Wise Man

Hey look, another lapse! It's another season where I just haven't been mixing much original stuff - largely gin & tonics and daiquiris, for some reason. Just to keep the suspense from building too much, here's a backlog item for you.

I started screwing around with this concept a little while ago after purchasing a bottle of Bombay Sapphire East, which was an unusual purchase for me. I'm not a fan (at all) of standard Bombay Sapphire, but a bar-master friend had me try a competition drink of his once using this as the base, and I got hooked. This version adds lemongrass and black pepper to the normal Sapphire botanicals, which I think adds some depth and spice to what is otherwise a fairly bland gin. I got to thinking one morning (don't judge me) how the "eastern" concept might get along nicely with tea, so I assembled this the moment I got home from work. It's still a work in process (I don't think the balance is quite there) but let's record it anyway.

1 oz Bombay Sapphire East
1 oz cognac (any decent VS or better brandy ought to do)
1 oz Bonal (honestly, I might try straight-up sweet vermouth next time)
1 oz chilled oolong tea (can't remember exactly what kind)
1/4 oz Licor 43 (to balance the astringency of the tea)

Stir and strain into a chilled coupe glass. A lemon twist garnish is a good idea here, but don't tell anybody I said so.

The mix here was based on the Ampersand, which I think is something of an unfairly obscure lost cocktail. Again, I don't think this exact recipe quite nailed the balance, but I find the concept intriguing, and the drink's light body quite fit for summer. Some further renditions might pop up here soon.

Last Rays

This is the drink that started our evening.  Yes, it's another riff on the Last Word, but I don't care. I was very pleased with how this turned out.

1 oz reposado tequila (Espolon, as seen)
3/4 oz Casoni 1814 (Aperol would do too)
1/2 oz Licor 43
3/4 oz lime juice

Shake and strain into a coupe. Garnish with a thin lime wheel if you must.

The name emerged from the colors of a sunset, because look how pretty. Pictures, man.

Fortified

And a second drink from last night (at least as best I can remember). This one filled the "use everything up" slot, including the Licor 43 we saw in the last recipe and my remaining Cocchi Americano. Can't go long without replacing that; Cocchi is one of my favorite apertif wines and has a permanent slot in my fridge.

Now, a slight problem with this one is that I can't quite remember the exact proportions; they got a little funky because I was at the end of some of these bottles, so I'm rounding off as best I can. If and when I make this next, I'll probably fuss about with some of the ratios.

3/4 oz Amontillado sherry
3/4 oz Pineau des Charentes
1/2 oz Cocchi Americano
1/2 oz Licor 43
2 dashes Bitter Truth Xocolatl Bitters
3 drops salt solution

Stir and strain over fresh ice in a small cocktail glass (a proper sherry glass would be nice, but I don't have any) and garnish with a large swath of lemon peel.

Reconstruction Era

My wife and I have developed a bit of a routine for the irregular nights when we get back reasonably early and sober from whatever event we were attending. (Events from which we don't come back early or sober are a different story.) It goes a little something like this:

1. I want a drink, and so without prompting I make us a pair of cocktails. This is usually something stiff and low-fuss, like an old-fashioned; last night's was a rye old-fashioned with blueberry syrup, good but not worth recording in detail. These go down quickly while we figure out how to entertain ourselves for the rest of the evening.
2. Something occurs to me: "We'll need more than that. What do I have to use up from the bar?" (Note that I'm using the imperative have to very loosely here.) I collect 2-4 bottles that are less than a quarter full and challenge myself to use them together.
3. I cobble together a drink from the must-use list, usually with a bunch of tweaking and far more pomp than I used on drink #1. We taste the result together and find out that it's actually pretty goddamned good.
4. Confidence boosted, I make a third drink, usually a classic or repeat that I can make with the must-use bottles. Cocchi Americano was on the chopping block last night, so I made a Vesper, and a pretty dang good one too.
5. At this point, my wife says something like "I think I want another one..." She says this because her tolerance for alcohol is terrifying; this is a woman who (dead sober) used to greet me home from work at the restaurant with an empty wine bottle at her side. This is the point where, by now, I should have learned my lesson, but I haven't learned and probably never will, so I take our collection of empty glasses and stumble off to make another drink.
6. I resolve to kill whatever's left in the must-use bottles and somehow wind up with a drink that absorbs them all. To my surprise, it winds up being good. I realize that dammit, I've now made two solid cocktails that deserve writing down, but my wife's also waiting, and I have neither the patience nor sobriety to start writing now. The recipes go unrecorded.
7. Eventually I make yet another drink (because why not, at that point?) and later on we somehow make it to bed.
8. I wake up with multiple regrets, among them a hangover and the realization that I never wrote anything down.

