July Drink of the Month - Casanier

For the past month, I've been running a "Saint Pius on the Rocks" series at our parish. Each week we feature a guest speaker, and I create a video to introduce them along with a cocktail for folks to make at home. Its been fun to channel my inner Bobby Flay, and I even got creative for my old program director from my Masters program, and created an original drink for him. Msgr. Michael Heintz is a lover of the Boulevardier (1.5 oz bourbon, 0.75 oz Campari, 0.75 oz sweet vermouth), which is only slightly ironic. You see, "boulevardier" in French means "man about town," and Fr. Mike is one of the biggest homebodies I know. So I created a "homebody" cocktail for him ("casanier" is homebody in French) using some of the same ingredients (just less bitter, because its my blog).

If you'd like to watch the video, you can find it here: https://vimeo.com/427125156 (I'll be awaiting my call, Next Food Network Star). The whole series can be found on the parish vimeo page (I also make a "Scofflaw" (rye, dry vermouth, grenadine, lime, orange bitters), Navy Grog, French 75, and a Last Word). For now, try out the Casanier, which was my first experiment in using grape juice in place of sweet vermouth (for shelf stability reasons).

Ingredients: 1 oz bourbon, 1 oz concord grape juice, 0.75 oz Aperol

Preparation: Combine ingredients in a Japanese stirring glass, or pint glass. Add ice, and stir until very cold. Strain into a Old Fashioned glass, add one large ice cube, and garnish with a lemon wedge.

December Drink of the Month - Bitter Passion

Ann and I rent our house out every fall during Notre Dame home football weekends. Our renters almost always leave behind something after departing. Sometimes the items are odd, like a single novelty sock, or a horribly smelly cooler that went straight into the trash can. But sometimes the leavings are truly gifts, like the cans of champagne left in our refrigerator by Ann's old student workers. Single serve CANS of champagne. This was a life changer for me, as I NEVER go through enough champagne while mixing drinks to justify a whole bottle. Mini bottles have been around for a bit, and they are nice... but cans are even easier to store, and the serving size is excellent for four-ish drinks. Somehow, I missed out on this innovation until it was deposited in my refrigerator. And yes, naysayers, the can of champagne isn't of the finest vintage, but it is cheap and convenient. I'm going to mix it with lots of tasty booze and juices - so I'm not going to be overly focused on the label here. I'm just here for the bubbles.

Our renters' gift allowed me to play down in the bar one night, and the result was a pretty tasty bubbly drink - just in time for New Years! It is a mix of sweet (passion fruit & simple syrup), sour (lime and passion fruit again), bitter (grapefruit), and dry (champagne). It's a lot all in one glass, but the tropical flavors all pair well, and champagne bubbles keep it light, and there is a strong backbone of vodka to keep it boozy enough. This is what I'll be drinking on NYE if I have my way!

Ingredients: 1.5 oz vodka, 0.5 oz grapefruit vodka, 0.5 oz passion fruit syrup, 0.5 oz simple syrup, 1 oz lime juice, 2 oz brut champagne to top.

Preparation: Pour all of the ingredients except for the champagne into a Boston shaker. Shake over ice, and strain into a chilled champagne flute. Top with brut champagne, and finish with lime zest.

Notes: I use Deep Eddy grapefruit vodka and Small Hands Foods passion fruit syrup. I can't remember what brand of champagne in a can we had, but I'd buy it again. What a concept!

November Drink of the Month - The Autumnal Equinox

If you haven't read last "month's" post yet, go check out the Granny Sour, one of the best original drinks that Zack and I have created. It's up there with Smoke on the Water... Melon and our first original drink for the blog, the Opera Glove. Also, as a side note, Zack and I have been mixing drinks together for a while - the Opera Glove goes back to 2013. Wow!

After testing a number of apple varieties to create the Granny Sour, Zack and I found ourselves with a surplus of apples on hand, and no great need for cobbler. Luckily, we had Cocktail Club the following Tuesday, so more experimentation was on tap. Attendance at Cocktail Club was low this past month (I suppose having a new baby is an acceptable excuse for missing a club meeting), but that meant we had a little more freedom to sit and experiment. Our goal was to riff on the classic Żubrówka and apple juice, and maybe play around with some sour and/or sweet flavors (grapefruit? apple caramel? aperol? mint syrup?). The only requirement for the drink was that it feature fresh apple juice, and be served in a hollowed out apple.

Showstopper!

After a few rounds of bar "scientific method," we had a base drink we liked - Żubrówka, jonagold apple juice, lemon, ginger liqueur, and (eventually) rosemary. That drink was fine, but it needed one final touch. Would we go sweet, and add apple caramel? Bitter and dash in some grapefruit juice? Or do both?

It turns out that doing both was a terrible idea. So lets get that out of the way first. Ick.

Adding grapefruit did give some pleasant tartness and bitter finish to the drink, but it was nothing outstanding. However, slowly adding apple caramel made this into a semi-tart, spiced dulce de leche (in liquid form), and that was absolutely worth writing home about. We named the drink the Autumnal Equinox, because it uses fresh fall flavors, and is half sweet and half tart. I hope you enjoy it, and the photo, which made use of the portrait mode on my new phone camera.

Ingredients: 2 oz jonagold juice, 1 oz Żubrówka, 0.5 oz lemon juice, 0.5 oz ginger liqueur, 1 tsp apple caramel, 1 sprig rosemary

Preparation: Juice the jonagold, and strain out any pulp using a mesh strainer. Combine juice with Żubrówka, lemon and ginger liqueur in a Boston shaker. Slowly stir in apple caramel using a bar spoon until it is well dissolved. Remove rosemary needles from stalk, and add to shaker. Shake over ice, double strain into a hallowed out apple. Garnish with a half caramel rim and a rosemary sprig.

October Drink of the Month - The Granny Sour

Photo Credit: Ann Kiley

I'm going to keep this month's post short and sweet. Zack and I created the Granny Sour over a Friday afternoon, another product of our newfound love for the drink creation "scientific method." Because it is the fall, we actually purchased a number of locally sourced apple varieties and juiced them all, searching for nuance in the different cultivars (fuji, johnagold, courtland, granny smith, and honeycrisp were the ones we toyed with). Our experimentation began as a riff on the classic Stone Fence (rye and cider, although there are many variations - the Stone Fence from Dead Rabbit is immensely more complicated!), partially because Zack picked up some decent rye on clearance while we were apple shopping. The rest is history, as we played with independent variables on the way to discovering a drink we both consider one of our finest original creations. This was a really fun experiment, because it made us consider where the flavor for commercial apple juice comes from, and how we can tweak and play with that formula by using fresh ingredients. When you recreate this drink at home, you absolutely must juice your own granny smith apples - store shelf apple juice will not have the same tart/crisp notes that are essential for this drink. You can buy granny smith year round, but the harvest is still fresh now, so go get some local apples if you live in orchard-friendly states!

Ingredients: 2 oz rye, 2 oz granny smith juice, 0.5 oz lemon juice, 0.5 oz mint syrup, 2 dashes cranberry bitters

Preparation: Juice the granny smith apples, and strain out any pulp using a mesh strainer. Combine juice with remaining ingredients in a Boston shaker. Shake over ice, double strain into a chilled coupe. Garnish with skewered cranberries.

Notes: Peeling the granny smith apples before juicing helps the drink's color - juicing with the skin on results in a darker juice, so the cranberry hues get washed out. Also, the juice oxidizes quickly, so don't allow it to sit for long before mixing.

September Drink of the Month - The Hummingbird Daiquri

Last time Zack and I sat down to fiddle with drinks, he had a very specific challenge in mind: find something to do with a tasty bottle he had just purchased. The bottle in question was Flora from Cardinal Spirits, a raspberry and edible flower liqueur. He had sampled the wares at Cardinal, and declared this bottle was the most interesting thing they had to offer. So we went to work crafting a drink to highlight the sweet, floral notes found in "Flora," using the scientific method.

"Scientific Method" Round 2

"Scientific Method" Round 1

The process involved lemons, limes, and lots of agave, grape, and sugarcane based spirits. For those keeping score at home, pisco, brandy, and mescal were non-starters. The grape-based spirits provided too much of the same flavors as the Flora, masking what made it special. And the mescal was just too much for this delicate liqueur. Rum and rum-adjacent spirits, however, played really nicely with what Flora brought to the table. At the end of the day, we settled on concocting a daiquiri riff, swapping in the Flora as the sweetener instead of sugar. That led to a second round of experimenting with different sugarcane spirits using our base formula, and a momentary disagreement. Zack found a drink made with Havana Club rum to be just about perfect. I preferred the extra earthiness that came from using cachaça. Instead of arguing ad-nauseam, we relied on a trick we had just learned from the Cocktail Codex: we used a split base, keeping Havana Club as the dominant flavor, but adding a little cachaça for seasoning. The drink by itself stands up with rum alone, but the split base is divine. Want to try this, but can't find Flora in your local spirits store? They sell and ship online: Cardinal Spirits. Or else sub out the Flora for 0.75 oz creme de framboise and 3 dashes of rose water. It won't be the same, but it is a close approximation.

Ingredients: 1 oz white rum, 0.5 oz cachaça, 1 oz lime juice, 1 oz Cardinal Spirits Flora

Preparation: Combine ingredients in a Boston shaker. Shake over ice, strain into a chilled coupe. Garnish with an edible flower.

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).

March Drink of the Month - the D'Angelo

For Christmas this year, I decided to go back through six years of Bar Kiley posts and assemble the best of the best into a little book for friends and family. I'm still figuring out how best to produce said book, so it hasn't hit shelves yet (my parents and sister got galleys in their stockings), but the process of revisiting and tweaking 60+ recipes was a lot of fun. It also reminded me that I am really bad at naming original drinks, as is evidenced by the except below from the entry for the "Blade":

There is an old axiom: never let your idiot friends name your drinks when they are sleep deprived and watching old Marvel movies. Blade is made from hibiscus syrup (more on that in a moment), so it has a really pretty ruby hue. Hypothetically, if you and your friend are both sleep deprived because of travel and small children AND you happen to be watching the 1998 super hero/horror classic Blade, you may be tempted to imagine your drink as a goblet of blood, and name the tipple in honor of the movie. But that would be an incredibly dumb name, so no matter what you do, you should probably never promise your friend that they can name the drink you’ve handed them. Otherwise you’ll end up writing a 150 word essay in a cocktail book on why your drink has such a dumb name…. hypothetically.

I intensely dislike naming drinks because my naming conventions often come down to terrible puns, and no one needs more of those in their lives. With that as a given, I'm going to leave the name of the D'Angelo shrouded in mystery. I will say that it is an homage to one of the worst professors I ever had at Notre Dame, but the drink has nothing to do with her personality, subject matter expertise, or dress. It was a name association/pun, which I had better keep to myself in order to continue to project an aura of mystique.

The drink for this month began as a recreation of a tasty happy hour beverage I enjoyed at LatinicityRosa Maria from Latinicity became a sweet and sour porch sipper called the D'Angelo, and I hope you enjoy the fruits of our tinkering!
in downtown Chicago. It was a sweet and syrup-y (and likely spiked with soda-y) vodka drink made with lime, passion fruit, and rosemary. Down in the basement lab, we tweaked it into a passion fruit daiquiri riff with added notes of rosemary for complexity. The

Ingredients: 2 oz white rum, 1.5 oz lime juice, 1 oz passion fruit syrup, 0.75 oz rosemary simple syrup

Preparation: For the rosemary simple syrup: combine 0.5 cups water and 0.5 cups granulated sugar in a saucepot over medium heat. Stir until combined, add in 3 large sprigs of rosemary. Steep rosemary over medium heat for 10-15 minutes. Allow to cool, then strain and store for up to 3 weeks. For the cocktail: combine all ingredients in a Boston Shaker, shake over ice and strain into an ice filled goblet. Garnish with a rosemary sprig.

January Drink of the Month - the Kiley Royale

The newest craze I saw on all the morning talk shows this year was to celebrate the New Year with a "bubbly bar." I love the idea of allowing guests to spruce up their NYE champagne with fresh fruit and syrups, but most of the offerings on the Today show and other were pretty boring. Of course a fresh strawberry slice would be nice in my champagne, but where is the creativity in that? If I had hosted NYE (instead of building IKEA furniture and falling asleep on the couch watching Life of the Party), my bubbly bar would have had a little more style and flair! Add some Chambord or creme de casis to the table so guests can make a Kir Royale. Add some bitters and gin or brandy for a French 75. Citrus is a must if you are adding more sweetness, so make sure to have some lemon or lime juice out for guests. And add in a curve ball for giggles - some Domaine de Canton ginger liqueur for sweet/spicy or some evergreen liqueur for herbaciousness. Surprise your guest, and encourage them to sample something unique, instead of adding a boring blueberry or three.

While my NYE plans were not the most epic, I was inspired to try my hand at a sparkling cocktail for the evening - yes, you can still drink bubbly on NYE, even if your plans consist of sitting in sweatpants and trying really hard not to fall asleep. I was inspired by the Kir Royale, which is traditionally made with champagne and creme de cassis, which is made from blackcurrants. The Kir Royale is named after it's creator (a Mr. Kir), who first created the Kir Cocktail (cassis and white wine), and then made it "royale" by swapping out the still wine for sparkling. My take (named the Kiley Royale, because if Mr. Kir can have an eponymous drink, then so can I!) adds raspberry syrup, brandy, and lemon juice (to balance the sweet with some acid), while upping the alcohol content to give it some punch. Brandy and champagne are natural pairings, but make sure to avoid other grape distillates - the first batch I made used pisco, and I can confirm that brandy is the far superior fermented grape product to use in this application.

Ingredients: 1 oz brandy, 1 oz raspberry syrup, 0.5 oz lemon juice, 2 dashes cherry bitters, 3 oz prosecco to top.

Preparation: For the raspberry syrup: combine 0.5 cups water and 0.5 cups granulated sugar in a saucepot over medium heat. Stir until combined, add in 6 oz of raspberries. Bring to a boil, and reduce to simmer for 5 minutes. Allow to cool, then strain and store for up to 3 weeks. For the cocktail: combine the first four ingredients in a Boston Shaker, shake over ice and strain into a chilled champagne flute. Top with prosecco, garnish with a whole raspberry.

November Drink of the Month - Clash of Cultures or Southeastern

Our local Meijer store puts up a display every year of "scary" fruits for Halloween. This includes prickly rambutans, fearsome dragon fruits, and whatever the heck cherimoya is. It also includes buddah's hand citron, which looks (as the name suggests) like a gnarly, withered hand. Buddah's hand is a member of the citron family, just like lime, lemon, orange, and grapefruit. But unlike those other fruits, buddah's hand has no flesh, seeds, or juice. It is only peel and pith. Fortunately, the pith is not nearly as bitter as other members of the citron family, and the fruit itself is incredibly fragrant. It is used in some Asian cultures as air freshener, but in the Kiley household, it is used exclusively for drinks.

I found several recipes that made use of buddah's hand, and wound up turning the two buddah's hands that I purchased into five different products. I made flavored vodka, flavored simple syrup, flavored salt, flavored sugar, and candied buddah's hand. I won't use all of the recipes in this blog post (the candied citron makes a nice garnish, but I ended up using the salt instead), but three of these applications are featured below (no sugar either, since the simple syrup replaced it, but it would be good for doing a sugared rim). Most of the flavor of the buddah's hand comes from the peel - the pith is good for making candied citron, but it does add much to an infusion. For the vodka and simple syrup, use a vegetable peeler to cut long, thin strips of the peel, and allow them to steep - either in 1-1 simple syrup over medium heat or in a non-reactive container with vodka for 4-6 days. For the salt, use a microplane grater to zest the peel, and then place the zest in an oven at 200 degrees for 25 minutes. Add 2 tablespoons of zest to 1/2 cup of kosher salt, and use a mortar and pestle to combine.

BH salt garnish on the Clash of Cultures

I've tried two original drinks with the fruits of my buddah's hand creations. Below are the recipes. One features mezcal, in the mold of the Mezcal Bisou. The other is a daiquiri riff, which adds vanilla-flavored falernum as a compliment to the buddah's hand. Of the two, I prefer the rum drink (which I'm calling the "Southeastern"), but both feature the unique flavor of the buddah's hand in interesting ways. Here are the recipes, for you to choose from:

Clash of Cultures
In a Boston shaker, combine the following ingredients:
1 oz mezcal (joven)
1 oz buddah's hand vodka
0.75 oz buddah's hand simple syrup
0.5 oz lemon juice
pinch of buddah's hand salt
2 dashes of orange flower water

Shake over ice, strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a sprinkling of more buddah's hand salt.

Left: Clash of Cultures - Right: Southeastern

Southeastern
In a Boston shaker, combine the following ingredients:
2 oz white rum
0.75 oz buddah's hand simple syrup
0.5 oz lime juice
0.25 oz falernum

Shake over ice, strain into an old fashioned glass filled with ice.

I hope you enjoy one or both of the Clash of Cultures or the Southeastern!