Category: Cocktails

Cocktails with friends

Posted on by Dale

This past weekend I was invited to attend a fully-vaccinated, outdoor event by Camp Shameless, a burn theme camp who pretty much lives up to their charming name. I took cocktails for the happy hour before dinner on Saturday night, and they were a hit. Here, for those who are interested, are the recipes, with advice.

(Note: I served these on the rocks at the burn, but the first three are usually served without ice.)

No photos, alas.

Naked & Famous

  • ¾ oz mezcal
  • ¾ oz Aperol
  • ¾ oz yellow Chartreuse
  • ¾ oz lime juice
  • garnish lime slice

Shake with ice; pour into glass. Adorn with lime slice.

Thunderer

This one is a little complicated, but worth it. The Honey Arbol Ginger Syrup is an extra step, but not hard.

  • 1 ½ oz bourbon (or gin/tequila/rum)
  • 1 oz grapefruit juice
  • ¾ oz lemon juice
  • ½ oz Honey Arbol Ginger Syrup
  • garnish: slice of arbol chile

Shake with ice; pour into glass. Adorn with the slice of arbol.

Honey Arbol Ginger Syrup

  • ¾ c orange blossom honey
  • ¼ c boiling water
  • 2 oz fresh ginger, peeled and roughly chopped (about ½ cup)
  • ½-inch piece chile de árbol (I use dried)

Directions

Put the honey and water in a blender and stir until the honey dissolves. Add the ginger and chile and blend on high speed until the ginger is pulverized. Strain through a chinois or cheesecloth or fine-mesh strainer and discard the solids. Let the syrup cool to room temperature. Transfer to a small jar or bottle and refrigerate for up to 1 month.

Charlie Chaplin

  • 1 oz apricot liqueur
  • 1 oz sloe gin
  • 1 oz lime juice

Shake with ice; pour into glass.

Cedar & Sorghum

(This is one of my inventions, essentially a Manhattan with stuff in it.)

  • 2 oz rye
  • ¾ oz sweet vermouth
  • 1 barspoon cedar tincture*
  • 1 barspoon bourbon-barrel aged maple syrup
  • 2 dashes Woodford Reserve Sassafras & Sorghum bitters
  • garnish: orange peel

*To make the cedar tincture, char cedar wrap/paper (the kind you use for grilling) with your flame, then soak it in vodka/Everclear until it is a dark amber.

Stir with ice; pour over ice. Express the orange peel over the drink, toss it in.

[notes: When do you shake vs. stir? Cocktails with citrus juices, milk, and/or egg whites are shaken; otherwise stir. James Bond was asking for a more-diluted martini when he asked for his “shaken, not stirred.” To “express” a citrus peel, simply hold it over the drink and squish it suddenly. You’ll be surprised and delighted at the oils that spurt out. Finally, I tend to add the bitters after the pour so that the aromas are foremost, but feel free to add them to the mixing.]

Rose-Colored G

(This is another invention of mine.)

Again, an extra step, but this one is so easy that it hardly counts.

  • 1 ½ oz gin
  • tonic water
  • hibiscus-infused gin floated*
  • allspice bitters floated*

*For the hibiscus-infused gin, soak a handful of dried hibiscus blossoms in gin for 2–4 hours. Strain, store. For the bitters, I’ve used both Dale DeGroff’s Pimento Aromatic Bitters and Bittermens Elemakule Tiki Bitters. Other bitters with predominant allspice notes would also work. Or play with other bitters — that’s the fun of cocktails.

Make yourself a gin & tonic, leaving room in the glass. Carefully pour the hibiscus-infused gin on top. Add 3–5 drops of bitters on top of that. You may add a lime slice if you wish.

New-Fashioned

An Old-Fashioned is one of the granddaddies of cocktails: bourbon with simple syrup and bitters. This is a twist on that.