I'm not knocking it; the process is generally quite fun, except for that last step. But failing to record good cocktails grates on me, and so I'm trying to break the cycle by reconstructing a couple of those successful drinks from last night. I can't guarantee complete accuracy, here, but this is the best I can remember.

First, a fancified-old-fashioned style drink, featuring Licor 43, the main liqueur that wound up in the must-use collection last night.

2 oz rye whiskey (I used High West Rendezvous Rye, but anything nice and spicy will do, including Bulleit)
1/4 oz Licor 43
1/2 oz Pineau des Charentes (a very cool if tough-to-source apertif, created by blending grape must/juice back into cognac distilled from the same or similar grapes)
1 dash Fee Brothers Whiskey Barrel-Aged Bitters
1 dash Fee Brothers Black Walnut Bitters

Build in an old-fashioned glass over a large ice cube. Don't garnish, or I'll find you.

Different Drum Drinks

A good friend brought over a bottle of Different Drum, which he'd somehow snapped up in a truly insane rush to order the first 1,500 bottles.  After a first tasting, he decided that he wanted to try it in a cocktail.  I was happy to oblige!

This is funky stuff - rich, smooth, slightly sweet, redolent of roasted coffee.  A lot like a quality coffee liqueur but without that cloying sugar component.  I dig it, although I think it really shines when paired with another base.  Like so:

Fine Grind:

1 1/4 oz Different Drum rum
1 oz armagnac brandy (I used Tariquet VS Bas-Armagnac; a mild bourbon would work too)
1/2 oz red vermouth (Primitivo Quiles again)
1/4 oz Licor 43 (you could scale this back or omit entirely depending on your taste)
1 dash Fee Brothers Black Walnut bitters
1 dash orange bitters (Regan's No. 6)

Stir and strain into a cocktail glass; garnish with a strip of orange peel.

This wound up being the winner in our small tasting group; it's a Manhattan-esque sipper (or more properly a Saratoga Cocktail) that highlights the flavor of the Drum without letting it dominate everything else.  But I also wanted to try something less spirit-forward, resulting in this take on a Dark & Stormy:

Drumming in the Dark:

2 oz Different Drum rum
1/2 oz Mathilde Poire liqueur
1/2 lime juice
2-3 oz ginger beer (Reed's Extra Ginger is my favorite)

Shake the first three ingredients and strain over fresh ice; top with the ginger beer, stir, and garnish with a lime wheel.

Overall, I'm sold.  Different Drum seems like a solid and interesting way to bring coffee flavor into cocktails without the added sweetness of coffee liqueurs.  I'm not sure about the tagline ("A rum for the bourbon drinker") as it seems more like a rum for the espresso aficionado, but I like both those things so it works out.

Be warned, this clearly isn't a simple substitution for other rums, whiskeys, or what-have-you.  This occupies a place in my mind next to quality spiced rums (Sailor Jerry's all the way) and overproof dark rums (like Lemon Hart 151): too potent to use as a base in a simple cocktail, but bringing very unique flavors for which it's tough to substitute.  Also, Different Drum only seems to be available direct from the La Colombe distillery, so don't go seeking it out at your local liquor store.

