September Drink of the Month: The Dribbly Pear

Sometimes you create an awesome drink and then sit for hours, scratching your head, trying to come up with a name to give it justice. In case you were wondering, this is not one of those drinks. The flip side of this phenomenon is when you are gifted a wonderful (or in this case, a "so terrible its wonderful") name, and have to come up with a drink to accompany the name. For the month of September, I was challenged by my lovely wife to come up with a drink called a "Dribbly Pear," named after the company of a particularly frustrating camp instructor that contracted at Saint Mary's this past summer. It is a nonsense name, and so the challenge became how to construct a drink to fit the profile.

Clearly we needed to begin with pear. I posed this "build a drink from a name" challenge to sometimes collaborator and friend of the blog Zack, but with a crucial misspelling. I gave him the name "Dribly Pear" (only one "b"), which sent him down a rabbit-hole trying to find a definition of "Dribly." His best guess was related to a Boston-area surname, so he riffed on a Boston Sidecar, using pear eau de vie for brandy and pear nectar for Cointreau. It was a valiant effort, but despite our best intentions, the pear flavor got lost (pear eau de vie is fragile - easily overpowered - as is pear flavor in general).

So what do we do to help bring out the pear? My first instinct was to wrap in white wine. It has a robust, noticeable flavor, but it is delicate enough to enhance and not drown out pear flavor. I also wanted gin, to add a little floral/botanical note without bumping in too much extra funk. Turns out, even the gin was too strong in this drink. I needed a base flavor that would enhance the pear flavor, not overpower it. I settled on the bottle of Żubrówka that has been sitting around since March, and never looked back. My final concoction was meant to be a summer sipper. Light, floral, easy to "dribble" down your chin as you take a sip on the porch or on the beach. This drink takes a little prep (20 minutes to reduce some Riesling and an hour to cool the resultant syrup), but it can still be worth your while during the last few days of Indian Summer we are experiencing! The Żubrówka and Riesling syrup taken together lend an almost caramel flavor to base pear notes in the drink, while a splash of soda water keeps everything light and sunny. Here's the recipe to follow along at home:

In a mixing glass, combine the following:
1.5 oz Żubrówka (Bison Grass Vodka)
0.75 oz Riesling Syrup*
0.75 oz pear nectar**

Shave over ice, and strain into a collins glass filled with ice. Top with ~1 oz sparking water. Garnish with a thin pear slice.

*For the Riesling syrup: Heat 2 cups of sweet Riesling over high heat, until boiling. Continue boiling until wine has reduced by half. Reduce heat, stir in one cup granulated sugar. Take off stove and allow to come to room temperature. Cool in refrigerator at least one hour before serving. Use within two weeks.

*I used Goya fruit nectars, available at most Mexican groceries (or in the Hispanic section of many large chains). If you want to be fancy, you could use fresh pear juice with some of the pulp retained, but I wasn't that ambitious this time.

I hope you enjoy your Dribbly Pear!   

August Drink of the Month - Venial Sin

My apologies for the lateness of this post - it would appear that starting back full time at work, building a deck, and raising a 5 mo old takes more time that I would hope. I actually made this drink back during the second week of the month, in celebration of Ann's birthday. Her request: an original rum drink with strawberries. The classic interpretation is the strawberry daiquiri, made with rum, simple syrup, lime juice, and muddled strawberry. A good, ice cold (but not frozen) daiquiri with fresh lime juice and good, un-aged rum is sublime - forget the frozen stuff or the cheap mixes. However, the daiquiri is also a perfect recipe for blender/frozen drinks, so that is often what most people encounter. When you mix frozen strawberry daiquiri and frozen pina colada, you get a Miami Vice, named after the classic TV show.

Three options of the Venial Sin - the right glass won!

My idea this month was to make a take on the Miami Vice that could be consumed as a rocks drink. The Miami Vice works because it is a frozen drink, which can be layered. But how could you combine these two drinks without them being layered? There is a riot of flavors between these two drinks - rum, lime, pineapple, coconut, and strawberry. Mix those all up into one and you get a weird drink with "too many notes" as my mom likes to say. The solution? We got rid of the pineapple (the most overpowering of the flavors), and used coconut water to make a simple syrup instead of coconut cream. The result isn't quite a vice, just a venial sin (oh, that was a bad Catholic theology joke - I must be getting back into the swing of things at work). I tried a few different recipe combinations for this drink, using both strawberry coconut water simple syrup and muddled strawberries in the syrup. Shocker, Ann preferred the sweetest option. But it was her birthday, so the recipe to follow will be up to her standards. Should you desire a less sweet option, reduce the coconut water syrup from 0.75 to 0.5 ounces. Here is the recipe for the Venial Sin:

In a mixing tin, combine the following:

0.75 coconut water syrup*

0.75 oz lime juice

1.5 oz white rum

2-3 strawberries, hulled and sliced

Muddle the strawberries. Add ice and share for 12 seconds. Fine strain if desired, otherwise serve with the muddled strawberry in the glass. Pour over fresh ice and serve with a strawberry garnish.

