corn'n'oil

2 oz Blackstrap Rum (Cruzan)
1/4 oz Falernum (Velvet)
Juice of 1/4 Lime (~1/4 oz)
2-3 dash Angostura Bitters

Build over ice in an old fashioned glass.
The Corn'n'Oil is a drink that Brother Cleve recommended to us last year but we never got around to making one. Since the drink appears on the Anvil's 100 drinks that everyone should try at least once list, it was time to tackle this one. The drink started out with a great clove and cinnamon nose from the falernum and Angostura bitters, respectively. The Corn'n'Oil had a great blackstrap molasses taste at first, but the molasses notes began to fade with successive sips while the lime juice became more noticeable. Overall, the drink functioned like a spiced rum sour with Embury proportions on the alcohol-to-other ratio. With the Corn'n'Oil crossed off the list, 24 remain (I also had a Hemingway Daiquiri and a Pink Gin but decided to just enjoy them without blog entries).

24 martini

2 1/4 oz Beefeater 24 Gin
3/4 oz Lillet Blanc
1 dash Bitter Truth's Beefeater 24 Bitters (sub Regan's Orange)

Stir with ice and strain into a cocktail glass. Twist a lemon peel over the top and rim the glass.
My second drink at the Beefeater 24 release event at Drink was one of the drinks created by Beefeater to showcase their gin's botanicals. The drink contained Lillet and lemon oil from the twist which synergized with the gin's citrus notes. Moreover, the cocktail's bitters were created by the Bitter Truth to emphasize some of the gin's botanicals. Tasting the bitters straight, they smelled rather citrussy and tasted like bitter citrus peel pith with perhaps some tea in the mix. Overall, the 24 Martini was pretty dry and was more grapefruit flavored than orange which was surprising since Lillet is an aromatized wine tasting more of orange peels than its other fruit components. Since the Beefeater 24 bitters are not currently for sale, Regan's orange bitters were recommended as a substitute.

bee sting

2 oz Beefeater 24 Gin
1/2 oz Lemon Juice
1/2 oz Honey Syrup (1:1 with water)
~12 Peppercorns

Muddle peppercorns in shaker. Add rest of ingredients and ice, shake, and strain into a cocktail glass.

Last night, Andrea and I attended the Boston launch party for Beefeater's new gin, Beefeater 24, held at Drink. Beefeater 24 is more citrussy than normal Beefeater with peels from Spanish grapefruit, lemon, and Seville orange in the botanical mix. Also noteworthy in the 12 botanicals are two teas -- Japanese Sencha and Chinese green tea. Desmond Payne, Beefeater's master distiller, added the tea in homage to James Burroughs' (who founded Beefeater in the 1800s) father who was a tea merchant. Tasting the gin straight, the citrus notes stood out the most with the tea being a little more subtle. In addition, the juniper was a lot more subdued than in the regular Beefeater.

The first drink I sampled from the menu was one developed by the bartenders at Drink and made for me by Misty Kalkofen. The Bee Sting is a take on the classic Bees Knees with the added ingredient of muddle peppercorns to provide a bit of extra spice to the drink. The grapefruit accents in the gin really showed through in this drink with the green tea notes coming out in the aftertaste. The black pepper was a good addition for it worked well with some of the other botanicals in this particular gin. Indeed, Andrea's comment was that "the sum is greater than the parts given the ingredients" in this cocktail.

Misty making a Beefeater 24 Old Fashioned with bergamot bitters.

fig leaf cocktail

1 1/2 oz Sweet Vermouth (Dolin)
1 oz Light Rum (El Dorado 12 Year)
Juice of 1/2 Lime (~1/2 oz)
1 dash Angostura

Shake with ice and strain into a cocktail glass.
A few days ago, we were flipping through Patrick Duffy's The Official Mixer's Manual (1975 edition) in search of an aperitif wine-based drink and found the Fig Leaf Cocktail. In essence, the drink turned out to be a rather winey Daiquiri where the sweet vermouth substitutes for the simple syrup. Unlike a high octane drink like a Daiquiri, the Fig Leaf Cocktail was a lot lower in alcohol; in fact, the CocktailDB recipe is even more so as it lists the rum as a 3/4 of an ounce instead of a full one. Flavorwise, the Fig Leaf Cocktail had a great lime nose and an attractive color from the vermouth mixing with the rum and lime juice. We took the liberty of using an aged El Dorado which is a little darker than a light rum but added a lot of great demerara rum notes to the drink.

yardarm

2 oz Gin
3/4 oz Passion Fruit Juice
1/2 oz Lime Juice
1/2 oz Honey Syrup (1:1 Honey:Water)
2 dash Angostura Bitters
1/4 oz Absinthe (or Pastis)

Shake all but absinthe with ice and strain into a rocks glass filled with crushed ice. Float absinthe and garnish with a lime wheel.
Last night was Mixoloseum's Thursday Drink Night (TDN) was its first anniversary event where the theme was Tiki drinks. I culled a few aspects from Tiki-like drinks I have had in the past such as the absinthe float from the Sea Captain's Special to make the Yardarm. The beginning of the this drink was dominated by the anise seed notes from the absinthe, and after a few sips, the passion fruit flavors started appearing. As the cloudy layer on top diminished, the lime became more apparent. The honey syrup provided not only the right amount of sweetness to the drink but also a certain richness that sugar alone does not. The response from the TDN chatroom seemed pretty positive about the Yardarm, including Jeff Beachbum Berry who gave his thumbs up to my creation!

suffering bastard

1 oz Bourbon (Buffalo Trace)
1 oz Gin (Beefeater)
1 oz Lime Juice
1 dash Angostura Bitters
4 oz Ginger Ale (Polar)

Pour everything into a double old-fashioned glass filled with ice cubes. Garnish with a mint sprig and orange wheel speared with a cherry.
After dinner, I scanned the Anvil list for a drink to make and picked the Suffering Bastard. The Anvil's listing has it as a lemon juice drink, and all of the ones I could find were lime. After bailing on the lemon juice recipe search, I figured that the recipe in Beachbum Berry's Grog Log would be one of the better ones to choose. Berry lists the origin of this drink around 1950 at the Shepheard's Hotel in Cairo, Egypt, where the drink was originally made with brandy and ginger beer instead of bourbon and ginger ale. Overall, the Suffering Bastard was pretty refreshing. The lime really stood out on the foretaste and the ginger on the swallow. It was rather hard to tell that there was bourbon or gin in the drink due to the lime, ginger ale, and bitters dominating the flavor profile. With the Suffering Bastard crossed off the list, 27 more drinks remain.

norwegian wood

1 oz Aquavit (North Shore Distillers)
1 oz Applejack (Laird's Bonded Apple Brandy)
3/4 oz Sweet Vermouth (Dolin)
1/4 oz Yellow Chartreuse
1 dash Angostura Bitters

Stir with ice and strain into a cocktail coupe. Garnish with a lemon twist.
Last night as Andrea was finishing up her Thai chickpea dish, I flipped through Imbibe magazine and found the perfect aperitif, the Norwegian Wood. The drink was created by blogger/bartender Jeffrey Morgenthaler of Clyde Common in Portland, OR, featuring a local-to-him aquavit Krogstad. Since I lacked that particular one, it gave me a great excuse to use the North Shore Distillers' one. The Norwegian Wood started off with a great lemon nose and this was followed by a variety of complementary flavors. Two of the most notable were how the aquavit and the Chartreuse played together and how the sweet vermouth and apple brandy interacted. In addition, the aquavit I used was very citrussy and it worked well with the lemon oil from the garnish and the orange peel notes in the vermouth. Andrea liked the hot sharpness in the middle of the sip, and these notes jived with the spicy Thai food once dinner was served. Moreover, she enjoyed the lingering apple flavors from the brandy.

champerelle

One of the more intriguing bar gadgets that I recently bought was the British-style Bonzer barspoon (available at the Boston Shaker store in Somerville, MA, and online at Cocktail Kingdom). At first glance, it looks like a standard barspoon great for mixing drinks and measuring half teaspoon amounts with the added aesthetic merits and textural sensations of the twisty stem.
But what's that on the right you ask? I have heard vehement arguments over what that flattened end is used for in the field (and specifically in the UK). One camp declares that it is used as a bar muddler and the other argues that it is a drink layering device. Therefore, I decided to test the merits of each claim in my own kitchen.

