Category: Life

Oh, you know, the usual…

Cocktail update: The Citrine

Posted on by Dale

As you may recall, I recently invented a cocktail called The Citrine. It was notable in that its ingredients were all handmade: the plum vodka from my neighbor, the simple syrup from me, and the shrub from a small company in Smyrna.

But Dale, I hear you ask, what happens when your neighbor runs out of plum vodka, and now that the small company is Smyrna has shut down, what will you do for the Peach & Cardamom shrub?

Follow along, class, and let’s fix this together.

First, the plum vodka. I am not a fan of 95% of flavored base liquors, but I am not unaware of the multitudinous abominations in that category, so I was sure I had never seen plum vodka. And I hadn’t. I was helped by a young person who was stocking the shelves, and even he had to have it looked up so he could find it. (It was on the top shelf of the vodka section, where neither he nor I had dreamed of looking because — trust me — it’s not top shelf material.)

This is Plush. It is too sweet to be a vodka, more like a liqueur, so that meant a complete rejiggering of the ingredients. In addition, rather than the original apple simple syrup, I decided to make an apple cider simple syrup for a little extra edge (recipe to follow).

The Citrine (non-handcrafted version)

  • 1 3/4 oz plum vodka (Plush)
  • 3/4 oz peach & cardamom shrub
  • 1/4 oz apple cider simple syrup

Shake with ice, strain into a Nick & Nora glass.

You will notice that we use triple the amount of shrub in this version; that’s how sweet the Plush is.

Apple Cider Simple Syrup

Boil 3 cups of apple cider with 1 cup of turbinado sugar until the sugar is dissolved and the cider has reduced to 2 cups. Cool. Add an ounce of vodka, calvados, or applejack to the mixture to help prevent mold.

We have one more variation to try: plum brandy, or slivovitz, which is marginally easier to find than plum vodka. And I may make an apple cider syrup with brown sugar to see if that adds depth to the drink or not. And I have found a peach/cardamom shrub recipe that I will be trying early next week. (I’m aiming to serve this at a holiday function where apparently I am the go-to bartender.)

Stay tuned.

New Cocktail: The Citrine

Posted on by Dale

Okay, you might have a little trouble getting your hands on the ingredients for this one, since two of them are home-made and one is from a small food company in Smyrna, GA [keep reading]. But it’s worth it!

This is one of those cocktails (of more than a few!) that I came up with after sitting with the ingredients for a while before I thought, why the heck not, let’s mix these two and see what happens.

The Citrine

First we start with a plum vodka that was given to me several months ago by our incredible neighbor Lisa Lee. She gifts me with all kinds of home-made substances, like elderflower liqueur and this plum vodka, made from either things she grows in the backyard (over the fence from my labyrinth) or gets at the market.

That’s the bottle on the right. On the left is a Peach & Cardamom Shrub, which means it’s vinegar (in this case, apple cider vinegar) with infusions. It’s from a company called MarRay Foods and was given to me by a burner friend at Alchemy back in October. (My camp, 3 Old Men, is known for its craft cocktail bar.)

And in the rear is the apple simple syrup, the recipe for which is dead simple.

  • 1 3/4 oz plum vodka
  • 1/4 oz Peach & Cardamom Shrub
  • 1/3 oz apple simple syrup

Pour the ingredients into a cocktail shaker. Shake with ice, then strain into a cocktail or Nick & Nora glass.

The Citrine is fruity, not too sweet, and then finishes with that lovely acidity that vinegar brings.

Apple Simple Syrup

  • 1 cup apple juice
  • 1 cup turbinado sugar

Mix the apple juice and sugar in a small pot. Bring to a boil, then stir until the sugar has dissolved. Cool, and store in the refrigerator. If you can’t find turbinado sugar — it shouldn’t be a problem — try brown sugar.

Coming soon: a recipe for the shrub, since MarRay Foods (I just discovered) is in the process of shutting down so that its proprietor can go back for their Masters in Library Science! Huzzah!

