zambito

2 oz Coffee-infused Pisco (César, Medium-roast Organic Nica) (* see infusion notes below)
1 oz Lime Juice
3/4 oz Simple Syrup

Shake with ice and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with 3 coffee beans. Original recipe was 3 oz of spirit which I reduced above to 2 while keeping the other volumes constant.

Two weeks ago, my friend Héctor, who I met at Eastern Standard's 75th Anniversary Prohibition Repeal Party, gave me a copy of some Peruvian cocktail recipes. Many of the recipes from Gastón Acurio en tu Cocina: Cócteles Peruanas require indigenous ingredients such as fruits and juices which are hard to acquire here in Boston; however, some like the Zambito are definitely do-able. The Zambito's lime and coffee combination stood out for it was one I had discovered worked well through a Hellfire-inspired bitters recipe I improvised last year.
The Zambito started with a glorious coffee nose which stemmed from the infusion; had the coffee bean garnish been muddled coffee bean powder, the effect would have been magnified. The coffee and lime flavors truly paired up well as I recalled they would, and the recipe had enough sweetness to balance the lime's sour and the coffee's bitter notes. The medium roast I used seemed to be just about right; a darker roast might introduce burnt notes, oil residues, and flavors that would probably pair up better with a darker spirit. I was surprised that the Pisco itself did not stand out, but the fact that the drink worked as a whole whereas other spirits would have derailed the drink speaks volumes about Pisco's ability to bridge flavor gaps in the recipe without creating new ones. Andrea especially enjoyed hers which she found "very refreshing -- it has that [delightful] bite to it."

(*) I used 1 tsp for every 2 oz of Pisco. Overnight infusion should be sufficient, but mine went 48 hours due to scheduling. After infusing the medium-coarsely ground coffee, I filtered it through a paper coffee filter and topped off the volume back to 2 oz with fresh Pisco (a slight loss occurs in the infusion and filtration process). A medium roast seemed to work well.

gin-esaisquoi

1 1/2 oz Gin (Berkshire Mountain Distillers' Ethereal)
1 1/2 oz Lillet Blanc
3/4 oz Falernum (Velvet)
2 dash Orange Bitters (Regan's)
1 Egg

Shake one round without ice and one round with. Strain into a coupe glass and garnish with a pinch of ground cardamom.

Earlier in the week, I had come home from a long day at work and needed a cocktail to tide me over until the dinner I was making was done. Therefore, I flipped through Food & Wine: Cocktails 2008 and found the Gin-Esaisquoi, and as soon as I saw that name, I figured it could have only come from Jeff Grdinich from New Hampshire's White Mountain Cider Co. My assessment was not wrong.
The Gin-Esaisquoi was very different from the egg and cardamom-containing Punky Monkey that we made last month from the 2009 volume of the series. While the Punky Monkey was very Tiki-esque, Grdinich's drink despite the falernum -- a standard Tiki ingredient -- fell into a separate camp. To me, the drink was a spiced Orange Julius of sorts. The cardamom sprinkled on top of the egg foam was quite a pleasant and its aroma was joined by orange notes from the bitters, gin, and Lillet Blanc. The egg functioned to give the sip a thick mouthfeel and smooth out a lot of the flavors in the mix. What was left was a light citrus, clove, and allspice taste that was quite delightful.

air mail

1/2 oz Matusalem Platino Rum
1/2 oz Lime Juice
1/2 oz Honey Syrup

Shake with ice and strain into a white wine glass. Top off with Brute d'Argent Blanc de Blanc sparkling wine and garnish with an orange twist.

For my second drink on Sunday night, I asked bartender Derric Crothers to make me an Air Mail. The Air Mail was one of the drinks I have sort of had, which sounds odd until I explain that it was for the Mixology Monday: Hard Drinks for Hard Times. For that theme, we made some champagne cocktails rather inexpensively using beer instead of sparkling wine of any sort. Three of the drinks in that post were successes, but the Air Mail with Heineken Light (someone beer-bombed us at one of our parties so we had a bunch) was rather atrocious. While Heineken Light worked rather well with the lemon-based French 75 variant, it worked horribly with the lime-based Air Mail. Therefore, I needed to try the drink done properly.

The Air Mail's nose was full of honey and citrus due to the effervescence of the sparkling wine volatilizing aromas into the air. The drink's sip was rather crisp from the champagne and the lime juice and was full of citrus notes. The white rum provided some heat but not a lot of flavor; many recipes call for more flavorful amber rums which might bring the spirit closer to the forefront of the profile. Lastly, the honey donated a slight funkiness to the drink, but it lost in the sweet-dry balance battle given the other ingredients in the mix.

st moritz

2 oz Rittenhouse Rye
1/2 oz M&R Dry Vermouth
1/2 oz Green Chartreuse
1 dash Regan's Orange Bitters

Stir with ice and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with an orange twist.

