Clear Ice

I would guess that most of you who follow the blog would know this about me, but I'll say it again--I am obsessed with ice. A party isn't a party without ice, I've often said. When we were in Portland a few months ago, we had a drink at Jeffrey Morgenthaler's new bar Pepe Le Moko. Mr. Morgenthaler is sort of my bar hero, and I was lucky enough to be there on my birthday when he was at the bar. Total fanboy here. Anyway, he made this absolutely gorgeous Old Fashioned, and he put a gloriously clear ice cube in the glass. That got me really thinking about big chunks of clear ice. When I make ice the normal way, it's always awfully cloudy. Not too attractive in a drink. I decided that until I can crowdsource enough cash for a Clinebell (they make giant blocks of ice for ice sculptors), I was out of luck.

This Christmas, however, my sweetheart got me an amazing new nerdy science-of-cocktails book, Liquid Intelligence by Dave Arnold. There are some really fun and cool experiments you can do yourself, but I was immediately drawn to the section on ice. He writes that you can make clear ice cubes yourself at home with a cooler and a freezer. I'll admit, I was totally skeptical at first. In Morgenthaler's book, The Bar Book, the man himself says that he has tried this method and it didn't really work, which is why he buys ice commercially. I figured I had nothing to lose, so yesterday I set about making some clear ice myself. The worst part of this was cleaning our cooler, but I managed to scrub it out and I was on my way. 

First off, put HOT (doesn't have to be boiling) water in a cooler without the lid on it. I used the old Coleman we already had and I would guess it holds like 2.5 gallons or so. I put about 4 inches of water in the cooler and put it in the deep freeze. Now, Arnold's instructions were sort of unclear at this point, but he says to put hot water in the cooler but to let it cool before putting it in the freezer because the hot water makes the other stuff in the freezer thaw a little and it messes with your food's textures. I didn't really understand that, so I put the water in there hot. I've got a new batch in the freezer now, and I let it cool down a lot before putting it in, so we'll see if that actually makes a difference. Now for the fun part--let it freeze. I left mine in for less than 24 hours because I was so anxious to try it out, but really 24-48 hours is probably best depending on the thickness of ice you want. After about 18 hours, my ice was approximately 1.5 inches thick. It was hard to see how much the water had frozen, but after I sloshed it around for a few minutes I was able to see how much had frozen. I decided the 1.5 inches was thick enough, so I took it out. I had a couple inches of water underneath the ice, and I knew I was going to spill it everywhere if I just dumped the ice out, so I used a screwdriver (I guess I'll be ordering an ice pick later) to make some small holes around the edges to let the water out, so I was able to dump it out in the sink.

After all the water was out, I put the cooler upside down on a towel and let the ice slide out.

Once the ice was out, I made sure it was a good temperature to work with. Arnold says the ice should look sort of wet rather than dry, because if it's too cold it will just shatter. When the ice first came out, it looked like this.

All that stuff on the top was just sort-of-frozen ice. I sliced it off and I was ready to go.

I used a serrated bread knife and a rolling pin to start making columns. I had no clue what to do here, so my end pieces ended up breaking in weird ways. The main thing I learned here was to not be afraid to use the knife to break the ice (ha, ha). I put the knife on the ice and then whacked it with the rolling pin to break these pieces into columns. After that, I did the same thing to the columns to make cubes. I ended up making maybe 15 or so "good" cubes that were about 2 x 1.5 inches. My most perfect cube was this one, which I am ridiculously proud of.

After I cut all the cubes, I placed them in a Rubbermaid container thing and put it in the freezer. It remains to be seen how they do after a few days storage. 

I made an Old Fashioned to show off my work, and it was pretty darn beautiful (and tasty!).

Look at how clear that cube is! After trying this out for myself, I can officially say it works. Give it a try yourself and let me know how it goes in the comments.

Homemade Tonic

Here in Wisconsin, we're finally starting to see lemongrass available at our farmers' markets. This means only one thing in our house--homemade tonic. (As an aside, you can buy fresh lemongrass and freeze it in the appropriate sized batches and pull it out to use in tonic in the off-season.) Store-bought tonic is fine in a pinch, but after tasting the homemade stuff, prepare to be ruined on cheap tonic forever. I've sort of created my own recipe by mixing together the recipes from Imbibe and Jeffrey Morgenthaler. My recipe goes like this:

• 4 cups water
• 3 cups pure cane sugar
• 3 tbsp powdered cinchona bark (this is the quinine; order from a herb store online if you can't find it locally)
• 6 tbsp citric acid (you can get this in the canning section or the bulk section of many grocery stores)
• 2 limes, zested and juiced
• 1 orange, zested and juiced
• 1 lemon, zested and juiced
• 1/4-ish cup of lemongrass stalks, roughly chopped
• 1 tsp allspice berries

Mix the water and sugar together and heat until the sugar dissolves. At this point, you've made some 4:3 simple syrup. Now, add in the rest of the ingredients and heat on low for 25 minutes. The part that I find the most annoying comes next--strain all the junk out. I do this by first using a strainer to get all the big chunks (the zest, lemongrass, etc.). Then, I use a tea strainer (I use a Finium stainless steel strainer, but anything like that would work as long as it is fine mesh) and a Chemex coffeemaker, although really that's sort of overkill--any pitcher would do, to strain out all the bark. It's going to be brown, so no worries about that. After it cools, I add about 2 oz or so of vodka to the syrup so it lasts longer and bottle it. I have been able to find nice bottles at TJ Maxx and Ikea. As an added bonus, you can freeze the syrup and thaw it as you need it. For this, I use plastic cups (like a Solo cup) and then seal them in a baggie. I get about a liter or so of the syrup, but this equals a lot more tonic water when it's mixed with fizzy water. I do about a 3:.75 ratio of fizzy water to syrup for a gin and tonic, but of course, you can do it to taste.