New Cocktail: [unnamed bourbon cocktail]

Posted on by Dale

I created this back before Alchemy in October, but I still haven’t come up with a name yet.

[unnamed bourbon cocktail]

  • 1 1/2 oz bourbon
  • 1/2 oz Rivulet pecan liqueur
  • 1/2 oz salty caramel flavored whisky
  • 2–3 dashes smoke bitters

Stir with ice, strain into highball glass with ice.

You might add a little sweetener to it, but I don’t think it needs it. It is actually pretty complex for such a bougie combination.

Suggest names in the comments.

The Savoy Variations: Warday’s Cocktail

Posted on by Dale

I’m bored, so I’m taking random cocktail recipes from The Savoy Cocktail Book (1930), giving them a try, and modifying/improving them if I think it’s necessary, and reporting my findings here.

Warday’s Cocktail

[p. 169]

This one was pleasant enough, but kind of lackluster. I almost splurged and used some of my very precious green chartreuse — and I am assuming they meant green, not yellow — but chickened out and used Boomsma Kloosterbitter instead. (I may make it again with one of the other not-quite-chartreuses in my cabinet to see how they work. And I may break out the actual Chartreuse.) At any rate, after a sip or two I added another teaspoon of the Kloosterbitter and that helped a lot.

You will also notice that I used Old Tom gin. I was surprised to discover that I had no actual dry gin in the cabinet. Don’t know how that happened, so I may take steps to remedy that before making this again. Also, I could play around with the sweet vermouth to see if one of the others might bump it up a bit.

  • 3/4 oz sweet vermouth
  • 3/4 oz dry gin
  • 3/4 oz Calvados/apple brandy
  • 2 tsp green chartreuse

I’m counting this one as my improvement, especially if I make more with alternate ingredients.

SAVOY VARIATIONS SCORECARD:

  • Savoy: 7
  • Dale: 3
  • Sink: 4

New Cocktail: Thyme & the Citadel

Posted on by Dale

For some reason in the last six months, I chose to make/experiment with thyme liqueur, and last summer at To The Moon I offered a Thyme & Tonic as one our cocktails. For this most recent Alchemy, I decided to step it up a bit and came up with…

Thyme & the Citadel

This intriguing name came from the French gin Citadelle, which is a bit more floral than I like gin in general — but what if we added a bit of herbal to it?

It’s quite tasty!

  • 1.5 oz Citadelle gin (or any floral, slightly sweet gin)
  • .5 oz thyme liqueur
  • tonic water
  • lemon twist

Combine in a glass with ice, add tonic water, express the twist over the drink and drop it in.

All very easy, but what about the thyme liqueur?

Infuse 3–4 tablespoons of fresh thyme sprigs in a 750 ml of neutral spirit, like vodka, for three weeks until it’s a rich olive green. Strain and set aside. Make a cup of simple syrup by boiling 1/2 cup of water with 1/2 cup of sugar until the sugar dissolves. (You might try experimenting with brown sugar, etc.) Mix simple syrup into the thyme until it’s just sweet enough. Don’t oversweeten it!

Enjoy!

Grand Canyon 2024

Posted on by Dale

Yes, we traveled once again to Grand Canyon. It was our fifth trip to our favorite place, and this time we started out with a two-night stay at the North Rim, a 4.5 hour drive from Las Vegas.

And yes, I usually live-blog our travels. But how many photos of the Canyon do you need to see? You can always use the dropdown menu of categories over there on the left to find our previous Canyon jaunts.