  • 2 oz bourbon
  • ¾ oz banana liqueur
  • 1 dash Jack Rudy bitters (or other aromatic bitters, like Angostura)
  • garnish: orange peel or cherry

Stir with ice; pour over ice. Garnish at will.

If you have questions, don’t hesitate to ask.

New (unnamed) cocktail (but now named)

Posted on by Dale

I’d like to name this one Upside-Down New York Sour, because that’s what it is, but that’s just unwieldy.

A New York Sour is as follows:

New York Sour

  • 2 oz rye or bourbon
  • 1 oz lemon juice
  • ¾ oz simple syrup
  • ½ oz red wine

Combine the first three ingredients in a shaker with ice. Shake and strain into a highball glass. Float the red wine on top.

It’s a tasty, elegant cocktail; it served as the inspiration for my Rose-Colored G.

Now it has inspired this:

New York Sunset (formerly known as Inverse Sour)

  • 2 oz bourbon
  • 1-¾ oz oleo saccharum (recipe to follow)
  • ½ oz Barolo Chinato Cocchi

One is supposed to shake any admixture containing citrus juices, but I must admit I just poured the bourbon and oleo saccharum straight into the glass. More work is required. It probably could benefit from a lemon peel garnish as well.

So mix the first two ingredients, and then add the Barolo Chinato Cocchi. I had not considered that this fortified wine might have a different specific gravity than regular red wine, so I was a little disappointed when it didn’t float but rather sank to the bottom. (It occurs to me that this is more like a Tequila Sunrise in looks…)

No matter: It is a very tasty, sophisticated drink.

Note: It is also a fairly expensive drink, given the cost of the Barolo. But if you can swing it, it’s worth it.

Oleo Saccharum Sour Mix

There are multiple versions of this recipe online. This is the one I’ve settled on, but you can do all lemons, or any variety of orange instead of grapefruit.

  • 1 grapefruit
  • 1 large lemon
  • .4–.5 cup sugar
  • .5 cup lemon juice

Peel the grapefruit and the lemon. Place the peels in a medium bowl; add the sugar.  Muddle the peels with the sugar about a minute.

Leave for 4–6 hours.  The oils from the peels will puddle at the bottom of the bowl.

Add the lemon juice and stir to dissolve all the sugar.

Strain into a container. Refrigerate and enjoy!

Now to name it. Sour Sunrise? Barolo Sunrise? Barolo Sunset? Bloody-Bottomed Sour? Or how about plain old Newnan Sour?

UPDATE: Alan Brown on Facebook has suggested New York Sunset, which I think is perfectly cromulent. I’ll see if it sticks.

UPDATE 2: Having checked to see if such a cocktail with that name already existed — it does not — I am claiming the name for this drink.

Cocktails: Lemony goodness

Posted on by Dale

Yesterday a friend emailed me with a request: he really liked this nice tonic water with a lemon taste, but it’s expensive. Did I have a substitute/workaround?

Probably. Not having tasted this particular brand, I wasn’t sure what we were looking for, nor could I find it during my ramblings during the morning.

So we improvise.

First, I got a bottle of pure lemon extract and gave that a whirl. For a lowball glass full of tonic water, one drop is enough to give it a strong lemon taste. (Ingredients are lemon oil, alcohol, and water; you could dilute it with more alcohol.) (Also, remember those ingredients.)

Next, I prepared an oleo saccharum. (I have a killer sour mix that’s an oleo saccharum.)

It’s easy. Use a vegetable peeler to peel a lemon.

You can leave them whole; this time I cut them into strips.

Put them in a bowl with one teaspoon of sugar and muddle them. If you don’t have a cocktail muddler, use a wooden spoon or something similar.

Let it sit for 4–6 hours. The lemon’s oil will ooze out and collect. Add two tablespoons of lemon juice and one of vodka, strain into a container. You have basically just created pure lemon extract from the store, but fresher and a little more balanced (with the sugar) for your cocktail.

One or two drops of this in your tonic water is effective.

Thirdly, you could just use lemon bitters.

