few sips, I can no longer taste the unique character of Winter. But when I switch back to Amber for a few sips and return to Winter once more, I can taste it again.

Conclusion

I guess I see what Woodchuck is doing here. They make a varietal of their cider whose flavor doesn't appreciably stray from their "core" ciders. That way, their loyal fans are able to drink their varietals without having to adapt their tastes or think too hard. But when someone like myself can barely taste the difference between your core and varietal ciders, then you have a problem.

I dearly wish that beverage and spirit companies would take more chances in issuing unique variations of their products. It really comes down to money versus innovation: you can either ensure that a new product is close enough to the old to keep consumption the same on average, or you can take a leap that may fall on its ass, but it may also advance the industry.

Perhaps I'm being a little harsh or hyperbolic, but I'm quite disappointed with Woodchuck Winter. I wouldn't go out of my way again to obtain it. I'd buy it again only to impress my cider-drinking friends at a party. I'd recommend it only to those who could obtain it easily. As for the other Woodchuck limited releases, I'd still love to try them, but knowing how nebulous it is to get my hands on them, I don't know if I ever will.

While we're on the subject of cider, let me share with you a great drink: the Stonewall cocktail.

You won't find too much information on the Stonewall for some reason, but some quick research makes it clear that the drink consists of whiskey and apple cider, hot or cold. I've found that Woodchuck Amber and bourbon make a fine Stonewall, and its flavors really hit the spot in fall or winter, for whatever reason. The bourbon manages to bring out the yeastiness of the cider, and the cider manages to highlight the pungent corn flavors of the bourbon. Do yourself a favor and pick up a pack of Woodchuck for this year's New Year celebration, and do yourself a second favor by making an Amber Stonewall.

Amber Stonewall

2oz Woodchuck Amber hard cider
1oz bourbon

Pour ingredients into a tumbler filled with ice. Optional cinnamon stick for a stirrer/garnish.

Review: Spike Your Juice

2010-12-14T10:03:00.009-05:00

One of my favorite blogs is the Drinkhacker. Primarily a booze review blog, it constantly reviews anything alcoholic with a discerning palate and thoughtful notes. My favorite is when some of the more rare or unusual products are reviewed.

A while back, I saw that the Drinkhacker had reviewed a curious product called Spike Your Juice. I was so excited by it that I emailed their Customer Service on the product's website to see if they would send me a free sample to review, and they did. Because of their kindness and their great product, I will be ordering more soon with my own hard-earned money.

Spike Your Juice is a small kit that contains all you need in order to begin making your own cider or wine at home. The kit comes with a bubbler airlock that will fit on most large commercial 64oz juice bottles, six packets of yeast, and a bunch of quaint labels to put on your homemade hooch once it's done.

The process to make your own booze with this kit is simple and fun. You take a bottle of your favorite kind of juice, pour in a packet of yeast, plug the bottle with your bubbler airlock filled slightly with water, and wait! The yeast immediately begin consuming the sugar in the juice and begin emitting alcohol and carbon dioxide as waste... delicious, delicious waste. Within 8 hours you can see many tiny bubbles rising to your juice's surface while your airlock lets out excess gas and keeps out bacteria. If you didn't have an airlock, your capped bottle would explode in a matter of hours.

As a side note, it turns out the the Spike Your Juice yeast packets are in fact yeast and a bit of sugar mixed in. It may be the added sugar or that it's a particularly fast kind of brewing yeast, but the effects of the yeast's consumption can be seen hours quicker than if you used a simple run-of-the-mill yeast from your grocery store... I experimented and confirmed it.

The fermenting will stop when either 1) you put the bottle in the fridge to chill and kill the yeast (but cap it loosely if your airlock doesn't fit in the fridge!), 2) you drink it, 3) there is no sugar left for the yeast to consume, or 4) when the alcohol-by-volume of the juice reaches about 14%, which is an environment that naturally kills off the yeast. But watch out, if you let it ferment much past 48 hours, most of the juice's sugar will be consumed by the yeast, and your juice/hooch will no longer be very sweet.

This stuff is great fun. The first thing I fermented was Welch's Concord Grape juice, a product on Spike Your Juice's recommended juice list(pictured right). After 48 hours, the juice was carbonated, still sweet, and slightly boozy. The yeast lend a pungent flavor to the juice, which is tolerable, but not ideal. I found that running the juice through a coffee filter can remove most of the yeast (taste)... also another way to slow down the fermentation.

After I tested a recommended juice, I set out to try it on my own favorites... and I learned a valuable lesson: carefully check your juice's ingredients list before you try to ferment. It goes without saying that yeast will only consume natural sugar and not artificial sweetener, but another aspect to consider is preservatives. I wanted nothing more than Hawaiian Punch wine, but it is not to be; after the yeast floated in the punch for a day, I realized that (with the help of my friend who's a doctoral biology student) the culprit is the punch's Potassium Sorbate, a preservative which is specifically used for killing yeasts and molds. Whoops.

So far I've fermented grape juice, apple juice, cranberry cocktail, fruit punch, (bottled, non-refridgerated) orange juice, and a big jug of apple cider. I brought the fermented cider to Thanksgiving, and it was a hit (pictured below).

Herein lies, in my opinion, Spike Your Juice's best application: parties. The life of your fermented juice will be short; like soda, the hooch's carbonation quickly dissapates, and further, the yeast's consumption doesn't stop on a dime. What tastes delicious and sweet today might be dry and sugarless tomorrow, even if you put it in the fridge. Further still, Spike Your Juice recommends throwing away your juice's cap once you begin to ferment it, because you can essentially never safely cap the bottle again without it exploding, which doesn't exactly encourage you to keep it long before drinking it. All this volatile nature means rapid juice drinking is best, and that is best done among friends or family.

I highly recommend this product. It's cheap($10), simple, educational, and a lot of fun. You can turn your favorite juice into a wine or cider and enjoy it in a different and novel way.

Experiment responsibly!

theSpeakista reviews the DJ's experiments

2010-12-02T09:42:00.005-05:00

There is a chap named Keith who lives in New York City, and he runs a booze blog called theSpeakista. You should read his blog, because it details the coming-of-age of a novice cocktailian, and if you like drinking Manhattans in Manhattan bars, then you should really read his blog, because that is a subject in which he's quickly becoming an authority.

And now you have yet another reason to read it, because he has recently crafted a in-depth and detailed review of both my home-aged Composite Grape Spirit and my homemade Coffee Bitters, of which I sent him samples.

Thanks for the kind words and the thoughtful analysis, Keith. I'm dedicating my next Manhattan to you, sir.

MxMo: Forgotten Cocktails

2010-11-21T15:54:00.006-05:00

This month's Mixology Monday is hosted by Rock and Rye, and the theme is "Forgotten Cocktails". Contextually, Dennis of Rock And Rye is referring to cocktail recipes that may be of old age and, even better, underrated!

I have just the candidate, and as one of my favorite cocktails, I've been waiting to post it for quite a while.

The mythology behind the Oriental cocktail is that the recipe was loosed upon the world when an American engineer shared it with a Filipino doctor as repayment for his having saved his life from some tropical disease, as first mentioned in the Savoy. I personally find cocktail histories to be untrustworthy and dull, and so I'll stop here. Let's get on with the drinking.

Oriental

1.5 oz rye whiskey
.75 oz orange curacao*
.75 oz sweet vermouth**
.5 oz lime juice

Shake all ingredients with ice, strain into a cocktail glass. No garnish.

*Triple sec, if you must
**Try to use a sweet vermouth that isn't overpowering. I find that certain brands, such as Martini & Rossi, are veritable herbal assaults on the tongue, and just a bit too much. If your vermouth is too strong, it will upset the balance in the drink.

What separates this from many other obscure vintage cocktails is the flavor. Erik at the Underhill-Lounge remarks that it has a "very modern" taste, and he's right. As I've mentioned before, whiskey and lime is a fairly uncommon combination, which is what might lend to the drink's modern flavor. Furthermore, as Erik also points out, the amount of sweet and sour in the drink is high, such that the whiskey isn't exactly singing the lead.

It's the struggle between each ingredient in this recipe that makes it so interesting. Nothing is accenting and complementing the other here; instead, it's like a flavor free for all, where each is vying for your attention. It's an unusual dynamic for a cocktail, but it proves that it can be done, and in an entertaining way.

A variation on this recipe is the James Joyce which replaces the rye whiskey with Irish whiskey, constructed by the legendary Gary Regan.

James Joyce

1.5 oz Irish whiskey
.75 oz curacao/triple sec
.75 sweet vermouth
.5 oz lime juice

Shake all ingredients with ice, strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a maraschino cherry.

Chuck Taggart declares this drink to be superior and more complex than the Oriental, but I don't agree. (Probably because I used the balmy Jameson as my whiskey.) For me, this variation throws the Oriental's balance a little out of whack, as the subtler whiskey recedes to let the fruit and the sweetness take over. Regardless, it's still a fascinating drink, but in a different way.

Lastly, I have my own variation, which I daresay is my favorite version so far. One simply replaces the Oriental's rye with bourbon...

ORIGINAL REMIX

Sentimental

1.5 oz bourbon
.75 oz curacao
.75 oz sweet vermouth
.5 oz lime juice

Shake all ingredients with ice, strain into a cocktail glass. No garnish.

This drink tips the recipe's balance ever so slightly into the "sweet" direction, thanks to the bourbon, but I feel it's not too much. If you use something on the sweeter side, like Knobb Creek or Woodford Reserve, you'll find a deep spiciness appear in the drink causing you to praise whatever god you worship (or lack thereof).

Homemade Coffee Bitters

2010-11-10T10:06:00.013-05:00

One of the things I try to do on this blog is not be redundant toward subjects that have already been touched upon by people smarter than I. For example, I began this blog with the beginning of my Cask series, an experiment with at-home spirit aging, something about which had been scarcely written. Also, the reviews on this site are of products for which there are scant reviews already. My original remixes tend to be fairly unorthodox, and not simply echoes of what you'll see in a book or another booze blog. Ultimately, I'm not going to pretend that I'm more clever than I really am, and so I choose only to write about things which might sound interesting coming from me in particular.

So, when I finally decided that it was time for me to try my hand at making my own bitters, I knew that I didn't want to simply start with the most-popular aromatic-type bitters. Aromatic bitters are typically made with a plethora of roots, spices, and herbs. Instead of simply finding some zany twist to some popular type of bitters, I instead sought to create a type of bitters that I always wished existed (or rather, wished was easier to obtain): coffee bitters.

How does one make bitters? Fairly simply: you infuse a bunch of crap in alcohol (not unlike some of my infusion experiments), but instead of stopping the infusion when the flavor is modest and palatable, you let it infuse for days, weeks, or months. And then sometimes, you remove the flavoring material, and infuse the alcohol again with more material. What you're going for is a result that is undrinkable, literally. In the end, what you want is something that is generally high in percentage of alcohol, overwhelmingly strong in flavor, and intensely bitter. Even though these attributes are usually negative, none of them are negative when you apply your finished product one dash at a time.

Someone who's been doing some pretty interesting stuff lately with bitters is CaptainMcBoozy. He's given me advice on making bitters, but I find that he and I stand separately on what appear to be two different schools on bitters fabrication. The Captain likes flying by the seat of his pants, throwing all his ingredients in one jar of alcohol, and infusing it until it's done. I myself am much more pessimistic about my chances of success, and so I subscribe to how Jamie Boudreau does it: infuse each flavor separately into its own tincture, and experiment with blending the tinctures in different proportions until you have it right. Otherwise, you greatly risk destroying your bitters; a pinch too much of any one ingredient can make it taste completely wrong.

Jacob Grier made some coffee bitters of his own, but my recipe took a very different flavor approach.