I am not sure how long this lasts before going bad, but I'm pretty cautious and try to use it all within about a month and a half or so. Because it makes so much, the freezing option is a good idea so you can use it for much longer.

Here are some photos of the process:

The ingredients. I had to use packaged lemongrass here.

Simple syrup mixture.

After the rest of the ingredients have been added.

Nearly there!

Filtering. This is a time-consuming process but really important.

Bottled!

Ready to become a gin and tonic.

Homemade tonic never fails to impress people, and if you're like me and a bit of an introvert, bringing a bottle to a party instantly gives you something to talk about. I like to mix up a bottle with fizzy water before a party so it's easier to manage on the fly. The large quantity you get out of this makes it pretty affordable compared to some of the nicer tonics that you can buy, and I think it's super tasty. 

Aged Negronis

One cocktail trend I've noticed is the act of aging cocktails in some sort of barrel. I first saw barrel-aged negronis on a menu when I was in Portland last fall. I was pretty intrigued by this--what gets aged in the barrel? Is the cocktail mixed and the whole thing aged or was just one ingredient aged (and if so, which one)? What sort of barrel was it aged in? Once I got home, I did some research and found a good entry on the barrel-aged cocktail trend on Jeffrey Morgenthaler's blog. I like the idea of pre-mixing drinks; it certainly makes dishing up drinks at cocktail parties much faster. I love a drink experiment, so I thought about what I wanted to make and how I was going to age it.

I thought about what would benefit from being soaked in a bourbon barrel (or equivalent) for a few weeks, and I pretty much immediately wrote off bourbon-based cocktails. The bourbon's already been aged for years in bourbon barrels, what's the point of aging it a few more weeks? I can see aging a specific ingredient like Campari or sweet vermouth and then mixing it with bourbon, but that's a test for another day. Because my two main spirit bases are bourbon and gin, I decided to focus on a gin drink. Since Morgenthaler did negronis, I figured I start with that, too. Essentially, you can age anything that's all booze, but I wanted to start simple and focus on a drink that I'm already very familiar with.

Now, I had to decide what I was going to age it in. There are multiple places online to get mini barrels, but that seemed like a lot of booze when I had no idea if this was going to be drinkable or not. One of the places that sells mini barrels, Tuthilltown Spirits, also sells kits that have a 375ml glass bottle along with a wood stick from a barrel. These sticks use something Tuthilltown calls "honey comb" cutouts; the sticks have many little holes drilled at all angles to provide for more surface area. The price on one of these kits is low ($12.50) and it requires a lot less booze, so I went with this.

At some point in my research I came across this blog entry from ManMade. This guy was doing exactly what I wanted to, so I used this as a model. I ordered a bag of Jack Daniel's Wood Smoking Chips from Amazon as an alternative to the barrel staves from Tuthilltown (I used 12 grams of chips so it would be nearly the same weight as the stave) and went to work mixing my batches of negronis.

The recipe I used was a basic negroni mix, but because I was making two batches that were 375ml, I upped the size of my batch. Each bottle had:

• 1/2 cup Plymouth gin
• 1/2 cup Campari
• 1/2 cup Carpano Antica sweet vermouth

The picture on the left is the barrel stave kit from Tuthilltown; the right is a mason jar with Jack Daniel's wood chips.

Pre-aging

I put these both in the root cellar (a dark, cool place) for two weeks. I shook them up every three or four days. After two weeks, I opened them up, strained each into its own pitcher, and invited folks over for taste tests. I also made a pitcher of "fresh" negronis as a base line. Right away I could see that the aged batches were much darker in color than the fresh. I thought that might tip everyone off to which was the fresh, but it didn't. I labeled each pitcher A, B, or C so it was a blind taste test. To really nerd out, I made up a questionnaire to capture what people thought as they tasted each sample. If I was going to do this again, I'd probably give everyone all three samples at once so they compare each against each other.

Some photos:

 

 Pouring Sample A

Filling out the questionnaire for Sample A

Pouring Sample B

The samples have been consumed...now to score these!

Sample A was the wood chip version, B was the fresh, and C was the barrel stave version. I added an small orange peel garnish to each. Most people thought the wood chip version was the most bitter and they generally liked the barrel stave version the most. Personally, I thought A was pretty smooth, not overly smoky, and quite sweet. No one else really agreed with this opinion, but maybe I was biased because I was hoping the best would be the one with the cheapest barrel ingredient. Anyway, the two smoked versions were really very different from the fresh and from each other. I would definitely make either version again as they were both quite tasty.

I plan on aging other cocktails in the future--so far I've thought about the Bijou (gin, sweet vermouth, green Chartreuse, and orange bitters), the Martinez (Old Tom gin, sweet vermouth, maraschino, and bitters), and the Dubonnet Cocktail (gin and Dubonnet). Dear readers, have any of you jumped on this trend? Post in the comments what you've aged and how you've aged it.

Dubonnet Cocktail

The Dubonnet Cocktail is to the French as the gin and tonic is to the British--both are delicious and have the added benefit of being an antimalarial. As gin made tonic a more palatable means of imbibing quinine for citizens of the British Empire, Dubonnet, a fortified wine, made quinine more palatable for French Foreign Legionnaire troops stationed in North Africa in the mid-19th Century.

I'm not sure what it is about quinine fortified beverages, but they do catch on. The Dubonnet Cocktail was also a favorite of the Queen Mother--rumor has it that she had one or two everyday before lunch (she preferred 70% Dubonnet to 30% gin with a slice of lemon tucked under the ice). In fact, the Queen Mum is so closely associated with the cocktail that the Dubonnet Cocktail is also sometimes called the Queen Mother Cocktail.

