November Drink of the Month - The Beachbum

November seems like a weird time to feature a tiki drink as my drink of the month (especially right now, with 6 inches of snow on the ground), but just last week I was still enjoying tropical climate down near Cancun, Mexico, so I hope you'll forgive me for being in the tiki mood. Two things led to our drink today: 1) I picked up some good Nicaraguan rum from the local grocery store while I was on my honeymoon, so it seemed only fair that I build something tropical. 2) Ann and I also had excellent shrimp tacos al pastor, so I decided to recreate those this week, which necessitated that I buy a whole pineapple. Rum plus pineapple always means tiki, and this month I was drawn to a recipe from the excellent PDT Cocktail Book named "the Beachbum." The drink is named in honor of Jeff "Beachbum" Berry, the man who is responsible for the modern revival of tiki culture, and it does everything you want out of a tiki cocktail - it has multiple types of rum, multiple fresh juices, and a couple of extra ingredients to add complexity (want an intro to tiki? I found this article helpful!)

Speaking of Jeff Berry and tiki bars, Ann and I had the good fortune of visiting Three Dots and a Dash in Chicago last weekend while in town to celebrate a friend's wedding. If I wasn't already inspired to make tiki drinks before this weekend, that trip would have surely done the trick. The bar is tucked back down an alley near some other excellent Chicago restaurants off Clark Street, and the underground bar is guarded by an impressive collection of blue-lit skulls as you enter. Ann was a little sketched out as we entered, but once you are inside, the Hawaiian-shirt clad bartenders and festively garnished drinks quickly put you at ease. The bartenders are artists (I sat and watched one work for 15 minutes - they took so much care in all of their drinks, and the fellow I watched spent 5 minutes garnishing the collection of cocktails he was mixing up - so much fun!), and the drinks were excellent. In true tiki fashion, there is a different, dedicated mug for each beverage, as well as copious fresh flowers, fruit, and swizzle sticks. I'm already planning my next trip (and shopping for tiki mugs - just don't tell Ann, since she thinks we have too many different types of bar glasses already).

While I currently lack the necessary tiki mugs to make an authentic cocktail on the level of Three Dots and a Dash, you can still make the Beachbum cocktail at home and serve it in a boring glass, just like I did. The recipe is below:

In a mixing glass, combine:
1 oz Amber (aged) rum
1 oz silver (unaged) rum*
1 oz fresh pineapple juice (if you don't want to break out your commercial juicer, a handheld citrus squeezer works well here if you don't mind a little mess)
0.75 oz fresh lime juice
0.5 oz Rothman & Winter Orchard Apricot**
0.5 oz Orgeat

Add a heaping scoop of crushed ice and shake for 10 seconds. Strain into a class filled with crush ice, garnish with your favorite tiki accompaniments - pineapple leaf, cherry/orange flag, fineapple skewer, hibiscus flower, etc.

*It is really important that you use two different types of rum here. I used aged Hatian Rhum Barbancort (which is a rhum agricole, made from fresh squeezed sugarcane juice instead of molasses) to get some of the "funk" or "hogo" that you find with good rums and Nicaraugan Flor De Cana Extra Seco 4 year for my silver rum. Getting the flavors from two different rums is the hallmark of a good tiki drink

**You can find all sorts of different apricot liqueurs if you look hard enough, but I really like the Rothman & Winter. They also make the Creme de Violet that I use for my Aviations, so I trust the brand.

Enjoy your Beachbum!

October Drink of the Month - The Johnny Utah

DVR is a wonderful thing! Before my recent cable purchase, the last time I had recorded live television was in middle school, using a blank tape and my parents' VCR. Being able to do so digitally and from my phone (if need be) is excellent. My DVR has allowed me to discover Alton Brown's excellent Good Eats program, and it is from this source of inspiration that our drink for this month arises. For those unfamiliar with the program, Brown usually focuses on a specific dish or ingredient and shows multiple uses for the ingredient or "better" ways to cook the dish. While watching the episode "Celeryman" earlier this month, I was inspired by Brown's recipe for Celery Soda (here). It seemed like such a unique concoction, and I simply had to find some drink that would make this (weird) beverage pop.

Celery soda you say? Why on earth would someone make soda out of celery? My first memory of celery soda comes from Marx Bagel Shops in Cincinnati. Occasionally when we visited this excellent kosher deli, we were allowed to get Dr. Brown's soda as a treat. Dr. Brown's makes wonderful black cherry and cream sodas, but they are also one of the few remaining companies to make celery soda (Dr. Brown's markets theirs as "Cel-Ray"). Celery soda was originally sold as a medicinal tonic (in the 1860s, celery was considered a "super food"), but continued on in Jewish delis around the world as a perfect pairing for pastrami sandwiches (as it goes excellently with salty foods). In the 1930's, celery soda was so popular with the New York Jewish community that some people even referred to it as "Jewish champagne" (thanks Wikipedia).  Since I knew celery soda was a real thing that people chose to drink on occasion, I was confident that there had to be a palatable drink out there somewhere featuring this weird flavor. I just had to find it!

