Jack Rose

The Jack Rose is a cocktail with a long history. Popular in the 1920s and 30s, it appeared in a scene in Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises. I was unaware of this drink until an eponymous bar opened up on the south end of Adams Morgan. I tried it when I went there for New Year's Eve, but for some reason don't recall the details of the drink. So having made some homemade grenadine, I thought this would be a great opportunity to try the drink again.

I found a couple different recipes in my cocktail books, and decided to go with the one from Dale DeGroff's Craft of the Cocktail. It was very tasty and refreshing, similar in fact to the effect I'm trying to get with my Apple Beverages. Sadly, it was way too sweet. My wife couldn't even finish it! So it's probably better without the simple syrup. Recipe after the jump.

Apple Beverage #4: Now we're cooking with fire!

This is much better than my previous attempts. It's probably the best drink since the first, and certainly the one that tastes most like apples. It's interesting just how pale it is -- the glass in the picture to the left is half full. The nose is very apple-like. The flavor is reminiscent of apples, though it's a bit bitter. I wouldn't want to put any less vermouth in it, so maybe just some more simple syrup would do the trick. That might make it too sweet though -- I'm more looking for crisp. Maybe some sort of bitters. In any case, I'm pretty happy with how this one turned out.

Apple Beverage #4
1.5 oz Applejack
.5 oz Dry Vermouth
.5 oz Lemon Vodka
splash, ginger simple syrup

Apple Beverage #3

As I've mentioned before, I've been working on a beverage that tastes like apple. For now at least, I'm referring to it as "Apple Beverage". At some point I plan to discuss Apple Beverage #1 and #2, but this is Apple Beverage #3.

Apple Beverage #3
1.5 oz Applejack
.5 oz Allspice Dram
.5 oz Domaine de Canton

This one is less crisp apple and more apple pie. The allspice dram gives it a lot of spice, and the Domaine gives it a bit of a kick. I added a dash of Boker's Bitters to help balance out the sweetness. That helped, but not enough. The allspice dram tends to be a bit overpowering as well.

Apple Beverage

Image from geekphilosopher.com.

So I've been working on a cocktail that tastes like an apple. It's hard! I started off with Applejack, lemon juice, and Domaine de Canton. The first iteration was quite good, but very, very lemony. I'll post it here sometime. The second was more apple like, but still too lemony, so I switched to lemon vodka. I'll need to fool around a bit more, but the lemon vodka is the right idea, I think. Last night I tried something a bit different -- I threw together lemon vodka, St. Germain, and Applejack. It didn't really work. There might be a good drink in there somewhere, but it's not going to be particularly apple-flavored. This iteration had too much St. Germain, so it mostly tasted like elderflower. I wonder if some dry vermouth might not help some of these recipes?