An online speakeasy of potent potables and other pabulam.

Happy July 5th! If you’re like me (and who wouldn’t want to be!) you really wish someone in the government would make today a National Holiday too. I mean, who couldn’t use the day after Independence Day to recuperate, amiright?

This Independence Day, at least here in the Washington, DC area, has been marked with a record setting heat wave and levels of humidity that almost necessitate a scuba tank. It’s seriously hot around here!

So while lounging around the Den yesterday watching Jaws & Independence Day, I, of course, whipped up a few refreshing beverages that really beat the heat. The names are less than desirable, but my brain was like fudge.

One thing about drinking when it is this hot out, I want ice & lots of it. So I tend to drink tiki drinks and long drinks in chimney glasses that will keep the heat at bay for a little while. These drinks definitely fit that mold.

For the first drink I wanted to utilize some of the great looking peaches I got at the market. And when I think about peaches and summer drinks my mind instinctively goes to whiskey. So this is what I came up with.

Peach-Whiskey Cooler
Muddle 1/4 of a fresh peach with .75oz simple syrup.
Add:
1oz fresh lemon juice
1oz Bonded Applejack
1.5oz Rye whiskey
1 dash Angostura Bitters
1 dash Fee Brother’s Peach Bitters

Shake and double strain into an ice filled chimney glass. Add soda water to fill and gently stir. Garnish with mint, a slice of peach and/or some lemon peel.

This drink fit the bill perfectly. You may think that the whiskey & applejack make this a heavier drink but in reality it is very light. The peach, lemon & soda mixture make this incredibly refreshing and the rye and applejack give just enough body to let you know you’re enjoying a potant potable.

The next drink I came up because I wanted to have a little English gin during my Independence Day celebration. I had a pink grapefruit hanging around and knew that some of the fresh rosemary we have growing on the balcony would be a great tasting mix.

Grapefruit-Rosemary Cooler
Muddle a 4 inch strip of grapefruit peel, a 2 inch stalk of rosemary and 1 oz simple syrup.

Add to that:
1.25 oz fresh grapefruit juice
2 oz gin (I used Beefeater 24)
2 dashes Bittermen’s Burlesque Bitters

Shake & double strain into an ice filled chimney glass. Top with soda water to fill and gently stir to combine. Garnish with some grapefruit peel & rosemary.

This was great! Light and citrusy without being cloyingly sweet. I could drink these all day during this heat wave.

So what kind of drinks do you make to beat the heat? Leave us your suggestions in the comments.

Cheers!

Hey folks! Happy holidays from the Den! I wanted to give all y’all out there some updates on things happening here – both upcoming and stuff you might have missed.

First off: congrats to my co-blogger, Marshall! He got engaged to his lovely and fun girlfriend, Sylvie, earlier this week. I couldn’t be happier for them!

Second: We’ll be updating our DNS records soon. Thanks to GoDaddy’s support for SOPA, and general embarrassment I’ve had with them as a hosting company in general (especially every time one of their ads come on) we’ll be moving registrars. If you have any problems reaching the site, try using an alternate name – put a dash between “scofflaws” and “den” (i.e. scofflaws-den.com) or use .org as well. I’ll be moving the domains over in batches.

Third: If you missed Drink.Write 2011, you really missed out. We had a fantastic meal at PS7 on Thursday night, a fun tasting group at Jack Rose on Friday, multiple trips to The Passenger, a heck of a great time at the Repeal Day Ball, and then ended it hanging out at the Speed Rack competition at Jack Rose on Sunday after brunch at Bourbon. It was FANTASTIC.

Fourth: Some events coming up. PS7 is doing a Feast of the Seven Fishes tomorrow (Christmas Eve) if you’re into that kind of thing, and a “Gangster to Gangsta” event (check LivingSocial) for New Year’s Eve. And on January 17th, the Museum of the American Cocktail is doing a seminar about George Washington’s whiskey. You can register here.

