An online speakeasy of potent potables and other pabulam.

Just a reminder folks:? The Passenger is donating 25% of all proceeds and 100% of all tips tonight to the American Red Cross.? Join Phil Greene of the Museum of the American Cocktail making Sazeracs and the brothers Brown as they whip up some delicious rum drinks. There will also be a film about Haiti.

Also, Public Bar is donating space for a Red Cross fundraiser at the same time (5-8 PM).? Suggested donation is $40 and Bud Lights are $3 a piece with donation.

I know what you’re thinking – “what the hell, SeanMike just posted!”? I know, I know.? I’m going to have a bigger post later – but I wanted to remind people of this first.

Help out people who have suffered a horrible tragedy.? Hope to see y’all there (I’ll be at the Passenger, assuming I finish my work first!)

First off – happy belated two year anniversary to us!? I admit we maybe haven’t been blogging perhaps as much as we should be, and I’m trying to get off my tookus and do more.? Tales of the Cocktail and that trip to Korea broke my rhythm!? But the good news is that I’m finally working things out right again.? I think.? Ask me that again in a week.

Second off – Phil Greene alerted us to this post covering the cocktails from the DC bracket of the Domaine de Canton competition.? I know I’ve tried a couple of those – the Domainatrix by Rachel Sergi, now over at Againn, and the Thai’s the Limit by Gina Chersevani of PS7 (which also features your Scofflaws in the Washington Post video about it).? I want to say I’ve tried the Owen Thomson (of Bourbon) Jack O’ Ginger but I might just be confusing it with another drink.

So – now to drinking and reading.

When I moved into my current apartment my parents commented on how it seemed like all the boxes I brought in had one of two things in them – either books or liquor.? Well, duh, I thought – what are my hobbies?? Cocktails and reading!

Them's a lot of words!

As I settled down recently to reread a ten part alternative history by Harry Turtledove (the Timeline-191 series, if you must know, where the South won the War Between the States thanks to not losing Lee’s Special Order 191 to McClellan), I did it my usual way – most of the time outside, on my balcony, drinking a beer and smoking a cigar.

mmmm, beer and a cigar

As I read through the first book How Few Remain that was mostly fine, but then I got into the Great War series with American Front.? That series introduces what has to be my favorite character in the entire series, Quebecois farmer Lucien Galtier.? Unlike most of the characters in the book (slight spoilers here, I’m afraid) his life doesn’t entirely suck.? In fact, his often humorous sections really help out through the grimmer parts of the series.

It was also his sections quite a while ago that got me introduced to Calvados.? Calvados is an apple brandy produced in France, and while the character drank basically a moonshine variation of it – after all, he’s a farmer in Quebec, not in the Calvados region of France, and it’s so often wartime with occupation forces etc yadda yadda yadda – that I had finally managed to get a bottle a few years ago.

I still remember the first time I actually tried Calvados.? It was on a date at a place called Sonoma here in DC and I was so excited to see it on the menu that I spilled red wine on my shirt.? (Hey, that was like over 2 years ago!? I had no idea what I was getting myself into.)? I didn’t care for it much straight, and the bottle I had tended to only be used in cocktails for a number of years (that number being two).

As I started rereading the series, I thought, hey, I should drink appropriately for the books.? Cigars are fine, a lot of the characters smoke them though the US characters will remind you repeatedly that their cigars are bad compared to Confederate ones (the Confederacy, in these books, own Cuba as well as the prime tobacco growing parts of North America).

At first this started with sipping on Calvados while reading them, which helped with the Galtier parts to feel more “into it”.? Depending on night of the week and compunction, I started adding in other things.? Whiskey, for instance, is an easy choice for a lot of the characters, as well as beer – which I had before, naturally – and occasionally for the characters from Sonora and Chihuahua some mezcal, specifically, Del Maguey crema de mezcal.

Of course, you can’t keep up with the characters in the book, but on the other hand, keeping it close to what you’re reading helps a lot.? I feel an urge to read The Great Gatsby again, since I think it’d fun to drink appropriate cocktails to that – though it is kind of funny to try to figure out what to drink while reading my Warhammer 40K novels.

Right now?? Well, I’m reading The Space Wolves Omnibus and therefore drinking ale.? In fact, I started tonight with a Sam Smith Yorkshire Stingo.? Sure, I probably should drink something more viking, but they drink ale in the books, and I don’t have any Skullsplitter.? A lot of the characters drink amasec in 40K, and the description of that seems to be “brandy” as it’s distilled wine.? Hey, I’ve got plenty of brandy in my house…

What do you drink while reading?

I’m a lucky man and I’m not going to deny that.? I was born into a great family and this weekend I had the opportunity to hang out with my grandfather – which reminded me of the role cigars play amongst at least some of the men in my family, and why I smoke them.

Cigars are not for everyone.? They’re strong.? They’re pungent.? They require a bit of an infrastructure to keep in their best shape.? Yet as I sit on my balcony in Arlington, smoking a La Gloria Cubana and sipping on some Rodenbach Grand Cru ale, I’m part of a community.? Not just a community of my relatives who smoke cigars, or my friends, such as my fellow blogger here Marshall, but of all cigar smokers around the world.? We don’t smoke cigars out of “must need them” like many cigarette smokers do (and trust me, I smoked them for a while, too) – no, we smoke them for the same reason why craft brewers drink micro- and home-brewed beers.

This is Marshall's picture, I forgot to take mine.

Back in August I was sent to South Korea for a month.? That’s also the month of Marshall’s birthday, so I initially thought perhaps I would procure some cigars there that I couldn’t get in the United States.? Unfortunately for both of us, the cigars I found in Seoul – and admittedly, this was mostly in Itaewon, the Americanized ghetto of high end shopping paradise around Yongsan Garrison in Seoul – were overpriced for the lack of flavor that they had.? They were dried out, expensive, and really, just not worth it.

When I got back to the United States I visited my local tobacco store.? I go most of the time to Old Virginia Tobacco in Seven Corners.? It’s kind of a good ole boy shop – to be honest, it reminds me a lot of the barber shops in terms of attitude and repeat customers that I used to go to in Charlottesville and Roanoke – but they have good selection and good prices.? Looking for a cigar for Marshall I found one I hadn’t heard before.

It was the La Flor Dominica Salomon.

It wasn’t a cheap cigar.? The most I’d ever paid was for a special edition Opus XX this summer at around $40; this was over $20.? I loved the construction of it as you can see in the second picture (and it tapers off at the end, which I love), and LFD has always been a solid cigar in my opinion if not one of the ones I typically go for right off the bat.? (My favorites, if you must know, tend to be Rocky Patels, La Gloria Cubanas, and Padrons, with CAO Italias rapidly joining that rank.)

Again, Marshall took this pic, 'cause he doesn't run out and smoke 'em right away like I do.

Was it worth the price?

Well, I let mine sit for a week or so and then smoked it.? I’m the kind of guy, yes, who buys whatever he buys someone for their birthday for himself.? And I sat outside and smoked this one on a beautiful Saturday afternoon, sipping on a delicious drink while at it.

Was it perfect?? No.? It took a good bit of maintenance to keep it burning evenly, something which surprised me, but upon reading other reviews I saw I wasn’t the only one.? Was it delicious?? Yes.? Would I buy another one?? Almost definitely, for a special occasion.

But what else do you smoke?

Like I said, I smoke a few different ones regularly.? Padrons of the 2000, 3000 series tend to get smoked a lot, along with La Gloria Cubana Serie Rs, usually #5s.? I found #3s for the first time this weekend so I bought a few, and I’ve switched from CAO Americas to CAO Italias thanks to a friend of mine in the Navy.

My grandfather this weekend gave me a Cosachero, which he buys from Thompson (note: Thompson really really pissed me off in a hard sale phone call, so I won’t link to them – I will recommend Famous Smoke Shop typically out of PA due to good prices and short shipping times to Virginia).? The reason he likes it is that it’s mild, and that you can let it go out and relight it without losing much.? I was hesitant about the last bit but let mine do so when our apple pie came out (Whipkey males are required to eat apple pie at all times lest Whipkey females beat the crap outta them).? However, I found that it relit quit easily and still had the spicy yet mild taste that it had when I lit it.

Here in the Den, we smoke a lot of cigars, we just don’t talk about ‘em as much as we do cocktails.? If you’ve got any questions or comments, please let us know.? And if you work for a cigar company or retailer – we have an opportunity coming up at the beginning of this December – yes, just about a month away – we’d love to hook you up with!

Happy smokes and cheers, y’all!

Ahhh, Mixology Monday – how I’ve missed you!

I was unable to do August’s MxMo, thanks to my trip to South Korea.? Thanks to Tales, we didn’t have one in July.? So the theme for this week, thanks to our hosts at eGullet, is “Dizzy Dairy”.? This means anything dairy, or it seems, egg whites.

I’ve had a lot of debates over what to make for this one.? I also did a lot of searching for heavy cream in case I wanted to do that.? I had bad luck in that regard – I first went to Harris Teeter near me and they were out.? So I got home from work and went to the mini-mart in my building, but they did have Guinness (which I may be using).? Nothing.? Walked up to Courthouse Plaza and tried the convenience store there – didn’t see any, but they had that Bud Light Golden Wheat which I had wanted to try.? From there I went to CVS, but they had none of those things, so I went back to the convenience store, actually found a carton of cream I’d missed (whew!), bought the Bud Light, then went back to my mini-mart for a four pack of Guinness pub cans.

Now let’s see if I use ‘em – because as of the time I’m writing this, I still haven’t made a drink!

Let’s look at some ingredients first.

My first instinct had been to use Castries, a rum-based peanut cream liqueur.? I love this stuff.? LOVE IT IN THE FACE.? It is delicious.? Actually, I typically drink it straight.? Hmmmm.

Then it occurred to me (thanks to a fortuitously timed e-mail) that I also had a bottle of the limited edition Kahlua coffee cream liqueur in my fridge.? As you know, a White Russian is equal parts Kahlua, vodka, and cream, so the easy (and perhaps lazy) thing to do would be a version of that – say, adding vanilla vodka to a measure of Kahlua coffee cream liqueur – but I wanted to do something different.

Thus the Guinness.

Depending on who I end up going out drinking with there’s a good chance I end up with a car bomb at some point – usually made where we go with Bailey’s and Irish whiskey.? That gave me an idea, though using the Kahlua coffee cream meant I should use something like a Spanish brandy, I thought.? Alas, I didn’t have any, so I went with some Armagnac XO.

I'm glad someone reminded me that I had this!

I fiddled around a bit and came up with a drink that’s delicious whether or not you use the beer.? I thought about naming it something related to the car bomb but thought some people might not appreciate it so much – whatever, I know, but hey, let’s think up a different name.

Uhhhh…I hate thinking up drink names!

Anyways, here it is:

The Cross Hemispheres
1 1/2 ounces armagnac (XO if you have it – I used Castarede)
1 ounce Kahlua coffee cream
1-2 dashes Fee’s Aztec chocolate bitters
Add ingredients to a mixing tin with ice and shake.? Strain into a chilled cocktail glass.? Alternatively, strain into a chilled pint glass and top with Guinness.? Let the Guinness settle, give a light stir, and drink.? If you add the beer, call it a Cross Hemisphere Fizz.

nom nom nom

But you know what the problem is – here at the Den, we like to give you two drinks for your Mixology Monday fun!? I’ve come up with a brand new drink (I think) so this time I thought I’d take a look through my copy of The Joy of Mixology (as much because it happens to be sitting right next to me) to see if there’s a drink I’d like to make in there involving dairy.

Unfortunately, I failed to be inspired.

Then I remembered that I’d come up with some drinks for the Thursday Drink Night we did with Kahlua coffee cream.? It was during the Steelers-Titans football game and, unfortunately, the last game that the Steelers won, so my two drinks named after various Steelers players I decided to skip – especially as my last drink is a bit fuzzy in my memory.

But the first one had some potential, so it was time to tweak, rename, and try it again.? Originally it actually used two cream liqueurs – Castries and Kahlua.? I kept that, but tweaked the proportions on those and the bourbon, added a garnish, and renamed it.

Tastes great and wakes you up! Oops…

That TDN was really the first one I’d done since – well, longer than I could remember, thanks to Tales and Korea.? My first drink, therefore, was called “I’M BACK” and, well, I don’t think that is such a great name.? Therefore we have a new name for it along with the before-mentioned tweaks.

The Bloodhound
1 1/2 ounces bourbon (Willett Pot Still)
1 1/2 ounce Kahlua coffee cream liqueur
1/2 ounce Castries
2 dashes Fee’s Aztec chocolate bitters
Shake with ice, double strain into a chilled cocktail glass half-rimmed with ground espresso.? If desired, sprinkle some additional ground espresso on top.

Man, this drink came out good!? It’s waking me up a bit, not necessarily a good thing right now, but it’s darn delicious.

If you notice, I had the same bitters in both.? There’s two reasons for that.? One, I haven’t got the Bittermens mole bitters yet, so I can’t compare and contrast.? More importantly, however, is that the combination of flavors I feel like works really well with the Kahlua coffee cream liqueur.

I think that’s about all for tonight.? I want to thank the eGullet folks for hosting, and I should also thank Kahlua for providing me with the sample bottle of Kahlua cream liqueur.? (I should note, too, that this bottle of Castries was also a sample, but lord knows I’ve bought enough bottles of it already…)