On Sunday night, Andrea and I headed down to Green Street for dessert and cocktails. For my first drink, I asked bartender Derric Crothers to make me something that I had spied in their cocktail recipe book, the St. Moritz. The St. Moritz was reminiscent of Scott Holiday's rye Bijou, the Family Jewels, and of the Hague Cocktail (also on the Green Street menu). Embury in The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks likened the drink to a Dry Manhattan with Chartreuse and orange bitters (his recipe is light on everything but the whiskey, of course). Embury also claimed that the drink was served in Old Fashioned glasses at the St. Moritz Hotel, but neglected to mention where the hotel was located.

The St. Moritz started with rye and Chartreuse notes on the nose. The dry vermouth certainly took the drink in a very different direction than the sweet vermouth facsimile; the St. Moritz was rather crisp, but not as dry and biting as I remember the Hague being. Strangely, the orange bitters did not stand out in the flavor profile much, unlike in the gin-laden Bijou.

lusitania

The theme for this month's Mixology Monday (MxMo XLVI) is "Absinthe" as picked by Sonja Kassebaum at the Thinking of Drinking blog. Sonja described her chosen theme as, "The topic for February is Absinthe. That much maligned, misunderstood, mistreated spirit, suddenly plentiful again in the US and other parts of the world. Absinthe played a role, whether large or small, in a variety of great cocktails from the 1800's and early 1900's -- the Sazerac, Absinthe Suissesse, Corpse Reviver No. 2... I'm getting thirsty. So let's celebrate absinthe's history, and it's future, with all manner of cocktails using absinthe."
An absinthe drink that stood out in a recent purchase, Jacques Straub's Drinks, was the Lusitania. While everyone today knows the Lusitania as the ship that was torpedoed and sunk by a German U-boat in 1915 -- an action that was instrumental in bringing the United States into World War I, this drink has nothing to do with that tragedy for the recipe was published the year before in 1914! Thus, the Lusitania cocktail was no Remember the Maine -- an absinthe-laden drink that commemorates the sinking of the Maine which brought the United States into the Spanish American War. No, it is a drink praising the ship while it was still sailing. The Lusitania was one of the fastest ships of its day and captured the Blue Riband for the quickest westbound trans-Atlantic voyage followed a few voyages later by the quickest eastbound trip. This grand ship traveled at speeds averaging over 25 knots and made the voyage in well under 5 days.

Lusitania
• 1 oz Dry Vermouth (Noilly Prat)
• 1/2 oz Good Brandy (Larresingle VSOP Armagnac)
• 1 dash Absinthe (1 barspoon Pernod Absinthe)
• 1 dash Orange Bitters (Angostura Orange)
Stir with ice and strain into a cocktail glass. I made the addition of an orange twist to the recipe.

Another thing that attracted me to this drink was that appeared like a solid aperitif cocktail. The Lusitania started with a rather pleasant anise and orange oil nose. The star interaction in the drink was how well the Noilly Prat and the Pernod Absinthe played together; the wormwood in each as well as the sharp note in the Noilly Prat created a wondrous taste. Secondary to that were the orange notes from the bitters, the citrus peel in the vermouth, and the twist I added to the recipe. The brandy rounded off the Lusitania by providing a rich mouthfeel. The drink certainly captured the time period and Andrea commented that, "this has a very old world feel to it." I can well imagine drinking this cocktail on the first class deck right before a sumptuous dinner.
Cheers to Sonja for hosting this month's Mixology Monday and to Paul for running the show as always!

gory guerrero

1 1/2 oz Tequila (Lunazul Reposado)
1/2 oz Drambuie
1/2 oz Pineapple Juice
1/2 oz Dry Vermouth (Noilly Prat)
1 dash Fee's Whiskey Barrel Aged Bitters

Shake with ice and strain into a cocktail glass.

For Mixoloseum's Thursday Drink Night, the theme was "Tweaked - take a past TDN drink or one you've submitted and improve on it!" Two that came to mind were the Balmy Night which was a great drink with a somewhat lame name from the Allspice Dram event and the César Moro from the Cointreau night. The latter seemed more flexible of a recipe, so I decided to ponder variations that I could make. I remembered the lesson that bartender Misty Kalkofen shared that she learned from Charlotte Voisey -- that is how well tequila and Drambuie work together. So from the César Moro's Pisco Punch-esque form, the drink was quickly shifted in a very different direction by subbing the base spirit and liqueur. For a name, I abandoned the Surrealist theme since the only Mexican one I could think of honoring was Remedios Varo (and she was not even born there), and I switched gears to Mexican luchadors (professional wrestlers). Gory Guerrero became the obvious answer and I was tempted to name the drink after his signature finishing move, the Gory Special (although the move he is most famous for inventing is La de a Caballo which was later made famous in the 1980s as the Camel Clutch by the Iron Sheik). Gory was also the father of the recently departed WWE star, Eddie Guerrero.
The nose on the Gory Guerrero was rather complex. Aromas of the tequila and the Scotch in the Drambuie were dominant with floral notes from the vermouth and pineapple as an undercurrent. Flavorwise, the pineapple played a larger role in shaping the drink. The sip started with a dry booze flavor, had pineapple notes in the middle, and finished with honey, spice, and tequila on the swallow. In terms of tequila drinks, it was soft yet flavorful. I feel like visually the drink could use a garnish; however, none came to mind when making the drink. Perhaps a lime or lemon wheel might do the trick.