That’s it for now – after the new year we’ll have more stuff for you! HAVE A GREAT HOLIDAY SEASON!

Over the course of the years, I’ve had lots of friends enjoy hanging out and drinking cocktails in my home. When you’ve been dabbling in cocktails as long as I have you tend to collect a lot of tools. I believe the form and function of using the proper tools is important. First, to make a balanced cocktail, you need to carefully measure ingredients and carefully pour the drink into the glass. Second, you want your guests to feel like they are getting something special in that glass and it was prepared using the best tools.

The good news is that you can have a very well stocked tool kit for home cocktails for very little cash. Since we’ve just passed Black Friday and retailers were trying their best to separate you from your wallet, I decided to chronicle my favorite basic bar tools in the next several posts. While some of these won’t be the cheapest option, in my opinion they are the best for the money and won’t require a loan or selling your first born child to the credit card company to own. These tools are everything you need to make just about any cocktail.

First, you have to have mixing tins/shakers. Many times you see what’s called a Boston Shaker which usually consist of a pint glass and a larger tin which fits snugly over the pint glass. You can stir drinks in the pint glass and use both pieces to shake. The downside to this set-up is two fold. First, glass is not a good conductor of heat. It takes a lot more thermal energy to cool down the glass than it does other materials. Second, pint glasses have a tendency to break. I prefer all metal Boston Shakers. Using all metal solves both problems with glass. Metal is a great conductor of thermal energy meaning your cocktail will get cold faster. Plus, metal doesn’t shatter. These are my metal shakers.

Different size shaker tins.

I like having various sizes. From left to right, each tin works with the next size down. The largest set is good for making 3 or 4 cocktails at a time while the smallest set is perfect for serving one cocktail to a guest. I have purchased tins from BarProducts.com and found them cheap and very dependable.

The second basic tool you need is a jigger. You can find these at almost any kitchen store, restaurant supply depot, or in your grandmothers cabinet gathering dust. For my money, the best jigger on the market is the Oxo Steel Double Jigger.

As you can see, this jigger has a non-slip grip in the middle which is great when your hands are wet or sticky. The bigger bowl holds 1.5 ounces and the smaller bowl holds 1 ounce. But what really sets this jigger apart is the gradients inside each bowl.

For about the same price as the Oxo jigger you can get stainless steal jiggers with each bowl a single volume. Similar to these:

These are good jiggers and meet the form and function of your tools. However, I’m lazy and don’t want to wash more than I have to and only using one tool instead of multiple fits the bill for me.

The third tool you need is a good muddler. For my favorite muddler, see this post on the PUG! muddler.

The last tool I’ll cover in this post is the all important cocktail spoon.  Cocktail spoons are a bit different than a normal spoon in that the are long and contain a shallow bowl at the end.  Some bar spoons have a fork or a muddler on the other end.  These are the two spoons I use most often.

The brand of spoon on the left has been lost to memory, the spoon on the right is a ProStirrer by Uber Bar Tools.  Each of these spoons is weighty and feels good in the hand.  The ProStirrer has a muddler on the end, although I find it works much better to crack ice cubes than muddle. One thing to notice about both of these spoons is the lack of a red plastic cap on the end. My experience has been the cheaper spoons, usually the ones with the red tip, are flimsy tools not worth wasting your money on.

There you have it. My favorite shaker tins, jiggers, muddler & spoons. Next time, I’ll cover strainers, ice cube trays, peelers, and one special tool I think every home bartender should utilize.

Do you have any favorite bar tools? Leave a comment and let us know what and why.

Cheers!

Guess who is who!

Happy holidays from Scofflaw’s Den!

If you’d like a drink, I’ll suggest…

Errr, it’s football season.  I’m drinking a lot of cheap domestic beer.

Still, have a good one with your folks, and check back next week for some cool stuff!

Hopefully I’ll have thought of that cool stuff by then.

MERRY HOLIDAY STUFF!