It turns out there were plenty of recipes for home made celery soda, and some of these folks even had suggestions for cocktails. But I wasn't about to go to the effort to make my own celery soda before I had tried one of these cocktails first - the pay-off needed to be worth the effort! I scoured every single grocery store in South Bend looking for Dr. Brown's. Even the usually excellent Bamber's International Market (which had a whole wall of craft sodas) failed to turn up Cel-Ray. I finally broke down and bought a combo pack from Amazon with Cel-Ray and Cream Soda (yum), as all my efforts to find it locally went for naught. As it turns out, it probably would have been easier to make my own, even if celery seed is a little hard to find (try a Whole Foods if you have one nearby).

Once I had acquired my own 6 pack of Cel-Ray, it was time to whip up a "Johnny Utah," the most intriguing recipe I found online. It comes from Polite Provisions in San Diego, by way of Imbibe Magazine (their recipe is here). It is essentially a fizz-forward margarita that substitutes hints of herbs, pepper, and bitter celery spice instead of sweeter curacao. The recipe I used calls for celery seed syrup, but had a note that you could substitute Cel-Ray soda instead. I tried to follow the recipe exactly, but the lime and salt flavors overwhelmed my celery soda. That wouldn't do, as my whole reason for making this cocktail was to feature the celery! Try the recipe below for my twist on the recipe, a cocktail that prominently features the vegetal, savory flavor of celery, paired with 100% agave tequila and kosher salt:

In a mixing glass, combine 2 oz of 100% agave blanco tequila with 3/4 oz fresh squeezed lime juice. Shake over ice for 10 seconds and strain into a lowball/rocks glass filled with ice.
Top with 2 1/2 oz of Cel-Ray soda and add a pinch of kosher salt.
Garnish with a lime wheel and serve.

This is a great way to introduce unsuspecting friends to celery soda - let them try and guess the mystery ingredient in their savory margarita! You can also make your own celery soda instead of Cel-Ray (using Alton Brown's recipe liked above or another one). You can guarantee that is what I will do as soon as I'm out of Dr. Brown's - I'm not repeating all of that fruitless driving around again!

I hope you enjoy your modified Johnny Utah!

September Drink of the Month - Blackberry Bourbon Smash

Our ingredients for experimenting

This month's journey started out with me trying to recreate a wonderful drink that Ann ordered when I took her out for her birthday. We dined at Woochi, a Japanese Sushi/Fusion bar in town, and had the opportunity to enjoy a few of their drinks, including an excellent Singapore Sling and a solid take on a Between the Sheets cocktail. Looking over the menu, we chose a bar original cocktail for Ann, what the folks at Woochi call their Basil Smash #2. It had light rum, muddled basil and lime, Cointreau, and a pinch of agave syrup. I invited my friend Justin over a few days later, and we spent an hour or so trying to recreate the recipe, without success (our problem was that we only had enough basil for three attempts - we would have cracked it with a bigger supply!). However, the evening was not a total loss, as my research while attempting to discover proportions for the drink caused me to stumble upon a whole class of cocktails that are excellent this time of year: Smashes!

Drink components: Assemble!

In hindsight, I should have remembered more about Smashes from my time spent reading The Drunken Botanist by Amy Stewart. As it turns out, she has kept blogging after publishing her book and she has a great recipe for a Blueberry Smash that inspired me to play around with a few of the ingredients I had laying around the house. Justin and I played around with a combination of fresh blackberries (I love blackberries, and the Amelia is my new favorite vodka drink), mint, lemon juice, Cointreau, and bourbon. A little experimentation helped us to discover that wheated bourbon played really nicely with this flavor profile, and I still had a full bottle of John E. Fitzgerald Larceny on hand from my trip down the bourbon trail in June (this was my favorite of all the wheated whiskies - sorry Maker's Mark). The combination of these elements had great acid and sweet notes that went down incredibly smoothly when paired with the Larceny.

I made this drink for my parents in honor of their anniversary last week when they came up to visit. It was a bourbon drink, so I knew my dad would be happy (he's been on a Sazerac kick since his time in New Orleans last month, but that's a story for another month), but it was sweet enough that it would go down smoothly even for my whiskey-adverse mom. Ann was brave enough to test drive the drink (being notably whiskey-adverse herself) and it earned a coveted "not terrible" rating from my bride-to-be. That's high praise coming from her mouth, especially when whiskey is concerned! Upon serving, both parents enjoyed the cocktail. The only complaint? My dad thought it could have been even a bit sweeter (this is the only time in my life I've ever heard him utter such a thought). Take that for what it's worth, but I think the recipe below is a crowd pleaser, even for those in your circles who avoid whiskey like the plague! Here's the recipe:

Ready to muddle!

In a cocktail shaker:
Muddle 4-6 mint leaves and 5-6 blackberries with 0.5 oz Cointreau or rich (2:1) simple syrup*
Add 2 oz wheated bourbon (I used John E. Fitzgerald Larceny) and 0.75 oz lemon juice

Shake over ice for 15 seconds. Double strain** into a rocks glass filled with crushed ice*** and garnish with a sprig of mint.

*I like the extra citrus notes from the Cointreau, but if you want this a little sweeter, rich simple syrup with suffice.
**I double strain to get out all of the blackberry particles and crushed mint. If you like that business in your glass, be my guest. Muddling the fresh ingredients should release most of the flavor (and shaking with also aid in the release), but if you like them in the glass, you can omit this step (but I wouldn't - blackberries in particular have pesky seeds, which can really ruin your sipping experience).
***The ice will help turn this into a long sipper and brings out even more of the wheat flavor of the bourbon as it melts. If you'd rather not water down your drink, however, omit the ice and serve in a coupe of martini glass.