Cedared Martinez

It's time once again for the Weird Gin Cocktail Hour!  Seems like there's not a month where I find some new, unusual gin that just begs to be taken home.  This time, it's Vikre Distillery's Boreal Cedar Gin, which I almost feel bad for mentioning; it's brand-new, hyper-local, and near as I can tell not yet distributed outside my home state.  It's an interesting spirit, very subtly colored and flavored with cedar wood, which is probably a first. The cedar is most definitely prominent, sharing space with some classic botanicals as a somewhat piney presence before ballooning out into campfire smoke with a mild forest-berry backdrop.  It's a little bit hot at the end (campfire in more ways than one) but despite all that cedar manages to be more restrained than other evergreen-infused gins like St. George Terrior or Rogue Spruce Gin.

That unique smoky presence makes this a dead-on match for Cynar.  After some experimentation, here's a Martinez rendition designed to make use of this potent combination.

2 oz Boreal Cedar Gin
1/4 oz Licor 43
1/4 oz Cynar
1/4 oz red vermouth (plain old Martini & Rossi, this time)
1 dash Regan's No. 6 Orange Bitters

Stir and strain into a cocktail glass.  Garnish with a thin strip of orange peel, or nothing at all.

If you're adventurous, you can swap out some or all of the red vermouth for additional Cynar (in which case you might want to drop the bitters) but I like this more balanced approach.  From experience I can also tell you that Luxardo, Benedictine, and even Rothman & Winter's Apricot liqueur all make interesting substitutions for the Licor 43.

Carina Collins

That's right, friends, it's another of my patented Unexplained Absences!  I shouldn't feel too bad - we did just buy a house, after all, and I've recently noticed that many (better-known) cocktail blogs are subject to their own random hiatuses.  Ah well.  I had to check in to be sure that I got this one down.

2 oz London Dry gin (Tanqueray in this case, although Boodles would be welcome)
1 1/4 oz lime juice (about a full medium-sized lime)
3/4 oz strawberry-saffron syrup
1/2 oz Licor 43
1 dash orange bitters

Shake and strain over large ice cubes, then top with soda water to taste (about 2 oz for me) and stir gently.

I named this one after a constellation visible in the Southern hemisphere during the summer months - appropriate, since I'm not sure why I came up with this only once the weather turned frigid.  Go figure.

Pirate Dram

Here's a random Friday-evening old-school nightcap, cobbled together (as always seems to be the case) out of ingredients I'm trying to use up in preparation for our move.

3/4 oz Pyrat XO rum (or similar spicy, navy-style rum; Admiral Pusser's, perhaps)
3/4 oz VS brandy (technically I used a Torres 5 Year, but the style is similar)
1/2 oz Highlands scotch (or other smoky, peaty goodness)
1 barspoon Licor 43
1 barspoon honey-sage syrup
3 dashes Bitter Truth Jerry Thomas' Own Decanter bitters

Stir and strain into a cocktail glass.  Garnish?  What's that?

You could probably bump up the scotch if that's your pleasure.  The overall effect was oddly close to Drambuie, hence the name.

Malaccan Madness

I was thrilled to hunt down a couple bottles of Tanqueray Malacca today - I'd bought a couple before, recently after the news of its reissue, but the supply in my local market seems to be drying up and I found only one store with remaining stock.  I might have to invest in a couple more, or exercise more willpower in using the stuff.  It's really a very lovely gin, and I hope that its current limited run gets extended.

Anyway, should you have an open bottle of your own, here's a nice way to sling it around (although Malacca seems to work well in just about any pre-Prohibition gin cocktail).  What with this name, it's entirely brand-specific (sorry about that) but you could use another relatively soft, Old Tom style gin.  Seek out the real deal if you can.