I do have some thoughts, and with that…

PRO TIPS

  • If you’re going to the North Rim, fly to Vegas. If you’re going to the South Rim, fly to Phoenix.
    • If you have the time and money, spend a night in St. George, UT, on the way to the North Rim, and in Flagstaff, AZ, on the way to the South Rim.
  • If you have a SoLight or two, bring them with you to light your way back to your cabin/campsite.
  • Do you have dirty shoes from hiking/tripping over elk? Bring some cheap shower caps to put them in when you pack!
  • North Rim Lodge: Try to get in one of the cabins numbered 300 or 400. They are a little more modern and a little more spacious than the originals.
  • The restaurants claim to expect “business casual” attire. Pfft. I saw no one turned away for shorts and t-shirts.
  • Pack your jigger and your bitters, then buy a small bottle of gin, either on the way out of Vegas or Phoenix or at the General Store in the park. Presto: your first pre-dinner cocktail is now a lot cheaper than the one in the restaurant. (I snagged a 750ml bottle of Bombay Sapphire our second day there, and even though I left half the bottle for the cleaning staff it was still cheaper than my having the same cocktail up at El Tovar or Bright Angel.)
    • Empty your ice bucket somewhere it can pool so the chipmunks and ravens have a little water in that heat.
  • Stick to the speed limit. Wildlife will be right there in the road when you least expect it.
  • Watch for stopped traffic, too: It usually means there are elk or deer or something to look at. Similarly, in the Village, if you see a bunch of tourists facing away from the Canyon, they’re more than likely watching a wild animal or two.
  • “Where are you from?” always works as a conversation starter, followed by “Is this your first time at the Canyon?”

 

RANDOM THOUGHTS

  • The North Rim is very much more wilderness than the South Rim, a lot less accommodating to the casual tourist. The ponderosa forests, flecked here and there with stands of aspen, are gorgeous, and even the fallen giants are beautiful, serving their cyclical purpose in death.
  • Reservations are required at the North Rim Lodge restaurant. It’s the only restaurant there (with a small deli and one coffee shop) and seating is tight.
  • The elk on the South Rim are quite habituated to humans, but are nonetheless wild animals. After all, they’ve had us around for over 100 years now, and the three babies we saw — like their mothers — have never known a landscape without those weird human things in the way.
    • As a comparison, the only elk we saw at the North Rim was on our way out,  a youngish male who was thinking about crossing the road but when he saw our car went sproinging away into the woods. At the South Rim, they just stroll on out across the road.
    • In the same vein, we watched two baby elk play-fight in front of us, then race each other up and down the “revegetation area” there at the rim. No adults in sight. A third baby, smaller, chirped at being left alone.
  • Spanish and Eastern Asian languages were the predominant languages I heard there. English was maybe 30% of what I heard.
  • We went into Tusayan to check out the pizza place (right there at the roundabout), and it was good! As we left the park, we realized there was a very very long line of cars waiting to get through the gate, so I did a little map quest and discovered that there is indeed an “authorized vehicles only” road that zips around the gate and deposits you right there in the Village. So, shouldn’t guests at the Lodges, who hold senior citizen National Parks passes and who are sustaining members of the Grand Canyon Conservancy, be authorized to skip the line??
  • We had literally cloudless skies the entire week we were there. For the past five years we’ve tried to catch a summer lightning storm over the Canyon, and every single trip, the weather has been flawless. I registered a complaint at the front desk and was told with a laugh that I should have been there the week before. Hrmph.
  • We saw our first Tesla Cybertruck in the wild, and yes, it’s as ugly as you think. I now describe them as looking like a police artist sketch of a Rivian.
  • I had a Scathingly Brilliant Idea for a t-shirt, which seemed to tickle the folk at the Grand Canyon Conservancy when I emailed them about it, but I doubt they’ll have the courage to produce it:

What’s not to like? They’d sell a million of them.

Cocktails on The Moon

Posted on by Dale
3 Old Men’s labyrinth with full moon

Last week I headed up to Tennessee to To The Moon, the regional burn there. It’s a long drive, longer if the driver’s side window of your 15′ rental truck explodes for no reason, necessitating a five-hour delay while the repair guy shows up to replace it.

