An online speakeasy of potent potables and other pabulam.

Okay, it’s been a week – I know.  We met up with the one and only Kaiser Penguin last Friday and headed out to the Repeal Day Ball.  Washingtonian has some coverage of it over here, and we got to run into a lot of people that we know and got to meet all kinds of new people as well, including LeNell Smothers, Tony Abou-Ganim and Jeffrey Morgenthaler.

(I tried to think up something witty to say there but alas, it was not to be.  What I will say is that I made his eggnog recipe the other day and it was damn delicious.  Of course, I also saw his coverage of Repeal Day and man, I need to learn how to pose for the camera like he’s learned so well to do…)

But enough about that.  If you missed it, you missed out, ha ha!  It was quite possibly the most fun party I’ve ever had in DC.

Back on topic.  Earlier this week I was logging in to work where my browser, be default, goes to www.msn.com for whatever reason (possible reasons: I’m too lazy to change it, it is IE after all, PopCap.com would be too obvious).  There they had a link to “95 Chic Cocktail Recipes for the Holidays”.  Me being me, I felt compelled, after viewing a few of them, to go through and comment on EACH AND EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM just for you, our loyal readers.

And because I’m such a nice guy, I’ll put it after the cut.

1.  So Rick from Kaiser Penguin showed up in town this weekend.  He and his friend Char joined us at Bourbon Friday night, and then we met him and Matt from A Jigger of Blog over at The Gibson.  Good times were had by all and once again we had the pleasure of having Tiff as our bartender there.

As I’ve mentioned before – you’ve got to give The Gibson a shot if you haven’t yet.

We tried to go to Bar Pilar afterwards but it was just packed; we got to speak with Adam briefly but then hailed a cab and headed back to Virginia for pizza and relaxation.

One of my favorite moments of the weekend came Friday night, however.  Owen was showing off some really cool liquors and cocktails all night, but at one point Chris (and I’ll explain about this in about a week or so) had Marshall and I buy a drink.  He got his favorite, the cocktail a la louisiane, and I got a Sazerac.  Chris had never had a Sazerac so he tried one and absolutely loved it.  It’s always great to see someone try a new drink and see their eyes light up like that!

2.  Repeal Day is up to $90 for a ticket and coming up soon – December 5th.  Hope to see y’all there, I’m really excited about it.

3.  Phil Greene asked us to post an announcement about the Holiday Cocktails seminar at Bourbon on December 9th.  It is presented by the Museum of the American Cocktail and will feature the dynamic trio of Derek Brown (The Gibson), Justin Guthrie (Central Michel Richard), and Owen Thompson (Bourbon) as well as Phil Greene.  $35 in advance, $40 at the door, and that includes light appetizers and sample sizes of the cocktails.  I know Marshall will be there!

You can register here.

4.  TDN – sponsored by Leblon Cachaca – was a heck of a time!  There were a lot of good drinks made and while we wait for the recap (AHEM) I thought I’d share one of the drinks I came up with that people seemed to like.

The Braziliagroni
1 ounce Leblon cachaca
1 ounce Carpano Antica
1 ounce Aperol
2 dashes Fee’s Rhubarb Bitters
Shake over ice, strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

I have to admit that I wasn’t a big cachaca fan before Thursday night but I’ve definitely learned to enjoy some of the complexities of the spirit.  Check out the TDN round up when it’s posted and look also for my Brazilian Frog – it’s an orange flavored drink that needs a bit of tweaking but I think turned out pretty well also.

5.  A friend invited my brother and I over to watch football yesterday and asked that I bring some “tasty drinks”.  I pieced something together and made it which ended up being a big hit.  It was fairly improvised, but the basic recipe is here and we’ll be making both cold and hot versions of this for our Christmas party (we only made cold ones yesterday).

Apple Cider Heaven
2 ounces applejack
1 ounce Jameson’s
1/2 ounce St. Elizabeth’s Allspice Dram
2 dashes Fee’s aromatic bitters
4 ounces apple cider
Shake and strain into a cocktail glass.  Alternatively, build over ice in a collins or pint glass using 50% more of each ingredient and stir, then serve.

That’s about enough for now, I think.  This week is Thanksgiving so everybody think of what you want to give thanks for and have a good time with your friends and family!  Remember: don’t drink and drive.  Which means – don’t drive.

…and I just can’t hide it…

Sorry.  I’ll try to distract y’all away from the horrors of my singing.

Tonight is Thursday Drink Night (TDN) at the Mixoloseum – and for the first time, it’s sponsored, this time by Leblon cachaca.  I’m very excited about some stuff with that!

I’ve not experimented a lot with cachaca but I’ve got some real ideas in store.  And speaking of “in store”, I still need to go to the store.  I also need to get a haircut, but that’s for something special that we’ll tell you about soon enough.

