December Drink of the Month - Hot Buttered Rum

I've been making a lot of fun drinks this month, and I've gone through a couple of possible Drinks of the Month over the past few weeks. I considered  few, and some might make it into the new few months (hello new uses for cachaca), but everything changed once the temperature dropped and we got a white Christmas in South Bend. From that point on, as we froze going from our car to the store, only a warm drink made any sense. Luckily, I'd just begun reading the excellent Smuggler's Cove book that I got from my birthday last year (yes, I know that was last January, but we had a baby, so sue me). They have an excellent recipe for Hot Buttered Rum, and I promptly whipped up a batch for Christmas, and then another to take to my parents once we went through the whole first batch.

The Smuggler's Cove recipe is genius, in that you can make up most of the drink ahead of time. Once you've whipped up their "batter," all you need to do is add rum and hot water to serve. The batter takes 15-20 minutes to take, and is good until the butter you use passes its expiration date. We adjusted down their recipe and changed one or two ingredients, but the gist is still the same. Below is the recipe for the buttered "batter," and the drink recipe will follow.

For the "Batter":

Pre-batched Batter

First, prepare the spice mixture for the batter - 1/2 teaspoon of each of the following: cinnamon, nutmeg, clove, allspice, black pepper, and ginger. Combine, and set aside for later. In a sauce pot, melt 1 cup (2 sticks) of butter over a low heat. Once the butter has melted, add 2 cups brown sugar, and stir to combine fully. Add 1 tablespoon of molasses and 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla extract, and combine. Finally, add spice mixture, and stir over low heat until butter is completely integrated into the mixture (it will tend to separate out initially - keep stirring until it is fully incorporated). Allow the mixture to cool slightly, and then pour into a glass jar and store in the refrigerator.

For the Hot Buttered Rum:

In a ceramic or glass coffee mug, combine 3 barspoons of the rum batter with 1 1/2 ounces of aged (golden) rum.* Top with 6 ounces of hot water, and stir until the batter is completely dissolved.

*Dark rum also works for this recipe - we used the Plantation overproof dark rum, and that packed a significant kick! But mostly we drank these with Appleton Estate Signature Blend, and that was just fine!

We hope you enjoy your hot buttered rum!

November "Drink" of the Month - Bourbon Balls

Is it possible to ever tire of drinking excellently crafted cocktails? While it would be easy to overdo it in one evening... I don't think I would ever turn down an excellent drink if offered one. However, if you should ever tire of drinking fine cocktails and spirits, the good news is that you can also eat fine spirits! There are lots of options: tiramisu, whiskey glazed anything, rum cake, etc. One of my favorites, however, are Kentucky Bourbon Balls - bourbon infused fudge coated with chocolate and usually topped with a pecan half.

Since Thanksgiving is the time for cooking, baking, and an overdose of deserts, we decided to make bourbon balls this past weekend. Because I'm a prude, and dislike chocolate (I know, I'm the worst), we coated our bourbon balls with white chocolate instead of milk chocolate. We followed a recipe, but worked mostly with found objects - so we were a little light on chopped nuts. The result was a fudge that was a little runny, which made coating the fudge balls with chocolate quite difficult. I've included a picture of my one perfect ball, but the rest were a mess. While they were not the most visually appealing, they were delicious... and boozy as heck. Should you make your own bourbon balls, make sure not to skimp on the nuts, and remember that the freezer is your best friend. Keeping bourbon balls out at room temperature will lead to a runny mess, so your finished product should remain in the fridge/freezer.

Below is the recipe for bourbon balls. I've combined the Imbibe magazine recipe that we used with some helpful insight from the Food Network recipe. Since this is my recipe, I'm going to use white chocolate, but feel free to sub for semi-sweet/milk chocolate chips instead. Here is my recipe for bourbon balls:

Finely chop 3/4 to 1 cups of walnuts. Place in a mason jar, and cover with 5 tbsp of bourbon. Allow

the nuts to soak in bourbon overnight.

The following day, combine the following in a mixing bowl:

1/2 cup butter, softened

2 cups powdered sugar

3/4-1 cups bourbon-soaked chopped walnuts

1 tsp vanilla extract

Mix using a hand-mixer until smooth and elements are fully combined. Place in refrigerator and allow to cool for 1-2 hours.

Form fudge mix into small balls (between 1/2-3/4" in diameter), place balls on wax-paper lined cookies sheet. Freeze balls for 1-2 hours.

Melt one package of (white) chocolate chips in double boiler or similar. Dip balls into melted chocolate using a toothpick. Spin to coat. Place coated balls back on wax paper, cover toothpick hole with pecan half. Return to freezer until ready to serve.

 

I hope you enjoy your bourbon balls!

October Drink of the Month - Fallen Patriot

This month's drink is not an original, but rather came across my desk from Imbibe Magazine, by way of the Teardrop Lounge in Portland, Oregon. While it may not be one of my originals, it is what I drank almost exclusively during the month of October, so it seems worthy of inclusion into the blog roll. As an additional bonus, this is one of the few bourbon cocktails that Ann will drink, so it is a major winner in my book.

According to Imbibe, the inspiration for this drink is a classic - the Lion's Tail (bourbon, allspice dram, lime juice, gomme syrup, and bitters). I can see the inspiration, but the Fallen Patriot feels to me more like a winter-y mint julep with a hint of the tropics. Teardrop Lounge introduces a complex-flavored cordial for sweetness: Licor 43 (sometimes called Cuarenta y Tres). Licor 43 is most often used to make Key Lime flavored cocktails because of its vanilla body and lime finish. It plays nicely with the baking spice flavors found in allspice dram. The resulting sweet and spicy combo is mixed with bourbon, lime and fresh mint to make the Fallen Patriot. The result is a drink with just as much sweetness and mint-y finish as a mint julep, but with some fun additions! Fresh citrus from the lime, vanilla warmth from the Licor 43, and cinnamon/nutmeg/clove from the allspice dram. It's a great drink for a fall day spent watching ND football!

Sadly, I did not capture any pictures this month, but I do have the recipe for the Fallen Patriot to share:

In a mixing glass, combine the following ingredients:
2 oz bourbon (I like a wheated bourbon for this)*
0.75 oz Licor 34
0.75 oz lime juice
0.25 oz allspice dram
10 mint leaves

Shake over ice for 12-15 seconds until the mint is well pulverized. Double strain into a coupe glass to remover any mint particles. Garnish with a sprig of mint.

*Larceny is a good mid-range wheated bourbon. I use Buggy Whip Wheat Whiskey from Journeyman Distillery, which is excellent.

I hope you enjoy your Fallen Patriot!

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).