Pithy Reply

I've been trying a technique lately in an effort to recycle, wherein after juicing a bunch of citrus, I'll take the spent shells and pour some inexpensive spirit over them in a Mason jar. I'll let this stand for a while, infuse a bit, then strain off to produce a slightly bitter cordial. It's a simple, cheap way to wring a little more flavor out of what would otherwise be waste.

The result is also an easy way to put a twist on an otherwise basic cocktail. Like this one, which became a straightforward response to an unspecified request for "just a drink" (in which case you're getting whatever I have to use up). It was named (terribly) for its various citrus content, combined with a self-referential pun. Fucking meta, man.

2 oz grapefruit-infused white rum
3/4 oz lemon/orange syrup
1/2 oz lime juice

Shake and strain over a fresh large ice cube. Hurl disdainfully at the freeloader who begged it from you. (Or, like, drink it.)

Easter Special

Did I forget to post this one? I forgot to post it. But that's okay - a little backlog helps make up for the terribly unproductive Mocktail Month so far. Honestly, it's been a lot of the same, and it's hard to get excited enough about a basic soda to throw a post together, even if it is handmade.

I have ideas in the works, though! I'm convinced that there has to be a way to make a substitute Negroni, or at least an Americano, probably involving Sanbitter but preferably something I can make at home. Maybe a tea concentrate and a heavily spiced syrup?

Until then: this. One of the signals that I'm getting fairly decent at this stuff is that when I ask my mother what I can bring for brunch, her response these days is as likely to be "How about you make something?" as the old standby bottle of wine. I made this low-caliber punch-type thing for Easter. The name wrote itself.

For ease of transport, the end product was a scaled-up bottled cocktail. The proportions given in the picture aren't the final version; I just needed an illustration for the post. A couple trial runs produced the following end proportions.

This makes roughly two liters of finished cocktail.

12 oz light white wine (I used a cheap gruner veltliner, but a mild pinot grigio or sauvignon blanc would do fine too)
9 oz gin (nothing fancy; New Amsterdam here)
6 oz Byrrh
3 oz Aperol
3 oz cinnamon syrup
1 1/2 oz orange juice
1 1/2 oz lemon juice

Mix this together and bottle until ready to serve. When ready, combine with an equal proportion of soda water and serve in wine glasses.

Mocktail Month: Kitchen Counter

Well folks, it's gotta happen now and again. I obviously love a good drink, but there can be too much of a good thing. My wife and I are therefore embarking on a new, extended edition of Mocktail Week, because obviously we still need something to drink, and I'll be recording our favorites as we go.

Now, fear not - this won't be as stringent as the original Mocktail Week. We're still allowing ourselves the weekends, and I'll pop in with an occasional proper cocktail here and there, but we might mostly towards the comforting simplicity of beer and whiskey. Besides which, we'll probably still be at least somewhat moderate. One of the better things about an extended booze-free period is its ability to reset your tolerance, which is great! It'd be nice to go out sometimes and not suffer regrets when the bill arrives.

So: an initial entry for our inaugural day. This one was kind of a kitchen-sink approach, but then I named it after where most of the first attempt wound up.

3/4 oz cinnamon syrup

3/4 cranberry tonic syrup (I'll provide the recipe later)

1/2 oz orange juice

1/2 oz lemon juice

Shake and strain over fresh ice, then top with 5-6 oz soda water and stir.

A good start, but I'd like to amp up the bitterness quotient a bit, maybe with a black tea concentrate or something; the tonic, while tasty, didn't have quite enough bite. We might see a revised version of this one. 

Bobhouse

A solid highball, suitable for consuming in the winter months.

2 oz sour orange juice (nice sour oranges are good for this; you can also supplement navel orange juice with citric acid)
1 1/2 oz blended scotch
1/2 oz Loonshine
1/2 oz squash-brown sugar syrup
1/2 oz pineapple syrup
1 dash Angostura bitters

Shake and pour unstrained into... well, any glass really. What is this "gar-nish" you speak of?

Punch for 50

I love our chalkboard paint!

The recipe at left pretty much says it all - I decided to put this up in our kitchen, so that I didn't have to repeat it over and over if anyone asked. Nobody really did, but it seemed to go down well. And my mother-in-law, whose birthday it was created to celebrate, requested a repeat at Thanksgiving. I'll take that as high praise!