It’s also almost the weekend.  We’ve got trips to Bourbon and The Gibson planned, so obviously, that should be a lot of fun.  If you see us out, say hi!  Then it’s Thanksgiving, and I’m thinking of something to take home with me, and then there’s Repeal Day…not to mention my brother and his fiancee’ want me to come up with cocktails just for them for their wedding…

I’ll be putting up some of the drink ideas we come up with using cachaca after TDN.  Not necessarily tomorrow, that’ll be dependent on hangover, I guess…

Well, it has been a while since I posted . . . damn work . . . and then Thanksgiving creeping up on me filling by blood stream with ham and turkey and sweets . . . ummmmm turkey . . .

Anyway, I hope all of ya’ll out there had a great Thanksgiving and was able to spend it with friends and family.  I do want to send my thoughts and prayers to Sean Taylor’s family during this trying time.  Especially his little girl.  Even though she is very young, having lost a parent myself, I have some idea of what his family is going through.

While I was visiting my mother this past weekend she asked if I wanted this really nice martini set.  It came with a pitcher, six glasses and a serving tray.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t take it now because I simply have a finite amount of space in my apartment and one more thing in the kitchen/bar/laboratory could cause havoc (and exploding cabinets.)  But I seemed to remember a cocktail book that she and dad used to have.  I asked her about it and she said yes, they did have an old cocktail book tucked away in a bookcase somewhere.  After a bit of hunting we found it.  And it was just as I remembered.  Thin and tall, with covers made out of wood, bound by a strap of leather.  The cover has an etching of a rooster drinking a cocktail.  It was an awesome find.  But why don’t you judge for yourself . . .

So the book is titled “Just Cocktails” and was published in 1939 by Three Mountaineers, Inc.  My mom believes she bought the book for my father as a gift during one of her trips to Washington, DC as a chaperon on a senior class trip.  (Mom was a high school teacher before retiring.)  There are a lot of recipes that we’ve seen before and some new ones that I haven’t been able to look at too closely . . . yet.  But one thing that I found interesting was the recipe for the Aviation.  It called for applejack, pernod and grenadine . . . hmmmm . . . strange.  Sometime I want to do an Aviation post, but not until I get a bottle of Creme de Violette so I can make a proper Aviation.

I’ll start exploring this little treasure as soon as I finish reading David Wondrich’s new book “Imbibe.” If you get a chance to pick up this book, I highly recommend doing so.  It is a fascinating read.

Something else I really have to share with ya’ll.  You know of my love for bourbon.  You know of my growing fondness and appreciation of Rye.  Well, I may have mentioned this earlier, but about two months ago I got wind that Buffalo Trace distillery were releasing their 2007 Antique Collection.  Now this is something I just couldn’t pass up.  I contacted the Virginia ABC and put in a special order.  After waiting a little over a month, I get a phone call saying my swag had arrived.  Luckily, I live two blocks from an ABC store (dangerous, I know) that was holding my new babies for me.  If you click on the link above you can find out information about the individual bottles.  But here are a few pictures and some notes for you to drool over.

Here are all five of my children in a row.  Notice the color difference from left to right.  From left to right we have, Eagle Rare 17 Year Old, Sazerac Rye 18 Year Old, Thomas H. Handy Rye, William Larue Weller Bourbon and, finally, the granddaddy, George T. Stagg Bourbon.  It should be noted that two of these bottles are older than the rest.  The Eagle Rare and the Thomas Handy are from the 2006 Antique Collection.  It is so hard to find any of these at any given time, I had to snatch those up when I could . . .

Here is a close up of the Thomas Handy Rye and the WL Weller bourbon.  If you notice in the picture both of these are uncut, unfiltered and bottled at barrel proof.  This is some potent firewire!  The Weller is bottled at 58.95% Alc. by Vol. (117.9 proof.)  The Handy comes in at 66.35% Alc. by Vol making it a whopping 132.7 proof.

Here is another photo of all of the bottles together.  Again, notice the color differential.  If you check out the bottle on the far right (the Stagg), you’ll notice that it too is uncut, unfiltered and bottled at barrel proof.  That is why this is the granddaddy of the bunch.  Mr. Stagg comes to the table at a staggering 72.4% Alc. by Vol., aka, 144.8 proof.  Damn.

Well folks, that’s it for me tonight.  I’ll be back in a day or two.  Keep watching this space because next week we’ll have another Mixology Monday post.  This month it is being hosted by Jeffrey Morgenthaler and the theme is Repeal Day.  Yee-Haw!!!!  (From a family of moonshiners, I love this idea!!!)

See ya’ll later!