The first aspect I set out to test was the muddler. For muddling something soft like mint in simple syrup (pictured to the left), the tool worked rather effectively. The only difference between it and my gold standard wooden muddler is the smaller surface area on the spoon's tail end. At the bottom of the mixing glass, this difference just meant a few extra strokes. Moving on to the other end of the spectrum -- the sugar cube -- the spoon's muddler seemed to falter (note: I did not even attempt to crush ice cubes). To derive the force necessary to smash the cube into powder, the spoon felt awkward to hold on to due to its narrow diameter, especially compared to the wooden muddler which fits nicely in the hand. My fingers kept sliding down the shaft, but with enough attempts, the sugar cube eventually gave way. In between these two extremes, I figure that the muddler end would be sufficient for softer items like berries and herbs; however, it would have issues in muddling citrus with the rind like in a Caipirinha or smash. Added force applied on the spoon end should be avoided since the weld holding the spoon bowl to the shaft apparently will give way. So as a muddler, it is adequate for some ingredients and it is certainly handy to have a single tool to do both, although I still prefer my sturdy wooden muddler as my go-to tool (and Dr. Freud would certainly be proud).

The second aspect I tested out was the drink layering. For standard floats, gently pouring on the back side of any barspoon or teaspoon with its edge touching the glass works so the flat end seems excessive for this purpose. However, for making a pousse-café, a multiply layered drink, in a narrow glass, the convex part of the spoon trick is not sufficient. For a recipe to test this functionality out, I opened my copy of Boothby's World Drinks and How to Mix Them and picked the Champerelle.

Champerelle
(1) 1/4 jigger Curaçao
(2) 1/4 jigger Anisette (Pernod)
(3) 1/4 jigger Chartreuse (Green)
(4) 1/4 jigger Cognac (Courvoisier VS)
(5) few drops Bitters (Fee's Whiskey Barrel)
Pour carefully, as numbered, into chilled pousse-café glass, so that ingredients will not mix, and serve with cut straws and ice water chaser.

I must admit that pouring the layers with the Bonzer's flat end was a little tedious but not that difficult to achieve perfection on the first try (my middle transition would look better if my old bottle of Pernod had not yellowed to look similar in color to my Chartreuse). The lower I got the OXO mixing cup, the gentler the pour. Beforehand, I did experiment with starting at the top of the spiraled shaft with some water but this caused drops to fly off before landing at the flattened base. At a height of a few inches, the stream adhered beautifully to the shaft quite well. Keeping the OXO mixing cup touching the shaft and the edge of the flattened base touching the side and slightly above the surface was not that difficult to achieve even with several slow pours.

Overall, I rather like my Bonzer barspoon. It has a great feel in the hand as opposed to a straight, untextured shaft. The muddler is handy in a pinch although it will not be my tool of choice; however, the layerer is quite superior to anything I own especially for depth and precision work. At $13-14, the Bonzer barspoon is more pricey than say my $3 eBay one, but it is a lot more stylish and handy for certain advanced techniques. And oh yeah, it stirs drinks too!

japanese

1 1/2 oz Brandy (Courvoisier VS)
2 dash Orgeat Syrup (1 barspoon Ferrara Orzata)
1 dash Boker's Bitters (Homemade (*))

Stir with ice and strain into a cocktail glas. Garnish with a lemon peel.
(*) Substitute Angostura or Fee's Whiskey Barrel Bitters otherwise

The above recipe for the Japanese came from The Old Waldorf-Astoria Bar Book but the rationale for seeking it out was two fold. One was that we had just bought a decent bottle of orgeat from the local Italian specialty store (Capone Foods in Union Square, Somerville). The other was a list that Chuck Taggart of GumboPages posted on Facebook; it was of 100 cocktails that Bobby Heugel of Anvil in Houston thinks everyone should try at least once. Picking from the 29 remaining, the Japanese became the first targeted strike on the list. It was a drink I had always thought of making but usually skipped in preference of something more flashy.
The Japanese was full of spicy almond richness in a Brandy Old Fashioned sort of format. The drink proved to be a good display of the new orgeat due to the simplicity of the recipe which was basically a slightly sweetened and bittered jigger of brandy. I am glad that the Anvil's list finally pushed me to try this classic cocktail, and perhaps I will be able to reach my goal of completing the list by the end of 2009.