I hope you enjoy your Blackberry Bourbon Smash!

Finished product!

August Drink of the Month - Pear Eau de Vie

While we are already half way through the month of August, I still am no closer to finding the perfect cocktail for the month, which is a real bummer! Last weekend, Ann and I were able to take a trip up to Northern Michigan. On our way back home, we stopped in Traverse City and picked up some wonderful "Spirit of Pear" eau de vie from Black Star farms. I've been looking for some micro-distilled pear brandy for some time now, and I knew that I should be able to find some in Traverse City, Michigan's cherry capital. We both loved Black Star farms (their Late Harvest Riesling is excellent), and I went home with a bottle of their pear and a bottle of their aged "Spirit of Apple" brandy. Since then, I've been wracking my brain and scouring the internet for something that really shows off the wonderful pear flavors in their eau de vie well. Instead of putting off writing this blog post for another week while searching for one definitive recipe, I decided I would present to you the story of my search instead and let you be the judge! I hope you enjoy it and find something below you might enjoy making again!

The simplest solution seems to be to combine a healthy portion of the pear with brut sparkling wine, lemon juice, and either simple syrup or soda water, depending on how dry or sweet you like your cocktail. The fine folks at Black Star recommend tempering a flute of champagne with a "splash" of the pear, a tsp of lemon juice, and a sugar cube. This does add subtle flavor to the champagne, but the pear is not the star in this drink. Verdict: PASS - not enough pear flavor.

The next cocktail I tried intrigued me, because it stayed away from the bubbly. The folks over at Kindred Cocktails called it a "Poire Bomb," and the recipe called for combining 2 oz of pear eau de vie, 1/2 oz of Maraschino, 1/2 oz of Domaine de Canton ginger liqueur, 1/2 oz or lemon juice, and a dash of Peychaud's bitters. I didn't love this cocktail at first sip, but it improved as I got further down the glass. Pear pairs well with ginger, so the recipe had instant appeal, but the Maraschino overpowered the drink at first. Overall, I liked this drink, but I still rate it a PASS - too much Maraschino, not enough pear. Were I to make this again, I would drop the ginger and Maraschino to 1/4 oz, which would still provide a hint of flavor while letting the pear shine through.

The folks at Difford's Guide had a number of pear eau de vie cocktails, but most of them were simply riffs on martinis. If that was what I wanted, I would have just bought some pear flavored vodka and been done with it. However, two cocktails intrigued me. The first, The Pernelle Cocktail, ended up having really nice flavors, but pear was still not the star of the show. It combined one ounce each of vodka, elderflower liqueur, pear eau de vie, and lemon juice, topped with soda water. This isn't that different from a previous Bar Kiley entry, the St. Tropez, only with a hint of pear instead of the extra lemon kick. Fine beverage, but again I will PASS - the pear isn't running the show.

The other Difford's entry intrigued me. Named the "Twisted Sobriety," this drink combined an ounce of VSOP cognac, an ounce of pear eau de vie, and brut champagne. The aged cognac pairs well with the un-aged pear brandy, and here finally the pear comes through well. Brandy also happens to be one of my favorite cocktail bases, so this one was a winner. I find it hard to name this the drink of the month, but it finally showed off the pear eau de vie in ways I wanted a drink to do. KEEP.

One drink I am still intrigued to try, which I have seen pop up once or twice, combines an ounce of rye, an ounce of pear eau de vie, and brut champagne. A very similar recipe to the one above, but adding the extra smoky flavors of the rye into the equation. Some also called for a swirl (and then dump) of bitters in the glass before preparing the cocktail (Peychaud's, blood orange, pamplemousse, you name it). I haven't tried this yet, but I think the rye would also be a nice pairing. I'm worried it might be a little bit too smoky, but don't knock something until you try it! Verdict: UNDECIDED.

So there you have it - no one Drink of the Month this month, but rather a journey to feature my new eau de vie. While the Twisted Sobriety ended up being my favorite, I also enjoyed drinking the pear eau de vie straight, or in a tall sipper with a little bit of lemon juice and soda water. I'm sure there are many more possibilities out there, so feel free to try your own as well! And whatever you do, make sure to enjoy your next cocktail!

July Drink of the Month - Improved Genever Cocktail (with Brandied Cherries to Accompany)

There's a story behind this month's cocktail, but to be honest, I was mostly looking for something to pair with the beautiful brandied cherries I made last week. South Bend is right on the Michigan border, so gorgeous Michigan cherries are plentiful (and relatively inexpensive) this time of year. That means it was time for me to finally stop buying terrible maraschino cherries and make my own garnishes. If you can afford them, the Luxardo cherries are excellent, but the recipe below comes close (and if you're a brandy fan like me, you can't beat the aroma these cherries put off when you open the jar).

All kinds of Genever - thanks Wikipedia!