So for my coffee bitters, my process was fairly simple:

1) get 3 jars/bottles

2) put coffee grounds (I used Starbucks Summer Blend) in the first bottle, cinnamon sticks in the second bottle, and wormwood in the third bottle*

3) pour a mixture of vodka and grain alcohol in the bottles, enough to cover the contents completely

4) wait at least 2 weeks

5) strain each bottle (using a coffee filter, pictured right), and re-infuse them with new contents if you find that their flavor is not yet strong enough for your liking

6) store the tinctures separately, mix them in various combinations until you find one that tastes good (drunk with another spirit, not necessarily tasted alone)

7) mix more in those ideal proportions, and bottle it

Captain McBoozy recommends using Everclear as his solvent of choice. In order to save money, I use a mixture of vodka (80 proof) and grain alcohol (190 proof) that balances out to about 140 proof. A higher proof solvent with give you more "chemical surface area" (as I once read it so eloquently put) to capture the solute's flavors, and more specifically, its alcohol-soluble compounds. A simple vodka wouldn't do quite the same thing.

Where the hell do you get bitters bottles? Well, I don't know, really. The bitters-style cap that's meant for dashing is not something easily obtained. My solution is one that works fairly well: I go to www.specialitybottle.com, which is an absolutely fabulous site. There, you can buy just about any type of bottle you want(some of mine are pictured above). While they don't have dasher bottles, they do have dropper bottles and spray bottles, both of which, I find, apply bitters in an acceptable way (though you have to get a feel for how much to use using these new methods).

*Wormwood isn't easy to find. There are websites that sell herbs which you can order from, but I was lucky enough to find it in a local hispanic market. Trawl your local ethnic markets, and if they have an herb/spice/root section, be sure to look for it. It also may be useful to learn what your desired thing is called in a target language. I knew that wormwood was ajenjo in spanish, and I found it.

The coffee bitters ended up quite good. They ended up being a combination of tinctures of coffee, cinnamon, and wormwood, with a little vanilla extract in there as well. I could have tried to make my own vanilla tincture, but vanilla beans are very expensive, and I expect it would have cost me about 20 dollars to get any respectable amount of it infused.

The bitters taste most strongly of a burnt and smokey flavor, which let the moderate coffee flavor sit in back, fairly muted. The spiciness of the cinnamon works well with the smokiness, and the vanilla is there to soften everything. The wormwood provides little to no flavor, and instead serves to make everything more bitter, though this concoction is on the less-bitter side (compared to a commercial bitters). These bitters of mine may not actually be quite bitter enough. I'll just have to try harder next time.

What can these bitters do? Well, I find that these are best in a Scotch Old Fashioned(pictured above), for some reason. Perhaps the smokiness of the bitters plays well in scotch. The coffee bitters also go well in rum and rye whiskey. Both Rob Roys and rye Manhattans play nice with them.

I encourage you to try something like this. All you need is some high proof vodka, some spices/herbs/roots/whatever, some bottles, and some time! Combine your favorite flavors, and you can make your very own personal bitters!

Review: Evan Williams Honey Reserve

2010-11-04T10:32:00.011-04:00

A while back I reviewed a new Seagram product called "7 Dark Honey", a whiskey liqueur that is flavored with honey. The product mostly missed the mark: its whiskey base was the underwhelming Seagram's 7, its aroma and flavor were dominated by alcohol, it tasted just as much of a generic (brown) sugar as it did honey, and its character was completely lost when mixed with anything else. This failure was particularly salient when compared to its competitor, Wild Turkey's American Honey liqueur. American Honey was bourbon based, and its honey flavor was prominent and enjoyable.

Well, I spoke too soon. Shortly after the review(s), I stumbled across Evan Williams' entry into the product segment.

I'm a huge Evan Williams fan. For about $15, their normal black label bourbon is one of the best liquor values I know. The price makes you feel fine while mixing it away, but it's certainly refined enough to enjoy alone in a glass, which I do often.

The Review
Evan Williams Honey Reserve

Most of the Evan Williams bourbon flavor doesn't come through, despite its bourbon base, though if you pass up trying this product, you'll regret it severely.

In the Glass

I daresay that Honey Reserve is thicker than its competitors. Its viscosity is luxurious. But with that, its color is so light that you'd swear it uses a base other than whiskey.

Smell

The aroma of Honey Reserve immediately hits you, and it's fruity... mostly of lemon. Whereas the 7 Dark Honey's aroma is nonexistent and the American Honey smells faintly of bourbon, the Evan Williams immediately makes its aroma known. Aside from lemon, I'm detecting a brown sugar aroma, much like its competitors.

Taste

Strangely enough, the overwhelming flavor in this stuff is of fruit. It's got an overall fruitiness that is constant, and soon enough you realize that most of it is lemon. The sweetness coats your tongue, like this others; this one is mostly of honey, but there's some brown sugar in there too. After a while, you can begin to notice faint hints of vanilla, and even the sweetness of corn from the whiskey. The swallow brings more fruitiness and brown sugar.

Mixing

This stuff is heavenly over a few ice cubes... you'll find yourself struggling to stray from either doing that or mixing it with bourbon in various proportions. I think I successfully mixed this stuff into a Manhattan and it was good, but that was a long time ago. You can make it into an Old Fashioned by simply putting some bitters in it and throwing on a good twist of lemon.

I set out to do something much more radical with it, just for giggles. I came up with something of a Martini variation, but it doesn't taste like it. Let's call it the...

Laced Straight

2 oz gin

.5 oz Evan Williams Honey Reserve

.5 oz dry vermouth

Stir with ice, and strain. Garnish with lemon twist.

This thing is great. The honey manages to keep the gin's botanicals in check, and there's a resulting nuttiness in the mix. It's sweeter than most clear gin drinks you'll ever have, which is a little disconcerting.

Conclusion

This is by far the best American honey whiskey product on the market. It takes a slightly different tack from its competitors by embracing a lemony fruitiness to accompany the wheat and the honey, but the risk paid off.

The moment I tasted Honey Reserve for the first time, I knew it was the best in its class. Weeks later, my suspicions were confirmed when I saw it behind the bar at the exceptional PS7 in Washington, DC.

Oh, and by the way, its price is smack dab in the middle of its two competitors. I'm not sure what more to tell you, other than to go buy some now.

Bonus: Here's what the Drink Hacker said about the stuff, and here is a piece done by Bourbon Blog on how one restaurant uses it to make a cocktail along with BBQ sauce.

Review: Hiram Walker Original Cinn

2010-10-15T09:47:00.020-04:00

I'm a young guy. I'm still at the point of my life where I'm trying to financially balance the fact that I have an expensive cocktail habit and the fact that I'm living alone in one of the most expensive metropolitan areas in the US. And, much like a cash-strapped parent might go for the from-concentrate orange juice in order to save a few cents in the grocery store, I have no problem with lowering my eyes a shelf or two in the liquor store in order to save a few dollars.

I'm not ashamed that I don't demand the best every time. As someone who's still learning this craft, I value quantity just as much as quality, since quantity allows my experimentation-per-dollar to fly farther. You won't see me making Beachbum Berry's famous $100 dollar Mai Tai... I can make a Mai Tai for half the price that tastes better than half as good.

I've found that liqueurs are a product segment where money can be very easily saved with little ill effect. Why? Because liqueurs generally constitute small volumetric amounts of any given recipe (so any imperfections aren't too noticeable). Simply put, it is my opinion that you're better off using a lower quality triple sec in your Sidecar cocktail, for example, than lower quality brandy.

But let's get one thing clear: if your eyes wander to the bottom shelf of the liqueurs, you're in for trouble. Many times have I generously given chances of impression to bottom-shelf triple secs, for example, and continually I've been disappointed. I believe one time I salvaged a bottle of the stuff by infusing it with orange peels, but I later found that it doesn't always work. The key is to realize that less-than-premium liqueurs (and spirits) can yield fine cocktails, but that lowering your standards too much can make the drinks suffer.

Hiram Walker is a brand I find myself returning to very often, in this respect. Its prices are completely affordable, and it always tastes better than the nonsense you find on the bottom shelf. For instance, if I choose Hiram Walker's Triple Sec over Cointreau, I can save over $20. My drinks may not be quite as good, but they certainly won't be twice as good with the Cointreau. A few of the products I like most from Hiram Walker are the Triple Sec, Orange Curacao, Creme de Cassis, and Cherry Brandy (mentioned previously here).

And now I have another favorite: Hiram Walker's Original Cinn cinnamon schnapps.

Wait, don't go away! I have a feeling this stuff isn't what you'd expect.

Schnapps is an interesting topic in the land of liquor. When one speaks of schnapps, there is value in clarifying what you mean. Why? Because there are two different types of schnapps, and they are very, very different.

The first type is the product to which the name originally referred: German schnaps (spelled with only one "P"). German schnaps(pictured right) is very similar to the french term eau-de-vie; it means any liquor that is distilled from fruit or fruit juice, bottled at about 80 proof, and contains no additional sugar, colors, or flavors. These are most commonly produced using apples, pears, plums, and cherries. Technically, schnaps is a kind of fruit brandy.

Americans have a knack for bastardizing foreign things, and schnaps is no exception. American schnapps bears little resemblance to its German grandfather. Typically, American schnapps' base is a neutral grain spirit (read: vodka) with colors, flavors, and sugars added to the final product. While the German stuff is technically an eau-de-vie, the American stuff is a liqueur.

Most people serious about spirits scoff at schnapps (two "P"s), and I don't blame them; the vast majority of them are flavored artificially. Some of them are much better than others, however. And in the case of Hiram Walker's Original Cinn (pictured right), its quality and singularity merit a second look.

When it comes to cinnamon flavors in modern food and drink, I think of two main categories: natural cinnamon and candy cinnamon . When it comes to cinnamon schnapps, the overwhelming flavor is usually of candy cinnamon. Even Hiram Walker's original Cinnamon Schnapps is this way.

The Review
Hiram Walker Original Cinn

Original Cinn is a cinnamon schnapps that clocks in at 90 proof. A high proof cinnamon schnapps? Sounds like a textbook competitor for Goldschlager.

Goldschlager is a clear liqueur that is also high proof and quaintly decorated by edible and delicate 24-carat gold flakes that gracefully float inside the bottle. At 87 proof and mostly consumed via shots, the fiery stuff screams down your throat with the strong flavor of hot candy cinnamon. It's very popular, especially among those who don't like harder spirits like tequila or whiskey, but still like the effects of intoxication.

I thought Original Cinn was gonna be the same experience, but I was wrong. And thanks to this free bottle of Original Cinn that was given to me as a gift, I'm able to tell you how.

In the Glass

Original Cinn pours thick, like a liqueur should. Its color is that of a lightly aged rum(pictured above). It's disconcerting at first to see a cinnamon liqueur that's not red, but after a moment I begin to appreciate the withholding of obligatory red coloring on the part of Hiram Walker.

Smell

The nose of this stuff is strongly of cinnamon (like it was freshly grated), but as you'll learn with Original Cinn, a streak of vanilla invades the experience as well. Its aroma is a bit creamy. Other than that, there's a strong waft of alcohol. It is 90 proof, after all.

Taste

Original Cinn hits your tongue with a syrupy viscosity. After a moment there's a blooming and full flavor of fresh cinnamon (as opposed to candy cinnamon) that fills your mouth. Following the cinnamon is a wonderful flavor that's identical to a good vanilla frosting, and even with a touch of red apple. You'll also find the slightest hints of nutmeg and maybe even clove. You'll most definitely notice some alcohol, as the 90-proof vapors rise to the roof of your mouth.