There you go. That’s my civic responsibility for the day.

New Cocktail: Cedar & Sorghum

Posted on by Dale

I’m not wild about the name. As you will see, I could also name it the Cedar & Sassafras. Or I could find another gemstone/crystal to name it after, like the Smoky Topaz, the Smoky Quartz, and the Jasper. Time will tell. In the meantime, here’s the new cocktail, which I am wild about.

Quick background: Years ago I made a stab at mixing my own bitters, choosing to create tinctures of all the ingredients and mix proportionately with those (as opposed to dumping all the herbs, etc., into a jar and not being able to adjust anything).

Yesterday, while musing about clearing out two decades of software installation disks, I came across the jar of cedar shavings, still soaking away. Hm, I thought, and began to experiment. (ABORTIVE ATTEMPT)

Manhattan + 1/4 oz of the cedar stuff was astringent. (GESTALT)

I modified. (SUCCESSIVE APPROXIMATION)

Cedar & Sorghum

  • 2 oz rye
  • 3/4 oz sweet vermouth
  • 1 barspoon cedar tincture
  • 1 barspoon bourbon-barrel maple syrup
  • 2 dashes WoodfordReserve Sassafras & Sorghum bitters

Stir over ice, strain into glass. Garnish with orange peel.

To make the cedar tincture, find “cedar papers,” the kind used for grilling. Char 3–4 of them with your blowtorch and break them into chips and place in a jar. Add vodka, let steep for a week or so, until it’s a dark amber color. Strain and filter. You’re not going to need a lot.

The drink is good: the woodiness and astringency of the cedar is still there, but doesn’t overwhelm your palate on the aftertaste. The maple syrup mellows the overall front of the drink while still contributing to the woodiness. The bitters bolster the flavor of the syrup and provide one more layer to the drink.

Enjoy!

New Cocktail: Jasper

Posted on by Dale

I’m not at all sure of the name here, so I’m sticking it with Jasper for the time being, in my ongoing series of gemstone cocktails.

The Jasper

  • 3/4 oz barrel-aged gin
  • 3/4 oz Amaro CioCiaro
  • 3/4 oz sweet vermouth
  • 4-5 drops Alpine Herb Bitters

Stir with ice; strain. Orange peel garnish.

It’s dark, herbal, and the piney bitters give it just enough punch to make it very interesting.

A musing about joy

Posted on by Dale

Short prologue: I bought a set of cards with inspirational questions on them to use as writer’s prompts down at Backstreet Arts, and in a fit of masochism decided that if I weren’t actively working on anything while I was down there, then I was required to draw one randomly and answer it.

Full prologue: https://www.lichtenbergianism.com/blog/2019/6/10/perverse-task-avoidance

So today’s question was:

Ugh. This is the kind of gross self-affirmation any of which I do not need. But an oath is an oath, and I think I’d like to share my response.

Ha. I am perpetually self-indulgent. Every day I enjoy what I do—and I do what I enjoy. This idea of not enjoying life is completely alien to me.

This includes the things I have to do, duties and burdens—far be it from this atheist to claim biblical inspiration, but the verse, “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might” [Ecclesiastes 9:10] seems to have stuck with me from Sunday School. Why not commit to your tasks with joy and appreciation?

It’s certainly not the case that I am a Pollyanna about life—there is plenty in my life that frustrates me or makes me unhappy. But it has never made sense to me to regard all of life as roadblocks. For one thing, taking things “personally” is the quickest way to misery: if the universe is out to get you, how are you supposed to enjoy your existence in the face of that?

To revisit the Ecclesiastes, here’s 9:9–10 in the International Children’s Bible:

9 … Enjoy all the days of this short life God has given you here on earth. It is all you have. So enjoy the work you have to do here on earth.

10 Whatever work you do, do your best. This is because you are going to the grave. There is no working, no planning, no knowledge and no wisdom there.