But before we dive to hard into the garnishes, we need a cocktail to put them in. Last month, I read the newly published second edition of Imbibe by David Wondrich (find it here). The author goes back to the origins of the cocktail with some help from America's first celebrity bartender in print, Jerry "the Professor" Thomas. It was really interesting to learn more about the roots of the cocktail, and I learned plenty of fun nuggets. For instance, did you know that the gin we drink today (for the most part) is not the same gin that would have been drunk in the early twentieth century? London Dry gin was not popular until the advent of the martini - before that time, the most common gins were either Hollands gin (known as Genever or Jenever) or Old Tom gin. Genever (which is of Dutch origins, as the Hollands gin name would imply) is often barrel aged and has some malty flavor notes. It is still made with juniper berries, but its profile actually rests somewhere between London dry gin and whiskey. Old Tom is the transitional link between Genever and London dry - less malty but still with some heft to it. For our drink today, we'll take Genever as the base in honor of those old-timey drinkers.

More fun facts! Do you know how the Old Fashioned cocktail got its name? As it turns out, while bartenders today will swear up and down about the importance of using bourbon or rye in an Old Fashioned, the original cocktail could have had anything as a base. The simple combination of spirit, sugar, water, and bitters was the original cocktail. Over time, ambitious bartenders began adding all sorts of other accouterments to this simple, elegant recipe: curacao, syrups, fruit wheels, imported French liqueurs, you name it. The grumpy cocktail purists, in revolt, would simply order their cocktails the "old fashioned" way. The name stuck, and eventually became associated with bourbon exclusively. But roll into a bar in 1902 and an Old Fashioned could have had any spirit as a base, including Genever.

Last fun fact: I already mentioned that bartenders tended to "gussy up" the simple cocktail recipe with all sorts of additives. The first stab at improving the classic cocktail recipe led to a whole category of "improved" cocktails in Jerry Thomas' book. What was the improvement, you ask? Maraschino liqueur and a dash of the green fairy - absinthe. Absinthe was a huge part of cocktail culture in the early days, and was put in almost any cocktail to "improve" it. Until recently, that improvement was unavailable to modern consumers, but now absinthe is once again legal to buy in the US, so feel free to improve your cocktail any time!

Put all these fun facts together, and you have the Improved Genever Cocktail. Follow the recipe below:

In a mixing glass, combine the following:

2 oz Old Genever*

0.5 oz simple syrup (1:1 - don't want this one too sweet)

One dash Maraschino liqueur

Two dashes bitters (I bought some Fee Brothers Black Walnut bitters, and they go nicely here)

A "martini mister" atomizer

Stir over ice until chilled. Strain into a rocks/lowball glass (also known as an "old fashioned" glass) and finish by misting the drink with absinthe using a cocktail atomizer (one spray should be sufficient). Garnish with a cherry.

*Genever is available both "young" - un-aged - and "old." You'll want the barrel improved stuff. I used Boomsma Old Genever, but Bols is still the standard bearer.

Now that you have your cocktail built, here is how to make your garnish. There are tons on recipes available for brandied cherries (trust me, I went looking last week). I ended up adapting a recipe from Food Republic (here), and I've been pretty happy with the results. The recipe is below:

1) Wash, de-stem, and pit one pound of fresh cherries. Any cherries will work, but sweet cherries work best. Quick note - invest in a good cherry pitter. Pitting cherries is messy business, and big plungers leave ragged holes in your cherries. A good tool helps make sure your cherries don't get torn in half and your clothes are not stained blood red.

2) Dissolve 1/2 cup of demerara sugar into 1/2 cup of distiller water over a low heat. Once sugar is dissolved, add 1 cup brandy and your cherries. I used the newly released Fine Girl brandy from Journeyman Distilleries in order to make my batch truly authentic Michigan brandied cherries.

3) Bring the cherries, brandy, and syrup to a boil, then reduce heat and let simmer for 5 minutes.

4) Add 2 tsp of vanilla extract for flavor, let cool.

5) Once the mixture is completely cooled, place in large mason jar and refrigerate. This should keep for 4-6 months (alcohol is a wonderful preservative).

After an evening in the refrigerator, these babies are ready to garnish your next cocktail. Enjoy them in an Improved Genever Cocktail!

June Drink of the Month - The Mint Julep (and the Bourbon Trail)

I'll understand if there is any backlash over me making the Mint Julep my June Drink of the Month. Derby season was over a month ago, and with the Belmont Stakes this weekend, by all rights I should be constructing a Belmont Jewel (a mixture of bourbon, lemonade, and pomegranate juice). However, the Belmont Stakes loses points for their inability to get their act together on an official drink. Purists will recall the White Carnation, but there was also the Belmont Breeze for a period of time from 1997 to 2011, and this article even recalls a "Big Apple" from 1975. The Kentucky Derby has claimed the Mint Julep as their official drink since 1938, so I don't feel so bad breezing over Belmont's offerings (puns!).

I have good reason for selecting the Mint Julep (beyond shaming the folks at Belmont), and they are twofold: first, I'm currently reading the Updated and Revised edition of Imbibe by David Wondrich. This book goes back to one of the earliest bartending manuals ever written, recreating those recipes while also providing a good deal of drink and spirit history. The Julep is heavily featured, and I'll share some of the anecdotes below. The second reason is that I've just returned from a long weekend on the Bourbon Trail in Kentucky with my dad. His primary goal as we wandered was to try one of those Mint Juleps that he had heard so much about (he's a red wine man, and this was his first experience with bourbon). So in honor of David Wondrich and bartender Jerry Thomas who he so admires, as well as in tribute to my father, who bought his first bottle of bourbon the other day (Woodford Reserve Distiller's Select), we will be making Mint Juleps this month.

