Archive for the ‘Bitters’ Category

It’s Derby time once again.  Now, this won’t be the first time I’ve discussed the Mint Julep, and certainly won’t be the last.  It’s such an iconic and classic drink, in some cases argued to pre-date the cocktail.  I plan on enjoying a few of them today, and here’s one variation in particular.  I came up with this Julep for a recent competition here in Portland, hosted by Maker’s Mark.  It didn’t win the contest, but it did win on the palates of a number of the attendees.  I think it’s pretty darn swell myself.

King Julep

• 6-8 Kentucky Julep Spearmint Leaves
• 2 small chunks pineapple
• 1/2 oz Small Hand Pineapple Gum Syrup
• 1/4 oz Allspice Dram
• 6 drops Herbsaint Original
• dash Angostura bitters
• 2 oz Maker’s Mark bourbon

In a 10 oz collins glass, muddle mint, pineapple, pineapple gum and allspice dram briefly and gently.  Release the oils but don’t break the mint too harshly.  Top with crushed ice to 3/4 of the glass, add Bourbon.  Stir or swizzle until a frost begins to form on the glass, and top with more crushed ice until the glass is overflowing with ice.  Garnish with a leafy mint sprig and pineapple wedge.

The drink’s name is King Julep as the pineapple is known as the King of fruits.  Inspiration for the drink comes from my want to put a tropical spin on the classic Julep.  Now, this might also play well with an aged Rhum Agricole, or strong Jamaican rum such as Smith & Cross, but I find the Maker’s Mark added an interesting nuttiness to the drink that played well with the sweetness of the pineapple gum.  The Allspice dram, well, that’s just fun.  I also utilized the 1-2 punch of bitters and herbsaint to add complexity, using the new formulation of Herbsaint, which I find enhances the mintiness of the concoction, which can get muddled amidst the other flavors.

All bets are in, hope you enjoy your own Derby Day!

Fabulous prizes at the bottom of the post. First, let’s get to drinking!

So, if you’ve haven’t heard it said around here before, Martin Cate, my ultimate H-bomb when it comes to name dropping, has been known to drop down a damn golden nugget of a drink when he cares to.  I’m not saying all that comes from his brain his golden, he just has the wherewithal to really figure out what makes a drink tick, and keeps on trying ’til he gets it right.

The following drink, the 2070, was introduced to me by Paul Clarke through his article in last year’s Sept/Oct. Issue of Imbibe (yes, it took me a year to post on this… I’ve perhaps enjoyed them a few too many times).

2070

• 1 oz Angostura 1919
• 1 oz Lemon Hart 151
• 1/2 oz Fresh Lime Juice
• 1/2 oz Rich Simple Syrup
• 1/2 oz Honey Mix
• 1/4 oz St. Elizabeth Allspice Dram
• 4 drops Pernod
• 2 dash Angostura bitters
• 1 pinch freshly ground nutmeg

Build ingredients with Crushed Ice in a Chimney glass.  Insert barspoon or lele stick and gently twirl spoon between the palms of your hands until a frost forms on the outside of the glass.  Serve with Straw.

Honey Mix is a mix of even parts honey and warm water, stirring until the honey is completely dissolved.

Rich Simple Syrup is a 2:1 Demerara Sugar to Water Simple Syrup.

Says Martin of the origins of the drink,

The recipe was inspired by a regular at FI who always had me make him swizzles. I usually freestyled based on several recipes, and some were better than others. So I wanted to really get down a firm version of what I liked that was true to its Trini roots, but also mindful of the drinks eventual tikification.

I sat down one night at the bar and whipped up every swizzle recipe I could find- three different QPSs [Queen's Park Swizzles], some stuff from Barbados, etc.. I wanted to see what flavors and rum combos I really liked, to sit down and make what would be, for me, the ultimate swizzle. So it’s really just a showcase for some of my favorite flavors.