We chose to make the recipe that is featured in The Savoy Cocktail Book--the ratio of gin to Dubonnet is an easy 1:1 and we added a slice of lemon as well. I think the drink would also be delicious with a little orange bitters as well. The overall flavor is sweet and slightly astringent. We used a neutral tasting gin, Plymouth, since the Dubonnet is a pretty overpowering flavor. I figured there's no sense in having a gin attempting to compete with the favors of the Dubonnet; rather, I think a gin that gets along well with others is a better choice. Also, I would encourage the use of a lemon since the acid sort of cuts through the sweet and floral notes in the Dubonnet.

Also, I have to point out that I love the advertising associated with Dubonnet. There are a variety of posters, but I like this one the best:

Of course, I'm totally taken with the cat featured on the label and in much of the advertising as well.

Okay, here's the recipe!

Dubonnet Cocktail

1 oz. Dubonnet

1 oz. gin (we used Plymouth)
Slice of lemon

Pour the Dubonnet and the gin in a pitcher filled with ice, stir for about 30 seconds. Stain into coupe glasses and garnish with a slice of lemon.

El Presidente

We acquired some rum and some pineapple juice, so I was looking for something to use both. Of course, there are a zillion tiki drinks that use both, but I wanted to do something else. I looked in the usual places: CocktailDB, Joy of Mixology, the Playboy Bar Book, and I kept seeing El Presidente. I liked the idea of this one, being very simple, but the recipes I was seeing were not the same. They all started with rum, but some used white rum and some used gold rum, some had a whole ounce of lime juice, and some even had dry vermouth instead of pineapple juice. I definitely wanted to use pineapple juice, and I wanted to try the gold rum, so I sort of made up my own version, based on the recipes I had seen. I know that I tend to like cocktails in the Sours family, and I tend to like them when the "syrup" agent and the citrus juice are equal. So, here's what I came up with:

2 oz gold rum
1 oz pineapple juice
1/2 oz lime juice
1/2 oz grenadine

Wow, this turned out GREAT. This is going to go into regular rotation at our house, for sure. The pineapple is just the right amount, not too sweet, not too much lime. All the components taste balanced and really delicious. The juice makes a lovely foam on the top. I think this would probably still be good if you only have white rum, though the gold with the pineapple is very smooth.

Dark & Stormy, Cuba Libre

My husband just got back from a trip to Costa Rica, so he's been inspired to cook, and we've been eating black beans and rice, chicken, mangoes, avocadoes, pineapple -- great stuff. It has put me in the mood for rum drinks. Now, we've all ordered a rum & Coke in a bar, and frankly, I have always thought it was kind of terrible. The combination of cheap white rum and the kind of cola that comes out of a bar gun, filled out with way too much ice, is just uninspired and overly sweet and bland.

I have read before that a rum & Coke becomes a Cuba Libre when you put some lime in it. I've been reading Gary Regan's The Joy of Mixology and trying some of his recipes for basic drinks, as a sort of starting point, so I thought I'd see what he had to say for the Cuba Libre. To me, it looked like a lot of lime and not much Coke. Hmmmm. Turns out that changing that ratio is what makes a not very interesting rum & Coke into a rather delicious, refreshing, and well-balanced highball.

Cuba Libre
2 oz white rum
1 oz lime juice
3-4 oz cola

Some will say you can't make a Dark & Stormy unless you're using Gosling's Black Seal rum and Gosling's ginger beer. I've never had one made this "official" way, but dark rum with ginger beer or ginger ale and lime is a great basic highball that you shouldn't avoid just because you don't have any Gosling's. Call mine a Dim & Drizzly if you must. I used Kraken, which is a spiced rum, but the spiciness is pretty subtle. I often use it in a recipe that calls for dark rum, just because we happen to like it. We have been known to have homebrew ginger beer in the house, and we enjoy Fever Tree's ginger beer, too, but we didn't have any of that stuff right now, and we did have a bottle of Blenheim's ginger ale. Blenheim's has a spicy kick to it, so it's not a bad stand-in for ginger beer. I consulted Gaz Regan again:

Dark & Stormy
2 oz dark rum
3-4 oz ginger beer
squeeze of lime wedge

It was interesting to have these two drinks back-to-back -- the Coca-Cola in the Cuba Libre and the dark rum in the Dark & Stormy both have that sort of brown sugar/coffee/caramel flavor that tastes like the Caribbean and goes so perfectly with rum and lime. Now that I've had these with the right proportions, they are definitely both going into my regular rotation.

The Harvest Moon

So, those of you who know me know that I have a real thing for Crème de Violette--it's so sweet and floral and reminiscent of violet pastilles. The only Crème de Violette currently on the market in the U.S. is by Rothman and Winter. They also make a wide variety of other "Orchard Liqueurs," although they're a challenge to find (at least in our parts). However, this weekend we found the Orchard Apricot Liqueur at Surdyk's in Minneapolis. 

Orchard Apricot Liqueur, according to the Haus Alpenz website, "combines juice from the seasonal harvest of Austria’s famed Klosterneuberger apricots (known locally as "Marillen") with an eau-de-vie produced from this same fruit." The flavor is sweetly apricot with a boozy punch. 

On our drive home from Minneapolis (two and a half hours in blinding snow) I came up with the idea to make a variation on the Blue Moon--I even came up with a name for this drink, "Harvest Moon," for what I imagined would be the glow of a combination of Plymouth Gin, Orchard Apricot Liqueur, and lemon juice. Tonight, the Harvest Moon was born!