Before we get too deep in Julep history, however, permit me to share a brief account of our time on the trail. We made twelve stops in all (while also spending an afternoon hiking Mammoth Caves), averaging three distilleries a day (our high was four, and our low was two on Mammoth Caves day). Far and away the most visually pleasing of the distilleries was Woodford Reserve, and their tour was excellent. But we also enjoyed excellent tours at Maker's Mark, Heaven Hill, the Evan Williams Experience, Four Roses, and Buffalo Trace (we even went on a ghost tour at Buffalo Trace). We made all nine stops on the official Bourbon Trail, and also made a few stops along the emerging "Craft Trail." I tried many excellent and old bourbons (especially at Heaven Hill, where we took the Whiskey Connoisseur tour, which featured several select bottlings and an Elijah Craig 23 year), and also some less than excellent ones. I also got to see firsthand the Rye Renaissance, and bought a bottle of Willett 3 year rye, which was just released last Saturday - it is excellent, and has enough body and spice to sip on its own or mix up in a Manhattan. I only ended up buying two bottles (I'm on a budget, what with buying a house and all) - the aforementioned Willett rye and a bottle of Four Roses Single Barrel. But the overall experience was wonderful, and I'm going to enjoy the heck out of those two new bottles (plus it was a great trip to catch up with my dad - that made the whole trip worthwhile on its own).

A Lewis Bag and muddler

Now on to the Julep, To hear David Wondrich tell it, the name "julep" might be someone's idea of a practical joke. The historical records of the word "julep" almost always refer to a medicinal compound. A combination of spirits with astringent herbs and plants, it was taken to ward off any number of ills. However, in America, the nasty tasting plants were replaced by spearmint and peppermint leaves, combined with sugar and water, and then imbibed early (as in breakfast-time early) and often. The introduction of ice into mainstream consumption is what made the Julep really take off. A combination of shaved ice and cubed (or lump) ice helps chill the drink and dilutes the liquor enough to make it a lovely slow-sipper. Most early juleps were made with brandy (or a combination of brandy, rum, and sherry) and were garnished with all all manner of fruit (especially oranges and fresh berries). Whiskey in those days was not quite as fine as our current product, and brandy was the liquor of choice for most Americans (except in the northeast, where they enjoyed their rum - and vile rum at that). The phylloxera outbreak in the late 19th century that severely depleted world brandy reserves is what eventually led to American products being featured in juleps, and of these, bourbon was king.

Below you will find a simple recipe for a bourbon Mint Julep. In honor of my dad, I'll suggest that you use Woodford Reserve if you like a little rye in your bourbon, or John E. Fitzgerald Larceny if you like your bourbon wheated. If you're a true gourmand, you can make your julep with a single barrel, but why waste the really good stuff in a mixed drink? A nice small batch will stand out very well in this drink:

Combine one tablespoon of superfine sugar* with one tablespoon of water in a glass.** Stir to dissolve the sugar and add three to five mint leaves. Press the mint with a muddler (gently, so as not to break the leaves) to extract the mint oils. Fill the glass half full with shaved and/or crushed ice (a Lewis bag is a handy tool here) and then fill the rest of the way with cubed ice. Top with three ounces of bourbon and stir** vigorously until a layer of frost forms on the outside of the glass. Garnish with a tall sprig of mint and top with ice*** as needed to fill the glass.

Now for the notes:

*Many will advocate using simple syrup here rather than stirring the sugar yourself. Perhaps if you are making this in a commercial kitchen, that would be fine, but if you are making this at home, ignore them - this just feels right. You may also see recipes calling for powdered sugar instead of superfine sugar. This is an anachronism, as our modern superfine sugar is a better analog to the "powdered" sugar of the early twentieth century than store-bought powdered sugar.

**If you wish to buy a fancy copper or silver plated "julep glass," be my guest. That's still a little rich for my blood, but you never know what could happen with wedding presents...

***You can make this drink in a Boston shaker and shake instead of stir. However, this can tear the mint leaves, so you will definitely want to double strain the drink before serving.

****You may also choose to strain the drink into a fresh glass of ice, but this tends to water the drink down too much.

I've also included the recipe from Wondrich's book for an older julep, attributed to bartender Joe Redding (edited down for brevity):

Combine 2 teaspoons of sugar and 2 teaspoons of water in a deep tumbler, and add half shaved ice and half lump ice to fill. Add three mint leaves, and pour over one ounce "fine, unimpeachable cognac brandy," one ounce "fine old Jamaica rum," and one ounce "old ripe port wine." Pour the mixture back and forth between two glasses until it is good and mixed. Garnish with a tall sprig of mint and rub the rim of the glass with fresh lemon.

 As you can see, the above recipe looks nothing like a modern julep, but it is still dang tasty! Either way, I hope you enjoy your Mint Julep!

May Drink of the Month - Blood and Sand

A great article from the Wall Street Journal relays an old joke that was popular in the 30's and 40's: a young screenwriter in Hollywood gets hooked on cocktails and begs a bartender to give him his recipes, offering him $100 for the information. The bartender responds, asking the screenwriter, "Wanna know what's in a Blood and Sand, Mac?" He then accepts the cash and calmly replies, "Blood and sand." ...I guess you had to be there, right?