*For the coconut water syrup, combine equal parts coconut water and sugar (by weight) in a small sauce pan. Warm over low heat until sugar and coconut water are in solution.

We hope you enjoy your Venial Sin!  

July Drink of the Month - Smoke on the Water... Melon

Zack mixing up the first batch of our new cocktail

Some of the worst drinks I've ever made come come about because Zack (my drinks collaborator and friend of the blog) and I think we've found a genius new cocktail idea, only to have it blow up in our face. At the end of last month, I bought a whole watermelon as part of a fruit tray for my nephew's baptism. It was a big one, so I still had some melon left after chunking most of the fruit. I juiced about a fifth of the melon and wound up with over 14 ounces of juice - watermelons have an excellent juice yield! So Zack and I went down into the lab and tried out a few ideas for drinks featuring fresh watermelon. One attempt we made with gin was almost undrinkable (but you can't let booze go to waste, so we still drank it). But out of this experimentation also came one of my favorite new drinks, sure to be a a staple in Bar Kiley during the summer months.

We played a riff on a Cadillac Margarita, using Cointreau, lime, simple, and agave spirits. We subbed raicilla and/or mezcal for tequila and added a healthy dose of watermelon juice and a few dashes of kosher sea salt (as salted watermelon is all the rage right now). The resulting blend of sweet, fruity, citrus, salty, and smoky made an excellent summer sipper. Changing out the agave spirits allows the bartender to adjust the level of smoky flavor as well (I'll probably just make this with tequila for Ann, but I loved the super-smoky, almost peaty-Scotch flavor that raicilla imparted). Juicing a watermelon is easy - using a citrus press on chunks of watermelon works in a pinch, but going full-out and using a juicer leads to high yield without too much work or cleanup.

Here is the recipe for our Smoke on the Water...Melon (name credits go to Zack, who insisted I include the ellipses and all):

In a cocktail shaker, combine the following
0.5 oz lime juice
0.5 oz simple syrup
0.5 oz Cointreau
0.75 oz watermelon juice
1.5 oz agave spirit*
3 dashes kosher sea salt (approximately 1/2 tsp)

Shake over ice and strain into a coupe or margarita glass. Garnish with a watermelon chunk.

*For no smoke (in which case you're basically making a salted watermelon margarita), use blanco tequila. Use mezcal for hearty smoke flavor and raicilla for scotch-lover levels of smoke

I hope you enjoy your Smoke on the Water...Melon

June Drink of the Month - Fish House Punch for One

I'm going to start off this post with a crazy, bar-related news story, and then skillfully segue way into our drink of the month. Or at least I'll make a tangential connection - but this story is too crazy to not talk about. Okay, on to the news! There is a bar in Dawson City, Yukon (Canada) that serves a drink called the "Sour Toe." Ordering the drink gets you a certificate and your name on the wall, but there is a catch - you must drink a cocktail with an actual severed, preserved human toe in it, and the toe must touch your lips! Gross. The bar has several toes, including a prized "second toe" (the one after the big toe) which is grossly bent and distorted (the previous owner of the toe had it amputated because of hammer toe and donated it to the bar - see some great/grisly pictures HERE). I should say that the bar had several toes, because one tricky customer made off with the bar's favorite hammer toe the other day, in a brazen act of robbery. If you happen to know anything of the whereabouts of the the toe, contact the bar's "Toe Captain" (yes, a real job) - there is bound to be a reward. For more juicy story details, be sure to read THIS article.

Okay, here's where I do some gymnastics in order to make a connection to my drink for this month. The Sour Toe is a drink that "benefits" from steeping a human toe in liquor. Such steeping changes the flavor of the drink the longer the additive is placed in the beverage. The Fish House Punch is another drink that has a flavor that changes over time because of an added ingredient (connection!). However, the key in the Fish House Punch is much more pedestrian than the Silver Toe - a large block of ice! The drink is designed to be kept in a refrigerator, allowing the ice to melt slowly over the course of the day, which subtly changes the flavor.

Fish House Punch is a great party drink, and its fun to make and note the shifting flavors over time. But the recipe we found calls for 32 limes and 12 lemons, and serves 15-20. What if you desire the tart pleasure of a Fish House Punch, but you don't have a citrus grove in the back yard? My bartending companion Zack and I came up with a modified recipe that makes punch for one. It can also be scaled up easily to make a small pitcher, as we did for a reception at my parents' house to welcome Charlie to the neighborhood. The punch is a delightful combination of light and dark rum, brown sugar, brandy, and citrus. Below is the recipe for the punch for one:

In a Boston shaker, combine the following:

2 oz lime juice (fresh squeezed of course)
1 oz lemon juice (ditto)
1 oz 1:1 dark brown sugar syrup*
1 oz light rum
0.5 oz dark rum
0.5 oz brandy

Shake over ice, and pour into a Collins glass filled with cracked ice. Garnish with lime and lemon wheels and/or twists!

*The original recipe calls for one cup of brown sugar to be added to the giant mix. You could add dry sugar to the citrus and stir to combine (that's what we did the first time), but making the one to one syrup (1/2 cup brown sugar and 1/2 cup water) also adds a little water, which simulates the effect of melting ice in the large-scale punch.

I hope you enjoy your Fish House Punch for One (and maybe stay away from the Sour Toe).

May Drink of the Month - Garden Party Punch

On the occasion of Charlie's baptism (last Saturday, 5/13), it seemed right and proper to make a punch for our guests. We held an open house on Mother's Day, and the weather could not have been more perfect for an outdoor celebration. While my back yard is still in the process of transformation ("collection of green-ish weeds" suits it better than "garden"), a party on the lawn seemed like a fitting time to try "Garden Party Punch" from the great little book Punch Bowl by Dan Searing (link).

Finished product, ready to serve!

The key ingredient for this lovely burgundy-hued punch is Sauterne, a sweet white wine. Our favorite local winery, Lemon Creek, (which makes a to-die-for peach spumante), makes a great "Silver Beach Sauterne," which celebrates the old boardwalk amusement park in Saint Joseph, Michigan. This is tempered with Bordeaux, brandy, demerara sugar, a touch of green chartreuse, and lemon and orange juice. It tastes somewhere between cold mulled wine and sangria - really refreshing for a sunny spring day!

The recipe can be found below. Next month, I am going to offer another punch from Searing's book, the Fish House Punch. In the bar laboratory with Zack (who helped me select this month's drink), we came up with a scaled down recipe of the Fish House Punch that we really liked. However, with the recipe for the Garden Party Punch calling for whole 750 ml bottles of wine, I won't attempt any scaling here. Make the whole batch and serve it at your next spring or summer gathering! It was a hit for us!

Prepping the ice molds next
to Uncle David's turkeys.

Below you will find the recipe. Any good punch also needs an ice ring to help cool the punch and provide visual flair. I forgot to borrow my mother-in-law's bundt cake pan, so I made my ice ring using orange segments in a cylindrical cake pan. That works in a pinch, but using greased saran-wrap in a bundt mold is preferable, for the eye-pleasing ring shape it produces (and higher surface area it affords for cooling). Form your ice ring the night before (make sure to add water after you place the mold in the freezer - I had my oranges all artistically arranged, and had to re-do the whole thing when everything shifted on my way to the ice chest), and prepare the punch below about 30 minutes before serving to allow everything to marry well.

In a glass measuring bowl, combine 2 cups brandy with 1 2/3 cups demerara sugar. Stir until sugar is dissolved. Add juice of one orange (~6 tbsp), two lemons (also ~6 tbsp), and 3 tbsp green chartreuse. Stir to combine, and pour into large punch bowl. Top with 3 750 ml bottles of Sauterne (Tokaji or other white dessert wines will also work) and one 750 ml bottle of Bordeaux (or another full-bodied red). Stir and let sit for 10 minutes. Add ice mold, garnish with additional lemon or orange slices if desired.

We hope you enjoy your Garden Party Punch!

April Drink of the Month - The Apra-Daquiri

Meet Charlie!

I have a confession to make - I've tried to write this blog post about 10 times in the last two weeks, but something kept getting in the way. I would try to make it down to my bar each night to craft a relatively simple cocktail - I had all of the ingredients in stock, and all I needed to do was juice a lime and measure out spirits. But each night, when things finally calmed down, and I would contemplate trekking down the stairs, I would hit a wall. I hear being a new parent does that to you...

For those faithful readers who have not heard the good news yet, my wife, Ann, and I welcomed our son Charles Joseph Kiley (Charlie) into the world on March 24 at 5:49 pm. He's just passed the one month mark now, and he's gaining weight like a champ (I wish people were as excited when I gained weight... or when I pooped for that matter). There are many, many wonderful things about parenthood, but surviving the first month (and accompanying sleep deprivation) did take a toll on my mixology time. Luckily, as noted above, this month's drink is pretty simple.

One of the benefits of living in your wife's home town is that you have easy access to eager babysitters. Ann's parents were nice enough to take Charlie for a few hours during week number two, so that we could run out and grab dinner together (just the two of us) and debrief/decompress from the first two weeks of parenting. We went to the LaSalle Kitchen, which has a great little bar program. My wife, being a big fan of anything with rum, ordered a drink called the Apra-Daquiri. This was her first cocktail post-baby, so I thought it would be appropriate to memorialize it here on the blog. The folks at LaSalle Kitchen were nice enough to pass along the recipe (yay!), which I have included in picture form. Below, you will find my slightly modified recipe. I use apricot liqueur instead of apricot nectar, and cut down on the simple syrup to help adjust the sweetness level. Here is my adjusted Apra-Daquiri recipe:


In a cocktail shaker, combine:

1.75 ounce silver rum (I used Journeyman Road's End)
0.75 oz lime juice
0.75 oz Rothman and Winter Orchard Apricot*
0.5 oz orgeat

0.25 oz simple syrup

Shake over ice, strain into a highball glass. Garnish with a dried apricot or lime wheel.

*Rothman and Winter is found in most good liquor stores. They also make an excellent Creme de Violet, which I use for my Aviation cocktails.

I hope you enjoy your Apra-Daquiri!

March Drink of the Month - The Gosia

Our drink for March is one of my own creation, inspired by a bottle of Żubrówka (Polish bison grass vodka) that I found at a Mardi Gras party. I'd never tried Żubrówka before, but I knew it was a favorite among bartenders, and that it went exceedingly well with apple juice. I did some light reading this morning, and found that most experts ascribe the following taste notes to Żubrówka: vanilla, lavender, thyme, "spring flowers," and, of course, grass. Żubrówka is made by steeping vodka in the tall grass that grows in the Białowieża Forest (which is favored by the local bison - hence the name). Żubrówka has a slight yellow-green hue, and usually is bottled with a blade of grass in the bottle.

My muse for this month

I wasn't quite sure what to do with my bottle of Żubrówka (apple juice was nowhere to be found), but I remember reading that it also paired well with lime. Inspired, I decided to try my own riff on a Margarita, using Żubrówka and Saint Germain (a personal favorite for elevating Margaritas). The lime accents the grassy notes well, and the Saint Germain provides a little bit of sweetness (along with Cointreau), as well as some other floral notes to compliment the earthy Żubrówka. It is a slightly bracing, slightly sweet drink with a nice acidic backbone from the citrus to keep everything together. It was a hit at the party, so the only thing left to do was find a name for my creation.

Long time readers may remember the entomology of the name "Margarita" (need a refresher? See this post from 2013 - wow, I've been doing this for a while now!). For those readers who have not been around that long, the short story is that the Margarita was a take on the popular "Daisy" drink during Prohibition. A brandy drink with lemon and Cointreau became a tequila drink with lime when brandy was hard to come by. "Daisy" was a nickname for Margaret, hence Margarita (or "little Margaret). Since this drink uses Polish vodka, I decided I would use the Polish word for "daisy" as the name for my new drink. Unfortunately, "stokrotka" is super hard to pronounce, as I was informed by everyone at our party. The name I ultimately settled on is a better fit however - Gosia is a Polish nickname for Margaret (or Małgorzata in Polish), so it better fits the name scheme for the Daisy/Margarita. Now that you know where that odd name came from, enjoy the recipe below to make one at home:

In a Boston shaker, combine the following:

2 oz of Żubrówka*

1/2 oz Cointreau

1/2 oz Saint Germain

1/2 oz lime juice

Shake over ice for 10 seconds, and strain into a coupe glass (no margarita glasses please, we're using vodka here!)

Notes:
*Only one note this month - there are other bison grass vodkas on the market, but Żubrówka is officially licensed by the Polish government, and far outshines its imitators. Make the investment. Apparently, if you can find stuff from Poland, the flavors are a bit stronger. The US government bans the strong Polish stuff, so the bottles sold here are a little different, but still excellent.

I hope you enjoy your Gosia!