While the mouth feel is thick and the flavor is sweet, this won't fool you into thinking you're drinking Drambuie; the base of this is clearly not aged, and so there's a cheap vodka-like body to it. It's not to the detriment of the experience, but it's noticeable.

The swallow finishes sweet. After each sip, it feels like you've taken a bite of a piping hot frosted cinnamon roll right out of the oven.

Mixing

I had trouble mixing this stuff. Liquified cinnamon buns aren't begging to be paired with anything that I know of. However, I did have some limited success with a few ideas.

The first was something you could almost call an Original Cinn Old Fashioned. The stuff doesn't need any more sugar, but with a few dashes of aromatic bitters and on the rocks, these schnapps are just fine. Frankly, Original Cinn on the rocks(pictured left) might be the best easy way to drink it. After dinner, this stuff is great.

Ever heard of B&B? It's a bottled product that you can buy which is half Benedictine (a sweet herbal liqueur) and half brandy. The brandy cuts the Benedictine into a nice drink. I took a similar route and mixed some Original Cinn with an equal part of bourbon, and the result was nice. I bet it'd work great with rye whiskey as well.

Lastly, I poured about two dashes of Original Cinn on a big ol' lump of vanilla ice cream. I always get irritated when the back of liqueur bottles suggest use with ice cream... I think it's a cop-out, mainly because no one buys liqueur for that. Anyway, Original Cinn on ice cream is great, period. Don't go overboard with it, though, because the high proof makes itself known a little too much in this application. For the record, the Original Cinn bottle doesn't actually suggest consumption with ice cream.

Conclusion

Original Cinn is different than I expected, and I was pleasantly surprised. I'm glad that Hiram Walker took a different tack with this product, which I still feel is a competitor to Goldschlager. Unlike Goldschlager, however, what you get is not an intimidating liquid fire that people can only manage to drink when forced down a shot at a time, but instead a completely inviting liquid sweet roll that reminds you of your grandmother's house on Sunday morning. While I imagine that Hiram Walker believes that Original Cinn will be most often consumed in shot form, I feel that it's much more at home swimming with ice cubes while you lounge after dinner on a cold night.

I also feel that Hiram Walker is doing itself a disservice by marketing this product with an edgy, mischievous image. Though I suppose that the American schnapps segment is rarely marketed on its own product quality, and so perhaps this sort of "sinful" image is really needed to get sorority girls to pick up the bottle for their next party.

What I wish they had done instead was simply marketed it as a "Cinnamon Roll Liqueur" or something like that. Perhaps that image is a bit novel, but I feel there's a glut of products on the liquor store shelves which rely on the "bad boy" image. I could point out examples in schnapps, vodka, spiced rum, tequila, and that's not even counting products whose commercials depict naughty sexual suggestions in some night club.

There aren't enough wholesome products which are marketed on their own merits, and I feel that Original Cinn could benefit from it. It is a boozy and sweet liqueur whose flavor is unique, fascinating, and delicious. It's worth having a bottle around simply for its singularity. And, with a price tag that I imagine will be well under $20, the decision isn't difficult. If it's not already in your local store, it will be soon.

Drink responsibly!

New Scoreboard: Angel's Share 2, DJ 1

2010-09-28T11:24:00.015-04:00

It's that time again. I opened the spigot and drained the grape spirit out of my little aging barrel. The liquid had been in there for a little over 4 months.

If you recall, this time around I had "brandy" sitting in the barrel. In reality, it was actually a mixture of two spirits; in order to not ultimately have over-aged brandy on my hands, I originally mixed an aged Cognac with a young pisco and poured it in to age and mingle a bit more. What I had in the barrel was essentially a composite grape spirit.

The good news is that my "desperate swipe" at the Angel's Share was effective. And I don't know why. Before the aging, I topped off my grape spirit mixture in the barrel with a generous pour of high proof grain alcohol. I'm not sure why... perhaps I thought that upping the proof of the overall mixture would somehow slow the evaporation. Well, it seems to have worked. While I only aged the stuff for about 15% less time than I usually do, I ended up with over 150% of the expected end volume. Can someone explain this to me?

Well, the spirit's time in the barrel has yielded something for which I was thoroughly unprepared. The character of the end product is entirely different than anything that's been in the barrel previously. This is why aging at home is so fun and riveting. Here is a picture of the stuff housed in a beautiful re-used bottle from Tommy Bahama rum. I have another 750mL bottle that's half-filled with the rest of it.

Composite grape spirit, at-home aged

Smell

Its aroma didn't surprise me. It manages to have what is apparently my barrel's signature smell; it smells of wood and wood only. In fact, by its aroma, I could have mistaken this for the rum that was previously aged in this barrel. I had to ask myself "What bearing will this trend have on the development of the spirit's flavor?"

Taste

(The answer to the above question is "None at all.")

The spirit falls onto the tongue very dry, much like the previous products of this barrel. It's a characteristic dry/sweet combo that this wood has been known to develop. It spreads across to coat the tongue. Next I taste an ever-so-slight twinge of vanilla wafting up to my palate, if I concentrate hard enough.

Despite the fact that most of this product (in terms of volume) consists of Cognac, the mouth feel of the stuff is decidedly of a young spirit, like the pisco. (Perhaps because the Cognac used was on the bright and fruity side.) Despite the initial woodiness on the tongue, wood is absent from the rest of the tasting, instead replaced by a biting grassiness and spiciness. The swallow is peppery, as if it's refusing to be ignored, and I sense the slightest cinnamon aftertaste.

Conclusion

I'm at a loss for words as to what this "brandy" has become.

When spirits of all types are initially distilled and still clear and young, they often have flavor descriptors such as: spicy, pungent, peppery, grassy, rough, fiery, earthy, etc. The concept of aging spirits in barrels was designed to mellow these traits in spirits, while also building more complex flavors from the wood and evaporation. Well, it seems that in this case, the opposite was achieved.

Into the barrel was put a combination of fairly smooth, sweet, and fruity grape spirits and out of it has come something spicy, earthy, and more rough than before. This time around, the barrel imparted little to no flavor into its contents, but rather coaxed out completely different flavors that may have been hiding there all along. Fascinating.

I'm dying to see what's going to happen to the next barrel batch...

Into the barrel now is going a mixture of apple brandy. Yes, you could consider this a "seasonal" aging since the clock just struck "autumn", but don't forget that spirits keep almost indefinitely! The word "seasonal" has no power here!

Anyway, most of this new mix is comprised of Captain Applejack and Laird's Straight Apple Brandy, both 750mL, both bottled in bond, and both 100 proof. Frankly, it's my shoddy understanding that Captain Applejack is simply a Laird's product under a different label. In fact, they have the same bottling plant code in the fine print on the back of their bottles. Regardless, they are actually different products. The straight apple brandy is through-and-through an aged eau de vie of apples. The applejack is a combination of straight apple brandy and neutral spirit (vodka) distilled from apples. Their characters are different, and I wanted both in the barrel.

I topped the contents off with two more things: the grain alcohol that was so useful in combating the Angel's Share, and about 200mL of Chateau O'Brien apple wine, produced right here in the Commonwealth of Virginia. The wine is at the same time intensely sweet and intensely tart, and should liven up the other spirits.

After the grape spirit experiment, I have absolutely no clue what to expect on how the character of this apple spirit will change. Will its flavor get darker and deeper or will the barrel once again reveal some more feisty flavors? Will any wood flavors be imparted? Has the little barrel finally lost its ability to traditionally "age" spirits inside it? I'll let you know in a few months.

MxMo: Lime

2010-09-15T12:24:00.018-04:00

(This post won't gain me any friends.)

Once again, it's Mixology Monday, and this time around Doug Winship of the Pegu Blog (one of my favorites) is hosting. Doug named his blog after his favorite cocktail, the Pegu Club, an old mainstay that has gin and lime juice, among other things. Accordingly, he has chosen lime as this month's theme. Well, I have brashly decided to use this theme as a flimsy soapbox on which I shall preach and rant. (Winship and the guy, please forgive me.)

You can find the Round-Up for this MxMo here!

Today I'm not talking about lime per se, but rather a product that uses it: Rose's Lime Juice. Rose's Lime Juice is a cordial, which essentially means that it's a sweet fruit-flavored liquid that's meant to be diluted with something. In this case, Rose's Lime Juice is really only used in one popular alcoholic drink: the Gimlet cocktail (A simple combination of Rose's and gin).

Rose's Lime Juice is a controversial product, which I'll address in a second. The stuff is old; it was originally created to prevent scurvy in the British Royal Navy. The recipe has basically been left unchanged over the years (although the modern American version of it uses high fructose corn syrup instead of sugar... this sounds like it would taste worse, but strangely, I came across some British Rose's made with sugar a few years ago, and the stuff was so overwhelmingly sweet that it was essentially unusable in a Gimlet). Its taste is somewhere between a natural lime flavor and those green lolipops you were given as a child. Some say that the sweetness is cloying, that the flavor is of chemicals, and that it's an overall inferior product.

Many people have maligned the Gimlet over the years because of this distaste for Rose's Lime Juice. I'm not going to point fingers, but a simple web search for Gimlet (blog) articles can reveal this opinion. As a result, many people choose to forego the cordial and substitute lime juice and sugar syrup. And that's fine. But please, if you do, don't call it a Gimlet; it may taste delicious, but it doesn't taste like a Gimlet should. Some people (and bartenders), however, choose to make the drink without Rose's and give it the same name, in an attempt to expunge the cordial from modern mixology. Regardless of your politics, THAT is what's called "rewriting history".

There are a few sources which I consider authorities on cocktail recipes, and the Internet Cocktail Database, Robert Hess, and even the Savoy Cocktail book and David Wondrich all call for Rose's in the Gimlet recipe. Hell, even the Mixoloseum, run by a group which consists of some of the most prolific booze bloggers, including Doug Winship himself, calls for Rose's.

This brings to mind a blog post by Matt Hamlin, a blogger here in DC who I've personally met. (Great guy!) Here, he details how good a Gimlet can be with another brand of lime cordial called Employees Only. Matt remarks how "sticklers" insist that a cocktail without Rose's can't be a Gimlet, but also remarks how his taste for Rose's has waned, having liked it previously. As I type this, there is only one comment to Matt's blog post, but it's a poignant one. Arctic Wolf's final sentence in his comment reads: "if I have been making my Gimlets wrong [with lime juice and simple syrup] for all these years…can I really call them Gimlets?"

Recently there have been controversies concerning both the legality and appropriateness of building certain cocktails using only a specific brand of spirit, but the Gimlet's case is not quite the same. (Incidentally, Doug Winship has touched upon that subject here and here.) This isn't really an issue of promoting a specific brand in a recipe that would otherwise be perfectly comparable with substitutes. This is much more akin to the tiki "sticklers" who insist that the elusive (and presently discontinued) Lemon Hart 151 rum can not be substituted without keeping the spirit/character of any recipe that uses it. The same is true here with Rose's. I'll admit, however, that the game changes quite a bit in cases of discontinuation, like Lemon Hart. The recurring problem of discontinuation is a scourge that's touched every corner of the cocktail world and its history. Ultimately, this rant is to preserve history and tradition.

Bottom line: Rose's Lime Juice is an old and unique ingredient on which the Gimlet is based. Its long-standing tradition and singularity are such that if you substitute it for something else in a Gimlet, it's not a Gimlet. Your distaste for Rose's Lime Juice does not give you the right to change the Gimlet. If you make a drink with fresh lime juice, sugar, and gin, please give it a different name... it could be something as simple as the Fresh Gimlet, Natural Gimlet, or even something cheeky like the Improved Gimlet or The One and Only Gimlet. But if your drink does not have Rose's, your drink is not a Gimlet.