Anyway, I promised a few hippies that I would post the recipes of the cocktails my camp (3 Old Men) served, so here we go. (I don’t have time to make each of these and take a photo, but I promise I’ll get around to each of them after I get back from Grand Canyon next week.)

Blandings In Cold Blood

First, an explanation/apology. I felt last week that I was a bit discombobulated in getting my act together to make it to the burn, and if we needed any proof, here it is. The cocktail I served at the burn was not the Blandings, but one called In Cold Blood. I have no idea why I thought it was a Blandings.

  • 1 oz rye
  • 1 oz sweet vermouth, Carpano Antica preferred
  • 1 oz Cynar (bitter artichoke amaro)
  • lemon peel
  • pinch of salt

It’s rich and bitter, one of my favorites — which makes not getting the name right even weirder.

Rose-Colored G

One  of mine. Takes a little prep, but worth it.

  • 1 1/2 oz gin, preferably an old tom
  • tonic water
  • hibiscus-infused dry gin
  • allspice/tiki bitters
  • lime slice

Soak a couple of tablespoons of dried hibiscus flowers in a pint or more of dry gin. It should be a rich ruby color and should take about 45 minutes – an hour. Strain and store.

Make a gin & tonic, leaving room at the top of the glass. Drop in the lime slice. Carefully pour a little hibiscus infusion on top of the ice, forming a pretty layer of red floating on top of the G&T. Dribble 4–5 drops of the tiki bitters on top of that.

This is a spectacular cocktail, especially effective at Christmas. Tart and spicy.

Smoking Hot Molly

I invented this one at the behest of one Molly Honea for her 25th birthday.

  • 2 oz bourbon, preferably rooibos-infused
  • 3/4 oz Ancho Reyes liqueur
  • 1/2 oz creme de cacao
  • cherry wood smoke

Infuse 750ml of bourbon with 3 tablespoons of loose rooibos tea for about an hour. Strain and store. (While not strictly necessary, the rooibos will add a smoky note to the drink.) Likewise, smoking the cocktail with cherry wood is not required but boy will it bump the cocktail up several notches!

The chocolate of the creme de cacao comes through first, and then the ancho chile pepper takes over on the finish. A very fine cocktail, if I do say so myself.

Semele’s Flame

Yes, I just invented this one last month.

  • 2 oz (60ml) Metaxa (I used the 12-star)
  • ¾ oz (25ml) lemon juice
  • ½ oz (15ml) honey
  • ⅛ oz (5ml) mezcal
  • honey/sea salt rim (mixture of granulated honey and sea salt)

Smear honey around 1/4 of the rim of a martini glass. Dip it in the honey/sea salt mixture.

Add the 1/2 oz of honey to a shaker. (Instead of trying to scoop the honey out of your jigger, use a tablespoon and scrape it from there. 1 tbsp = 1/2 oz)

Add the other ingredients and then stir to dissolve the honey. Add ice, shake, and strain into the martini glass.

Besides being a showstopper in its preparation, this drink is one of the best I’ve ever invented. Without the honey/sea salt rim, it’s a little too sweet, but that rim really makes it work.

New-Fashioned

My fellow Lichtenbergian (and Old Man) Turff sent me this recipe several years ago, and I thought what you’re thinking now: banana liqueur? What the fupp? Trust me.

  • 2 oz bourbon
  • 3/4 oz banana liqueur
  • 1 dash Jack Rudy bitters
  • orange peel

This drink goes down easy, and the banana flavor is actually tasty and not gimmicky. Try it — you’ll like it.

Thyme & Tonic

Another one with an involved prep, but worth it.

  • 1 1/2 oz thyme liqueur
  • tonic water
  • sprig of fresh thyme

Infuse 3–4 tablespoons of fresh thyme sprigs in a 750 ml of neutral spirit, like vodka, for three weeks until it’s a rich olive green. Strain and set aside. Make a cup of simple syrup by boiling 1 cup of water with 1 cup of sugar until the sugar dissolves. (You might try experimenting with brown sugar, etc.) Mix simple syrup into the thyme until it’s just sweet enough. Don’t oversweeten it!