Here is existentialism in a nutshell: this life is all you have, and it is not long. Choose to do well at it. Choose to live it with joy.

So yes, I make cocktails and sit in my labyrinth. I read. I make dinner and run errands. I write letters. I go to burns. I serve on the burn board of directors.

I try to do it with “all my might”—why do it grudgingly? Do it with joy, and then you don’t have to find a way to give yourself “permission” to enjoy life.

New Cocktail: the MDL GinTonic No. 7

Posted on by Dale

I seem to have skipped MDL GinTonic Nos. 3–6. I’ll have to go back and try them again to make sure they’re worth posting.

However, MDL GinTonic No. 7 is a good one:

Half-consumed, but isn’t it a lovely color?

MDL GinTonic No. 7

  • 1.5 oz gin
  • .5 oz hibiscus-infused gin
  • .25 Violette syrup

It is distinctly floral without being sweet. I’m still thinking about bitters; I thought I had some 18•21 Bitters hibiscus bitters, but apparently I’m out.

Hibiscus-infused gin

This is stupid-easy: put some gin in a glass container, throw in some hibiscus buds, let it sit for an hour or two. Strain. Done.

Violette syrup

So you can see that this is kind of an Ultimate Gin gintonic, with three different approaches to gin all piling together.

Highly recommended.

New Cocktail: MDL GinTonic No. 2

Posted on by Dale

MDL GinTonic No. 2

  • 1.5 oz London dry gin
  • .5 oz Galliano
  • .25 oz hibiscus-infused gin*
  • tonic water, lime wheel

Sweetness, then the floral bitterness of the hibiscus. This is a nice one.

* Dump a tablespoon or two of dried hibiscus into a cup or so of gin. Let steep for a couple of hours. It will turn dark red. (You could also do a light steep for pinker look, and that concoction is more drinkable on its own. The full steep is a bit much.)

New Cocktail: the MDL GinTonic No. 1

Posted on by Dale

During our travels through Italy last fall, I was delighted to discover the European GinTonic: a gin and tonic with some differences, some tasty, tasty differences. First, it’s not served in a highball glass — it’s served in a big red wine glass. It’s got tons of ice, and rather more tonic than we use here in the States.

The big difference though is the palette that is offered by such a setup. Just as here, you have the full range of gins to start with — London dry, Old Tom, Plymouth, modern botanicals —and if you’re picky, the type of tonic water. Then you can add stuff: garnishes, other spirits, etc., and the sky is the limit. The result is a universe of flavors and sensations, and that is the universe I have begun exploring in a new series of cocktails. I’m calling them MDL GinTonics because my initials are MDL; it’s all about the branding, you see. I vacillate between ‘#’ and “No.” in the naming system, so historians, here’s your fair warning: there may be contradictory evidence in your research.

At the moment, I’m going with 1.5 oz of gin, .5 oz of some other spirit, and .25 oz of something else to add another layer. Stay tuned.

MDL GinTonic No. 1

  • 1.5 oz barrel-aged gin
  • .5 oz Amaro di Angostura
  • .25 oz Isle of Skye blended Scotch (slightly peaty)
  • tonic water
  • lime wheel

Stir the first three ingredients with ice, then strain into a balloon-shaped wine glass filled with ice. Add tonic water and lime wheel.

This GinTonic is very tasty, with the oak/woodiness of the gin forward, followed by the spiciness of the Amaro, and finally a return to the earthy/woodsy tones of the Scotch. It is now one of my favorite drinks.

Variation notes: I tried using Laphroaig instead of Isle of Skye, but the strength of that single malt was too much. I also tried bumping the Scotch up to .5 oz, but the drink is better, more subtle, at .25 oz.

Shopping notes: the Amaro Angostura is becoming more common in liquor stores catering to the cocktail crowd, but barrel-aged gin can be hard to find, and Isle of Skye is uncommon. Buy them when you see them!

UPDATE: Famous Grouse Smoky Black works as a substitute for Isle of Skye and is much more readily available.