Okay, so it wasn't as orange in color as I imagined it would be, but it was completely delicious. Peyton added a few dashes of Peychaud's, which was a smart decision since the apricot is very sweet and the bitters cut the sweetness and added a bit more depth to the cocktail. After the Harvest Moon, I'm going to try this liqueur in champagne for an Apricot Royal. 

Ingredients:
2 oz. Plymouth Gin
1/2 oz. Orchard Apricot Liqueur
1/2 oz. lemon juice
2 dashes Peychaud's bitters

Add the first three ingredients in a shaker with ice and shake vigorously. Strain into a glass and add bitters.

Sloe Gin Fizz

Since my last post, I've had some amazing bar breakthroughs. I acquired a lovely 10 cubic foot refrigerator, located just a few feet from the bar that allows me to store all my supplies downstairs, which makes it far easier to prepare a drink without three trips up and down the stairs. I also found some amazing new liquors, so I've managed to swig back a couple new cocktails.

I've discovered a new love, the Sloe Gin Fizz. First of all, I know. We've all had a miserable experience with this weird cough syrup-like swill. I too had an unfortunate time with a bottle of De Kuyper's "Sloe Gin" shortly after the Jack White/Loretta Lynn song "Portand, Oregon" was released.

Anyway, it was 2004 and during those heady days, this weird faux sloe gin was all that was available, so I had one Sloe Gin Fizz (SGF) and a bottle of sloe gin that sat in my cabinet for approximately four more years before I threw it out.

Cut to this 2013 and I'm searching out vintage and curious cocktail recipes. In many of the new books I've gotten, sloe gin has popped up more than once and is always referred to as "Plymouth Sloe Gin." Interesting, as the only Plymouth I've ever seen is their spectacular regular gin. Their sloe gin has thus been on my shopping list for awhile, but until a few weeks ago, I hadn't been able to find it. We were in Madison, Wisconsin for an overnight trip and went to a liquor store there where, lo and behold, they had Plymouth Sloe Gin! It's not cheap (like $35), so I only bought one bottle. This past weekend, I wanted to try something new, so I found a recipe in The PDT Cocktail Book (I like this book, but many of the drinks are so complicated and call for such obscure ingredients that it makes Imbibe recipes look basic). There are a ton of different SGF recipes out there. Out of the books I have, maybe three of them include SGF recipes. All three of these are different. The PDT references a recipe from J.A. Grohusko in Jack's Manual from 1910, and because that was the oldest I saw, it won. A good friend had a good amount of Meyer lemons and she gave me some wonderful Meyer lemon simple syrup and I used it here (by the way, AWESOME). I've noted how I adjusted my recipe to account for this.

• 1 oz. Plymouth Sloe Gin
• 1 oz. Plymouth Gin
• .75 oz. lemon juice
• .25 oz. simple syrup (I used .5 oz. Meyer lemon simple syrup and .5 oz of lemon juice)
• 3 oz. soda water

Mix all ingredients except the soda water and pour into an ice-filled glass. Top with soda.

I am absolutely in love with this drink. The sloe gin is nice and fruity and not cough syrup-y at all. There are a lot of good articles out there about sloe gin (sloe gin at Wikipedia, how to make your own sloe gin from Gordon's, and the always-helpful Imbibe Magazine with Elements: Sloe Gin), so I won't get into all that. Just know that in England, sloe gin is one of those drinks like limoncello that people often make at home. This sort of explains why good sloe gin is hard to find, as there doesn't appear to be much of a market for it. I like this drink so much because it is incredibly drinkable. I think the mixing of regular gin and sloe gin kind of thins out the sloe gin and makes it more palatable. Additionally, the lemon adds just enough sourness to the sweetness of the sloe gin and simple syrup.

Even if you've had a bad experience with sloe gin in the past, give this a try. I'd love to hear of your past SGF indiscretions and current better experiences, so leave me some feedback in the comments section.

The Manhattan

It's hard to believe that we haven't blogged about the Manhattan yet--especially since it was probably my gateway cocktail to the world of other delicious cocktails. It's one of those drinks where you're likely to already have all the ingredients on hand (whiskey, sweet vermouth, bitters, and a cherry, if you like), but don't let the simple ingredients fool you into thinking the Manhattan is a simple drink. A good Manhattan is sweet, smooth, and vaguely herbal. It goes down too easy as many attendees of our annual February Doldrums Party can attest to. Some folks like them up, others on the rocks. Some shake a Manhattan, others stir. However, these are the finer points you can explore later.

The history of the cocktail dates back to the late 19th Century and is one of cocktails named for NYC's five boroughs. I just tried the Brooklyn and will be blogging about that experience very soon. And, of course, at some point the Bronx, the Queens, and the Staten Island Ferry will also be featured (although the Staten Island Ferry sounds retched, draw your own conclusions).

Although some prefer a perfect Manhattan (half sweet and half dry vermouth), I prefer mine with all sweet vermouth, Carpano Antica or Vya are delicious if you can get your hands on either. Also, I should confess that I like my Manhattan with bourbon--but, let's be honest, I prefer bourbon in every whiskey cocktail. However, a traditional Manhattan is generally made with rye or canadian whiskey (never brandy, Wisconsin, never brandy). For more history on the Manhattan, check out this little NYT article.

Ingredients:
2 oz whiskey (bourbon or rye)
1 oz sweet vermouth
2 dashes bitters (we used Fee Brothers, but orange bitters are also nice)
1 Luxardo cherry

Stir all liquid ingredients with ice and strain into a glass. Serve up or over ice and garnish with a cherry.

