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.

The Golden Ratio: A Cocktail Method

Photo by Juan Barahona, JBlaze B on flickr

A while back, I talked about a method for devising your own cocktails, the Mr. Potato-Head method. Truth be told, most of the time when I'm fooling around with mixology, I use what I call the ratio method. For a long time, I made Manhattans with the ratio 3 parts bourbon to 2 parts sweet vermouth to 1 part Cointreau. As I started occasionally making margaritas, I made them with 3 parts tequila to 2 parts lime juice to 1 part Cointreau. Noticing the similarity, I came up with a general rule. New beverages can be made tasty by mixing three parts of a base spirit with two parts of a blender and 1 part of a flavoring agent.

Let me explain. I take it you are all familiar with the idea of a base spirit. This is your tequila or whiskey or rum, or whatever. According to the ratio method, this is what defines your drink. The flavoring agent is what characterizes your drink. To explain what I mean, let me use hobos as an example. In this metaphor, 'hobo' is your base spirit. But there are lots of different kinds of hobos. There are drunk hobos, sleepy hobos, clever hobos, shifty hobos, etc. The drunk, sleepy, clever, or shifty? That's your  flavoring agent. Both of the drinks above use Cointreau as their flavoring agent, but you can use lots of different things. Amaros, like Averna or Cardamaro, make good flavoring agents. If you're making a Dirty Martini, which I recommend against, the olive brine would be your flavoring agent. 

Finally, we have the 'blender'. This is the portion of the drink that brings it all together, that 'blends' the base spirit and the flavoring agent. Very often, it's some variety of vermouth, but it can be lime or lemon juice as well, anything that helps combine the diverse ingredients together. Of course, you can use different ratios as well. If you're using a strongly flavored blender, you could go with 3:1:1. If you want to give less prominence to the base spirit, you could go with 2:1:1. Experimentation is key! There's recipe for a really tasty margarita after the jump.

High Plains Drifter #2

Picture from flickr, by mslaura

Recently, the Speakista ran a series of posts on tequila cocktails. It made me sad, because I like tequila, yet I didn't have the ingredients required to make most of his cocktails. So there was only one solution. Buy some green Chartreuse! For the most part, that was the ingredient I was missing. And it does go well with tequila. Green Chartreuse is very herby, which meshes well with the vegetal nature of tequila.

I'm not sure this cocktail is the best showcase for that pairing, however. It's tasty, don't get me wrong. But it ends up being a bit too sweet; I think the Chartreuse ends up over powering the tequila. There's two solutions here. I could put in less Chartreuse, or I could add something. I suspect mezcal would work okay, but that would change the drink. And now that I'm transcribing the recipe, I realize I forgot the Campari. That might make a difference. Recipe after the jump.

Margarita Town

The plight of the Margarita may be unequaled in the cocktail world. Only the Old Fashioned rivals it in the injustice typically done to a tasty beverage. At its base, the Margarita is a type of sour, like the Sidecar, a blend of a spirit, lime juice, and a sweetener. But all too often, it's served as if it were some sort of alcoholic smoothie, with sour mix, triple sec, and copious amounts of sugar adulterating an easy drink. (At least we can be glad it's usually corrupted with just one type of fruit, and not the salad that inhabits many Old Fashioneds). It should be made simply, with Cointreau and fresh lime juice if you have it. Sour mix is right out.

I figured a Margarita would be a good chance to experiment with mezcal and hellfire bitters. It turned out well.  I'm not sure the amount of mezcal in here made much of a difference; it seemed overpowered by the lime juice. The hellfire bitters, on the other hand, made an excellent addition. They made the drink a bit spicier, though not overwhelmingly so. If you don't have hellfire bitters, orange bitters would be a good choice. Recipe after the jump.

Mexican Monk

I brought some mezcal home from Mexico with me, and thought I should try it in something other than a margarita. It naturally mixes well with tequila, but that can be a pretty harsh drink, even if you have decent agave products, so it can help to add something sweet. This is usually honey, or agave nectar if you want to stick with the agave theme. But I have a bottle of Benedictine laying around that I don't use much, so I figured I'd give it a shot.

It was pretty tasty. The Benedictine did a nice job of balancing out the harshness of the mezcal, while the mezcal was still able to contribute it's characteristic smokiness. I might add a different type of bitters next time, since I think the hopped grapefruit gets overpowered here. Recipe after the jump.