Renaissance de l'Orange

A friend of mine posted a very good cocktail on Facebook the other day, using coffee liqueur as a substitute for the sweet vermouth in a Manhattan. Sadly, her drink called for juices that I don't have, like orange juice. (It's a strange life). What I do have, is Pyrat, a rum that is quite orange forward. So I thought I'd do something to try and re-create Kat's drink. Here's the Renaissance de l'Orange:

1.5 oz Pyrat rum (you could maybe do a white rum with Cointreau? I haven't tried it that way, so I promise nothing)
.5 oz Nocino liqueur
.5 oz Creme de Cacao
.5 oz Coffee liqueur (I used St. George, but do as you will).
I finished it with lemon bitters. Mole or habenero bitters could be good too. Cheers!

Daiquiri Experimentation

The bartender at Proof is apparently getting bored: for the next two weeks, he's offering four variations on the Daiquiri. After that, it's the Whiskey Sour for those of you who aren't rum people.

h/t: Urban Daddy

The Lady's Leg

This week's Mixology Monday was themed around 'humbug', trying to create an anti-Christmas drink. I didn't have any particularly good ideas, but if by anti-Christmas, you mean an escape-your-relatives-boozy type of drink, this one will do it for you. It's named after the iconic lamp from A Christmas Story. This will be my last post until the new year. Merry Christmas!

Lady's Leg
3 oz Crabapple Schapps
1.5 oz Vanilla Vodka
.5 oz Allspice dram
.5 oz Maraschino Liqueur
dashes, mole bitters

The Tuxedo

The other day, I was looking for cocktails to use my new Bittermen's mole bitters in, and happened across this article which, in addition to the lovely Left Hand cocktail (pro tip: go easy on the bitters in this one), had a recipe for the old tuxedo. In the PDT cocktail book, it had a picture of a money in a tuxedo, which recommended this to the writer. Such is the acumen of Wall Street Journal writers: easily distracted by a monkey in a tuxedo. Nevertheless, it is a quite excellent cocktail.

It is a variation on a 2:1 martini, adding in a few dashes of maraschino liqueur and absinthe (I used Pernod). These additions make the martini more interesting, though one needs to be careful about adding too much Pernod. The PDT recipe has you rinse the glass with Pernod, and add 1/4 ounce maraschino liqueur. I used Dale DeGroff's recipe from Craft of the Cocktail, which is reproduced after the jump. Following Mr. DeGroff, which asks for a couple dashes of Pernod and maraschino liqueur, I ended up without quite enough maraschino, though that's probably mostly my own fault. Certainly the variations in the recipes are mostly a matter of individual taste.

MxMo: Rahasia

A hearty welcome back to Mixology Monday! Mixology Monday is a semi-regular event that has various cocktail bloggers creating a cocktail based on a theme. It's hosted by Cocktail Virgin Slut, and we appreciate Fred bringing it back. Past themes have included tiki and morning drinks. This month's theme is 'equal parts'. The idea is to create a cocktail that mixes equal parts of its component ingredients. Since fall is fast approaching, I thought I'd go with an anti-Negroni.

As opposed to the Negroni, which is bright and a little fruity, this is dark and rich. I was originally calling it the Inorgen, which is Negroni spelled backwards, but then decided that was dumb. I didn't think it was going to be much good -- it was pretty sweet and a little syrupy. But the addition of the grapefruit bitters transformed the drink. It's wonderfully complex, with some spiciness from the rye, some bitterness from the Averna, some sweetness from the Cardamaro, and some herbality (herbalness?) from the bitters. It's still very rich, but pretty good. Recipe after the jump.

Snickerdoodle

It's fall time, and that means time for fall cocktails! I've been playing around with Becherovka cocktails, and this one is great for a crisp autumn evening. There's a lot of cinnamon, but enough cookie and ginger that it tastes more like a snickerdoodle than a cinnamon stick. It's not sweet, mind you, but somehow it still tastes like a cookie. This is a golden ratio recipe; it might have been too boozy, but there are enough spices in the Becherovka that you don't notice the alcohol. Recipe after the jump.

The Good Corque

I like thespir.it, though sometimes the recipes seem less than entirely useful. But today I got a recipe for a drink I wanted to try: The Good Cork. One problem though -- it called for Red Breast Irish Whisky. We don't have Red Breast, and I wasn't sure what would make a good substitution for a single malt Irish Whiskey. I thought about bourbon, but I eventually decided on brandy. My wife made a similar cocktail, but subbed in scotch. We both liked mine better, but disagreed on whether it was because mine was less sweet or more sweet.