hot apple toddy

1 medium-sized Apple (Gala)
1 1/3 oz Sugar (Turbinado)
2 2/3 oz Whiskey (Old Overholt Rye)
2/3 oz Jamaican Rum (Smith & Cross)

Roast the apple (30 minutes, 400°F (*)) in a pan. Scrape the pulp and juice away from the skin, core, and seeds, and add to a heat-resistant bowl or mixing glass. Add sugar, and pulverize the apple using a muddler until the sugar is dissolved. Add spirits, stir, and warm up before serving in microwave. Serve in punch cups with an equal part of boiling water; provide small spoons. Garnish suggestions: cinnamon stick or grated cinnamon (none listed in original recipe). Recipe makes two servings.

Last night, I decided to give the Hot Apple Toddy recipe I found in 1904's The Blue Grass Cook Book a try. The other recipe I made from the book, the Xalapa Punch, was a great success, so my confidence in trying another one of the drink recipes was high. The original called for a dozen apples and I scaled it down to what would make about two servings (although the recipe claims that the 'pug' before hot water dilution will keep indefinitely) besides a few other slight modifications.
The recipe gave me a good excuse to use my new bottle of Smith & Cross Navy Strength Jamaica Rum. In the toddy, the rum had a dominant signature to my palate whereas the whiskey stood out more for Andrea. The drink would definitely have been a different beast if I had interpreted the Jamaican rum as something as rich and full-bodied as Appleton's, but a rougher rum might have been more true to the ingredients more widely available when the recipe was created. The cinnamon garnish I added complemented the spiciness of the rum quite well in addition to pairing up nicely with the apple notes. The apple and sugar functioned to mitigate the alcohol's burn when the high proof was coupled with the heat. Overall, the Hot Apple Toddy made for a delightful nightcap on a cold winter's night.

(*) The apple still seemed chunky after being muddled extensively. Perhaps a longer or hotter roast/bake is in order, or perhaps Gala apples are a bit more structurally sound than other apples. A blender would help, but seems very un-1904...

cherry blossom

1 1/2 oz Hendrick's Gin
3/4 oz Stock Maraschino Liqueur
3/4 oz Lemon Juice
2-3 dash Peychaud's Bitters

Shake with ice and strain into a cocktail glass.
On Sunday night, Andrea and I attended Eastern Standard's annual anti-Valentine's Day event. On the special menu were eight pink or red drinks. While Andrea went for something with tequila, I asked Bobby McCoy to make me the Cherry Blossom which he described as a variation on an Aviation. I surmise that this might be their original concoction for all other Cherry Blossom recipes that I found in my library and on the web were very different. Like an Aviation, the drink had a maraschino nose and sour cherry flavor; however, the Peychaud's, besides donating the theme-appropriate pink color to the drink, took the drink in a very different direction. We were glad that we showed up on the early side to this event and were able to have a drink at the bar before the place got packed. After that, we used our drink tickets for the beer and shot of Fernet Branca combo at one of the satellite bars they had set up around the room.

byculla cocktail

1/2 oz Sherry (Lustau Don Nuño Dry Oloroso)
1/2 oz Port (Ramos Pinto Ruby)
1/2 oz Curaçao (Curaçao of Curaçao)
1/2 oz Ginger Brandy (Domaine de Canton)

Stir with ice and strain into a cocktail glass. I added an orange twist to the recipe.
On Sunday night after dinner but before going to Eastern Standard's anti-Valentine's Day event, Andrea and I had a drink to pass the time. I found the Byculla in Trader Vic's 1947 Bartender's Guide and decided to give it a go. Savoy's 1930 and Boothby's 1934 both had the recipe with the former being a liqueur glass (1 oz) and the latter 1/4 jigger measures for each ingredient. I opted for adding an orange twist for orange oils always seem to complement sherry rather well; moreover, it ended up bringing out a fresh juice flavor sensation from the Curaçao. In the drink, the sherry notes appeared early in the sip, orange liqueur in the middle, and ginger at the swallow. In addition, a pleasant port-like grape flavor lingered on in the aftertaste. The Byculla Cocktail was not as gingery as I imagined it would be; perhaps the fortified wines smoothed over the its sharpness for it appeared more as a light accent. The addition of a dash of Angostura bitters to the Byculla might help to bring out a more robust and complex ginger taste, and I could easily see orange bitters adding to the citrus complexity. The drink would be a good cocktail to have with dessert and Andrea imagined it working extravagantly well with a flourless chocolate cake.