Category: Cocktails

New Cocktail: The Apple Pie, Jack

Posted on by Dale

It’s the holiday time, and we have found ourselves with more than the usual amount of Laird’s Applejack Brandy lying about (long story), so here’s my first and obvious cocktail thereby: the Apple Pie, Jack. It truly tastes like an apple pie.

The Apple Pie, Jack

  • 2 oz Applejack brandy
  • 1 oz vanilla vodka, preferably homemade
  • 1/2 oz lemon juice
  • 1/4 oz cinnamon syrup

Shake with ice, pour, garnish

Vanilla vodka

  • 2–3 vanilla beans, split
  • 750 ml vodka
  • 1/4 cup simple syrup

Add the vanilla beans to the vodka. Let soak in a cool, dark place for 2–3 days or until desired vanilla taste is reached. Add the 1/4 cup simple syrup.

Cinnamon syrup

  • 2–3 cinnamon sticks
  • 1 cup demerara sugar or Sugar in the Raw™
  • 1 cup water
  • 1 teaspoon vodka

Combine all ingredients in a pan. Bring to a boil and boil until all sugar is dissolved. Cool, cover, and allow to come to room temperature. Add vodka (for preservative), store.

I have not tried this with store-bought vanilla vodka; I expect it might have a harsher taste.

 

 

New Cocktail: The Golden Quartz

Posted on by Dale

I’m not sure about the name,[1] but it’s better than the scurrilous suggestions I got on Facebook…

The other night I craved a sweet, dessert kind of cocktail, and for some reason this cocktail invented itself.

The Golden Quartz

  • 1.5 oz vanilla vodka, preferably homemade
  • .75 oz pecan liqueur
  • .75 crème de cacao

Stir with ice, strain into a coupe. No garnish, no bitters.

It’s sweet but not cloying, with a nice layering of the vanilla, chocolate, and nuttiness.

Vanilla Vodka

Take one or two vanilla beans and split them down the middle. Plunk them into a bottle of vodka and let sit for 7–10 days, testing after one week. Remove the beans.  You can strain the seeds out through a coffee filter, but you can leave them in as well.

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[1] edited to change the name, in fact, from Amber Quartz to Golden Quartz

New Cocktail: the Hot & Sour

Posted on by Dale

This is a beauty: the Hot & Sour

The Hot & Sour

  • 2 oz gin
  • 1 oz Ancho Reyes Chile Liqueur
  • 1.75 oz Oleo Saccharum sour mix
  • 2 dashes Dr. Adam Elmegirab’s Dandelion & Burdock Bitters

Shake with ice, pour into cocktail glass, garnish with lemon peel.

Very very nice.

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!

New Cocktail: The Camino Flores

Posted on by Dale

This one sprang from a desire to use my new bitters from Amor Y Amargo bar in NYC, specifically the Colorado Lavender bitters from Cocktailpunk.

Also, I had bought a while back a bottle of St. George Pear Brandy.  I should have known better, but hope springs eternal and St. George is usually not wrong.  The problem with pear brandy is that the flavor overwhelms anything you put it in; nearly ten years ago we were in Key West and during a rainstorm took shelter in an outdoor bar, where a young man who had fled investment banking for the island life struggled with us to make a cromulent cocktail using the stuff.  He failed, and I haven’t succeeded myself.

Until now.

The Camino Flores

  • 1.5 oz gin (Sipsmith preferred)
  • .75 oz lemon juice
  • .5 oz simple syrup
  • .25 oz pear brandy
  • 2 good squirts of lavender bitters

Shake the first four ingredients with ice; strain into a coupe. Dribble the bitters on top. Garnish with a lemon twist.

I go back and forth as to whether it’s cromulent or not, but others have told me it’s interesting enough.  I may try again tonight with maybe 1/3 or 1/4 oz simple syrup.

Anyway, enjoy!

