An online speakeasy of potent potables and other pabulam.

If you remember my post from yesterday I was preparing a bottle of Fris vodka as horseradish vodka as per Imbibe!‘s recipe for a Horseradish Egg Sour courtesy Ryan Magarian (mixologist at large).

I remembered to drain that bottle back into the Fris bottle.  I didn’t have a cheesecloth but didn’t have a problem keeping the large pieces out; it is a bit cloudy, and does definitely smell like horseradish!

I could’ve waited to try the drink, but hey, I can sleep in tomorrow (doctor’s appointment for the win!) and what the heck.

As per the book:

Horseradish Egg Sour
1 1/2 oz. horseradish infused vodka
1/4 oz. Noilly Prat sweet vermouth
3/4 oz. fresh lemon juice
1/2 oz. simple syrup
1/2 oz. fresh orange juice
1 dash Angostura bitters
1 white of an organic brown egg

Unfortunately, my oranges don’t fit in my new juice squeezer, so I went with the Simply Orange.  To be honest, it’s good enough, in my opinion.

Following the instructions, I poured the ingredients into a mixing pint glass, added ice, and shook.  They suggested shaking for 10 seconds; knowing that there’s egg in there, I went ahead and did it for a while longer.  Then pour, and carefully garnish with a flamed orange peel.

Yes, I did burn my finger, but it worked otherwise.  As you may be able to see (the garnish was falling in!) I used my channel knife to peel off a piece of the skin; I’d considered using a larger piece via a paring knife but figured I’d leave that for a future endeavour.

With a caveat that, yes, you must like horseradish for this drink, ladies and gentlemen, I say to you: DAMN this drink is good!

It’s pretty much all horseradish, at least, in these proportions, but the other ingredients even it out, give it a bit of a sour edge, yet leave you with an aftertaste of the horseradish in the mouth.  It’s creamy, smooth, and hot.

Oh yeah baby.  Screw the bloody marys with this vodka, I’ll make these!

I’d make another one tonight but oh well, the roomies went to sleep.  I’ll just clean my crap up and leave it for another day.

Well, there’s no snow, per se.  And I ain’t dashing anywhere but into my beverage.

I often make double size drinks.  For a lot of them, it can make it easier to measure the ingredients.  Also, it gives me more drink to enjoy.

With tmfiii trying not to get sick, I figured I’d make a drink that he’d like, and one that would work on some of the stuff that I don’t drink often.  Thanks to the Cocktail Chronicles (where I was scanning to find out the theme for the next Mixology Monday) and remembering his fondness for the drink I went with the Cocktail a la Louisiane.

Cocktail a la Louisiane
3/4 ounce of rye whiskey
3/4 ounce of Benedictine
3/4 ounce of sweet vermouth
3 dashes Pernod
3 dashes Peychaud’s Bitters

But here’s the question: how big is a dash?

That’s an easy question for bottles such as bitters that have the little plastic dashing doohickey in the top of them.  But what of the Pernod?  If there’s one thing I don’t want it’s too much Pernod; it can so easily overwhelm a drink.

Google to the rescue!

I found this blog posting on A Dash of Bitters and just read the top part first.  Michael Dietsch, the author of that blog, suggested that a dash be about 1/8th of a teaspoon.  I simply did six solid dashes of the Peychaud’s (remember, I was doing a double); for the Pernod, I measured out 3/4 of a teaspoon (6/8ths, natch) of the Pernod and mixed up with the drink with 1.5 ounces each of Sazerac rye, Benedictine, and Noilly Prat sweet vermouth.

Garnished with two of my homemade brandy soaked cherries it came out, as my brother might say, “damn hell ass good”.

A number of the commenters – including Jonathan M. Forester who is a regular poster on Slashfood, one of my daily reads, and hey, he has a drink blog which doesn’t look like it’s been updated since May – pointed out that a dash is 1/6th of a teaspoon.  That would’ve added another 1/4 of a teaspoon to my Cocktail a la Louisiane, which might not have been bad.

Yeah.  It might’ve been better.

But this one is pretty darn good.

First, the FEH part.  I’m sick.  A week before Christmas.  FEH So, since there is a very strong likelihood I will not be going to work tomorrow, I thought I would write a post about stuff.  Then I remembered I needed to write a post about PX.  Hmmm, time to start typing.

So, to repeat what has already been posted PX was awesome.  There were only two employees.  Ashley, the attractive hostess/waitress and Jason, the barkeep.  Both performed their jobs flawlessly, were great conversationalists and completely professional.  Despite showing up 45 minutes before our reservation, we were allowed in and began the evening in a small alcove beside the bar.  After about 20 minutes, seats at the bar opened up and we moved in.  We were about to talk to Jason about the cocktails he was making, what spirits he preferred and discussions about bitters and homemade mixers.  It was a cocktail enthusiasts dream.  The menu consisted of about two dozen drinks from classic cocktails to champagne cocktails, flips, fizzes, etc.  Here are some of the cocktails that I remember:

Smoker’s Delight, a cocktail consisting of bourbon, lemon juice, tobacco syrup, simple syrup and a honeycomb swizzle.
Grog, consisting of spiced rum and jasmine tea.
My Wife’s Favorite Manhattan, which contained Todd Thrasher’s homemade vermouth and cherry bitters.  We learned that the drink is named for the fact that Mr. Thrasher’s wife loves this drink.  We also learned she was sitting beside us for a while.  Small world.
Sweet Basil, I closed out the night with this phenomenal drink.  Lillet Blanc, lemon juice and basil simple syrup.  Delicious.

There were many other fantastic drinks.  Hopefully, Roy and Luke will leave a comment telling us about their thoughts on the drinks.

In other news, my after-Christmas purchases will include a soda siphon and a hand crank ice crusher.

Hmmm, what else.  Oh, if there are any readers out there from Tennessee, let me know.  I want to hit a Tennessee liquor store when I visit my mother over the holidays and want to find out if there is anything to keep my eyes open for.

Sean mentioned in a comment below that we are thinking of moving to our own domain.  I’m a big fan of this, but we’ll see where the blog-gods take us.

Well, I’m going to take some vitamins, make a mug of warm grog, and hopefully get over this bug before Christmas.

Cheers!

And thanks to Aimee…

Her husband made his own limoncello back a while ago.

I know

tmfiii

has made similar stuff.

I might try to make something like that soon – I guess, in a way, I sort of am, with the horseradish vodka I’m making.

But anybody else make anything good?