Gimlet (on the rocks)*

2 oz gin
.75 oz Rose's Lime Juice*

Combine ingredients in a glass and stir vigorously with ice. Serve.

*I prefer a Gimlet on the rocks. The Gimlet is not a drink that suffers from dilution.
**The key to enjoying a Gimlet is knowing how much Rose's Lime Juice that you prefer. Recipes vary this amount, but if it's undrinkable for you, then what's the point? Even a dash of Rose's in a glass of gin is closer to the spirit of the Gimlet than fresh lime juice. Find an amount that suits your tastes

Weird is not Bad

2010-09-03T09:17:00.007-04:00

There is a man named Phronk, and he runs a blog that documents his experiences with putting weird things in coffee. More accurately, he mixes weird things in coffee, dunks weird things in coffee, and even brews weird things with coffee grounds, all because he loves coffee so much that he tests the bounds of coffee's deliciousness beyond society's arbitrarily established conventions. Some of my favorite posts of his are coffee with Hollandaise and curry.

Well, Phronk has finally put on his mixologic hat, and has decided to create the Mojijoe: a mojito with hot coffee instead of seltzer! The verdict? Find out for yourself right here.

Note: Phronk is a snobby Canadian who chooses to flaunt his Cuban Havana Club rum in my rum-loving American face. I performed a persuasive speech in high school over the futility of the Cuban Embargo... I just didn't realize it was for a reason that I would find much more engaging 10 years later!

MxMo: Brown, Bitter, and Stirred

2010-08-25T12:51:00.005-04:00

This month's Mixology Monday event is themed after the blog hosting it: brown, bitter, and stirred.

As it just so happens, I have a recipe that I've been working on for quite a while that perfectly fits this theme. I've been waiting to post it, and so now seems like a great time.

As much as I'd love to be long-winded about this thing, there's really not much to say about it. You can really think of it as an elaborated Manhattan cocktail: you have two ounces of bourbon, you have dry vermouth and cherry brandy to replace the Manhattan's sweet vermouth, and you have Fernet Branca to replace the Manhattan's aromatic bitters. The final result tastes very much like a Manhattan, but just a bit more complex, herbal, and bitter.

Fernet Branca is a bitter liqueur from Italy called an amaro(amari, plural), one of many. It's made from a multitude of ingredients, and it's not for the faint of heart. For example, it's a go-to armament of mine when I win bets with friends, where the consequences involve shot-taking. Not only is Fernet Branca considered an amaro, it's also considered a potable bitters, meaning that it can serve as a digestif but also play the role of bitters in a cocktail. Campari is also in this category. A favorite anecdote of mine is that Fernet Branca can stain linoleum(it's as black as ink), and whoever said this isn't wrong; my last apartment has Fernet stains at various places on the kitchen counter.

Here is the MxMo roundup!

If you like this blog, please, PLEASE, try this drink (if you're able to make it) and post your comments below. I'm quite proud of this drink, and I'd love to know if anyone has opinions on it.

ORIGINAL REMIX

Old Knoxville

2 oz bourbon

.5 oz dry vermouth

.25 oz cherry brandy*

.25 oz Fernet Branca

Stir ingredients with ice, strain into cocktail glass. Garnish with maraschino cherry.

*Cherry Heering liqueur is the best choice here, but I prefer Hiram Walker's cherry brandy. If you use something other than Heering, double the amount. No, a clear cherry spirit/liqueur is not appropriate for this recipe.

Cocktails & Ego

2010-07-20T09:18:00.012-04:00

It's not a foreign practice for cocktail fans to simply make up a drink as they go. Maybe we feel like having a whiskey drink and don't know which, or maybe we have a few bottles with just a bit left in them that we want to get rid of; it's quite common for us to just get a few ingredients, throw them together, and see what happens. Sometimes the results are quite nice, and recipes are honed to result in a great original drink.

Well, a few years ago this happened to me. I wanted a gin and vermouth drink and I only had sweet vermouth, so I cooked up a quick ditty. Gin, sweet vermouth for its sweetness and herbal character, a dash of Angostura bitters for spice, and I peeled a bit of orange over the top of the drink for a bright fruity punctuation. I did this in my preferred proportions for a Martini or Manhattan. I didn't have a name for it, but it ended up looking like this:

2 oz London dry gin
.5 oz sweet vermouth
1 dash aromatic bitters

Stir together with ice, strain into cocktail glass. Garnish with an orange twist.

It was delicious, and I found myself making these all the time in the following months and years. What seemed eerie to me, however, was that such a simple drink with such common ingredients with such a classic recipe structure hadn't already been invented. One could even simply call it a sweet Martini or a gin Manhattan, by a stretch. Well, I took to the Mixoloseum Bar chatroom one night to ask the experts if there were such a drink that existed.

The best answer I got is that it was a variation on the Martinez cocktail. The Martinez is much like the recipe above, except that it uses orange bitters instead of the aromatic, a lemon twist instead of orange, and sometimes adds a dash or two of Maraschino liqueur. (The Martinez is a very old drink, and recipes that you'll find vary widely)

But then I came across the Hearst cocktail, and old favorite of David Wondrich, one of the cocktail demi-gods that we should all worship and adore. The Hearst varies from my above recipe by adding just a bit more sweet vermouth as well as the addition of orange bitters along with the aromatic.

Then I found myself readdressing the online cocktail list of Robert Hess, the single figure who pulled my tastes away from tiki and toward classic cocktails. His page documents the vintage Martini recipe from around 1900, when dry vermouth was not so much en vogue. This recipe is essentially a Martinez without the Maraschino!

And then comes along Erik from the Underhill-Lounge who is known for mixing and reviewing every single cocktail in the great Savoy Cocktail Book in alphabetical order. He's already at the S's, and recently mixed the Sunshine cocktail, which differs from my above recipe only by the proportions of gin and vermouth! (I've been known to make fun of the Savoy as an entire book of Martini variations)

This is getting ridiculous, I said to myself. I looked harder and found that even more folks had the same bright idea that I did...

Cocktails similar to mine above, and how they differ (using a generalized recipe):

Martinez
More sweet vermouth, lemon twist instead of orange, additional orange bitters
vintage 1900 Martini
More sweet vermouth, lemon twist instead of orange, orange bitters instead of aromatic
classic Martini
More gin, sweet vermouth instead of dry, lemon twist and aromatic bitters instead of the orange counterparts
Hearst
More sweet vermouth, additional orange bitters
Sunshine
More sweet vermouth, less gin
Artillery
More sweet vermouth, less gin, lemon twist instead of orange, optional Boker's bitters
two variations of the Yale
Less gin, additional orange bitters, additional Maraschino
Rex
Less gin, more sweet vermouth, orange bitters instead of aromatic, and no twist
Barry
Less gin, more sweet vermouth, lemon twist instead of orange, additional creme de menthe

I could go on. If I considered all cocktails with this basic structure and additional dashes of other ingredients, the list would continue to grow. And aside from the addition of strong ingredients like aromatic bitters and maraschino, these drinks are mostly going to taste the same, if not very similar.

Why create a new name for each one, then? I dunno... ego? Probably not. As you can see, I, your lowly DJ, effectively created this recipe from common sense and minimal creativity all by myself, and so it goes to show how the same thing probably happened to bartenders and mixologists during the past 100 years.

Yet I have the power of the internet. I have databases at my disposal. I see the universality of the recipe I created. I know that others more creative, more talented, and smarter than I have already crafted such masterpieces, and so I shall let my modest persona lay prostrate as these mixologic giants tower above me. My voice need not join this already harmonious symphony. I sit only as a learned spectator, appreciating the craft as someone who occasionally and humbly partakes.

So what am I calling my drink? Nothing. It deserves no name, and certainly isn't qualified to be an "original remix". It's simply a variation on any of the recipes you see listed above. More important than any name is that you make it for yourself, or any others listed on this page, and enjoy.

Cheers.

Just how much booze do I really have?

2010-06-30T13:28:00.014-04:00

I recently moved across town, and this gave me the opportunity to view my liquor collection in its rarely-seen upright form. I was amused and took a few photographs, and I thought to share just a few here.

Mind you, this is by no means a large liquor collection. I probably have over 50 bottles, but for example, I've seen SeanMike's collection in person, and it's at least three times the size of mine. Even with my collection, I would say that I'm only able to make any given cocktail recipe about 25% of the time.

So no, this is not some narcissistic flaunting, but instead reflective musing. I always enjoy seeing pictures of others' collections and what comprises them, and so I figured some of you may also feel the same.

There's no way in heck that I'll attempt to list my liquor inventory, because my bottle turnover rate is embarrassingly quick. **hiccup** My stock is dynamic.

Once I moved in, however, I returned the booze to its horizontal state on its wine rack.

I keep my aged rums and other wonky bottles on the top of my shelves here. If you look closely you can spot my Pyrat Cask 1623, the prize of my collection.

Recipe & Rating: Mint Muse

2010-06-08T15:08:00.007-04:00

Mint Muse

Source: small tag on Lucid bottle

1.5 oz Lucid absinthe (used Lucid)
2 oz pineapple juice (used Dole)
top with Sprite/7-Up (used Canada Dry Bitter Lemon, about 2 oz)
6-8 mint leaves
2 wedges lime

Muddle 1 wedge of lime and mint leaves in a tumbler glass. Add the soda, juice, and absinthe, then stir. Fill with ice, and add last wedge of lime as a garnish.

I bought Lucid because I was told it underplays the anise tones more than other absinthes on the market. Lucid was the first absinthe that one could buy legally since it was outlawed in 1912, but as such, I hear that its flavor profile is a bit subdued specifically for the American market. I hate lack of authenticity, but I hate overpowering anise even more, so I'm fine with this purchase (so far). This drink is about what you'd expect from a product's official literature. The absinthe thoroughly trounces both the pineapple and the bitter lemon (which is hard to do). I chose to use bitter lemon instead of lemon-lime soda because it's a more sophisticated product, frankly. Overall the drink isn't bad... the flavors do actually combine into something unique. The tanginess from the pineapple is there, but the absinthe bullies it around. The mint adds an herbal undertone that doesn't necessarily taste like mint. The bitter lemon provides a nice sharp base... I'm not sure how this drink could be made with something so syrupy and bland as lemon-lime soda. After the swallow, the absinthe refuses to let you forget about it.

Rating: 6/10

The DJ Drinks Disney

2010-05-28T11:33:00.017-04:00

It should be telling, if anything, that as an arguably grown man I choose to take my hard-earned and precious vacation time off from work to go to Walt Disney World. The place Where Dreams Come True© isn't really known for its drinking culture, but people like Doug Winship, for example, have done a surprisingly good job of rounding up a few good places to start.

To me, drinking at Disney is an exercise in discerning what defines a good place to drink. Should you always expect craft cocktails? Not really, but innovative bartending isn't the only thing that makes a pleasant experience; for me, atmosphere is also a big component. For example, I don't care how good a certain bar's cocktails are if it's generally populated by frat boys or is too loud to hear yourself think.

Well, while Disney World can't always deliver on value for money, it almost always delivers on atmosphere. I'm no bar reviewer, but I will share a few positive experiences that I do recommend, should you choose to embrace your inner child so stubbornly and ceaselessly as I.

I've loved geography ever since I was a child, eventually getting a degree in it when the time came to graduate from college. And so, Epcot is easily my favorite Disney World park. In Epcot's World Showcase, particularly in the country of Mexico is what's called the Mexican Pavilion. On the outside, it appears to be an enormous Mesoamerican temple. Inside it you will find one of the greatest spaces in all of Disney World. Its interior is designed to look like a lively Mexican market at night. You enter to the sound of festive Mexican folk music with guitars and trumpets. It's very dark, but the center is lit with a warm orange glow. To each side are what appear to be store fronts, and there are kiosks in the center. Toward the rear of the large room is a pyramid with a beautiful mural on the back wall of a lush tropical forest with a lazily smoking volcano in the distance. The mural is lighted and parts of it are animated by effects.