The Cardinal's Cocktail

Well, I did some drinking over the holidays, but I did not write anything. Suffice to say that my husband and I finally discovered what a difference homemade makes when it comes to eggnog. Husband made two batches of a somewhat famous recipe from an old Four Roses ad, and we were invited to share some of a friend's batch that had been aged for one year (Really! Alton Brown's recipe). The two eggnogs were different, but both were delicious and in no way like the stuff you buy at the grocery store.

Speaking of homemade being well worth the effort, a friend of ours gave us a bottle of homemade falernum and a bottle of homemade orgeat yesterday. I will write more about the falernum soon, but for tonight I tried the orgeat. Orgeat is a syrup made of almonds and a few other ingredients. Its most well-known use is in the Mai-Tai, but I wanted to try to find something different, so I consulted the CocktailDB and found this one that I had never heard of, called Cardinal's Cocktail. I have had no luck finding out any history of this one because most drinks I have seen called Cardinal involve red wine or Campari, for the bright red color. I'm not sure why this version is not better known, because it's really delicious. The only problem I could find with it was that it was all gone way too quickly.

Cardinal's Cocktail
1 1/2 oz white rum
3/4 oz lime juice
1/4 oz triple sec (Cointreau)
1/4 oz grenadine
1/4 oz orgeat

I have tried store-bought orgeat that was a "gourmet" brand and I didn't think it had much almond flavor at all, but this homemade stuff is terrific. It's thick with a pinky-beigey color, and you have to shake it really well but the flavor is sweet almond, like marzipan.

This recipe as written had 1 oz of lime juice, but it made more sense to me to cut it to 3/4 oz, to make it equal parts lime juice and sweetening ingredients. The balance came out just right, I thought. It definitely didn't need more lime.

If you don't know CocktailDB.com, definitely check it out. It's run by Martin Douderoff and Ted Haigh, aka Dr. Cocktail, the author of Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails. Not only is it a great resource about recipes and ingredients, but also it features really fun photos of bottles from Haigh's personal collection.

The Gimlet

This is a little embarrassing to admit, but sometimes I get the idea that I just don’t like something about a cocktail, and I will never try one. I’ve never had a martini (shocking, I know), for instance, just because I have the idea that I won’t like it (why, I have no clue—gin, I like, dry vermouth, sure, so what’s the problem?). I don’t like olives, so I think that’s where my skepticism of the martini lies, but I am tempted to try one with a lemon twist rather than olive juice. I’ll keep you posted on that front, but another drink I’ve thought I won’t like is the gimlet. Once again, no idea why. It could be because I think Rose’s Lime is a weird color. Anyway, a few years ago, Darci tried to get a gimlet at a bar here, and the bartender had no clue how to make one. We sent the server back with a recipe, and the horribleness that came back was enough to turn us both off of gimlets for awhile. I’ve had a revelation, though, thanks to an article by Troy Patterson over on Slate. You should pop over to that site and check out the article; it was very informative and piqued my interest in the gimlet.

I try to keep my bar well-stocked, so I tend to buy lots of little add-ons that I might use in the future. Rose's Lime Juice is one of these things, so I've owned a bottle for probably two years now. It has never been opened, due to the previously-mentioned blah feeling I had about gimlets. After reading the Slate article, I knew what drink I would be making that evening. I came home and mixed up a glass, not using the Raymond Chandler recipe (half gin and half Rose's Lime and nothing else), but instead the recipe off the Rose's Lime bottle. I threw in some orange bitters and wow! I plan on knocking more than a few of these back, at least until I run out of Rose's Lime. The ingredients:

• 1 1/2 oz gin (I went cheap cheap cheap and used Trader Joe's Jail-House Gin, which is actually quite tasty)
• 1 oz Rose's Lime Juice
• 2 dashes Bittercube Orange Bitters

In an old-fashioned glass, add ice, then gin, Rose's Lime Juice, and the bitters. Stir well and add a slide of lime to garnish.

I was completely blown away by how tasty this gimlet is. It's refreshing and is very simple to make, two things I appreciate. Most of the cocktail blogs or recipe sites I saw are pro-Rose's and anti-fresh lime juice in the gimlet, although I bet they'd be really tasty if you made your own version of Rose's Lime (I think you could mix 1 part 1:1 simple syrup and 1 part lime juice to make a reasonable facsimile, but I'm sure someone else has already done this and has posted about it somewhere on the Internet). Anyway, read that Slate article, check out some other recipes, and mix up your own version of the gimlet.

The Bronx Cocktail and the Income Tax Cocktail

I recently bought a set of four Thin Man movies. For those of you who aren't familiar with the film series, just know that the first one was released in 1934, is based around a detective (Nick Charles) and his wife (Nora), and includes a LOT of references to drinking. I highly recommend it--it's an excellent cocktail movie. Anyway, at one point, Nick Charles is at a bar, talking to some bartenders while he orders a Martini. He instructs the barkeeps, "The important thing is the rhythm. Always have rhythm in your shaking. Now, a Manhattan you shake to fox-trot time, a Bronx to two-step time, a dry martini you always shake to waltz time." I'd heard of a Bronx cocktail before (I love a Manhattan), so I decided to mix up a few of these. 

There are a couple of theories about who came up with the Bronx. Some people think Joseph Sormani created it in Philadelphia around 1905. Other sources credit Johnnie Solon (a bartender in Manhattan), sometime around 1899-1906. Check out the Wikipedia page about this cocktail out; the Solon theory has an entertaining creation story.

