An online speakeasy of potent potables and other pabulam.

So I’m perusing Northern Virginia magazine while buying cat treats (don’t ask) and I see in their “(Relish)” (yes, it’s in parenthesis) section a “cocktail corner” by Natalie Bovis-Nelsen aka The Liquid Muse.

Hey that URL sounds familiar…oh yeah.  It’s in my bookmarks.

She’s got two recipes in there from the “resident mixologist” for Bombay Sapphire.  Since I was thinking of picking up a bottle of that (mostly for martinis) soon, I went ahead and picked up the magazine (well, for that, and for the article on take-out).

Here are the recipes.

White Sapphire Ginger Martini
1 ounce Bombay Sapphire
Slither of fresh ginger
8 white grapes
1/2 ounce fresh apple juice

Muddle ginger and grapes at the bottom of a cocktail shaker.  Add remaining ingredients, then shake with lots of ice.  Strain into a chilled martini glass.

I’m not certain if I see the point of this one.  You’ll get…sort of grape-ginger-apple flavor?  I’m guessing that the Bombay Sapphire is going to be fairly overwhelmed by everything else, especially the grapes, though you might get a hint of flavor/burn.  And by shaking, it’s going to be all cloudy, as the attached picture shows in the magazine, but I guess with 8 muddled grapes it’s going to look worse if it was stirred.

The suggestion is for it to go with rich, meaty crab cakes.

Sapphire Bubbles
1 1/4 ounce Bombay Sapphire gin
1 teaspoon fine sugar
1/2 ounce lemon juice
2 ounces dry champagne
1/2 ounce mandarin liqueur

Mix lemon juice and fine sugar into stirring glass then fill with ice.  Add gin and mandarin liqueur.  Shake and strain into chilled champagne flute.  Top with champagne.

Again with the shaking!  On his site, Robert Hess often complains about the grittiness that one can get from using sugar in a drink versus simpnle syrup.  You may need to shake to get the sugar fully dissolved, but I’d rather stir (maybe) with simple syrup.  On the other hand, maybe the bubbles in the champagne would cover up the sugar’s grittiness.

This is one I could see myself making for Cathy – though it may be too strong for her.

I haven’t had any experience with Mandarin liqueur.  Any suggestions on a brand out there?

There’s also a review of a vodka that’s trying to be a gin called Sonnema VodkaHERB.  I’m kind of wondering the point…

Before I started in on my winter drink, I decided to taste a number of different kinds of bourbon and scotch blends to see which would make a good base.  I just have the basic idea of what I want to do right now; I need to get a base down, and then I can experiment.

Last night I tasted the Dewar’s 12 year old, Dewar’s White Label, and Knob Creek.

Knob Creek is WAY out.  Yikes.  I knew I didn’t like it but I’d forgotten how much I didn’t like it.

The Dewar’s wasn’t bad, but I decided if I went with a scotch blend, it’d probably be the Dimple.

So I think the winner will be Maker’s Mark.  That’ll provide a darn good base, and also a good starting point for people to try different bourbons in the drink.

I’ll have to pick up a bottle, but then it’ll be figuring out what else needs to go in the drink, and what form the vanilla aspect will take.

And when I was working on my cocktails notebook – a metal-covered Fallout 3 notebook I got at E3 – I saw a drink called the “Scofflaw”.  Thus, I had to make it.

Scofflaw
1 ounce Canadian Whiskey (I used Canadian Club)
1 ounce dry vermouth (typical Noilly Prat)
1/4 ounce lemon juice
dash of grenadine
dash of orange bitters
Stir with ice, garnish with a lemon wedge.

(Thanks to Robert Hess aka Drinkboy for the recipe.)

So I gathered upon my ingredients.

Having been reading earlier what the various proportions “double” to (or the such) when making a 1/3rd bigger Virginia Autumn (don’t ask), I knew that technically, a dash = 1/8 of an ounce.  Thus, I used:
2 ounces Canadian Club, 2 ounces Noilly Prat dry vermouth, 1/2 ounce lemon juice (squeezed from that lemon you see there), 1/4 of an ounce of Grenadine, and two generous dashes of Fee’s Orange Bitters.

It’s a surprisingly light drink.  It is strong; but the lemon and dry vermouth lighten it up and make it surprising tart.  In fact, the Canadian Club disappears almost completely behind the vermouth and lemon juice, making this taste kind of like a tart lemon drink.

I don’t know exactly what I think of it right now.  It’s not bad, per se – but it’s so lemon-y, and light, that I feel like I could stand possibly a bit more whiskey in the drink.

I might experiment with this – I’d be interested in seeing how turning it into 1 1/2 ounces of Canadian whiskey and 1/2 ounce of dry vermouth instead makes it, but that might not be the right move – but we’ll have to see.  If I get up the gumption to do so – and in all odds, I won’t, I’ll just continue working through my new notebook full of recipes I can make.

(Notebook, uh, note: I just wrote down all the recipes I can make and I give a crap about in a notebook, mostly from Drinkboy.com.  That means drinks with, say, Campari, aren’t in there yet – but when I get a bottle, I’ll add them in, I still have a lot of pages open.)

I went to the UVA event at Johnny’s Half-Shell and they had a drink there that was called the “Electric Cavalier”.

The Electric Cavalier (portions estimated)
1 1/2 ounces vodka
1/2 ounce blue curacao
4 ounces lemonade
garnish with an orange slice

It’s a bit fruity for me, but tasty.  No pictures of it, of course.

We’re watching football right now, so it was time for a UVA tradition that I haven’t had in ages – the bourbon and coke.

This time it’s about 3 ounces of Evan Williams green label – my favorite for this drink – and filled the rest of the pint glass with Coke Zero.  For some reason Diet Coke seems more appropriate many times, but hey, this works too.

Mmmm, bourbon and coke and football.  Yay.

Bad drink of the weekend

After the DCHoos alumni event last night a group of us went to the Dubliner right nearby.  The first drink I got was bought for me by Roy – a “Black and Blue”, supposed to be Guinness and Blue Moon.  They didn’t have Blue Moon Belgian White, so they used a Leinenkugel’s variation.

Not good.