This is something of a superswizzle- usually they have far fewer ingredients. But you get honey/pernod (more tiki) and Angostura/allspice/nutmeg (more Caribbean) and I like to think they can be friends¦much like the farmer and the cowman.

And its the “2070″ not “20-70″ Swizzle. Or “Twenty Seventy” or “Two Thousand Seventy”, but that doesn’t sound as good.

note: some editing, partially sourced from the Cocktailnerd.com 2070 post.

This is a lovely and flavorful sipper. Definitely heavy on the ingredients for your standard swizzle, but oh the flavor combinations. Have you figured out the origins of the name? Give it a guess. First to comment with the correct origins of the name (that I haven’t drunkenly explained it to already) will be shipped a bottle of Trader Tiki’s Orgeat and Cinnamon Syrup, to make up your own tropical concoctions!

In its homeland, the Pride of Barbados is a flowering shrub that serves as a medicine, reducing fever, healing wounds, and curing breathing ailments.  I can’t say the same for the drink I made to share the name, but I can personally guarantee that it will certainly make you forget about whatever ails you.

This drink utilizes two of the Mount Gay Rum product line, combining the rich oak and tropical notes of the XO, with the young springy cane in the Eclipse.  I developed this drink specifically for Mount Gay Rums, and think it’s a real winner, and hope you’ll think the same.

Pride of Barbados

• 1 ½ oz Mount Gay XO
• ½ oz Mount Gay Eclipse
• 1 oz Fresh Grapefruit Juice
• ¾ oz Fresh Lime Juice
• 1 oz Allspice Syrup
• 4 drops Vanilla Extract
• 1 dash Angostura Bitters

Shake with 6 ounces of Crushed Ice and pour into Chimney Glass. Garnish with Orange Ribbon and serve with a straw.

Yes, another Mandatory Monthly cocktail blog post. This time, made even mandatorier as it’s hosted by one of my favorite bearded behatted gents on the internets, Matt Robold of RumDood.com! Since I stole his subject earlier this year (all part of my grand scheme), he’s decided to go the spicy route and chose ginger!

Ginger Beer is a nice and spicy ingredient, of which there are about 3 choices in any regional market, for a total of about 50 billion or so.  I’m sure you’ll see a few recipes out there even just in this wrap up. I was almost half-tempted just to make this post a redirect to Jeff Morgenthaler’s How to Make your own Ginger Beer.  But, since I started using his recipe to make my own (others have… failed), I have come across a few changes I like to make in mine to make it my own.  I haven’t gone back to buying Ginger Beer yet.

Jeffrey Morgenthaler’s Blair’s Ginger Brew

• 1 part Ginger Juice
• 2 parts Lemon Juice
• 2 parts Simple Syrup
• 1 tsp Allspice
• 1 tsp Cinnamon
• 1 tsp yeast (brewing or champagne preferred, but anything will work) per liter

Juice your Ginger fresh in any convenient juicer.  It takes awhile, and thanks to the fiber, your juicer will likely get jammed a few times.  The effort is rough, but worth it.  Stir all ingredients together in a large foodsafe plastic container, such as used in kitchen prep.  Top with a lid and sit in a room temp, slightly dark area, such as on a shelf or under a counter, for 72 hours.  Once your time is up, uncap, filter, and put in cold storage to inhibit the yeast growth.  After a few hours in the fridge, you should hear a nice burp.  EZ-cap bottles are definitely the bottle of choice.  This creates a super spicy, super sharp ginger brew.

So,  at this point you’ve either made that (recommended), or picked up some store bought.  Well, if you don’t think 3 hours of effort, 3 days of waiting, and the cost of fresh ingredients is worth it, so be it.  I’d recommend Ginger People, Cock and Bull, or Bundaberg.  Now you’re hip for nay Dark and Stormies, Moscow Mules, Mamie Taylors and so on.  But if you’re here and into Tiki, I think you know what may be coming next… you BASTARD.