As it turns out, there is not any blood or sand in the Blood and Sand cocktail. It does, however, feature Cheery Heering, which is what led me to the Blood and Sand this month. I found a bottle of this Danish liqueur in the Mall of America during a recent trip to Minneapolis. I've been on the lookout for this ruby beverage for some time - my favorite local liquor spot sadly does not have it in stock. Named after Peter Heering, and tracing its origin back to 1818, this cherry liqueur is not overly sweet as many cherry brandies tend to be, nor is it as bitter as Kirschwasser (which is made using sour cherries with the pits still included). It is complex enough to drink on its own, with lovely black cherry flavor, but it also mixes well in a number of cocktails.

The Blood and Sand is one such cocktail that manages to pair Cherry Heering with seemingly disparate flavors in order to create a wonderful finished product. Named after a Rudolph Valentino silent film (about a matador) from 1922, the cocktail combines Cherry Heering, orange juice, scotch and sweet vermouth. Sweet and smoky with a hint of citrus tang, this cocktail should not taste good, but it does! However, it is very easy to overwhelm any one of these flavors, so please mix carefully. Too much sweet vermouth and the drink becomes cloyingly sweet. Too much orange juice and you can't taste anything else. As always, careful measurement of ingredients is essential.

Here is the recipe for the Blood and Sand:

In a cocktail shaker, combine:

1 ounce blended scotch (I've seen Famous Grouse recommended)
1 ounce fresh squeezed orange juice*
3/4 ounce Cherry Heering
3/4 ounce sweet vermouth

Shake over ice, strain into lowball glass or coupe.

*Orange juice, more than any other fruit juice, has an extremely short shelf life. Fresh lemon and lime juice can remain viable for use in cocktails for up to two days without any significant change in flavor profile. However, orange juice contains two substances (LARL and NARL) which are converted into bitter limonin after squeezing. Store bought orange juice uses a chemical process and flavor additives to prevent this process, but fresh squeezed OJ goes bad quickly. However, this cocktail is greatly improved by using real orange juice instead of juice from the carton. Just be sure not to squeeze your orange juice too far in advance.

I've seen a few variations for this cocktail suggested online. One replaces orange juice with blood orange juice. The sweet but bitter blood orange adds a little actual "blood" to the cocktail, gives it a wonderful color, and works well with the Cherry Heering. Definitely try this when blood oranges are in season (December to March for the popular Moro varietal, but you can still find fresh Tarocco "half blood" oranges as late as May). Another recipe omits the sweet vermouth entirely - this was how I first tried the Blood and Sand. I can't say that I miss the vermouth - the sweet botanicals in vermouth can overwhelm the scotch, so if you try the original recipe and find it wanting for peat-y goodness, skip the vermouth altogether.

Enjoy your Blood and Sand!

April Drink of the Month - The Hemingway Daiquiri (and Candied Grapefruit Peels)

There's an old saying that when life gives you lemons, you should make lemonade. Allow me to propose a modern twist on this which inspired this month's drink: when your future mother-in-law gives you grapefruits, make Hemingway Daiquiris (and candied grapefruit peel). I'm sure there are plenty of other things you could do with five pounds of grapefruit, but it seems to me that the most practical thing to do is to juice them and use that juice for cocktails. Six grapefruits produce about a quart of juice (and thanks to Zack's new juicer, all the juice went into the storage container, and not all over my floor), but they also produce a ton of "leftover" peel. What is an enterprising person to do with all this remnant?  One possibility would be to use the peel to flavor bitters. I actually made a grapefruit tincture last month (allow the peel of one grapefruit with the pith removed to steep in 4-5 oz of high proof neutral spirit and then strain and bottle - a drop or two of this add nice citrus-forward bitterness to overly sweet cocktails), so that was out the window. Instead, I decided to try to step up my garnish game and make candied grapefruit peels. Below you'll find recipes for both the drink and the garnish, but first a word on how the Hemingway originated:

Ernest Hemingway is well remembered for his contribution to English literature, but his contribution to the cocktail world is also quite extensive. He has been credited with inspiring many different drinks, including the Bloody Mary (perhaps named after his nagging wife), the classic Mojito, and more. His favorite drink was apparently a very dry martini, but the drink that is named after him owes its roots to Cuba rather than Paris. The Hemingway Daiquiri belongs in the daiquiri family, a drink named after an iron mine in Cuba made of rum, lime and sugar (or simple syrup). The daiquiri was first created in the early 1900s, but didn't gain popularity outside of Cuban and US Naval circles until the 1940s when wartime rations of traditional US liquors made rum (which was not subject to rationing) a popular cocktail ingredient. The Hemingway Daiquiri differs from the traditional daiquiri in that it replaces the sugar with grapefruit juice and a few drops of Maraschino liqueur. This was likely because Hemingway was diabetic, and thus took his drinks without sugar whenever possible. Hemingway liked his drinks big - his favorite Havana bar served this drink as the Papa Doble (Double), and each drink featured almost four ounces of rum. Hemingway was famous for throwing back six to sixteen of these a day, apparently with no ill effect. For our purposes, we will follow the somewhat slimmed down recipe from  the folks at NYC's Employees Only, which you will find below. They add a little bit of simple syrup to balance the flavors and go heavier on the Maraschino than Papa Ernest might have liked, but it is an excellent drink with a great balance of bitter and sweet and good, complex citrus notes.

