Casbah

Photo by John Holland, on flickr.

The Casbah is a bit of a variant on a Manhattan. Back when I was young, I took most of my drinking advice from a slightly older gentleman we nicknamed Jim "Beam". Among his drinks was a Manhattan, always with a splash of grenadine. I eventually moved on from those to different sorts of Manhattans, but the suggestion always stuck with me. So now that I have my own grenadine, it was time to play with it. Grenadine combined with sweet vermouth is just too sweet for me, but I figured I could replace the sweet vermouth, and it would be okay, so for my first recipe I got the following:

1.5 oz Rye
.5 oz Grenadine
3 dashes, Peychaud's bitters

It ended up very floral, since I added a bit more orange flower water to make the grenadine than may have been in fact ideal. It was somewhat sweeter than usual as well, and the Peychaud's seemed to aggravate that. It needed a different sort of bitters.

The second time I tried, I used 1/4 oz grenadine and added hellfire bitters.This version was much better and had a great finish. The third version I used Angostura bitters, and again, it was quite floral, though not exceptionally sweet. Not a bad summer drink for someone who likes brown spirits.

Trinidad Sour

I recently made some orgeat, and in researching drinks to use it in, I came across a number of intriguing options. One of the most intriguing was the Trinidad Sour. You rarely see drinks that require any more than a few dashes of non-potable bitters, let alone a full ounce. There's a reason they're called non-potable! But I figured I should give it a shot.

It turned out really well. The sweetness of the orgeat compensates for the bitterness of the bitters, and the sourness of the lemon juice makes quite a complex drink. It tastes very herbal, with a sour aftertaste (but in a fun way!) A very nice drink, and a good change from the ordinary. Recipe after the jump.