Toward the back near the temple is a lagoon, which happens to be the last leg of the pavilion's attraction, Gran Fiesta Tour Starring the Three Caballeros. On a lower level next to the lagoon is the main dining area of the restaurant San Angel Inn. For years I've always wanted to dine there, and so I finally did this time around.

The drinks at the San Angel Inn were not bad. I and my lovely lady ordered two Margarita variations. (I later also took advantage of getting a bit of the Mezcal they had on the menu.) I got the Blood Orange Margarita, and she, the Pineapple version. (While I don't expect to get a Classic Margarita basically anywhere, I do welcome a "modern" one occasionally when it looks like it's made with good ingredients.) Both of them were good, not great, much like the food. But the atmosphere of the place is what would have me return; you dine in relative darkness, your faces lit by a small lantern on your table... all with the gentle music of marimbas in the background mixed in with the sounds of the erupting "volcano" in the distance... these combined with the pavilion's indescribable pleasant "water ride smell" makes this an experience I would recommend to anyone.

Another place at Epcot worth stopping by is the Coral Reef Restaurant, tucked in a corner of the park next to the Finding Nemo ride. The restaurant consists of a large dining room, one wall of which is the glass of the enormous aquarium that is part of the adjacent ride. The dining room is dark, and most of the light in the room comes from the fish tank. We were able to get a table right next to the glass.

I ordered one of the few drinks on the pan-Disney drink menu (which is surprisingly large) that looked decent called the Eco-tini. I know, the name doesn't really scream "quality", but it had what looked like to be decent and natural ingredients. It uses an Acai spirit called VeeV, lemon juice, ginger, and agave nectar. Sounds good, right? Well it wasn't. It was way too tangy, the kind that hurts your cheeks. I ordered a shot of vodka and added it to the drink, and it still was overpowering. (The drink came with a cute bracelet made of dried acai berries though...)

What the lady got, however, was much better. She got the Magical Star cocktail, which is one of the signature Disney drinks. Is it a balanced cocktail that is complex, interesting, and shows off the best traits of whatever high quality spirits were used to make it? Not really. But is it delicious? Yes. So delicious that I ordered one later at another Disney drinking establishment. It's served on the rocks, and has pineapple juice, Parrot Bay coconut, and X-Rated liqueur, garnished with a pineapple crown leaf. It sounds like a complete disaster, but it's actually interesting and delicious. What's more, the drink comes with a campy LED "ice cube" that sits in your drink and glows different colors. You can turn the cube off at will and take it home with you for use in your own bar. For the effect to really shine, however, you need to use it in a drink that's semi-opaque, so that the whole damn thing glows.

Finally, an honorable mention is the bar at Citricos, a classy joint located in the Grand Floridian Disney Resort. The bartender was friendly, their spirit selection was better than most bars I saw at Disney(including 2 different premium Grand Marnier vintages), and they have adorable little lamps bolted right onto the bar surface. I can't speak to the cocktail service, as we just got dessert wines (their wine selection is very impressive). Go there if you want to feel classy.

If you're a blogger and you have Disney drinking experiences, please post about them. If you're not a blogger, post about them in the comments below! :)

Infusion #2: Strawberry Rum

2010-05-11T14:37:00.013-04:00

You really have to feel sorry for strawberries. Much like limes, their flavor is one that very poorly translates into our modern world of processed foods and artificial flavors. Sure, you may enjoy those old strawberry candies or even that strawberry-kiwi drink from the soda machine, but those don't actually have a flavor like fresh strawberries. This is also mostly true of liqueurs and flavored liquors. Strawberry vodka is an abomination, as is the bottom shelf syrupy nonsense that you can sometimes find at your local liquor store. Long have I wanted an honest strawberry flavor in a spirit, and so that's what I set out to accomplish. It's quite easy, really.

A concoction that's been floating around for a while is the Tequila Por Mi Amante. It's basically a recipe for a strawberry-infused reposado tequila, and I've heard from several people that it's simply delicious. I chose to start there for my experiment, but used rum instead of tequila because, well, I know rum better than tequila, and frankly put, good rum is cheaper than good tequila.

I reached for the Cruzan Estate Light, like I always do. Its subtle but likable flavors are a good platform on which to build things. I poured about 500mL of the rum over top about 3/4 pint of fresh strawberries and 3/4 pint of organic frozen strawberries. (You just can't get sweet fresh ones in the spring here on the east coast.) I stored this mixture in small container and stashed it in the fridge, where I let it sit for a little over 3 weeks.

When I took it out and strained it, it was a tad bitter. I believe I should have removed the fruit earlier, but it still tasted good. I made a rich simple syrup and began to slowly add it to the rum in order to counterbalance the bitterness. Would it not have needed sugar if it infused for less time? I don't know, that's a question for another time.

In the end, I finished with a slightly sweet strawberry rum (not unlike the sweet flavored rums you can buy on the market) that actually tasted like it should, and has a beautiful almost-neon red color (though not as pretty as the cranberry rum). Its best application I found so far? In an aperitif glass over crushed ice with a lime wedge/twist.

Scoreboard: Angel's Share 2, DJ 0

2010-04-29T09:50:00.010-04:00

Time flies. The day has come again for me to evacuate the liquor from my small barrel and see what's what.

In the barrel this time was 2L of Cruzan Estate Light rum. What has come out of the barrel is a rum that's darker in color (big surprise!) and its aroma, as I expected, smells highly of wood. But wait a second... why is the rum gone??? Where did my rum go? Damn those angels... the angel's share is certainly a mighty opponent, I've come to learn. It's official: aging things in this barrel for about 5 months tends to yield results that are less than half of the original volume. It's time to taste the rum!

Cruzan Estate Light, at-home aged

Smell

Mostly of wood, though it doesn't taste of whiskey, which I feared. There's not much smoke either, like I predicted. What we have here is an aroma mostly of dry wood, with a little rum seeping through.

Taste

Honestly, this stuff is fantastic. It's certainly doesn't taste much like a traditional rum. Most of the rum's original flavor is gone... pummeled by the wood. [insert dirty joke here] Much like its aroma, only the slightest rum taste remains as a base, and atop it is a full woody flavor that manages to taste completely of itself, and barely smokey. Although "dry" and "sweet" tend to be opposing terms in the world of wine and spirits, this result manages to be both. The intense woodiness of this stuff lends a very dry mouth feel that's almost bitter, but at the end of sip there's a glorious sweetness that rests and spreads on the tongue. Quite honestly, I don't know where the sweetness came from: this seems sweeter than the Cruzan source material, and I don't think that there would be any sweetness in the barrel. Perhaps the enormous loss of rum via evaporation has concentrated what sugars were there. All I know is that this result is excellent, and I'm very pleased with it.

That next passenger for this barrel is a mixture of grape spirits. I've put in 1 liter of Ansac VS cognac, which is one of the best brandy values I know. It's on the fruity side, with a deep flavor and a sweet finish. Then I poured 750mL of Machu Pisco. Pisco is distilled from grapes like brandy, but is aged less for a more vegetal and spicy taste. Its aroma and flavor are fruity... it almost smells like apple juice to me. I chose to add pisco so that the overall contents of the barrel wasn't too old before I began to age it even more. The resulting mixture had the darkness of a younger gold rum, and I'm ok with that. Oh yeah, and I also added about 200mL of 190 proof grain alcohol... call it my desperate swipe at the angel's share.

Not Booze: New Mountain Dew Flavors

2010-04-25T17:06:00.004-04:00

Truth be told, my passion for booze started when I was of the age 21, and not before. (no, really...) Before that age (which admittedly wasn't that long ago) my passion was soda. My days were spent digging up soda news and posting on soda forums. Today, I still enjoy a good soda, though my metabolism has urged me to slow it down from times past.

Particularly exciting is when I find new and limited edition products. My eyes scan the grocery store aisles and convenience store coolers and instinctively pick up on new colors or label designs (yes, I'm a sickening, brainwashed consumer), at which point I compulsively purchase them. As sad as it is, new products like these manage to get me the most visually excited in my day-to-day life, and the people that are closest to me would confirm that.

Among The Big 3, Pepsi is always the one that is most aggressive with issuing new products (I've always enjoyed their flavored colas.), but this is particularly so with their brand, Mountain Dew. (The new stylization of the logo is actually "Mtn Dew", but that's stupid so I won't type it anymore) Between Code Red, Livewire, Pitch Black I & II, and a slough of others, the amount of variations on Mountain Dew seem to be endless... and I approve!

Like 2008, Pepsi is running another DEWmocracy campaign in 2010, where they issue several prospective new flavors of Dew, we drink as much soda as we can, and we go vote on our favorite, which then becomes a new permanent product.

The new DEWmocracy campaign has begun, and the candidates are out for our scrutiny:

Typhoon (fruit punch flavored)

Comments: Nice!!

Distortion (lime flavored)

Comments: This could be a good sign. For ages people have gone to Taco Bell for Mountain Dew Baja Blast on tap, which is a variety of Dew which is exclusive to Taco Bell. Oh yeah, and it's delicious. I doubt this Distortion is the same product, but it's a step in the right direction, as far as I'm concerned.

White Out (smooth citrus flavored)

Comments: This is strange, of course, because Mountain Dew is a citrus-flavored soda. It turns out that this is a grapefruit flavored variation(several other grapefruits sodas are white), which is an interesting and possible good turn for the brand. I like it.

I nabbed a 12-pack of Typhoon to try first. It's unfortunate that I had to buy so much just for a taste, but that's how I react with new soda.

I was very excited about this flavor, because I'm quite the fan of fruit punch in most of its iterations. Unfortunately, this product falls short. I was hoping for it to be tangy but sweet, fruity but still Dew. What the result is, instead: a product that's much too sweet with a fairly dull flavor.

In reality, what Pepsi probably did was very much like multi-brand car manufacturers do today; they use components of one brand to save money in another. Pepsi owns Tropicana, and so I imagine they took some of their bottled Fruit Punch* and poured it into the Dew. The result is very lackluster. I hope the other flavors are worth keeping.

Incidentally, my friend Alex was able to get his hands on all three, and so I shall post some of this thoughts here. Call it a guest writer on Spirited Remix:

I tried Typhoon first. It smelled a lot like a package of Tropical Starburst. The taste was immediately very strong, but faded quickly. The Mountain Dew detracted from the fruit punch , I think. While the flavor wasn't particularly satisfying, its quick fade was still dissatisfying and ultimately left it tasting watered down a few seconds after each sip. Ultimately, I would not purchase it, but I don't know that I would classify it as bad.

White Out was second, and it, unfortunately, does not have this recommendation. While my wife was turned off by the color, comparing it to dirty water, I thought it was actually kind of nice. Like drinking a cloud. Unfortunately, White Out had none of the charm of any clouds I've met. The flavor was slightly grapefruity (a taste I cannot abide) and slighty dishwasher fluidy (a taste that, while better than grapefruit, I'm also not a fan of). Fresca, the only other grapefruitesque soda with which I am familiar, at least leaves you with a crisp and subtle taste. White Out overwhelms you with terrible and never lets you go.

Distortion is the only of the DEWmocracy beverages that I would actually consider buying. It has a strong lime flavor (although, again, the Dew actual does it no favors). "It doesn't make me want to gag" hardly seems like a strong recommendation, but, given what I had just gone through with White Out, it was the first thing that sprang to my mind upon drinking it. It's not great and it's not crisp, but it is drinkable. It tastes like a legitimate soda. Typhoon tastes like an amateurish effort by a recent Soda School graduate, while White Out tastes like God playing a sick joke on me.