I generally don't trust the cocktail recipes on Wikipedia, so I hit the cocktail books and found this in Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails. It was filed under a different drink, the Income Tax. One of my favorite things about cocktails is the history of the cocktail or how cocktails relate to each other. For example, the Manhattan (sweet vermouth and bourbon) became the Martinez (sweet vermouth and gin) became the Martini (dry vermouth and gin)...I just find this incredibly interesting (this is an excellent story about just this genealogy). From the standpoint of a very amateur barman, these connections make it easier to add drinks to my "memorized cocktail" list, just by slight adjustments. The Income Tax is just a Bronx, but with two dashes of Angostura bitters. 

The Bronx

• 1 1/2 oz gin (I used Gordon's)
• 3/4 oz sweet vermouth
• 3/4 oz dry vermouth
• Juice of 1/4 orange, freshly squeezed (This is obviously really vague. I used 1/3 of an oz.)

The Income Tax

• 1 1/2 oz gin 
• 3/4 oz sweet vermouth
• 3/4 oz dry vermouth
• Juice of 1/4 orange, freshly squeezed
• 2 dashes Angostura bitters

I quite liked both of these drinks. I would call the Bronx a citrus-y cousin to the Manhattan--the orange mellows the booze a little, but it is still pretty strong. As for the Income Tax, the bitters add a little sophistication and a lot of depth to the drink. These are ingredients that are pretty common, so you probably already have everything to make them, so that's a nice bonus that rarely happens. 

Philadelphia Fish House Punch

This past weekend, we got an invite to a little pre-Thanksgiving pie party and I volunteered to bring a cocktail, because, well, it's kind of what I do. I did some digging around and settled on Philadelphia Fish House Punch. Imbibe Magazine did a good write-up of some of the history of the drink; make sure you click that link. The punch was created in 1732 (1732!!) in a Philadelphia fishing club, the State in Schuylkill. The father of our nation, one George Washington, was fond of the punch, and it's said that he once drank so much Fish House Punch that he couldn't write in his diary for the next three days. After this experience, I can't say I blame him.

I always feel like making a drink at a party without testing it out first is risky, but I flew by the seat of my pants with this one. The list of ingredients (peach brandy, rum, and brandy) led me to think that it would be safe, so I took the plunge. I got this particular version of the recipe from Bon Appetit magazine, but there are a ton of different versions out there, including one in that Imbibe article and one in Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails. The recipes are all fairly similar, with slightly different ingredients and ratios.

The recipe I made was (and you're going to need a really big bowl to mix this up):

• 1 1/4 cup of sugar (mix this 1:1 with hot water to make simple syrup)
• 1 liter of Jamaican Gold rum (I used Appleton)
• 2 cups cognac (Disclaimer: I know nothing about brandy or cognac, but I do know that cognac was way more expensive than brandy. I went with brandy, specifically Korbel XS.)
• 1 1/2 cups lemon juice
• 1 cup peach liqueur (I have no shame--I used Mr. Boston's Peach Schnapps.)

First off, you're going to want to make a big block of ice. We have a bunch of peaches in the freezer, so we put some in a Bundt pan with some thyme springs (the recipe called for this, I certainly didn't make it up), added water, and froze. This actually turned out pretty cool. Now that your ice is freezing, you can combine the ingredients. Add in the simple syrup, rum, cognac (or brandy), lemon juice, and peach liqueur. Throw in AT LEAST six cups of cold water. You could really probably add like eight or nine cups and it would not cut the strength of the punch. I have a Soda Stream, so I fizzed up a couple liters of water so I could use fizzy instead of flat water. I used about a liter and a half (about 7-ish cups if my math is right), but I should have put both liters in. The fizzy water was a nice addition. Stir everything thoroughly and carefully place the ice block in, peach side up.

This was a bigger hit than I was expecting at the party (these folks tend to be wine drinkers for the most part). The only real downside is that the punch is deceptively strong, it doesn't taste boozy at all. By the time I finished two small cups (approximately one cup each), I was pretty well drunk. The darn thing was just so tasty and I felt like the water didn't thin it too much (it was slightly syrup-y)--this is why I think more water would be a good addition, to make it less syrup-y and less potent. It was peachy and sweet and a tiny bit sour all at once. If you don't want to make a big batch, I bet there are recipes out there that cut it down to single-serving sizes.

The Seelbach

I'm from Kentucky, and around here, everyone starts talking mint juleps in May, at Derby time. I have never liked mint juleps, and frankly, I don't know many people who do like them, but we all drink them on Derby Day. A couple of times, I got by with putting bourbon and ginger ale in my julep cup, but then I discovered the Seelbach cocktail. This cocktail is named for the Seelbach Hotel, where it was introduced in 1917 at its famous bar.

F. Scott Fitzgerald was once kicked out of the Seelbach for having a bit too much bourbon, and Al Capone was a regular there, as well. Movie stars and presidents have stayed there, and it's on the National Register of Historic Places. I decided that the Seelbach cocktail is an even better tribute to the beautiful city of Louisville, where the Derby takes place, and considerably more delicious than a mint julep, so now that's what I drink on the first Saturday in May.

1.5 oz bourbon
1/2 oz Cointreau
7 dashes Angostura bitters
7 dashes Peychauds bitters

Stir with ice in a mixing glass, strain into a cocktail glass or a flute glass, and top with champagne. Garnish with an orange peel.

Yes, that's 14 dashes of bitters.

The Seelbach is probably my favorite bourbon cocktail, and one of my favorite of all cocktails.

The 20th Century

The 20th Century is an unusual cocktail. It was named for the 20th Century Limited passenger train, that ran from New York to Chicago, and in 1937 introduced a new ultra-modern streamlined design for trains that started operating in 1938. The train was considered the epitome of modern luxury and sophistication. Ted Haigh in Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails says the 20th Century cocktail is "exactly what Art Deco tastes like."

The first time I saw the recipe for this cocktail, I couldn't wait to try it, just because it seemed so odd.