I like this drink both because it's tasty, and because it admits easily of substitutions. You could easily use any brown liquor instead of the Irish Whiskey,  and any herbal liqueur instead of the Benedictine. (I think Green Chartreuse might be especially interesting). The mezcal in this version gives it a smoky backbone, while the brandy lends a nice sweetness to balance the smoke. Recipe after the jump.

Czech Friend

I tried this drink twice, first as part of my spurt of becherovka cocktails, and then later with a few changes. It's basically a twist on the Old Pal, with the ingredients lightened up to allow the Becherovka to shine through. The first version was good, if a little simple. There was lots of cinnamon, enough that I thought it needed something to cut the cinnamon, maybe something sour. So the second time, I added a couple dashes of lemon bitters. The lemon bitters definitely help make this cocktail. There are definite cinnamon flavors still, but they don't overwhelm the rest of the drink. It's not robust enough to be a winter warmer, but it's a nice drink for a summer night. Recipe after the jump.

Happy Belated Rickey Month

Photo by Reece Lloyd, on flickr.

Apparently, July is National Rickey Month. I've been remiss. Typically, a rickey is made with a shot of gin, half a lime, and soda; after juicing the lime, you put the lime carcass in the drink. It's historically also been made with bourbon, though that's much less common. The rickey is the official drink of D.C., and so the D.C. Craft Bartenders Guild declared July National Rickey Month.

A rickey is a fine, refreshing drink, but there's not a whole lot going on. So there's been a contest to find the best variation in town. All month, bars across the city (as well as a couple in Virginia) have been offering their take on the rickey. Get five punches in your rickey card, and you get free admission to Jack Rose for the finals on August 5th. There's still time to get your punches, so get to it! Our favorite so far has been the Strawberry-Rhubarb rickey at Vinoteca, which sadly wasn't entered into the contest. If you like pickles, you should try Rachel Sergi's I'm Gonna Need You to Focus Rickey, which involves pickled soda and is available at Jack Rose.

Negroni Punch

As long time readers of the blog are aware, I'm a big fan of the Negroni. But sometimes, I want something a bit lighter, especially when it's hot out. For a long time, I went for a Campari soda to get that nice refreshing bitterness. But this past weekend, I happened to have a grapefruit lying around, so I thought I'd see what I could do with it. I like the way negronis go with grapefruit anyway, so that's where I went.

I combined the juice of half of the grapefruit with an oversized negroni, and topped it off with soda water. I think I should have gone with a normal sized negroni, since there wasn't a whole lot of room for the soda when everything was said and done. But it ended up good enough that my wife made me make her one, so not too shabby. It's a great drink for an overly hot summer afternoon. Recipe after the jump.

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.

Spirits in Black tonight!

Courtesy of the Washington Post:

You won’t find Bryan Tetorakis behind the bar at Rogue 24 tonight. Instead, at around 10 p.m., he’ll be crafting cocktails with an edge at American Ice Company for Spirits in Black, a boozy, wink-and-nod tribute to heavy metal, replete with atonals, growling vocals, awesome hair and headbanging.

 American Ice Company is a great venue, and Bryan certainly knows what he's doing behind the bar, so this would be a great event to go to if you're in to cocktails.

Mexican Manhattan

As part of my never-ending quest to find more uses for a bottle of mezcal, I decided to add some to a Manhattan and see what happens. Given the spicy smokiness of the mezcal, I used Punt e Mes to provide a bit more sauciness; I figured Dolin Rouge wouldn't stand up to the mezcal well enough. I also used the traditional rye instead of bourbon. I added Hellfire bitters, because once a drink is this spicy, what's a little more spiciness?

Unsurprisingly, going for the spiciest ingredient at each step makes for a very spicy drink. It blends together very well, each ingredient adding its own thing to the cocktail. There's definitely an underlying sweetness here, with a bit of fruit I didn't expect. It's quite good, though it might be worth trying with bourbon to tone down the sweetness. Recipe after the jump.

The Frisco

Golden Gate Bridge. Photo by Niall Kennedy, on flickr.

One of the features of the craft cocktail revolution that is intriguing to me is the search for the original recipe of a cocktail. Now, I'm not a fetishist for authenticity, either in my cocktails or elsewhere, so it's all a bit mysterious to me. But I admire their enthusiasm and dedication to tracking down the One True Recipe. This New York Times article actually provides a good example of trying to balance the quest for authenticity with the quest for a tasty beverage. Unlike noir classics, which start with a girl, this starts with a drink:

Last month I dined in a Los Angeles restaurant called Test Kitchen, which provides space for chefs from other establishments to try out new menus or put dishes through trial runs. On the night I was there the proprietors of Red Medicine, a progressive Vietnamese place that was getting ready to open, were introducing their food and cocktails, including a drink identified as the No. 15 and described as a mix of rye, Bénédictine and lemon. I had a No. 15 early in the seven-course dinner and several more as the meal unfolded because the drink so nicely matched the food and so beautifully hit the spot.