(h/t to Marc for an idea for naming)

Gin Number Two

Posted on by Dale

You will recall that I made gin a couple of weeks ago.  It wasn’t horrible, as the label proudly proclaims, but I wanted to see if I could make a more nuanced version.

To that end, I took one of my new, handy-dandy Field Notes Brand “Dime Novel” editions and began taking meticulous notes—as opposed to just dumping stuff into vodka like I did last time.

With that strategy, I think I was more successful.  I now have a recipe that I can reuse if I decide this is a good one.

Mostly, it is a good one.  Whereas the first one was almost overpowered by the lovage and had a huge bitter finish, this one is more herbal and has an interesting wood note as a finish.

That would be because as I finished up steeping the botanicals (gentian, angelica, lemon zest, lovage, coriander, burdock, and star anise), I rediscovered a jar of what I think is tincture of cedar chips.  I boldly added 30 ml of that to the mix, and lo! it makes a lovely difference.

So here’s Dale’s Gin No. 2.  Not objectionable at all.

A new cocktail, maybe

Posted on by Dale

I made vanilla vodka a while back and promptly stuck it in the hall closet and forgot about it.  I rediscovered it over the weekend and it’s been sitting out on the counter bugging me.

Consider this an abortive attempt.

Vanilla-Suze Something

  • 1.5 oz vanilla vodka
  • .5 oz Suze (gentian liqueur)
  • .5 oz lemon juice
  • .25 oz simple syrup
  • barspoon grenadine

Shake everything except the grenadine with ice.  Pour, then pour the grenadine in; let it sink.

It’s not bad, but it’s not very distinctive.  Or it may be that I’m not into citrus juice cocktails these days.  More work is required.

Also, I’ve made a second gin.  I need to blog about it.

UPDATE: The cocktail is growing on me.

New Cocktail: The Afterlife

Posted on by Dale

The other night I was privileged to drop in to Barnes & Noble to a book signing by a former student, Blue Cole.

Blue, who is actually the son of a high school classmate, was one of those charming, good-looking teenagers who you feared might amount to nothing.  Dimples and blue eyes will only get you so far, after all.

However, Blue has grown up to be a fine upstanding citizen who is only a little worrisome when his wife takes him to big box stores and leaves him unattended.  This novel, Evil Upriver, is Blue’s third, unless I’ve lost count.

But Dale, I hear you musing, supernatural horror is not your thing.  You even write about it in the chapter on AUDIENCE in your own upcoming book, Lichtenbergianism: procrastination as a creative strategy.  Indeed it is not, but 1) I go to book signings for all former students; and 2) Blue personally invited me to come and asked me to wear my pearl earring, since that’s what the bartender named Lyles in the book wears.

How could I not invent a cocktail and take him a small box with said cocktail and other mini-bar accoutrements?

Actually, I was going to bring him the Smoky Topaz, which should be good enough for any normal purpose, but then my Lovely First Wife suggested that I invent a cocktail called The Afterlife because reasons.

It was a rush job, but I did it:

The Afterlife

  • 1.5 oz bourbon
  • .75 oz Amaro Angostura
  • .25 oz Ancho Reyes Liqueur
  • dash 18•21 Havana & Hide Bitters

The idea was that it would be at first taste an interesting take on the Manhattan with a somewhat toasty finish (GET IT, KENNETH?), but however, and also too, I felt it was lacking.

So tonight, I futzed with it and now it’s pretty solid:

The Afterlife, redux

  • 1.5 oz bourbon
  • .75 oz Amaro Angostura
  • .25 oz Ancho Reyes Liqueur
  • .25 oz simple syrup
  • .25 oz 18•21 Blackberry Peppercorn Shrub
  • dash 18•21 Havana & Hide Bitters

Stir with ice, strain, serve on the rocks with an orange peel.

Rather more ingredients than I normally prefer, but it’s tasty. Quite tasty.

(Sorry, Blue, about the recipe I gave you last night.  Feel free to use it, but this is the recipe that will appear in my second book.)