1.5 oz gin
3/4 oz Lillet Blanc
1/2 oz white creme de cacao
3/4 oz fresh lemon juice

Shake with ice and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a lemon twist.

The recipe is very similar to the Corpse Reviver #2, with the lemon and Lillet, but replaces the Cointreau with creme de cacao. First, I will say that it does not really taste particularly chocolatey. The creme de cacao just gives the drink a delicious "what is that" quality. Ted Haigh also says that cocktail legend Gary Regan calls this his favorite "lost" cocktail. I think it's one that definitely deserves more attention.

The Sazerac

I have a real fascination with the history of New Orleans and in particular, the cocktails of the area. Our last post was the Stormy Morning, created in New Orleans. I'm going to continue the NOLA thread with the Sazerac.

At its core, the Sazerac is a variety of an Old Fashioned--it has a spirit, bitters, and sugar--but this goes a bit farther with the addition of absinthe. Traditionally, the drink is mixed using two glasses. The glass the drink is served in has an absinthe rinse (that means you pour a little in the glass, swish it around, and dump out whatever doesn't stick to the glass) and the second glass is where you actually mix the ingredients together. The drink is then poured into the rinsed glass and served.

Originally, the Sazerac was made with cognac, specifically, Sazerac-de-Forge et Fils. Around 1850, Sewell Taylor sold his tavern and began importing this cognac. The fellow (Aaron Bird) who bought Taylor's bar renamed it the Sazerac House and started serving, you guessed it, the Sazerac Cocktail. The cognac was joined by Peychaud's Bitters, which were created right down the street by Antoine Amadie Peychaud, a local druggist. The cognac switched to rye around 1870, during a Phylloxera epidemic in France that devastated their grape crops. Supposedly, the Sazerac is America's oldest cocktail, whether that's true or not is probably up for debate, like most cocktail history. Regardless of that, though, the Sazerac is the official cocktail of New Orleans, and that's pretty cool.

Currently, the Sazerac Company owns Sazerac Rye, Peychaud's Bitters, and about twenty different bourbon distilleries. Their website is pretty amazing, in an Internet circa 2001 sort of way, so you should really check it out.

I pulled this recipe from the Savoy Cocktail book, but there are obviously a ton of variations out there, including one from the Sazerac page. As a note, if you're using the Savoy, you'll notice that the measurements are, well, a bit odd. There are units of measurement like wine-glass, dessert-spoon, and hooker (!). I did a quick search and found this very useful page: Traditional Units of Measure Pertaining to Mixology. I bookmarked it; you should, too. Anyway, the ingredients:

• 1 Lump of sugar
• 1 Dash Angostura or Peychaud's Bitters (I used Peychaud's)
• 1 Glass rye or Canadian Club Whiskey (I used Sazerac Rye)
• 1 Dash of absinthe (I used Absente)

Mix all ingredients except absinthe in a glass, strain into a chilled glass, and top with one dash of absinthe. Garnish with a lemon peel. 

This is definitely a very aromatic drink. I would say the absinthe is mainly an olfactory addition; the rye covers the taste of it fairly well, although the tiniest amount of absinthe has the ability to cut through basically any other liquid. The bitters are also an aromatic addition, but you can taste both the absinthe and the bitters ever so slightly. I love this drink, but the first time I made one, I was completely overwhelmed by the absinthe. After that first shock, though, it grew on me, and now I have them on a regular-ish basis. So, if you make one and you think, WHOA, don't give up! Think on it for a few days and make another because you might be surprised.

Stormy Morning

Two of my favorite liqueurs are St. Germain, which is an elderflower liqueur, and Creme de Violette, a violet-flavored liqueur. In a search for a Creme de Violette cocktail, I came across the Stormy Morning, a drink created at Bayona in New Orleans. The images from other sites listing this recipe really drew me in--the dark purple that transitions to a hazy light violet evokes the name of the cocktail amazingly well. The whole time I was drinking it, I had "Stormy Weather" (the Martha Wainwright version) stuck in my head. Not exactly the same, but close enough.

The ingredients:

• 1 1/2 oz Creme de Violette (we use Rothman & Winter)
• 1 1/2 oz St. Germain (or elderflower syrup)
• 1 oz fresh lime juice
• 4 oz Champagne or other sparkling wine (Many of the cocktails I've seen recently call for topping off with bubbly, so last time we were at Trader Joe's, we picked up a variety of cheap sparkling wine. The kind I used here is some Italian Asti that was like 5 bucks a bottle.)

Fill a Tom Collins glass or tumbler with ice and slowly pour in the ingredients, starting with the Creme de Violette, the St. Germain, the lime juice, and topping off with Champagne. Slightly (very slightly!) stir and enjoy. 

When you start to drink it, it's mostly just Champagne, but as you drink further down, you're hit with the other flavors. By the time you get about halfway down, it gets sweeter, more floral, and fruitier. This is a really spectacular drink and I love anything that lets me use more than 1/2 oz of Creme de Violette. I think this would make an amazing brunch drink...we had it before dinner with some cheese and crackers and it really hit the spot.

The Old Fashioned

If I had to pick my favorite cocktail, I'd say it is the Old Fashioned. There are a number of reasons for this choice: number 1, I really like bourbon and rye (you can use either of these); secondly, they are super easy to make and I almost always have all the ingredients; third, this drink was named in my hometown, Louisville, in the late 1800s. Also, I like the OF because I really don't have to measure anything. I drop a sugar cube in a glass, add a little soda water, throw in some bitters, muddle a bit, and then pour some bourbon in a glass. I only dirty the glass and the muddler, and they are quick to make. The Old Fashioned has a long history--the drink has its origins in the early 1800s and was essentially any combination of a spirit, bitters, sugar, and water. As time went on, other ingredients were added and by the 1880s, this original recipe was called the "Old Fashioned." The rumor goes that this name was given to the bourbon-based version in Louisville at a club named the Pendennis Club.

