I announce — with some astonishment — that I have perfected the Rose-Colored G.
But Dale, I hear you exclaim, what is there to perfect? It’s just a gin and tonic with a float of hibiscus-infused gin on top.
Ah, I reply smugly, but you have not considered the variability of the main ingredient: gin. Normally I use the house gin, which is Bombay Sapphire, but yesterday I decided to use Gray Whale, for no real reason other than I like that gin and have been drinking it more often recently.
The results were a revelation.
I will also say that the hibiscus-infused gin was a little different this time. In getting ready for Alchemy — we always serve the Rose-Colored G at the bar — I was loath to use my dwindling supply of Bombay Sapphire to make a fresh supply of the hibiscus gin, so I bought a small bottle of Beefeater gin and used that. When I had to make another batch upon returning to the default world, I used the rest of the Beefeater. It is now my preferred gin for the hibiscus infusion. (But otherwise I’m not a fan.)
sidebar: At the burn, the 3 Old Men craft cocktail bar served the Smoked Smoky Manhattan, the Smoking Hot Molly, the Rose-Colored G, and the Grassy Knoll. All are my inventions, and we ran out of booze on Friday night. The word had gotten out that 3 Old Men was serving actual craft cocktails and we were swarmed. A proud moment, to be sure.
Whenever I see recipes that call for a specific brand of gin or rye or rum, I usually roll my eyes and just make it with whatever I have in stock, so it’s very weird for me to be doing the same thing here, but I get it: The salinity of the Gray Whale and the cleanness of the Beefeater were amazing together.
To make the hibiscus-infused gin, pour Beefeater gin into a glass container and add two or three tablespoons of dried hibiscus flowers. Let it sit for about an hour, swirling it every now and then. You want a bright ruby color. (The infusion in the photo is a little too dark.) Strain and bottle.
To make the drink, make a regular gin and tonic, then gently pour the hibiscus infusion onto the ice so that it spreads out and floats. Dribble 5–7 drops of the bitters onto the ice.
Enjoy!
(Note well that if you don’t have Gray Whale, the drink is still delicious with your preferred gin!)
Not wanting another gin & tonic, not even with my new Beehive Jack Rabbit gin (Utah, delicious), I decided to experiment.
Backstory: A couple of years ago I came across a sunflower spirit called Taza Ray, distilled right here in Georgia in Dalton. There were two versions, plain Taza Ray and Taza Ray Red, which had been aged in barrels. They were yummy (and gluten free!).
Alas, when I went back to the store to get more, it had vanished. This past spring, my Lovely First Wife and I went to Dalton specifically to buy some more. This involved more emails and texts than you might imagine. But the guys there were personable and helpful. They even — upon hearing of my interest in the Taza Ray Red, which they no longer bottled — decanted me my own bottle of fresh-from-the-barrel Taza Ray, which they blend with their regular stuff to make Taza Ray.
So my eye fell on my bottle of Taza Ray. The mental slot machine clicked around, and came up with…
It is quite tasty. I’ve had two. (A second one using Taza Ray Red was not good, so I made the original just to confirm.)
Hi there, owners of cocktail establishments! I have an idea for you.
If you have TV screens in the bar, and if you can stream from the intertubes, then set at least one of your screens to show BEARS, YOU GUYS, at Brooks Falls in Katmai National Park (Alaska). It’s a livestream of the salmon run up the river, and all the brown bears that start arriving to eat fish and fatten up for the winter.
I promise you, patrons will be rapt. They will cheer the bears on. They will create narratives for the bears. They will rate the bears’ fishing strategies. They will squee at the baby bears. They will, like the rest of us, worry about Otis.
And then: FAT BEAR WEEK, YOU GUYS! Post the bracket! It’s just like March Madness, only WITH BEARS!
Feature salmon on the menu.
Encourage teams with t-shirts.
Print out the official National Park Service guide to identifying which bear is which.
I’m telling you, start featuring the bears on your slow night each week, and by the time Fat Bear Week arrives, your place will be packed with customers.
DA BEARS!
Yesterday, on Mastodon, I was startled to see myself tagged in a ‘toot’ from Gregory Hays, the estimable UVA professor whose translation of the Marcus Aurelius Meditations I prefer. It said:
Wait, what? When I went to check, it seems he had asked whether a cocktail existed called the Indictment. A friend replied that he hadn’t been able to find one, but had a witty list of existing alternates:
All of which are witty indeed!
I answered that I would tackle the problem, wondering whether the cocktail needed to be bitter and dark or sweet sweet schadenfreude, and after only a little thought on a Friday afternoon, I thought, why not both:
First of all, it should clearly be a Manhattan in a nod to the present indictment, and let’s add to that a praline liqueur both as a sweetener and as a nod to a possible future indictment, let’s say in Atlanta. A dash of black walnut bitters and a square of bourbon dark chocolate on the side pairs well as the dark and bitter theme, and we have a tasty tasty refreshment with which to end the week.
For extra cheekiness, let’s serve it in an Art Deco Nick & Nora glass with a naked lady stem.
Enjoy!
You know how when you’re in the liquor store and there’s a bottle of something that is just so off-the-wall that you have to buy it to see what it tastes like?
No? Just me, then? Okay.
The bottle in question is a concoction called Nixta, made in Mexico from an ancient strain of maize.
