May Drink of the Month - Pomme de Feu

The past week was a productive time for cocktail exploration. Frequent collaborator and friend of the blog Zack brought over a few new and unusual spirits to sample, and we debuted a new method of drink building that seems super obvious, but was incredibly fun and fruitful. Occasionally, when trying to replicate a bar-made cocktail that we enjoy, we "scientifically" sit down and make multiple iterations of the same drink, swapping one ingredient at a time, or changing one ratio, to control the variables of our drink. Surprisingly, we rarely used this method when creating original cocktails. But this past week, we applied this methodical process to make a few new drinks, which I will feature for May and June. The refrain of "for science" rang out often, as I would run down to the bar to collect a new ingredient, so we could taste the difference between using Aperol or Campari, tequila or sotol, or apple brandy or apple jack. This method produced better cocktails, as we could more definitely say what exactly we liked about each formulation, instead of just declaring a drink to be "good" or "bad."

The first success story from this process began with a bottle of Wood Smoked Apple Spirit (called Fumus Pumila) from the Baltimore Spirits Co. We both enjoyed the apple brandy, and it lived up to the name - it was smoky as heck! Almost to the point where you could lose the apple flavor, but that was more of a problem from me than it was for Zack. We added ginger liqueur to the mix (who doesn't love apple and ginger?), lime juice, sparkling cider, and a little simple syrup (stuck on flavor combinations? I've been using the Flavor Bible more to help me with ideas). The result was tasty, but very smoky - and not terribly "apple-y," despite the addition of the cider.

From this initial formulation, the scientific method took over. I ransacked my back bar for all of the apple spirits I could find. I had a nice aged apple brandy from Blackstar Farms in Traverse City, MI. as well as a bottle of Laird's Applejack. We repeated our recipe with the new base spirits, to see what each brought to the table. The consensus was that applejack fell flat, but that the "Spirit of Apple" from Blackstar shined - and produced a really pleasant apple flavor. As to which drink was superior between the Fumus Pumila and Spirit of Apple, we were split. Zack loved the smoke (as did I), whereas I really loved the strong apple flavors. Zack could live without the more pronounced apple notes, and I was just fine without the bite from the wood. Each drink has its own nuance, but we decided that we didn't need to make a definitive pronouncement. Below is the recipe for our finished product - choose your spirit wisely, depending on your taste.

Ingredients: 2 oz apple brandy*, 0.5 oz lime juice, 0.5 oz ginger liqueur, 0.25 oz simple syrup, 2 oz sparkling cider

Preparation: Combine all ingredients except cider in a Boston shaker. Shake over ice, strain into an ice filled Collins glass**. Top with sparkling cider, garnish with a lime wheel.

Notes: *use an aged apple brandy, unless you'd like to make Zack's drink with the Fumus Pumila

**If using Fumus Pumila, serve neat in a chilled coupe glass instead (without ice).