To be honest, the shape and size of this chalkboard (painted onto an archway in our kitchen) made for a greatly simplified description anyway, and I figured this would be the place for a detailed breakdown.

Okay, so first, the ratio written out here actually came from two separate syrups I'd made previously: an orange-vanilla oleo-saccharum and a spiced cranberry-brown sugar syrup. These were tasty, but each a bit labor intensive, so I combined them into a single syrup for mass production. Prepare as follows:

Peel three medium-large navel oranges, avoiding the white pith, and place the peels into a large nonreactive work bowl. Add in 1 cup of sugar and muddle the oranges until the sugar sticks to the peels. Set these aside for at least 45 minutes and let the sugar absorb the orange oils to form the oleo-saccharum; add an additional sprinkle of sugar and toss if the peels start looking excessively wet.

Set a large pot (at least 4 quarts) over medium heat and toss in a few spices: 2 teaspoons each black peppercorn and allspice berries, plus two nutmegs and two cinnamon sticks smashed into several large pieces. Give these a quick stir or keep the pan moving until they become fragrant, then pour in 4 cups of water (this will bubble up a bit, don't be scared). Bring this to a simmer, then pour in 5 cups of sugar and about 2 tablespoons of molasses (I eyeball this, as it's too much trouble to measure). Stir until the sugar dissolves, then add in a pound of frozen cranberries, because they'll leach out into the syrup better than fresh.

Head back to your orange oleo-saccharum; at this point, a significant amount of oil from the peels should have been absorbed by the sugar. Use a spatula to scrape the peels and sugar into the syrup, bring the pot back up to a bare simmer, and kill the heat. Let the whole thing cool and infuse for a couple of hours.

Once the syrup has cooled off, add the juice from the oranges, plus 2 teaspoons of good vanilla extract. Stir and run the syrup through a sieve to remove the solids. At this point, I poured the syrup into a clean 1.75 L bottle for storage, because I love my Tanqueray handles.

To serve, pour the syrup base into a large punch bowl. Refill the empty container with cold water, add that, and then 4 cups of fresh lemon juice along with 2 liters of soda water. Add in some large ice cubes to keep the whole thing cold and garnish with a few thin slices of orange and some extra cranberries. In fact, if I had thought ahead, I might have frozen those into the ice cubes.

Once again, I forgot to take a picture of the final product. Sigh. Serve the punch alongside a white wine (an inexpensive California chardonnay in this case) and a few bottles of spirit. One of these was Jameson, of course (it's my mother-in-law's whiskey of choice) but gin was quite popular as well. This has become just about my favorite party trick - easy to prepare ahead of time, easy to assemble, flexible, fun for guests, and endlessly remixable. That's a tough act to beat.

Southern Side

I have kind of a contentious relationship with mint.  Keeping some around for use in juleps and such is great, but it always winds up on a top shelf in our fridge, where it remains forgotten until I notice its decidedly brown color.  At that point, it's just gotta get used.

Using up a near-empty bottle of mezcal seemed like an interesting merger, and I vaguely remembered a recipe from Speakeasy that sounded like a good fit - which actually wound up being a Prohibition-era classic from the Savoy Cocktail Book.  I swapped some mezcal in for gin to provide a smoky flavor, and at that point a pineapple syrup seemed only obvious.

1 1/2 oz gin (Tanqueray)
1/2 oz mezcal (Vida)
1/2 oz pineapple syrup
3/4 oz lemon juice
1/4 oz orange juice
2 bunches mint (about 15-20 leaves)

Shake well to pulverize the mint and strain into a cocktail glass.  Garnish with a strip of orange peel.

If you prefer, you could double-strain this to remove the tiny mint pieces, but I kinda like the texture they provide.  It also provides a nice visual impact, so you'll want to garnish with a mint leaf instead to keep the color.

Sidearm

Here's a very simple remix on the Sidecar that used up a lonely remaining Seville orange.  I kinda wish I'd been able to get this out earlier for Mixology Monday, since it seems to fit this month's criteria pretty well.  It's not particularly fancy, but it turned out well for all its simplicity.

2 oz cognac (grade not too critical here, but I used a cheap-ish VSOP)
1/2 oz Mathilde Poire
1/2 oz Seville orange juice
1 dash Angostura bitters

Shake and strain into a cocktail glass.  Garnish with a thin orange slice, if you have any left.