It does in fact taste like corn. It’s not too sweet, and as another reviewer has said, you also get notes of vanilla and something vaguely chocolate.
How to use, though? The bottle is not a lot of help, just suggesting you can add it to “your favorite cocktails.” Honey, please.
I pulled out all the Central American bottles — Ancho Reyes liqueur, Cocalero, tequila, blood orange liqueur — and started playing. I started with cognac as a base, but it didn’t quite work, so I switched to Calvados, figuring the sweetness of the apple brandy would complement that of the Nixta.
I was correct; it worked.
No name yet, but try this:
Shake with ice, strain into a Nick & Nora glass.
It ‘s simple, not too sweet, and refreshing. You can also use tequila instead of Calvados and it’s equally delicious.
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.
[p. 180]
I flipped to the back of Savoy and found the Zed Cocktail:
But the mythical substance the Elders knew as “Hercules” remains beyond our grasp.
So I backed up a bit and went with the Young Man Cocktail.
[I heard that.]
It was good. It was okay good, though I doubt I shall ever make it again. But it was good enough that I didn’t need to fix it.
Another point to Savoy.
SAVOY VARIATIONS SCORECARD:
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.
[p. 176]
I opened the Savoy Cocktail Book randomly and there was the White Lily Cocktail. Wow, I thought, there is no way that this is going to be palatable. Rum + gin? And a dash of absinthe?
So I mixed up a small one, only 1/2 oz of each, so as not to waste the booze before tossing it into the sink.
In anticipation of having to do some radical revision of the recipe, I taste-tested the mixture even before adding ice (and stirring, not shaking — sorry, Savoy, we’re more civilized now).
Well.
It was delicious.
I was shocked. I chilled it, poured it, added a lemon twist to it. It was still delicious, bright and clear and tasty.
I offered it to my Lovely First Wife, who despises gin and boozy cocktails in general. She liked it.
How could this be? It should have been a boozy slug, yet here was this stupid recipe knocking it out of the ballpark.
I attempted a variation with a darker rum and Empress 1908 gin, but it was not better. (I shall continue exploring gin/rum combos, though.)
Next time I will try using the absinthe as a rinse so as to lower its bully quotient, but otherwise this one goes in my bar book.
Point to Savoy!
SAVOY VARIATIONS SCORECARD:
Last spring, as I played with the Savoy Cocktail variations, I used the Savoy’s Fernet Branca Cocktail as the starting point. It’s simple recipe: 1.5 oz gin, .75 oz each of Fernet Branca and sweet vermouth.
It was, as I expected, not at all to my taste, but it spawned a whole new zone of experimentation, which I am calling the Grand Unified Vecchio Cocktail Theory, in which you use the proportions of the recipe for the Fernet Branca cocktail and substitute another amaro.
Here’s where it got interesting:
Gin— Even if we ignore the subtle differences in different brands of gin, differences that I am too lazy to learn to distinguish with any refinement, we still have the different types of gin that we can play with:
These different types involve dryness/sweetness, more or less juniper, added flavorings. Within those categories, of course, are scads of different brands of gin, of which I have about 30.
Sweet vermouth— Lots of these available, but I decided on three:
Again, the differences are in the herbals used.
Amari— Where do we begin? Whole books have been written about this category of herbal distillations. Suffice it to say that I have more than two dozen amari and have barely scratched the surface.
If we do the math, we have 5 [kinds] of gin x 3 vermouths x ≈24 amari, which gives us 360 possible combinations. The gin-loving soul thrills to the very idea.
I’ve had a blast testing out my Grand Unified Vecchio Cocktail Hypothesis [GUVCH], and the results are very promising. Here’s my most recent one.
Salers is an aperitif, gentian-based, bitter and vegetal, with some citrus notes. I bought it recently because it was mentioned in a couple of recipes, and I decided to plug it into the GUVCH. The results were quite pleasing.
Salers is unusual for the GUVCH since it is a clear aperitif, while most amari that I have are darker.
Stir with ice, strain into a coupe. Garnish with lemon zest.
It is light and refreshing. You’ll want more than one.
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.
[p. 82]
This one turned out to be a winner, but it took some figuring. The original recipe confirms my suspicion that most of these 700+ recipes were just quick slugs for the Bright Young Things who splashed into the Savoy before heading out to the jazz clubs — no self-respecting bartender these days would publish a recipe with no actual measurements.
There’s a note: “Some sensitive bartenders think it is more tactful to substitute orange juice.”
What? What kind of arch dig is this, and toward whom is it directed?
Never mind, we have to figure out what the heck to pour here.
Half a lemon? How big a lemon? How much juice do you want me to pour, Harry Craddock?
Pretty sure the curaçao called for here is the sweet stuff that I have eschewed in favor of the Dry Curaçao you see in the photo, but again, how much is three dashes? I actually have a set of measuring spoons for tiny amounts, and a dash is 1/8 tsp, so… 3/8 tsp? That doesn’t seem enough.
::sigh::
The good news is that my first all-over-the-place interpretation was a winner. Here you go:
Shake with ice, strain into coupe. I’d probably garnish with a lemon twist.
Let’s give this point to Savoy (with an asterisk, since I had to interpret it and it’s probably not the same cocktail served by Savoy).
SAVOY VARIATIONS SCORECARD:
