The Wild Drink Blog, hosted by Tristan Stephenson, is hosting this month’s Mixology Monday.? This was my first time checking out his blog, and so I say “welcome!” to the joys of a Mixology Monday.

The theme is “Superior Twists” – as you may have guessed by the title of my post.? What this means is not the usual garnish of an orange or lemon twist but rather a variation of a classic drink and one, that in the opinion of the blogger, works out better than normal.? He was also curious what our favorite song to do the twist to was, and upon thinking about it I have to say GWAR’s “Sex Cow”.? Now you know.? (And knowing is half the battle!)

I’m getting ready to move so I’ve started packing.? I started with a lot of my books and thus, all my cocktail related books – I thought – were in a sealed box.? Then I remembered my Museum of the American Cocktail pocket bar guide!? I thumbed through it for a few minutes while thinking of things I liked to make.? The first thing I noticed that really spoke to me is the Old-Fashioned Whiskey Cocktail.

The recipe in the book is listed like this:

Old-Fashioned Whiskey Cocktail
1 sugar cube (1 tsp)
1 tsp water
2 dashes Angostura bitters
2 oz (60 ml) rye (or bourbon) whiskey
Muddle sugar, water, and bitters together until the sugar is mostly dissolved.? Fill glass with ice, then add the whiskey.? Garnish with a twist of lemon peel, or orange slice and cherry.? Serve with a swizzle stick or straw.

It’s then noted that it’s better to muddle a slice of orange peel so that you get the essential oils from the peel without getting the pulp.? I trimmed off some of the inner bitter pith before putting in a slice, did the muddling, then left in the orange while adding the whiskey and such.

It’d been a while since I had one and OOF!? I’d forgotten the hit that a drink like this will give you on first sip.? I let it sit for a while while I got out the ingredients for my superior twist (heh) on this drink while trying to remember who, exactly, inspired the variation I typically drink.

It’s really between two different sources.? One of them is our friend Jake, who I believe was the first person to initially suggest using the different spirit in an old fashioned.? The second is The Gibson, the popular bar down at 14th and U that had a drink I absolutely loved – the Malt & Hops.

Yes, I’m talking about making an Old Fashioned with Bols Genever.? Ever since I started making those I’d have to estimate that of previous bottles of Bols Genever, probably 90%+ was used in gin-based Old Fashioneds.? Here’s how I make them.

Bols Genever Old Fashioned
2-4 ounces Bols Genever
1 solid squeeze of demerara simple syrup
1-2 dashes Bitter Truth Repeal Day Bitters (or Marshall’s Moonshine Bitters)
Pour into a small glass.? Add several cubes of ice.? Stir in the glass for a few minutes, and if desired, add a twist of lemon or orange.

Maybe it’s just me, but this version is just so damn good it’s not even funny.? It’s smooth, it’s strong, it’s a bit sweet – I like a decent size squeeze of simple syrup in mine, and you don’t risk the granularity you might end up by using straight sugar cubes.? The flavorful and complex bitters adds another level to the rich, malty gin making this the kind of drink you can just sip on for hours – but have to be careful about, because it is damn easy to drink way too many of them!

So that’s all well and good but if you know us here in the Den you know that we don’t like to let a Mixology Monday slide by without a chance to throw in a bonus drink.? Therefore and thusly I flipped a page or two more in the book and saw the Picon Punch.

Just recently I’d finished making up a triple batch (oops!) of Jamie Boudreau‘s amer picon replica.? One batch went to the before-mentioned Jake; the other two batches I bottled up, with the majority of them going to other bloggers and people I know about town.

The night it was done I was looking for a drink to make with it and over in the Mixoloseum chat room Greg Boehm suggested that I make a picon punch.? The recipe he gave me was very similar to the one in the guide:

Picon Punch
2 oz (60 ml) Amer Picon
0.5 oz (15 ml) lemon juice
0.5 oz (15 ml) grenadine
4 oz (120 ml) soda water
Shake the Amer Picon, lemon juice, and grenadine with ice, and strain into an ice filled highball glass.? Top with soda.? Garnish with seasonal fruits.

Now, I’ll admit, I’m lazy, and didn’t garnish.? But I made it, and it’s not a bad drink, though sometimes drinks like this (and the Suffering Bastard variation that uses bourbon and gin) make me feel really lazy – I don’t want to shake, then strain, then top, etc. etc. etc.!

But I have other lemon-based beverages, and better yet, I debated how to use them to make the drink easier and faster to make – and perhaps tastier.

On the left is Simply Lemonade; for orange juice, I almost always buy the orange juice that they make and I’ll often have a bottle of the lemonade sitting around in case I have a hankering for it.? On the right is Fentiman’s Victorian Lemonade, a tasty dry lemonade that I picked up last weekend over at Ace and will post more about it later.

But there’s the thing – the former is sweetened while the latter is more complex and less sweet.? On the other hand, the Fentiman’s is also carbonated while the Simply Lemonade is not.

The answer, for me?? I used the grenadine with the Fentiman’s, but instead of using it also for the Simply Lemonade and risk it being too sweet, I used 100% pomegranate juice (here, POM).? Since the lemonades were replacing both the lemon juice and the soda, and I wouldn’t be shaking these, I altered the recipe a bit.

Amer Boudreau Scofflaw Punch
2 ounces amer picon (amer boudreau recipe)
0.5 ounce grenadine or pomegranate juice
6 ounces lemonade
Build over ice in a Collins glass, stir.

From left to right we have the Simply Lemonade/POM variation, the Fentiman’s & grenadine, and then the traditional (in the highball glass).? Notice I used Collins glass for the others.? I prefer that for this kind of drink, as a) they seem more like summer drinks to me and b) I think it makes it easier to enjoy the drink.

But that’s just me.

In tasting them, I used the traditional Picon Punch as the “standard”.? Personally, I like it, but not hugely so; I think it’s the soda water.? I’m using Stirrings Club Soda and it just doesn’t seem quite right to me.

The Simply Lemonade variation is still very lemonade-y (in the American style of lemonade sense) though with a backend of the pomegranate juice and not a lot of room for the amer picon to shine through (note that my amer picon is a bit light, it seems).? As a summer time drink it wouldn’t be bad at all though I might consider using something instead of amer picon in it – perhaps even a triple sec plus bitters or amaro.? It might be worth experimenting to see what’s good.

The Fentiman’s combination, on the other hand, really works for me.? I think it helps that the Victorian Lemonade is just a darn tasty beverage without being as cloyingly sweet as even the Simply Lemonade can be; and perhaps the Stirrings grenadine doesn’t hit as hard as the POM pomegranate juice.? (My next grenadine will be made from POM, after I move; that might give a better comparison.)

Give these drinks a shot and let us know what you think – and don’t forget to enter Marshall’s Templeton Rye contest!? Damn him, I’d enter it if I could!? GRRRR!

And thanks again to Tristan for hosting this month!? Can’t wait to see the round-up!