March Drink of the Month - Lynchburg Lemonade

The last restaurant that Ann and I were able to visit before COVID-19 shut down the world was a tiny spot just over the border in Michigan called Fat Cam's. We love Fat Cam's for their Cajun dishes (particularly the Orleans Shrimp, covered in Worcestershire sauce and butter), and we were grateful that we had a chance to visit on a Friday in Lent and eat spicy seafood to our hearts' content. At the time of writing, we're now over a week and a half into our brave new world of coronavirus-related isolation, and thinking back to that night at Fat Cam's is making me a little emotional. I miss being about to go out, to see people, and to experience joy through new food and drink.

We've self-isolated pretty hard with Ann being pregnant. That means I'm drinking alone, if I choose to visit the bar. I'm sure I'll get more playful as our isolation stretches out, finding weird or unique ingredients on Amazon or Cocktail Kingdom. But for now, I wanted something simple and comforting. My drink this month was the last cocktail I had out in the wide world - a Lynchburg Lemonade. Fat Cam's called it something different (so that they didn't have to use Jack Daniel's), but the simple combination of lemon-lime soda, lemon, triple sec, and whiskey is easy to make and incredibly refreshing - until I ran out of lemons (I caved and bought shelf-stable lemon juice late last week). And even my pregnant, whiskey-hating wife took a (small) sip and admitted she didn't hate it. High praise from Ann!

Here is my recipe for a modified Lynchburg Lemonade. Like Fat Cam's, I should probably call it something else (since I'm not using Jack either). But why cause confusion? I'll just own that my recipe is not 100% standard... its better!

Ingredients: 2 oz bourbon (high rye content preferred), .75 oz lemon juice, .75 oz triple sec, 4-6 oz lemon lime soda (to taste).

Preparation: In a highball glass (or a mason jar if you need to feel folksy), combine the whiskey, lemon juice, and triple sec. Add ice to the top of the glass, and then top with soda. Stir to combine, and garnish with a lemon wheel.

February Drink of the Month - Sober Curious

For any loyal readers who thought I may have fallen off the edge of the Earth... you made a reasonable assumption, based on my lack of posting! My radio silence for the past few month is easy to explain, however: Ann and I are expecting baby #2 in July, so I've lost my #1 drinking buddy and taste tester. Who knows what this means for my blog output going forward (child #1 put me several months behind last time), but I will continue to post as much as I'm able!

In order to allow Ann to still join in on the fun, my cocktail club spent the month of February playing with shrubs and other low/no ABV options. According to the various publications that I read, the "sober curious" movement is growing. One way to get interesting flavors without using alcohol is with shrubs, sometimes know as "drinking vinegars." There is also a whole range of new "alcohol substitutes" available on the market, the granddaddy of which is Seedlip. For this month's concoction, we combined both of these alcohol-free options to make a pretty tasty little drink that even the pregnant ladies can get behind. This is definitely a case of a drink that is "greater than the sum of its parts." One of our club members described my bottle of Seelip Grove as "herbal hint water," but when combined with the kiwi shrub, it made something magical (we tried swapping Seedlip for gin later, and somehow the "herbal hint water" version was better!).

Ingredients: 2 oz Seedlip Grove, 3 oz kiwi ginger shrub*, 0.5 oz lime juice, 3 dash citrus bitters

Preparation: Combine seeldip, shrub, lime juice, and bitters in a boston shaker. Shake over ice, and strain into a chilled coupe. Garnish with a kiwi wheel.

Notes: *To make the kiwi-ginger shrub, combine 3 cups sugar, 3 cups cold water, 2 tsp ground ginger, 0.75 cups white wine vinegar, and 0.75 cups white wine. Bring to a boil, and remove from heat. Add the fruit of 6-8 kiwi, and allow to cool. Blend to incorporate ingredients, and then strain into a sterile container.

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.

August Drink of the Month - Fram-brandy Sidecar

I've detailed over the years my great love for the Sidecar, perhaps one of the perfect "mother" drinks, and my favorite formula to play with. Early on in the history of this blog, Zack and I performed a "side-by-sidecar" test with a number of (cheap-o) fruit brandies, our first foray into the scientific method of drink production. We tried out a number of flavors, and Apricot took the cake (and bad cherry brandy was the worst). However, raspberry (framboise in French) was missing from that list, and I now realize this to be a glaring omission (or perhaps a felix culpa, as I don't have memories of bottom shelf raspberry brandy to poison by brain).

While I was not on the lookout for new fruit brandies, a chance conversation at a family wedding this summer resulted in me becoming the proud owner of a bottle of "Nick's Red Raspberry Brandy," lovingly made by Ann's Uncle Nick. While it is quite sippable on its own, I can't resist an opportunity to tinker at the bar. A sidecar is brandy's best friend (and grappa, and pisco, and signani, and...), but a traditional formula with Cointreau would have been far too sweet. Tinkering with the ratios and subbing a dry curacao for Cointreau resulted in a gem which I'm looking forward to enjoying again this weekend (since my little sample bottle has now been replaced with a full fifth). Below is the formula for the Fram-Brandy Sidecar.

Ingredients: 1.5 oz raspberry brandy, 1 oz dry curacao (I use Pierre Ferrand), 0.75 oz lemon juice.

Preparation: Combine all ingredients in a Boston shaker. Shake over ice, and strain into a chilled coupe. Garnish with a fresh raspberry and a lemon twist.

Notes: Can't find Nick's Red Raspberry brandy? He'll trade you for some! Or else St. George Spirits makes a nice bottle as well ;).