Of course, like any good journalist, Bruni needs to get to the bottom of this cocktail. He quickly found out that the No. 15 was a Frisco. Or like a Frisco. After a bit of research, he finds that the Frisco is spoken of in a variety of ways. The principal question is whether it's made from bourbon or rye.

The answer is vague and depends on how far you travel back in time. This I learned from Jim Meehan, a cocktail sage at PDT in the East Village. When I called him about the Frisco, he was immediately familiar with it, though like Ms. Saunders he went through a moment of rye-bourbon befuddlement, which he was determined to resolve.
“Call me back in 45 minutes,” he said.
That was all the time he needed to riffle through his research books and place a few strategic calls of his own. He said that a Frisco recipe from the early part of the 20th century mentioned whiskey without specifying what type, and Bénédictine. Frisco recipes from the 1940s, he said, specifically call for bourbon.

But it doesn't end there! Bruni tries a number of combinations of rye, bourbon, Bénédictine, and lemon juice,  and in his opinion, it's 1.5 oz of rye, 1/4 oz Bénédictine, and 1/2 oz lemon juice. Just for the ease of measuring (really!), I'm going to try the second suggested recipe of 2 oz rye, 1/2 oz Bénédictine, and 1/2 oz lemon juice.

What a great drink! The lemon juice, Bénédictine, and rye all blend together really well, with the lemon juice removing the sweetness of the Bénédictine, and the rye providing an excellent base. If I had any complaints, it would be that this drink is a bit acerbic. When I try it again, I might use Bruni's recipe, but switch the proportion of the Bénédictine and the lemon juice. Alternatively, you could try using Meyer lemons in place of the lemon juice.

Fall-ing for Hemmingway

Now that I finally have some homemade Orgeat, I figured I should use it in a cocktail. There are lots of options. I wanted to save the traditional Mai Tai for when my wife was around, and for some reason, a lot of the other recipes I have laying around call for obscene amount of Angostura bitters. But the Plate recently posted a recipe that called for a reasonable amount of Angostura bitters. I still don't have any, but I'm more willing to substitute when an ingredient isn't a full ounce.

The first thing I noticed about this drink is how sweet it is. It's very good, and the lime juice helps balance it out, but between the rum and the orgeat, it's really sweet. After the sweetness, the main flavor I get is the allspice dram. I think I can take some nuts between the sweetness and the allspice, but that could just be my imagination. If I make this again, I'll probably up the lime juice to an ounce, or perhaps add more bitters. Recipe after the jump.

La Rosita

Ah, spring, that time of year when a young man's thoughts turn to tequila. I don't drink tequila particularly often, but while I associate it with spring and summer, I drink it year-round. It's too nice of a brown liquor not to drink during the winter. I like a good margarita as much as the next guy, but from time to time, it's fun to do something different. Michael Dietsch posted a drink on his blog, Dash of Bitters, that sounded good to me, in large part due to it's inclusion of Campari.

I like the drink. The tequila is powerful enough to stand up to the Campari, though it would be interesting to try with some Aperol instead. Between the Campari and the tequila, it's quite boozy, and not very sweet. Dietsch describes it as slightly herbal, lightly bitter. It's certainly not a drink if you don't love Campari and tequila both. Fortunately, I do, and the slight amount of herbaceousness that comes through is a nice change from your typical light on the palate summertime drinks. Recipe after the jump.

5th Annual Beacon Bar Martini Contest

Last night, I attended the Beacon Bar Martini contest with my wife and a friend of ours. As expected, we had a wonderful time. The 'martinis' were of varying qualities, and while some were better than others, there weren't any truly heinous ones. The secret ingredient was coconut vodka from Skyy which combines two of my least favorite things in liquor, vodka and coconut, so I found the cocktails better when they 'balanced' out the coconut flavor. I had four favorites, courtesy of DC Coast, Sky Bar, Occidental, and the Four Seasons. They were all quite good, and encourage me to patronize their establishment. Sadly, the DC Coast table was swamped, so I don't have notes on their cocktail.

Sunny Kim from the Sky Bar at Beacon Hotel did well on her home turf. She had two cocktails, one a chocolate one that pretty much only tasted like chocolate, and a far more successful pomegrate cocktail called "Acapulco is Dangerous." This drink incorporated lemon and açai with the coconut, balancing it out nicely. She also placed coconut jelly and pomegranate, giving some textural play to the drink.

Jo Jo Valenzuela from the Occidental prepared a drink he called "Flight of the Coco Melon." To the coconut vodka, he added some melon water (it looked like cantaloupe), cinnamon tincture, and fresh dill. I asked why he used a cinnamon tincture instead of a pimento dram, and he said it helped keep it light. It was certainly a nice, light and refreshing drink.

My favorite drink of the night was the "Coconut Delight," by Aaron Joseph of the Four Seasons and Sax. This drink used lemon and pineapple to balance out the coconut, and it was one of the few drinks that managed to taste good, and yet still taste a bit like coconut. As a garnish, he used a grilled pineapple. This added some smokiness to the drink, but the pineapple itself was a bit limp, and was big enough to hinder drinking.

The food was fine, but not the focus of the event, though I did really enjoy the shrimp ceviche. Now I can't wait for the competition to come back around next year!

New York City can fuck off

I swear one of the cocktail blogs I follow (which you can see to the right) mentioned a drink involving Cocchi. I haven't been able to find it. But looking for it, I found an old post from We Love DC talking about a drink they called "Chokin' in Manhattan".

While I still like a well-made Manhattan, it just is not something I find myself ordering at a bar all that often any more. There usually has to be some kind of “hook” to get my attention on a menu – maybe they barrel-aged it or use some interesting house-made ingredients. In the case of Tryst and their Chokin’ in Manhattan, they add one of my favorite liqueurs, Cynar.

Cynar is a bitter Italian liqueur with a variety of botanical flavors, but predominately artichoke. It is bittersweet and vegetal and I am a total sucker for it. In the Chokin’ in Manhattan, it is used as the bitters component, and Cocchi Americano takes the place of sweet vermouth. The resulting drink is less sweet than some Manhattans – due also to replacing the cherry with a wee shrivel of lemon peel – and a pleasant and interesting twist.

Largely because I don't keep a lot of lemon peel around, I don't garnish. Following my ratio theory of cocktail building, I built the cocktail using rye, Cynar, and Cocchi Americano. I renamed the cocktail "Fuck Off New York," since it's a more bitter variation on the Manhattan, and I like the Matson Jones song. It's definitely bitter and vegetal. I'm glad I used the Rittenhouse Rye 100, since you need a really forceful rye to stand up to the bitters, but it really does come together well. Recipe after the jump.

El Raja Key pt. 2

I wanted to try the El Raja Key again, this time with the edits I talked about here. Last time, the flavors didn't blend well, and it was too tart. This time, I replaced the grapefruit bitters with Peychaud's, used orange juice instead of muddled kumquats, and topped it off with soda water. How'd I do?

Much better. The tartness is much more subdued, more of a underlying note to the raspberry flavor. Not only that, but the raspberry flavor is more subtle, allowing everything to come together. I think the orange juice/kumquats helps the citrus to be more of a layered effect, and not simply a lemon-lime, but I'm not sure how much the ginger really adds. Perhaps I should try a variant and use Domaine de Canton instead of the simple syrup and see how that works. This isn't really a winter drink, but it'd be great for the patio in the summer warmth. Recipe after the jump.

Tre Amici

I started off wanting to do a variant negroni with the new bitter I bought over the weekend, but this turned into something else entirely. I was going to swap out the Campari for Aperol, but then started thinking about the other substitutions I could make, a la the Mr. Potato Head theory of cocktails. I know that Cardamaro can be a good substitute for sweet vermouth, if you like your drinks a bit more savory and bitter (and I do!) So that led me to start thinking about what I could sub for the gin.

Most of your major spirits don't make good substitutes for gin. Vodka is boring. Rum is sweeter and, to be honest, often less complex. And the brown spirits are really another thing entirely. But I had the fortune of purchasing (finally) a bottle of Cocchi Americano yesterday, and was eager to try it out. So I figured why not sub the Cocchi in for the gin? The first sip was fairly tasty, but a bit bitter. It needed something to tie it together. After two dashes of Boker's Bitters, it was complete.

Unsurprisingly, the Tre Amici is fairly bitter. But it's balanced out by the latent sweetness in the Cardamaro, and the Boker's really helps tie it together. You can taste all of the components, but they work off of each other to produce an exceptionally balanced cocktail. Recipe after the jump.