One of my favorite Tiki Drinks, if only for the name (the flavors, if mixed wrong can be… off-putting) is the Suffering Bastard.  We featured these drinks during last years Tiki Tuesday events, and the reception was warm for this slightly bitter strongly cooling drink.  Thinking that was the end of its story, I then chanced upon Robert Simonson’s post on the Beachbum’s Visit to NYC.  Here, he described the Dead Bastard, another drink by master mixologist Joe Scialom.  This is the third of its cousins (the suffering and dying being the other), and I think it’s just… tops.  As Robert Describes it, it’s a bit of a Tiki Long Island, featuring four types of booze, a few other knick-nacks, and finished off with a generous dallop of ginger beer.

Dead Bastard

• 1/2 oz Gin
• 1/2 oz Brandy
• 1/2 oz Bourbon
• 1/2 oz Rum
• 1/2 oz Rose’s lime juice
• 2 dashes Angostura bitters
• 4 ounces of chilled ginger beer

Shake Gently with 1 cup Crushed Ice, pour into Goblet or other large vessel.  Garnish with whatever the hell, it’s dead and doesn’t care.  I used a whole lime.  It’s a big drink.

Combined with the Ginger Beer above, this makes for a killer diller of a drink, like a feather that knocks you flat on your feet.  If you’re questioning the Rose’s Lime, see Robert Simonson’s post above. Just about everything has its place, and in respect to the original recipe, I used Rose’s Lime Juice. If it makes you feel any better, I garnished with an entire freaking lime, so at least some fruit was destroyed for the sake of the drink. For some reason, I couldn’t find the Brandy today, so I reached for Brandy of the apple variety (Laird’s) instead, and oh what a wonderful difference, adding a bit more fruit to the drink.

Well, here’s to hoping you go through the heck of a process to make Ginger Beer (or Brew, whatever), to see what the fuss is all about.  Worth it in my opinion, but, even better if you can get someone else to make it for you.  Cheers!

Can I get a cocktail post in here?  Yes, and soon… soon as I recover from last night’s TDN.

In the meantime, a discussion of the comings and goings in my life, booze related.

We’ve deployed the Spring Cocktail Menu over at Acadia Bistro, with a few New Orleans classics, and some originals I think you’ll like.  We’ve also been brewing our own ginger brew.  It’s labor intensive, no kidding, but the results are so worth it.  It ain’t the Colonel’s Shandy with no wussy Ginger Ale!

Colonel’s Shandy

• 2 oz Bourbon
• ½ Lemon
• 2 dashes Rhubarb Bitters
• tsp Simple Syrup

Build over rocks in a tall Chimney Glass, and top with 1/2 Pilsner and 1/2 Ginger Beer.  Give it a bit of a stir, and garnish with a Horse’s Neck.

Besides this dandy, you’ll find the classic New Orleans cocktails the P’lace de Armes, a New Orleans Style Jack Rose (with Peychauds Bitters), and Tchoupitoulas Street Guzzle.   The originals Bulle a Monté (the bubble rose), which combines housemade Rose/Hibiscus Liqueur with a lovely Gruet Methode Champenoise, the Fleur de Lis, a take on the Pink Lady with house made Orgeat in place of Grenadine, and featuring a PDT inspired Fleur de Lis stencil on top.  Of course the classic Sazerac and other popular Acadian libations are still there.  Drop on in sometime and say hi.

In other news, I’ve been accepted into the Tales of the Cocktail Cointreau Apprentice Program.  What does this mean for you?  Probably little.  What does this mean for me?  A lot of hard work in New Orleans this year, that’s for damned sure.  I’ll be joining my buddies Erik and David, and a great list of other bartenders in this program.  Like I didn’t sweat enough in New Orleans last year.

And in other other news, I’ve registered for the next B.A.R. 5-day program coming up this Fall in New York.  Again, what this means for you?  Bo diddly, I’m just sharing.  With any luck, I’ll have a nice write up of some places in NY I’ve been itching to go to for the past year or two.

So, it looks like my year is pretty much setup to keep me incredibly busy.  How you doing?