In a cocktail shaker, combine:

1.75 ounces white rum (we used Bacardi in honor of Papa, Employees Only recommends 10 Cane)
0.75 ounces Maraschino liqueur (best & most common brand is Luxardo)
1 ounce fresh lime juice
0.75 ounce fresh grapefruit juice
0.25 ounces simple syrup

Shake over ice, strain and serve in a martini glass. The traditional garnish is a lime wheel, but we decided to add candied grapefruit peel instead. Read on below for the recipe.

Candied grapefruit peel mixes bitter and sweet into little bite size strips of sugary goodness. In order to make these treats, first cut your grapefruit in half and juice each half using a citrus juicer. Be careful not to damage or bruise the peel during this process. Then, cut each half-peel again, so that you have peel quarters. Strip and remaining flesh from the peel, taking care not to remove too much of the (bitter) white pith. Cut the quarter peel on the diagonal into long, 1/2 inch strips. Place the peel into a pot and cover with water. Allow the water to come to a full boil, then remove the pot from the heat and strain out the water. Return the grapefruit to the pot and cover again with water. You will repeat the boil, strain, cover process 3-4 times. The more cycles of boiling water you allow the grapefruit to go through, the sweeter the final product will be - boiling the peels helps remove some of the bittering agents in the peel and pith.

Once you've gone through enough boil/strain cycles for your taste, cover the peels with water for one final time. Add equal parts sugar to the water in order to make a syrup for the peels (for instance, in the batch I made last night, we used five grapefruit, about three cups of water to cover and three cups of sugar to make the syrup). Allow the peels to simmer in this syrup for approximately two hours. Let the mixture cool and then store in the refrigerator in the syrup. When you are ready to serve, drain the peels, toss them in sugar (I used turbinado sugar, as the large crystals add to the presentation), and allow them to dry on a rack for an hour and a half. Now they are ready to garnish your drink or can be eaten by themselves as a snack. Some individuals may choose to dip the peels in chocolate rather than toss them in sugar - since I am an unabashed chocolate hater, this will not be my route, but feel free to experiment on your own time.

Enjoy your Hemingway Daiquiri!

March Drink of the Month - The Last Word

Tax refund season led me to finally purchase something I've had my eye on for some time now: my very own bottle of Green Chartreuse. While I've found it online before for less than $50 for a 750 ml bottle, Indiana shipping laws prohibit me from going that route. $60 is the most I've ever spent on a single bottle of liqueur, but it was worth every penny. Made from a concoction of over 130 herbs and botanicals by French Carthusian monks, Chartreuse is both sweet and spicy at the same time, and has a distinct vegetal aroma. It smells wonderful and even a few drops of this stuff can add a major boost of flavor to a drink. The color "chartreuse" is actually named after this liqueur (and not the other way around), which is pretty neat. The monks also make a yellow version, which has a lower alcohol content (40% ABV instead of 55%) and is much milder and sweeter. If you want to plop down another $50, be my guest. But if you have to choose (say you are still on a grad student salary), make like an environmentalist and go green. You won't regret it. Also, one more fun fact - unlike many fine spirits, Chartreuse actually improves in the bottle - so if you find a dusty old bottle in your grandparents' basement, the flavors will have mellowed and improved with age.

The crème de la crème of Chartreuse drinks is the Last Word cocktail, attributed to bartender Frank Fogarty of the Detroit Athletic Club. Apparently old Frank was a bit of a talker, which may have led to the name. Others insist that name is a nod to the fact that once you try one of these cocktails, you needn't look elsewhere. The drink mixes dry gin (with good strong juniper notes) with Chartreuse, lime juice and Maraschino (adding bitter, sweet almond notes). The combination of floral notes from the three spirits plus the fresh lime juice blend together wonderfully, creating a complex finish that is hard to explain (so go try one)! The Last Word is extremely popular among cocktail geeks (for good reason), so most fine bars would be happy to make you one, either on- or off-menu. The retail on the ingredients means this is a costly sipper, but you won't regret your investment.

Here is the recipe for making a Last Word at home:

In a cocktail shaker, combine the following:
3/4 oz dry gin (Beefeaters, etc)
3/4 oz Green Chartreuse
3/4 oz Maraschino
3/4 oz fresh squeezed lime juice (please, please, please don't use stuff from a bottle - this drink is too good to ruin with that crap)

Shake over ice and strain into a cocktail (martini) glass. Garnish with a lime wheel.

Enjoy your Last Word!

February Drink of the Month - The Chapman Cobbler

Apparently beer cocktails are a big thing right now. With the craft beer revolution making nuanced, flavorful beer accessible to many people, I suppose it makes sense. However, since the reason I got into bartending and the art of the cocktail was because I strongly dislike beer, this trend offends me on multiple levels. Wine, on the other hand, is always a wonderful addition to any cocktail. Over the past six years, I've made many sparkling drinks using champagne or  prosecco (I converted my mom and sister - their go to drink now is the Saint Germain Cocktial), but I never really had occasion to play with fortified wines, like port and sherry. However, this Christmas, Imbibe magazine ran a "25 Days of Holiday Drinks" that featured several wonderful concoctions using fortified wines. My favorite of these was the "Chapman Cobbler," which uses Amontillado sherry.