So Distortion wins the DEW-off. It wasn't particularly close, despite Distortion's middling score. It is probably worth mentioning, however, that, after my wife and I had sampled each of them individually, we mixed all three flavors together into one glass. It was surprisingly better than any of the flavors individually.

*The only decent picture of Tropicana's bottled Fruit Punch product, which is strangely absent on the internet, is this, and that's even only the label (it's the 20 oz bottle version found in vending machines). The picture is from Soda Finder, a young chap who loves soda even more than me, and you can order your favorite obscure sodas from him. Call him your carbonated guardian angel.

Recipe and Rating: Twelve Mile Limit, take 2

2010-03-29T18:00:00.005-04:00

About two months ago, I made a cocktail that Rumdood posted on his site in order to provide my take on it. My take turned out to be misguided, for both the venerable Frederic and the Dood himself made comments on my post, declaring my rum choice inferior.

This goes to show how much variability there is in the "rum" category. I had used Appleton Estate White, a fairly decent light Jamaican rum, but apparently it didn't pack the "punch" that the drink needed. I was advised to use a rum stronger in flavor, and so I've gone overboard in this advice by using Neisson Blanc.

Neisson Blanc is rhum agricole, which is basically a type of rum made in the French West Indies fermented from raw sugar cane juice, instead of molasses. The result is usually a high proof fiery mixture which tastes grassy and rubbery instead of smooth and spicy. What's worse, I'm using a blanc rhum agricole, which is "rested" in barrels for only a few months, while even the lightest white rums are usually aged much longer. The resting is used more so that sulfuric compounds can evaporate from the distillate, not for aging. The product of all this is a harsh spirit which tastes entirely of its source material, and is not favored by spirit novices (if the past rum tasting that I hosted with friends is any indication). So here I go, trying the drink again with this very very different r(h)um.

Twelve Mile Limit

1 oz white rum (used Neisson Blanc)
.5 oz brandy (used Salignac VS cognac)
.5 oz rye whiskey (used Old Overholt)
.5 oz grenadine (used 1-2-3 Cocktails brand... all natural with cane sugar)
.5 oz lemon juice (fresh squeezed)

Shake with ice and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a lemon twist.

What a difference. When last time I could almost only taste lemon, now I can taste everything. It's as if the lemon juice needed a strong rum to keep it in check, and when done, they both fall to the background. I immediately tasted the cognac, and in the background, the nuttiness of rye. As I said above, rhum agricole is known to be harsh and uninviting, but in this I can only taste its positives; its fire and rubber remain docile as its floral flavors take over. I never thought this one ingredient could change so much, but it did.

Rating: 7/10

MxMo: Punch

2010-03-21T18:37:00.011-04:00

The word "punch" means many things today, and almost none of them grasp the word's original meaning. As a man proudly built from the little juice boxes of his childhood, I still appreciate the high fructose corn syrup- and red #3-laden products on store shelves which call themselves "punch". I don't really care to talk much about the evolution of punch, but I do care to talk about how this month has a punch-themed Mixology Monday, hosted by Hobson's Choice. The theme was inspired by cocktail and spirit legend David Wondrich, who does care to talk about the evolution of punch... in his new book.

I've wound back the clock a bit this time to make a traditional 18th Century British punch, one of the original iterations of the stuff. Word has it (thanks to Wondrich and others) that the concept of punch originated with the British Royal Navy, when Naval Officers' wine stores began to spoil before their voyages had concluded. Thirsty and irritable, they eventually began mixing spirits (which didn't spoil) with other palatable flavors to create potable mixtures which lended the desired effects. They used whatever they had around; as we know, the British Royal Navy covered alot of ground by 1800. Arrack from the Pacific, rum from the caribbean, and citrus fruits from the tropics were usually included. In fact, the first versions of grog could be considered punch, in this sense. Punches generally had the same low proof of wine so as to mimic its easy consumption.

What we're making today isn't the officer's punch, but rather the kind that was probably drunk by the nobles back in England. The punches were indeed prepared in bowls and imbibed communally during social events. The punch that we're aiming for is the sort that was probably drunk at parties during the latter quarter of the 1700s; while the melodies of Johann Sebastian Bach played in the background, stodgy aristocrats and politicians would sip their punch and perhaps complain about names like Washington, Adams, Franklin, and Greene. By this time, rum from Jamaica was imported regularly, as well as various fruits from the tropics, and so we're comfortable with making a punch that uses the familiar ingredients from the Old World, yet also a few of the exotic, the kind to which they would have had a bit of access.

I say "we" because joining me for this venture is my friend Remington, after whose name we shall fittingly name our punch. We researched various old-style punch recipes and settled on our own combination of ingredients that we feel are fairly period, and in a combination that is in the realm of a proper punch. It's not the simplest or quickest drink to make, but we believe its authenticity warrants making a small batch, just once...

ORIGINAL REMIX

Remington Punch

**This recipe can be easily halved. Don't forget to halve both the ingredients and the amounts of water involved.**

Brew

4 cups water

24 cloves

8 slices orange

8 slices lemon

12 chunks pineapple

Tea

2 cups water

2 bags (or servings of loose leaf) black tea

2 bags (or servings of loose leaf) green tea
5-6 tsp demerara or white sugar (depends on taste)

Spirits

1 cup dark rum

1 cup brandy

.5 cup scotch

Step 1: Brew the fruit and cloves mixture by adding the orange slices, the lemon slices, and the cloves to a small pot. Add the water (for the brew), and bring to a boil. Let it boil for 2-3 minutes, then turn off the heat. Wait till it cools completely, strain, and put into your punch bowl.

Step 2: Bring the next amount of water (for the tea) to a boil, add tea, and let brew for about 6 minutes. Remove the tea leaves/bags, and dissolve the sugar into the brewed tea. Pour into your punch bowl.

Step 3: Add spirits to your punch bowl.

Serve in small glasses or tea cups, with the optional garnish of an orange and/or lemon slice, and grated nutmeg. Serve at room temperature or warm (not hot).

The flavor of this punch is dry and complex. The strongly-brewed tea adds the underlying body of the drink, lending a bitterness and dryness that defines it. The brewed water adds the slightest bit of fruitiness and clove, which supports the tea, and doesn't overpower it. The brandy gives its acidity and backbone, the dark rum falls to the background with just a bit of smokiness, and the scotch adds a bit more smoke and a pungent kick that perfects every sip. This is a balanced drink, perfect if you'd like to curse some Yankee rebels and eat some scones.

Of similar fare is the old-style milk punch. Milk punch has many iterations, from the whiskey and milk concoctions to the complicated and old school punches that Erik over at the Underhill-Lounge makes, where milk is used as a curdling agent and for its lactic acid! What we have here today is a recipe using mostly European ingredients, and was inspired by this recipe at Saveur, but with a few minor changes.

Milk Punch

1 oz half-and-half
2 oz whole or 2% milk
1.5 oz brandy
1 dash absinthe
1 dash green Chartreuse
nutmeg

Shake all the ingredients except the nutmeg in a shaker, then strain into a punch glass filled with ice. Garnish with nutmeg.

The nutmeg is what makes this drink so good... if you don't have it, don't make it. The acidity and fruitiness of the brandy cuts through the dairy, and the two green spirits play support. This is a really fun drink... great for brunches!

How to Char a Barrel

2010-03-04T12:12:00.007-05:00

This nifty clip comes to us from Camper English at Alcademics.com. Camper is one of the most prolific booze bloggers around. This time, he's on the west coast of Guatemala seeing how Zacapa produces their exceptional rum... one of the few rums not produced in the Caribbean!

He recorded a few seconds that display how they char the inside of their barrels. Suddenly, I don't feel so bad about not re-charring my own little one....

Choose Your Shirts Wisely

2010-02-25T12:02:00.006-05:00

Did you know February is Tiki Month?

Well, now you do.

I figured that I already do enough tiki posts (as I've said before, it comprises my cocktail roots), so perhaps I shall celebrate the month by sparing readers from tiki rather than providing it for them.

I'll tell you who isn't sparing his readers, however: Doug Winship. In fact, he's gone so far as to change his site's logo for this month, but the change isn't only superficial. Doug's Tiki Month blog content has been of exceedingly high quality, and you'd do yourself a favor to check some of it out.

I will share one of my favorite posts of Doug's for this month that talks about a subject near and dear to my heart, thereby employing what Doug calls "Rule #2". I hope you enjoy the post.

On Choosing a Good Hawaiian Shirt

MxMo:Tea Roundup

2010-02-03T10:47:00.003-05:00

Now you can go over to Frederic's blog and see the a summary and list of links for those around the world who participated in Mixology Monday: Tea.

Tons of folks put on their thinking caps and came up with some pretty damn interesting ideas on how to use tea in making cocktails. Do yourself a favor and see what they did! Who knows, you may even like to make one of their concoctions!

Recipe & Rating: Xeres

2010-02-03T10:01:00.006-05:00

Xeres

Source: Robert Hess

2 oz sherry (used Savory & James Amontillado)
1 dash orange bitters (used Angostura)
1 dash peach bitters (used Fee Brothers)

Stir with ice and strain into a cocktail glass(used small wine glass).

I'm wary of 1) cocktails that consist mostly of wine, and 2) cocktails whose main supporting ingredient is bitters (Pink Gin is an exception). I laughed when I first laid eyes on this recipe, but because I had some sherry lying around and I don't usually, I decided to make it. I was very surprised. The sweetness of the sherry is lightened with the dilution; the drink is actually tart. What was a fairly heavy and nutty sherry is now a light, fruity, and refreshing drink. It really isn't my kind of drink at all... I generally prefer the earthy wallop of an Old Fashioned, but this one really brings out the care-free side of me. I can't help but think of warm breezes and sunny locales when I sip this stuff. This one is an impressive sleeper.

Rating: 7/10

Recipe & Rating: Twelve Mile Limit

2010-02-01T18:01:00.008-05:00

This is a new segment I'll be writing on this blog called "Recipe & Rating". It will simply be the occasional plucking of a drink recipe, the making of the drink, (specifying which types/brands of ingredients I've used) and my rating of the recipe along with a few very brief comments. I'll choose recipes from any source, and the source I choose may not always be the original source, as in this first case. Let us begin!

Twelve Mile Limit

Source: Rumdood

1 oz white rum (used Appleton White)
.5 oz brandy (used Ansac VS cognac)
.5 oz rye whiskey (used Old Overholt)
.5 oz grenadine (used 1-2-3 Cocktails brand... all natural with cane sugar)
.5 oz lemon juice (fresh squeezed)

Shake and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a lemon twist.

The lemon is singing the lead here... perhaps the Appleton White doesn't have enough heft? The fruitiness of the brandy seems to add to the lemon. The rye, as I figured, falls behind in terms of getting attention. Overall pleasant, a fruity rum and brandy sour, mostly. A little too nondescript for me.

Rating: 5/10

Urgent call to those who value superior products

2010-01-31T16:38:00.005-05:00

Dear all,

OXO, for some reason, has decided to discontinue one of their best products, one that I consider to be the most valuable cocktail-related tool in my kitchen: the 2oz measure cup.

This little cup is perfect for measuring cocktail ingredients, since most recipes refer to amounts in ounces. These are superior to most jiggers; because jiggers are usually conical or irregular in shape, it is difficult to get precise measurements on certain intermediate amounts. Not only does the OXO cup provide various measurements, but it is constructed in such a way that it need not be held at eye level to achieve this accuracy. Simply put, this product is of extremely high value. I, in fact, own several of them.