As I said, the original recipe could include rye, bourbon, whiskey, brandy, gin, and so on. In fact, in The Savoy Cocktail Book, Harry Craddock says, "This Cocktail can be made with Brandy, Gin, Rum, etc., instead of Rye Whiskey." Modern-day Old Fashioneds, though, generally use some whiskey (bourbon, rye, or plain ol' whiskey) or, if you live in Wisconsin, brandy.

That takes me to the monstrosity known as a Wisconsin Old Fashioned (see this New York Times article on the matter). The main difference with this is, of course, the brandy, but there is also the trouble with what should be seltzer water. Wisconites take their Old Fashioneds in a couple of different ways: sweet, with 7-Up instead of seltzer; or sour, with sour mix or Squirt instead of seltzer. Both versions are flat-out too sweet, because they aren't just using a splash of the 7-Up or Squirt, they top off the whole drink with that. Warning: wicked hangover in the works. This state loves these so much you can even buy them premade, in a bottle.

If this is your preferred variety of Old Fashioned, well, to each their own. I, too, came to this drink from a decidedly not old fashioned route--the fruit salad version of the Old Fashioned. These came to popularity in the 2000s and involved muddling an orange slice, a cherry, etc., in with the sugar, bitters, and soda water. I drank the OF this way for a few years before I finally took the dive and started drinking them the Don Draper way. Let's not ignore the popularity of Mad Men as an important turn in the history of the Old Fashioned. That's how I was introduced to this glorious mix. Don and I will always have this drink in common.

Anyway, to the recipe:

• 1 sugar cube (or 1/2 teaspoon loose sugar)
• 3 dashes Angostura bitters (Angostura is just a suggestion; I like orange bitters in mine, which could be Angostura Orange, Regan's Orange Bitters No. 6, or Bittercube Orange bitters)
• 2 oz spirit of choice (I am a big fan of Bulleit Rye in these, but for this one, we used Four Roses Single Barrel bourbon)
• Splash of club soda (or seltzer)

In an old-fashioned glass (get it?), add the sugar cube, bitters, and club soda. Muddle to a slurry using a muddler or wooden spoon. Add ice and bourbon or rye. Give a slight stir to the mix, but keep the slurry in the bottom. Garnish with a large orange peel.

I like bourbon and rye on the rocks, and this is just a nice extension from that. By not stirring the sugar slurry in, you get a nice kick of sweetness on the last drink. The orange from the bitters and the garnish makes it citrus-y, and the bourbon or rye gives it a nice caramel-y and vanilla flavor. This is a drink you can really make your own; you can try different bitters (but I'd stay in the aromatic or citrus families) and different spirits until you find a mix you can call your own. 

The Aviation and the Blue Moon

Much like the Negroni and the Americano belong to the same family of cocktails, the Aviation and the Blue Moon are kissing cousins. The first documented recipe for the Aviation comes from Hugo Ensslin's seminal cocktail book Recipes for Mixed Drinks. Published in 1916, Ensslin's compendium of cocktails provides an interesting historical perspective on what are now established traditional cocktails. Ensslin's version of the Aviation includes gin, lemon juice, and both maraschino liqueur (such as Luxardo) and Crème de Violette (a liqueur made from violets); however, Crème de Violette, soon after the Aviation's debut, became increasingly difficult to find. As a result of this scarcity, by the time the Savoy Cocktail Book was published, the ingredient had been eliminated entirely. Thanks to Rothman and Winter, however, Crème de Violette is once again in regular production. 

This brings me to the Blue Moon. In Ensslin's book, the recipe calls for another difficult-to-find liqueur, Crème Yvette. Like Crème de Violette, it is also made from violets, but also features other aromatics like vanilla and orange peel. And, unlike Crème de Violette, Crème Yvette will give your cockatil a pinkish hue instead of the more periwinkle color of Crème de Violette. Rumor has it that Crème Yvette is now back in production--I've yet to see it, but I would love to get my hands on some!

On to the most important details--how they taste. The Aviation is a bit stringent for my tastes--we've been making it according to the Savoy recipe and to be honest I think it would benefit from a few dashes of Crème de Violette. The Blue Moon on the other hand is probably my favorite (of all the favorites) cocktail of the vintage cocktails we've been drinking. It's sweet, floral, and citrusy. The Crème de Violette reminds me of the violette pastilles I used to buy during my study abroad in France. I love how the gin is so perfectly complimented by the other elements in the drink. We use a basic London Dry, but I can imagine this is probably also very good with a more floral gin like Hendrick's. 

The Aviation (according to the Savoy Cocktail Book)

• 2 1/2 oz gin (we used Plymouth)
• 3/4 oz fresh lemon juice2-3 dashes maraschino liqueur

Shake in an ice cocktail shaker, strain into a cocktail glass, and garnish with lemon twist.

The Blue Moon (according to Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails)

• 2 oz gin
• 1/2 oz Crème Yvette (or Crème de Violette)
• 1/2 oz fresh lemon juice

Shake in an ice cocktail shaker, strain into a cocktail glass, and garnish with lemon twist.

**Note: Sometimes we don't have lemons--I suppose there's no good excuse except for the fact that they are not native to Wisconsin, are frequently expensive, and we cannot be bothered with juicing them. So, based on Melinda's recommendation, we've been buying Santa Cruz Organic Lemon Juice and using it when we don't have fresh lemons. To be perfectly honest, I can't generally tell the difference between this bottled juice and fresh lemon juice.