Gin, Part II

Posted on by Dale

You will recall that on Monday I began making gin.

Yesterday I finished making gin.  This is a true thing.

On Monday, I put some juniper berries in some vodka to soak for 24 hours.  On Tuesday, I added what we in the gin industry refer to as “botanicals”:

There’s angelica root, gentian root, star anise, lemongrass, lemon peel, black pepper, and lovage (which had survived in the garden enough to give me what I needed).  Based on cursory reading on the intertubes, I measured out two grams of everything and dumped it all in.  It steeped overnight.

Yesterday I began taste-testing it, and by lunchtime it was clear that the botanicals—the lovage in particular—were threatening to overwhelm the gin qua gin.  I strained everything out, doubled the amount of vodka to dilute it, put more juniper in, added some coriander, and let it ride until cocktail hour.  Then I strained it all out, bottled it, and began testing it.

Okay, so… it’s not a sippable gin.  This will never compete with Ayrer’s Single Malt Gin from Nuremberg, for example.  More work is required before I get to that point.

However:

Gin & tonic: quite delectable.

Negroni on the left; Bijou on the right.  Both were good; although I was apparently not in the mood for a Negroni, I finished the Bijou with relish.

And then…

The Smoky Topaz. Oh my.  My recipe calls for barrel-aged gin, but this gin added several other dimensions to this most fabulous of cocktails.  That which is a too-strong presence of lovage when you sip the gin straight becomes a fantastic lingering undertone in the Smoky Topaz.

And so…

The trick will be seeing if I can repeat it.

Gin.

Posted on by Dale

Oh, just making gin, as one does.

That’s the concoction on the right.  The stuff on the left is just your average lemongrass-infused vodka for a new cocktail I’ll work on for the beach this weekend.

The gin is in its first stage: juniper berries soaking in vodka.  What, you thought gin was something other than vodka with plants in it?  Pfft.

Of course there’s no one recipe for gin.  You can find tons on the intertubes—everyone has a different combination of botanicals they like to use—but they all start with soaking the juniper berries for 24 hours, then adding your other stuff for 36 hours.  That’s right, boys and girls, you can craft your own gin in two and a half days.  What’s not to like?

My original plan was to use lovage from the garden, but the lovage has been stupidly whiny this summer.  Maybe there’s enough to use anyway.  I’ll keep you posted.

Otherwise, here are the most likely additions:

Mine’s going to be more spicy/peppery than citrus.

I wonder if it’s going to be drinkable?

Cocktails: A new chapter

Posted on by Dale

After the bittersweet nostalgia of my cocktail reminiscence, you will be heartened to hear that when one chapter ends, another begins.

Behold:

This, class, is a smoker. A couple of months ago I went up to Ponce City Market to take a cocktail class at 18•21 Bitters, the topic of which was smoked cocktails, you guys!  It was fascinating, and as you can imagine added a whole new layer to the cocktails.  I came home and immediately added the smoker and the chips to my Amazon wish list, figuring I’d get it for either my upcoming birthday or Father’s Day.[1]

It was also super easy: you put like a teaspoon of wood chips in the little cavity in the top, light it with a regular lighter, flip the switch, and smoke emerges from the hose (not pictured) into whatever receptacle you’ve chosen.

Here are some photos from 18•21:

This one used a bell jar.  There was also a plain cedar board with shavings over which you placed your glass; a teapot; and a good old cocktail shaker.

You let the cocktail sit and smoke for about three minutes.

And then you serve it.

So remember, the next time you’re over for cocktails and I ask you what you would like, you really need to say I want something light and citrusy if that’s what you want, because otherwise you’re going to get a smoked cocktail.

—————

[1] Alas, the model I had tagged was no longer available; I had to buy my own because no one wanted to risk getting the wrong thing.  This model is actually cooler than the one 18•21 used. The chips however were a present from the Charming Child.