Cocktails & Ego

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?

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

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

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

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

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!

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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.

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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

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.