Call or write OXO if you care about this product, as it seems they are keeping count of complaints. You can call them at 800 545 4411 or write them at info@oxo.com or here.

Let us increase the demand so as to revive the supply!

Love,
DJ HawaiianShirt

Review: Seagram's 7 Dark Honey

2010-01-26T10:05:00.015-05:00

Although my friends may call me a liquor snob, I'm really not. It's true that I do like nice things and do try to steer people in the direction of the top shelf as much as possible, but I of all people realize that our wallets can't always follow. Today we shall lower our eyes to the middle shelf of our hypothetical spirits-vending establishment and examine briefly the Seagram brand.

Seagram's brand of spirits is very much a hit and miss model. A look at their good products begins with their gin. Even though I find my palate for gins to be still evolving, Seagram's gin is not to be discounted. It is an American-style gin (as opposed to London Dry) which means that the tongue isn't assailed by the taste of Christmas trees (which I actually like), though American-style gins vary widely in flavor. Seagram's gin's claim to fame is that it is one of the only gins to be lightly aged in barrels while almost all others are un-aged. The resulting taste is one similar to a London Dry, but much more mellow with slight flavors of oak... it makes a killer Gimlet. As an admitted non-expert on vodka, I can also say that Seagram's Vodka is also a great buy for the price. They both have really great bottles too.

Seagram's Smooth Brazilian Rum is a newly-launched product, and as a drinker much more versed in rum than other spirits, I have to say that it's simply a fine product. It's a rum produced from sugar cane juice instead of molasses, in the style of Rhum Agricole and Cachaca, such that its flavor is more on the caney and grassy side rather than a full-bodied and dry one. The Drink Hacker said this about the stuff: "This is actually drinkable on its own — when’s the last time you said that about a $12 rum?" The gin, vodka, and rum are all available for $15 dollars or (much) less, marking a considerable value for those looking to save a few bucks. As I've said before, being a liquor fan isn't cheap.

But Seagram's also markets products that don't really hit the mark. Notable are their Twisted Gins, which are basically some of the only flavored gins around, and they're just hard to take seriously. Also for sale is Seagram's "Gin & Juice", which are barely palatable syrupy concoctions that I can only assume are artificially colored and flavored (but I'm not positive). And lastly worth mentioning is Seagram's 7 Crown whiskey, which is an American blended whiskey (a dying breed) that's more often found on the bottom shelf than the middle. It's a long standing brand and even has its own cocktail, but it's really not a whiskey taken very seriously among whiskey-drinkers. In preparation for this post I did a quick tasting of the stuff at a local bar, and some notes I took down consisted of "alcoholy", "mellow", and "one-sided".

The Review
Seagram's 7 Dark Honey

I was interested to learn that Seagram's has a new product called Seagram's 7 Dark Honey which is a honey-flavored whiskey, and certainly not the first one on the market. This bottle was actually given to me for free to review, and so that's what I shall do. However, because this spirit clearly uses 7 Crown whiskey as a springboard, I really wasn't sure what to expect. For starters, the bottle is pretty cool, and is actually the same bottle used for Captain Morgan's Parrot Bay brand. This stuff is sweetened like a liqueur, and clocks in at 71 proof. (Not bad!)

It turns out that there's a mild controversy on the internet concerning how Seagram's may be promoting their products via marketers commenting on blog posts who pose as though they're normal readers, which can be read about here. I'll note that the person in question(according to that link) has also posted a comment on THIS blog several months ago, shortly before another person (the same one who sent me this product) commented, and both comments talked positively toward a brand name that I've never even uttered on this blog. When the Federal Government gets involved in this kind of stuff, you can imagine why I hold full disclosure in high esteem. With that said, I'm no less grateful or humbled to have received this gift; it's as if people think I know what the hell I'm talking about! But shall I be adding to this product's internet hype? No, I imagine I won't...

In the Glass

Nothing too groundbreaking here. It's the color of whiskey and is viscous like a liqueur.

Smell

Almost nothing but alcohol. I tried really hard, and I finally discerned a faint smell of wheat akin to the original 7 Crown whiskey. I'm also sensing a generic "sweet" smell... perhaps it's brown sugar, but it's definitely not honey. Near the end I detected something citrusy, which was a little strange.

Taste

Luckily, the first flavor I got was honey, but it was soon to be replaced with cinnamon, and then more alcohol. I tasted a fleeting wheat, much like the smell, before the alcohol burned my tongue a bit, and then the strong sweetness took over. To be honest, the mouth feel was quite nice. When it goes down the hatch, it's just fine, and finally flavors of brown sugar and cinnamon... and then more alcohol. Overall, despite all the alcohol burn, it's a pleasant experience. Perhaps disappointingly, its flavor is on the subtle side, much like it's mother, Seagram's 7 Crown. An added ice cube changed nothing of this experience.

Mixing

I set out to find a vehicle that could successfully deliver this stuff, and I did it alongside a fine young lady that (somehow) continually finds that I'm pleasant company. (DJ HawaiianSkirt, you could call her...) I knew we could do it. We tried some of the options that the official Seagram's literature suggested: as a chilled shot, on ice, with a little lime, and with cola. The shot tasted mostly of alcohol, and we found that so long as 7 Dark Honey is mixed with anything, its flavor is dominated and it "disappears" into the drink. (Seriously, when your product's flavor manages to hide in a small glass of seltzer, you know you have a problem.) Surprisingly, it works passably in a hot toddy (made with hot water, not tea) having the 7 Dark Honey replace both the whiskey and honey in the recipe. Also, the stuff isn't unpleasant on ice (but a lemon twist dashes its flavor) where it mysteriously has absolutely no aftertaste.

Conclusion

So, what's the final verdict? Well, I think 7 Dark Honey hits a little below Seagram's average mark. It's an overall pleasant liqueur, but its flavor is too subtle. It's nice on the rocks, but it is certain that your favorite mixer (unless it's flat water) will destroy what subtle character it has... otherwise, it's like using a sweet 71 proof vodka. You want a sweet honey liqueur that doesn't taste like whiskey? There's a better one that already exists, and it's called Barenjager. Perhaps this is a "gateway whiskey", perhaps it's a drama-free mixer (read: doesn't taste like booze), but whatever it is, it's not versatile, and not something for which I have much use.

Value (bonus section to the review!)

But here's the problem: I picked up a bottle of Wild Turkey American Honey, 7 Dark Honey's competitor. It's a bourbon-based liqueur, also honey-flavored, and also 71 proof(erie...). I had had the stuff before, but I bought more solely for this comparison. AH's smell blows Seagram's away... its aroma is bold, and actually of whiskey... and there's honey too, with a teasing herbal complexity. The taste is also of whiskey, and with a flavor of honey much more pronounced than Seagram's. The mouth feel is even better, the flavor more complex, even with hints of lemon at the swallow. And the punctuation to all this? Froogle says that AH is an average of $5-6 more expensive than 7DH. And so, simply, the final question is: Does Seagram's 7 Dark Honey have the best value among the whiskey-based honey liqueur products on the market today, or is it even worth your purchase? No.

Addendum: Evan Williams created a honey whiskey that's better than both the products by Seagram and Wild Turkey. My review of it can be found here.

MxMo: Tea

2010-01-22T15:40:00.011-05:00

This month's Mixology Monday theme is tea, both traditional and herbal. It is being hosted by one of my favorite bloggers, Frederic at Cocktail ~~Virgin~~ Slut. Frederic's blog is notable for his tireless visual and verbal documenting of interesting tipples around the city of Boston. He literally goes out several times a week to different bars and brings back pictures and recipes to share with us all. Perhaps most impressive is his post frequency... he almost runs 7 posts per week on average, I would say.

I'm doing my MxMo post on an herbal tea called Red Zinger by Celestial Seasonings. The name sounds stupid, but the tea is not. One would classify Red Zinger as a variation on hibiscus tea. Aside from both its Chinese and Thai types of hibiscus, it contains rose hips, orange peel, lemongrass, cherry bark, and even a little bit of peppermint. The result is an exceptionally fruity and tart tea, often suggested to be served in iced form. The ingredients combine into dominant flavors of cherry, raspberry, and a generic "red berry" flavor, all underscored by the fresh taste that only hibiscus can lend. The color of the tea is bright red, bordering on the likes of Campari.

The extreme fruitiness of this tea demands a fruity cocktail, and a light one at that. Its place was so easy to find in a drink that I began with a recipe in my head and found that the cocktail was perfect on the first try.

By the way, you'd brew a cup of Red Zinger like any other. Submerge a tea bag into a cup of hot water and let it steep anywhere from 5 to 15 minutes. Over-steeping really isn't much of an issue... the tea bag loses its flavors quickly and it does not get bitter. You should probably let it cool before you mix with it.

ORIGINAL REMIXES

Fraise

1.5 oz light rum
1 oz Red Zinger herbal tea
.5 oz lemon juice
.5 oz passionfruit syrup

Shake with ice, strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a (knotted) lemon twist.

This cocktail is one of the best I've ever made. It's called the Fraise (strawberry in French) because for some reason, it tastes strongly of strawberry. Much like the Red Zinger itself, the constituent parts of this recipe make it taste of something entirely different. It's a very pink cocktail, to be sure... and if you can't deal with holding a pink cocktail in a cocktail glass, GET OVER IT.

Vodka Cranberry Hibiscus

1.5 oz vodka
1 oz Red Zinger
4 oz cranberry juice
2 wedges of lemon

Take a lemon wedge, squeeze it, and throw it into a Collins glass. Fill with ice, and build the rest of the ingredients on top. Garnish with another lemon wedge.

Red Zinger and cranberry seem like a natural pair. They're just about the same color, and the tea begs for at least a little sweetness to perform best. This is a nicely refreshing drink.

Infusion #1 and Obscure Ingredient Commentary

2010-01-11T12:57:00.012-05:00

Infusion #1

I like cheap fun. I like food too. Thus, I like infusing things in alcohol. It's yet another outlet in mixology where creativity can be loosed. Even if you don't have a lil barrel to age your own spirits at home, you can still transform something ordinary into something exciting, different, and personal. (Home-infused spirits make great gifts to friends.) This past fall (of 2009) I undertook a small infusion experiment with a fresh seasonal ingredient: cranberries. But honestly, you don't even need to use fresh ingredients... something like dried fruit will add a nutty and dark oxidized flavor to a spirit that fresh fruit couldn't begin to approach... anyone who's made their own brandied cherries from dried cherries to replace their store-bought maraschino cherries knows what I'm talking about.(I'm thinking of making a prune infusion at some point...) You're also not limited to fruit, either. Spices can also be a clever source of infusion, something which I'll talk about in the future on this blog. Hell, there are people who even infuse spirits with wood pieces in an attempt at faux-aging... Oh, and if you think you should only infuse vodka, you're wrong. We already have bacon-bourbon, strawberry tequila, and the list goes on.

I figured that fresh cranberries didn't have a strong enough flavor to sing the lead in a bottle of vodka, so instead I chose a light rum, Cruzan Estate Light, whose laurels on this blog I've already established. I thought that its light sweetness and vanilla and wood tones would go great with the flavor and tartness of the cranberries. Again, I knew that cranberries wouldn't provide much flavor. They really need to be cooked and sweetened for them to shine. You know how cranberry juice tastes so good with vodka? Well, that's not cranberry juice. It's a cocktail of ingredients in which cranberry concentrate is usually used, which has been cooked and then sweetened further.

Anyway, cranberries are hollow, which is why they so conveniently float when their vines are flooded with water for harvest. I decided to rupture each cranberry in the infusion so as to take advantage of all the interior surface area. All you do is pinch the cranberry between your fingers, and the ensuing pop is quite satisfying. Fresh cranberries are also nice to eat, in my opinion. They're tart and fresh tasting, with very subtle vegetal flavors... they are quite acidic, however, so I'm not sure it's a great idea to have them replace your bowl of popcorn when you sit down for movie night.