If (like me), your only exposure to Amontillado sherry is from the classic Edgar Allen Poe short story ("The Cask of Amontillado"), then perhaps some tasting notes are in order. There are four basic types of sherry. From lightest (and lowest alcohol content) to darkest they are: Fino (fine), Manzanilla, Amontillado, and Oloroso. These wines range in color and taste from dry, pale white to rich, dark amber. There are plenty of other variations on these four basic types, like the Manzanilla Pasada or the Palo Cortado (the former is a nuttier version of Manzanilla that has been aged longer than normal while the latter is a wine that is aged similar to Amontillado but either by accident or intention winds up closer to Oloroso in flavor profile). There are also a number of cream sherry varieties. Despite the fact that the higher fortified sherries are dark amber and red, all sherry comes from white Palomino grapes grown in Andalusia, Spain. The name "sherry" comes from the name of the town where the wines are produced, Jerez ed la Frontera (Jerez became sherry when it was anglicized). Who knew there was so much to know about fortified wines? And we still haven't touched on port yet (but maybe some day soon - my dad has gotten into tawny port, so I need to find something to do with that)!

The drink we'll be making this month features Amontillado sherry, applejack, orgeat syrup and a little bit of creme de noyeux (as well as lemon juice to help cut the sweetness). Three of these key ingredients have nutty flavor profiles. Orgeat, we may remember, is an almond-based syrup. Creme de noyeux also has an almond flavor, but it is actually made from apricot kernels (much like amaretto). Finally, sherry is also quite nutty. The resulting cocktail is fairly sweet (applejack being very sweet as well), but the mixing of flavor notes makes it complex and the acid from the lemon helps balance the drink. Be cautious when mixing this drink - add a little too much of any ingredient and you will overwhelm yourself with sweet (especially if you overdo the creme de noyeux). But balance it properly, and you have a wonderful winter drink!

Here is the recipe for the Chapman Cobbler (a cobbler is a class of sherry based drinks from the 1800s, so named because they used "cobblestone ice" in drink. Who knew!):

In a mixing glass, combine the following:

1 oz applejack

1 oz Amontillado sherry

0.75 oz lemon juice

0.75 oz orgeat syrup

one barspoon creme de noyeux (one barspoon = one teaspoon or 0.17 oz)

Shake over crushed ice and dump into a double rocks glass. Garnish with a lemon wheel.

Enjoy your Chapman Cobbler! 

 

January Drink of the Month - The Amelia

I was lucky enough to get a few new cocktail books for Christmas this year, and I'm sure they will influence my choices for Bar Kiley posts over the next few months. So far, I've been able to tackle two of them: Alchemy in a Glass by Greg Seider and Speakeasy by Jason Kosmas and Dushan Zaric. I've not yet had a chance to get through The Drunken Botanist by Amy Stewart, but I'm excited to read that one - it promises to have lots of tips on homemade bitters and tinctures, which is an area I'd like to play around with more.

Speakeasy was the most straightforward of the three books. It chronicles the best recipes from NYC's Employees Only bar, which was one of the establishments on the forefront of the cocktail revolution, featuring fresh and homemade ingredients. I was visiting my parents when I was reading Speakeasy, so there were plenty of cocktails I wasn't able to try out because I lacked the necessary ingredients.
However, one recipe caught my attention and was easy enough to make using what we had on hand (luckily I hooked my parents on the St. Germain cocktail last summer, so there was elderflower liqueur available!). Named the Amelia, this drink was meant to be a stepping stone from the Cosmo into the more nuanced world of craft cocktails. The recipe follows below. While this month's post might have been a little light on exposition, I hope to make it up to you with some good technique notes below:

In a mixing glass, combine the following ingredients:

1.75 ounces potato vodka
1 ounce elderflower liqueur
0.75 ounce fresh squeezed lemon juice
0,75 ounce blackberry puree*

*To make the blackberry puree, combine 1 cup fresh blackberries (one small carton) with 2 tbsp superfine sugar, 2 tbsp distilled water, and 2 tbsp lemon juice in a blender. Blend until smooth and coarse strain the mixture. It will keep for 3-4 days.

Shake the ingredients over ice, and double strain** into a martini glass. Garnish with a sprig of smacked mint leaf.***

**Double straining involves using both a Hawthorne strainer and a fine mesh strainer when you pour out your drink. The Hawthorne strainer gets out the big pieces of ice, while the fine mesh strainer will get out the remaining blackberry particulates that survived the coarse strainer and the chips of ice that occur when you shake your drink. The recipe in the book only calls for using the Hawthorne strainer, which left bits of blackberry puree floating in the glass. I like the mouthfeel of pureed fruit for some drinks, but since this is meant to emulate the Cosmo, we much preferred the drink to be smooth and clean without the itsy-bitsy bits of blackberry. Fine straining means that the puree still imparts plenty of flavor and juice to the drink, but it gets rid of the texture of the pulverized fruit.

***You smack herbs to release their essential oils and fragrance. Grasp the stem firmly in one hand and gently but firmly strike the leaf against your palm. Hit too hard and you bruise the leaf, but do it just right and you will release some wonderful scents!

I hope you enjoy your Amelia!