If you’re going to be making a lot of infusions, you will appreciate the simplicity of an infuser like the Alkemista Alcohol Infuser: It’s expensive, but there’s no easier way to infuse and then strain your stuff. No more cheesecloth or coffee filters! Also, it holds 950ml, which, if you’re batching a lot of cocktails, is a good size. Other available infusers with the same design are smaller and less expensive, so if you don’t need 750ml of an infusion, one of those will work just fine.

Otherwise, the cocktail is simply a gin & tonic with thyme instead of gin. I took this to the burn thinking I’d get some reactions and suggestions on how to improve it, but everyone who had it remarked on how refreshing it was, so I suppose its very simplicity is a bonus.

Have fun!

New Cocktail: Semele’s Flame

Posted on by Dale

Youssef, if you’re reading this, this one’s for you, kiddo. (Youssef is the charming young waiter/bartender we met at the Semeli Hotel on Mykonos last month. He and I had a great chat one afternoon about cocktails; he, like me, is self-taught, and like me he has invented cocktails. To my shame I have forgotten the name of the cocktail he made for me, but it made me forget I don’t like ouzo or grapefruit juice. Well done, Youssef!)

My traveling party thought it was a no-brainer for the hotel to have a cocktail on its menu that referenced the myth of Semele and Zeus: Zeus got her pregnant, and when Hera found out she disguised herself as a crone and visited Semele. She expressed doubt that the girl’s lover was actually the king of the gods, prompting Semele to beg Zeus to reveal himself in his full glory to her. He refused at first, but eventually he decided to show her just a small portion of his divinity. Unfortunately, even that was too much for the mortal Semele, and she perished in a burst of flame.

(Zeus rescued the unborn child and sewed it up in his thigh; the baby was born from his thigh — Dionysus, who then rescued his mother from Hades and installed her on Olympus. She was in charge of whipping up the Bacchantes into their frenzies.)

So after mulling over the possibilities, here’s what I came up with.

Semele’s Flame

First off, using Metaxa was a no-brainer: It’s a quintessential Greek brandy-based liquor, and it’s quite tasty. I decided to start with a Metaxa version of the Bee’s Knees. (Honey is also a Greek specialty.) It was okay but lacked the punch of the original gin-based cocktail.

Perhaps some herbal notes would help? I experimented with adding a bit of Faccio Bruto Centerbe, a passable substitute for the increasingly rare Green Chartreuse, and it wasn’t bad. I even made a version using actual Green Chartreuse, but thankfully (for my cabinet) the Centerbe was better.

However, it still wasn’t a great cocktail. My next thought was to add some smoke; I settled on mezcal, although I could have gone with a smoky scotch or scotch blend. Much better.

And then, on a whim, I smeared some honey on the rim and rimmed it with a honey/sea salt mixture. (The sea is yet another Greek thing.)

Perfection.

So…

  • 2 oz (60ml) Metaxa (I used the 12-star)
  • ¾ oz (25ml) lemon juice
  • ½ oz (15ml) honey
  • ⅛ oz (5ml) mezcal
  • honey/sea salt* rim

Smear honey around 1/4 of the rim of a martini glass. Dip it in the honey/sea salt mixture.

Add the 1/2 oz of honey to a shaker. (Instead of trying to scoop the honey out of your jigger, use a tablespoon and scrape it from there. 1 tbsp = 1/2 oz)

Add the other ingredients and then stir to dissolve the honey. Add ice, shake, and strain into the martini glass.

*I happened to have a tin of honey/sea salt, but you can make your own by combining granulated honey and fine sea salt, probably in a 1:1 ratio. Experiment.