The busted berries fit conveniently into the mouth of the temporarily-emptied Cruzan bottle. I dropped about 1 cup's worth of them into the bottle, and filled her back up with rum. The infusion only took a few days, as most infusions do. The lightly-tanned Cruzan turned pink, and then redder, and finally an absolutely beautiful hue of red that would rival most Red #4-pumped fruit punches on the market. Assuming it didn't taste awful, I knew that this method was worth the visual results alone. You should taste the infusion each day, and it's up to your taste when to evacuate the "infusor". Fruit sure does look pretty sometimes in that bottle, doesn't it? But if you don't take it out when it tastes good, it's going to start tasting bad. At 3 days, I decided it was time.

The taste? Well, I'm really glad I didn't use vodka, because the cranberries imparted little to no flavor. It did, however, lend a tartness to the rum that is pretty interesting. If one concentrates, perhaps one could discern a slight cranberry flavor, but nothing really worth mentioning. The tartness has virtually rendered the rum unsippable, so cocktails are its only final destination.

In what, you ask? One interesting concoction I made was a variation on the Gimlet on the rocks, one of my favorite cocktails. The cocktail consisted of 1oz gin, 1oz cranberry rum, 1 oz Rose's Lime Juice, and a dash of (real) grenadine to make sure it wasn't too tart, all poured over ice. The results were pleasant. You could really use an infused rum like this in any drink that calls for light rum, but motions should be taken with the recipe to ensure that the sweetness of the drink is not thrown out of balance.

So, what did I learn from my first infusion experiment?

1) Cranberry infusions result in a brilliant color that could be useful and pleasing along with other infusions
2) Cranberry infusions don't provide much flavor, but do provide a tartness that could be useful and pleasing along with other infusions

So I think that settles it. Cranberries will definitely be used in my future infusion experiments, but not alone.

Why I'm not "posting" the above drink recipe on this blog

(Occasionally I will write commentary on mixology and the blogosphere. The following is classified as such.)

And now, an entreaty to bloggers everywhere. Please don't go overboard on posting recipes that require ingredients which are so specialized that no one will make them. Hyperbolic example:

Teh DJ HawaiianCocktail

1 oz light rum
2 oz gold rum
.5 oz lime juice
.25 oz grenadine
1.5 oz orange juice
.25 oz DJ HawaiianShirt's Saffron and Starfruit syrup

Shake with ice and pour into tiki mug. C'mon guys you really need to try this drink! But you gotta make sure you use the best and freshest saffron and starfuit, ok??

Of course I'm being a little facetious here, but things like this need to be kept to a minimum, unless you're explicitly professing to make wacky homemade ingredients and cocktails containing them, at which point readers who are looking for recipes they can easily make at home can simply shy away, if they choose. Not too many blogs commit this over-use of homemade ingredients, but some are certainly worse than others. (no names) Even if you provide the recipe for the unique ingredient, that doesn't mean it's not irritating when you use too many of them. Used sparingly, it's ok... but please, show some self control. And so, since I do my best to(most of the time) post drinks that are accessible* and sane, I will not mark the above Gimlet variation as a drink that will come up on this blog or the internet if someone is actively looking for drink recipes that they could/should make. Not to mention that I'm not sure if that variation is good enough to post, anyway.

*"Accessibility" is a dangerous word for home mixology. There's no way around the fact that an enormous amount of different ingredients are needed for one to be capably equipped to mix any decent amount of recipes that you'll find.

Especially, ESPECIALLY if you are participating in a Thursday Drink Night(TDN) celebration (a weekly event where bloggers and cocktail fans alike join in a chatroom to create their own drink recipes centered around a given theme and to have said drinks mixed on the spot by those who are able in order to provide instant feedback), where inclusiveness and unity are literally the goal of the event, try your best not to post a recipe that contains a home-made ingredient, or even a hard-to-find ingredient, for that matter. If none or only one or two people at a TDN can make the drink you're posting, then why post it? Choose something else so that more people can partake. If you'd rather post a monologue of exclusive recipes, blog it instead.

Tiki Drink Contest Entry

2009-12-14T09:09:00.013-05:00

I'm a sucker for a cocktail contest... and not usually because of prizes, but rather for the chance to see if any of my concoctions are decent beyond my own delusional tastes. Rick Stutz from Kaiser Penguin is holding a tiki drink contest, and I'm joining in the festivities.

No one needs to hear me blather on about my own accomplishments, so I'll keep it short. I wanted to make a drink with Cherry Heering, which I think is the superior cherry-based liqueur around. I've had tiki drinks that use Maraschino, and they're just not that great. I found myself wanting to put both Cherry Heering and sweet vermouth in this drink; I've been making many more classic cocktails recently than tiki (which do occasionally overlap, btw), so it's like I've been drawn to incorporate some classic ingredients into this drink like some traveller who's picked up a foreign accent after living in some far off land for a period of time. In this drink's preparation, I've shaken the actual drink with citrus peel, an idea I got from Ken at kenmoorhead.com. Whether or not this is a popular thing to do, I'm giving Ken the credit, because in my modest cocktail dealings, I've NEVER come across it, and it's really a great idea. I recommend shaking your cocktails with citrus peel/twists... just try shaking(I know, just this one time) your Martini with a few lemon twists... or my favorite... pomelo twists (if you can find them). Enjoy the results.

ORIGINAL REMIX

Flattering Wench

1.5 oz gold rum (something other than Jamaican)
.5 oz white rum
.5 oz falernum
.5 oz Cherry Heering
.5 oz red wine (drier is better than sweeter)
.5 oz sweet vermouth
.5 oz lemon juice
1 oz orange juice
1 oz pineapple juice
2 dashes Angostura bitters
3-4 grapefruit twists

Shake everything, including the twists, in a shaker with ice cubes. Pour all contents into a double Old Fashioned or Mai Tai glass. No additional garnish is needed.

Wasmund's Single Malt Review

2009-12-01T13:01:00.009-05:00

The above picture isn't a publicity shot... it's a picture that my friend took behind Wasmund's distillery, where they have a small table and chairs
set next to the local stream.

If you're tired about hearing me talk about Wasmund's Whisky, great! Because that means you've been reading my blog. This will be one of my final posts concerning their products. There are just too many things to say about them. But today, at least momentarily, I will be shedding my fanboyism and will try to soberly review one of their products.

The Whisky
Wasmund's Single Malt

Wasmund's Single Malt is the only whiskey in the United States that is malted and distilled under the same roof. The enterprise rests on the foothills of Appalachia in a small town called Sperryville in the Commonwealth of Virginia. The small distillery is run by a half dozen people, most of whom are family. They take local barley, malt it with local water, smoke-dry it with local fruitwood, mash it with more local water, distill it, age it in local barrels, and bottle-proof it with more local water. The whisky itself is usually less than a year old in age; the small barrels and fruitwood chips present in each barrel accelerate the maturation. The final product is a unique whiskey and does a fine job of turning professional heads. I'm sorry for the inconsistencies in spelling "whiskey". Rick Wasmund, classically trained in Scotland, insists the absence of the "e" when referring to his specific whisky. Thus, I will attempt to walk this tight rope.

In the Glass

Wasmund's whisky is of a color much more dark and red than your average whiskey, or even single malt. It's like some old Scot poured a glass from his favorite bottle and threw in a dash of coffee and red wine. It swirls readily and its legs are minimal; this is just too young of a whiskey to wow you with texture.

Smell

The first thing you notice is smoke, but instead of a slight peat smoke like that of Scotch, you get an assault of wood smoke on the nose, like walking into a restaurant that sells BBQ, or Wasmund's own distillery, for that matter. Continuing on, there's a warm presence of dried leaves, and an earthiness so earthy that it borders on dirt (in a good way). A long sniff reveals foundations of subdued malt/barley and dried apples(probably because of the applewood used to smoke the malt). Lastly, you finish with the hard-to-describe smell of fresh running water, often found near a stream or in a wet cave.

Taste

Much like your nose, your tongue will be overwhelmed with smoke. But this time you'll be able to discern the flavor of dried cherries in it(because the malt is also dried with cherrywood). Again, you'll notice flavors of dried leaves as well, which is my personal favorite. You'll taste more earthiness in a slight flavor of moss. Lastly, you'll find the maltiness, and finish with a sweetness that's not unlike the taste of marshmallows.

Conclusion

Wasmund's Single Malt is unlike any other whiskey, stylistically. Its sometimes-rough and thin mouth feel will confuse you when the incredibly complex flavors and aromas hit you, perhaps to its detriment. This is neither a whiskey with which to become inebriated nor something to hold in your hand as you socialize with friends or family at some party; it's to be drunk alone, in the quiet, in contemplation and concentration, where all of its flavors can be noticed and recognized. Drinking Wasmund's is like cracking open a textbook and learning something, then having your opinions challenged and again reinforced... it's a didactic and introspective experience. Although I have to say, making Wasmund's Old Fashioned doesn't hurt the whisky's character. At a price cheaper than most Scottish 12-year Single Malts, Wasmund's Single Malt is invaluable as a conversation piece and a study of spirits in general, and a bold statement on what an American single malt can be. Word has it that Wasmund's products are available in most of the eastern Midwest and mid-Atlantic East Coast, and their distribution is spreading. If your local store doesn't have it, they can probably order it.

With the review over, I'm going to add a few more points on why I think this product is so important to the culture of spirits today:

1) Innovation. Though Wasmund uses old methods that are tried and true for inspiration, his product mimics nothing. While its geography is American and its style is European, it does not taste remotely like either. Even better, the uniqueness of his product is not a gimmick. Brush your gaze across the vodka shelf in your local liquor store and you'll see plenty of recently-launched and soon-to-be-discontinued brands that were forged completely on a business model powered by brand marketing and not product quality. Wasmund's accolades and admittedly humble popularity come from the fact that he's making a product unlike any other, and a good one at that. In a land where Bacardi and Jim Beam dominate the industry... this is a breath of fresh air.

2) Local economy. I won't harp on this, because I myself tire of hearing it sometimes... Wasmund creates his products using completely local ingredients, which not only guarantees freshness, but displays a preference of quality over price; local ingredients aren't always the cheapest anymore, what with today's age of Walmart-style transportation networks. It also makes sense to help energize the economy around you and not one far away... after all, when everyone around you is living well, you probably will too.

3) Terroir. This is the most important, and a result of reason #2. Terroir is the effect that a landscape has on the taste of a food product. For instance, if a winery in France packed up and moved their personnel, equipment, and grape seeds to California to reestablish their enterprise in exactly the same way... their wine would taste different. Maybe not much, but it would taste different. The difference in soil composition, rainfall amounts, and even the chemistry of the air would impart slight variables that would ultimately change the character of the wine. Many people claim that the water in New York City is what makes the pizza there so delicious... I for one think that claim is a bit exaggerated, but nevertheless, it's still terroir. Wasmund's whisky is packed with terroir. Every single input ingredient in the process is strictly local... and by "local", I mean within about a 50 mile radius, if I'm not mistaken. Even though it might sound crazy, the taste of Wasmund's whisky transports me to the Appalachians in the fall, and I suppose that's no surprise. Their whisky doesn't let you forget where the product was made, and that's something exciting. The 2009 International Review of Spirits commented that Wasmund's "finishes with a very long, slowly evolving, mossy river stone, peat, cocoa, cereal, and pepper fade." So in the end, the word "earthy" manages to describe this products taste, ingredients, and process.

Wasmund's went on in the aforementioned contest to score 93 out of 100 points.