2 oz Tanqueray Malacca gin
1/2 oz Licor 43
1/3 oz lemon juice
1 dash creme de violette
1 dash aromatic bitters
1 dash Bittercube Bolivar bitters

Shake briefly and strain over a large ice cube.  Garnish with a twist of lemon if you feel.

Notebook Cocktail #9

Somewhere in here I had a rather unhealthy fixation on double-base cocktails, meaning those that combine two different liquors in equal proportion.  Classic examples such as the Vieux Carre are among my favorite drinks (you may have noticed a couple variations) and I like trying to get spirits playing off one another.  It's a damned difficult trick to pull off; out of maybe a half-dozen cocktails that I vaguely recall, this was the only one enjoyable enough to deserve recording.

1 oz rye (Wild Turkey here)
1 oz Bak's Bison Grass vodka
3/4 oz Cynar
1/4 oz Licor 43
2 dashes aromatic bitters

Stir and strain into a chilled cocktail glass; garnish with a wide swath of orange peel.

And that, my friends, concludes the run of Notebook Cocktails (representing maybe 10% at most of my output during this latest hiatus).  I'll try to spread these out a little in future.  In the meantime, I wish all of you a very pleasant July 4th weekend (those of you reading from the U.S., anyway).

Catching up

Hah - see!  Any of my writings beginning with a manifesto almost immediately fails to meet its stated goal.  No matter, let's just make up for some lost time.

I spent a significant chunk of this weekend behind a bar, and as usual when we're overstaffed, we had some time for experimentation.  We set a goal of utilizing scotch, which we don't sell much of.  What little we do sell is primarily single malt, and served neat, so the poor sad bottle of Johnny Walker Black sits lonely among its fellows on the shelf.  Why not let him have a little fun?

Blended scotch was all the rage about a hundred years ago, and grew to popularity out of marketing genius, capitalizing on the American invasion of a uniquely Scottish phenomenon: golf.  It's a key component in a very classic Manhattan variation, the Rob Roy, which is a damned good drink if made properly.  Dave Wondrich (via Imbibe!) gives a recipe from 1902 made with equal parts scotch and red vermouth, plus a few dashes of orange bitters and lemon peel.  Another favorite of mine is the Marie Taylor, a drink rescued from oblivion by Dr. Cocktail himself (I got the recipe from Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails, but the linked recipe is almost identical).  Why the Mamie Taylor ever went out of fashion is beyond me, as it's basically a richer, more interesting Moscow Mule that appeals even to non-scotch-drinkers.

Anyway, scotch doesn't appear in a great number of cocktails, mostly because it's notoriously hard to mix with, but it can be quite effective if well-used.  My first attempt was a rather simple Rob Roy variation made with Johnny Walker Black, Cynar, and Licor 43: easy, tasty, but nothing too far off the beaten path.  Coworker David immediately surprised me by grabbing a handful of fresh strawberries and muddling them with the Johnny Walker and a bit of Grand Marnier to tie things together.  A dash of orange juice completed his attempt, but the result fell flat until I grabbed some Fee's Aztec Chocolate Bitters in a fit of inspiration.  The result had a surprising balance between scotch-chocolate richness and strawberry-orange tartness, although I would love to swap the Marnier for a liqueur with some vanilla character like Tuaca, plus maybe an egg for texture...

Having passed these two around to the staff, we started deviating from our original mission.  David took aim at the row of amaros that have been steadily accumulating on the back shelf of the bar, while I reached for a recent addition: St. George absinthe.  I was slightly nervous about tequila as a base, but a resposado (in this case, Aguavales Gold, which is very good for the price) worked wonderfully when paired again with Licor 43.  The herbs and spices in all three teamed up wonderfully, although I would have loved to try an añejo if we carried one.

We'll squeeze recipes out of these yet; for now, they're still just ideas.  I hope you don't mind the banter.  I'll make up the missing recipes with some oldies from my tasting notebook.