Pro tip: If you’re going to be making a lot of these, batch the honey and lemon juice mixture (2:3 ratio) so that you don’t have to dissolve the honey each and every time.

Also, it might be interesting to float the mezcal rather than adding it to the shaker. And maybe try barrel-aged honey… More work is required.

update, 5/13/24: Having run out of Metaxa at my birthday gathering last night — Semele’s Flame was very popular — I made one tonight with brandy and am happy to report that it works nearly as well. You could add a dash of rose water for that floral aspect that Metaxa brings. I first tried a peaty scotch, but it vanished in the citrus/honey, so stick to mezcal.

The Savoy Variations: The Hanky Panky

Posted on by Dale

I’m bored, so I’m taking random cocktail recipes from The Savoy Cocktail Book (1930), giving them a try, and modifying/improving them if I think it’s necessary, and reporting my findings here.

The Hanky Panky

[p. 80]

I will admit to some embarrassment about this one. The Hanky Panky is not an obscure cocktail at all, but I am not a fan of the distinctive profile — if I may call it that — of Fernet Branca. And so I’ve never made it. It came up in my reading through the Oxford Companion to Spirits & Cocktails in the H section — y’all should go look up hogo — and I decided to try the thing.

Well.

  • 1 1/2 oz gin
  • 1 1/2 oz sweet vermouth
  • 1/4 tsp Fernet Branca
  • orange peel
  • stirred, not shaken

It’s pretty amazing. I had two and neglected to get a photo either time. It got added to the bar book on the spot.

SAVOY VARIATIONS SCORECARD:

  • Savoy: 7
  • Dale: 2
  • Sink: 4

(It might appear that the Savoy is easily winning this game, but I will remind you that most of the recipes are so gross that I’m not wasting my booze on them just to declare victory. At least, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.)

The Highlights Reel: Part 1

Posted on by Dale

When you transition into the Hoarding Lifestyle — as we have been doing recently — you may uncover a great deal of flotsam.

Did I say ‘may’ uncover? Honey please. It is a dead certainty that you are going to end up with a whole room full of stuff that you have no memory of wanting to keep around.

Behold, Highlights for Children, April 1962. I’ll save you the mental math: that was 62 years ago. I was eight years old, or about to be.

I have no clue as to why I would have saved this particular issue.

I thumbed through it yesterday and was struck by a bunch of things, which I think I shall discuss over a few blog posts.

First of all, it is a product of its time, so occasionally you will find terminology that we would no longer use. (One story is about the main character bringing a baby rabbit to cheer up a “crippled” boy at the “Crippled Children’s Home”; the boy had had polio. Another includes the “fact” that Brazil was “discovered” by Pedro Alvarez Cabral.)

On the whole, however, it is astonishingly inclusive. There are stories/articles about:

  • A Burmese family farming rice
  • A Jewish family celebrating Passover
  • An American boy in a fishing contest
  • The Bible story of Gideon and his soldiers
  • A Iroquois legend about how Native Americans began to fletch their arrows, illustrated by the Chief of the Iroquois
  • The Couperin family of composers/musicians from the 17th century
  • Drawings by children of Tunisia

The texts range from “Preparation for Reading” through “Easy Reading” to “More Advanced Reading,” and there is a chart in the front, a Guide for Parents and Teachers, that lists every item in the issue and has check marks in those columns. (Other columns include “Manners, Conduct, Living with Others”; “Nature and Science”; “Stimulation to Think and Reason”; “Stimulation to Create,” et al.)

At the bottom of many pages is a black star — ★ — indicating a footnote for parents about the thrust of the item:

  • Learning to be kind to trees
  • For arousing kindly feelings towards a boy in Burma
  • For the child when he is ready to have phonics practice
  • Being a selfish or unselfish playmate (yes, this is Goofus and Gallant)

On the whole, I am rather impressed at the magazine’s organization and commitment to reading and learning. (Its founders were both well-known educators.)

And there’s more to discuss! Stay tuned.