An online speakeasy of potent potables and other pabulam.

Time to make my triumphant return to Mixology Monday and what better MxMo to jump back onto the horse (just not the wagon) than Tiki MxMo hosted by my friend Doug over at the Pegu Tiki Blog.

I’ll admit, I love tiki drinks. In the oppressive heat and humidity that can easily overtake our nation’s capital, a frosty fruity rummy tiki drink immediately takes you to a better place. Somewhere you can hear the ocean waves breaking against the sand or a bubbling brook and waterfall hidden away in a tropical forest.

While trying to decide what recipe to share with everyone I really wanted to go outside the tiki drinks I usually drink or ones I commonly see on menus.  I believe the recipe below really hit that nail on the head.

The drink comes from “Beachbum Berry Remixed” by the Don of Tiki, Jeff Berry.

Ankle Breaker
1oz fresh lemon juice
1oz Cherry Herring
1oz amber 151-proof rum (such as Cruzan, El Dorado or Bacardi)
.5oz simple syrup

-Shake well with crushed ice and pour un-strained into a double rocks glass. Garnish with a lemon twist

I can certainly understand where the name came from! This is tart, sweet and rummy and incredibly deceptive in strength. The only thing that keeps me from gulping the entire thing down in one swallow is the crushed ice. It keeps you from gulping for fear of choking or brain freeze. Good thing though because if this drink was slammed and you stepped awkwardly, then . . . well . . . you may break an ankle. (Check out Jeff’s book for the real story behind the name of the drink!)

Thanks again to Doug for hosting this Mixology Monday. Aloha!

“Losers always whine about their best. Winners go home and fuck the prom queen.”
“Carla was the prom queen.”
“Really?”
(chambers a round in his gun) “Yeah.”

Sorry. I love that movie (The Rock, if you have to ask). We used to watch it twice a night in college – once on a copy with crappy video and good sound, and once with a copy that had good video and crappy sound. Typically put away a block of Kroger’s brand pepper jack cheese and a bag of tortilla chips along with a couple of 40s while doing it.

No, I do not wonder why I am fat.

When DJ Hawaiian Shirt aka MEESTER CHREES posted this topic my first thought was to whine. After all, I did not go home with the prom queen.

To be honest, I don’t even remember who the prom queen was. Though, by careful scientific calculation, I’m sure that whomever she was, she’d want to hook up with me now, definitely, unless she’s married, in which case she’d just be thinking about in the back of her head.

(waits for someone from high school to read this blog post and either direly insult me or post pictures of how dorky I am was back then)

(waits for Marshall to say something so he can break out Photoshop and have some real fun)

Anyways, I realized I did have a drink that was popular. It’s not that I don’t think I make good drinks (SHUT THE HELL UP REST OF THE COCKTAIL BLOGGER COMMUNITY) it’s just that I don’t typically sit around and tweak them until they’re perfect.

THAT’S MY EXCUSE AND I’M STICKING TO IT.

But some of them have been popular.

I don't know KP is hosting it but hey.

Back a few years ago (2, to be precise) I decided to come up with drinks named after a bunch of folks working up to Tales of the Cocktail 2009.

Oh, to be young and stupid in those days!

One of the drinks I did I named after local bartender Derek Brown. To call him just a “bartender” is to call Tiger Woods just a “golfer” or “trashy girl aficionado” or to call [POLITICIAN RANT DELETED].

Those motherfu[DELETED] how much I [DELETED].

Sorry.

Basically, this was an easy drink to come up with: Dolin Blanc is delicious. At the time – and I don’t think he still is, but I could be wrong, and don’t have time to double-check so as to give this post the delicious patina of last-minute-panic that DJ Hawaiian Shirt evidently just drinks in from my posts – he was a brand rep for Domaine de Canton.

Thus, the Derek:

The Derek
3-4 leaves of mint
1/2 ounce Domaine de Canton
3 ounces Dolin Blanc
1 dash orange bitters (Regans #6)
Lightly muddle the mint and Domaine de Canton in an old-fashioned glass.  Add the vermouth, bitters, and ice.  Stir gently to mix.  Garnish with a fresh sprig of mint.

(The post I originally put this in explains why it has so much better a picture than I’d normally give a drink.)

The really cool thing about this drink is how easily it’s modified; just sub out the Domaine, really. Try The Bitter Truth E***X***R, for instance, or Berechovka – two of the drinks I’ve had recently – or even better, try Hum. Replace the Dolin Blanc with Caparno.

Okay, there’s one of my best drinks. People really seemed to like it.

But this is SCOFFLAW’S DEN! We don’t just kowtow to MxMo with one drink! NEIN! NYET! NO! We do multiple drinks!

So, I give you, by far, and without pictures, the two most popular drinks I’ve ever come up with. In some synchronicity, these are also named after people I know. In fact, it’s my brother and my sister-in-law.

Back in the hectic, lawless, far-flung days of 2009 I lived with my brother and his fiancée. As they approached the sacred rites that would bond them as one, forever destined to take care of two flagrantly obnoxious cats, and one condo surrounded by some pusillanimous (and some recherché, I admit) neighbors, I suggested I’d make up drinks named for each of them. They liked the idea and I disseminated some test drinks which, soon enough, got narrowed down to these. The fact that their cakes would be soaked in Grand Marnier gave me the appropriate animus.

The Matt
2 ounces Crown Royal
1/2 ounce Grand Marnier
2-3 dashes Regan’s #6 orange bitters
Top with Coca-cola
Build in a low ball glass. Stir.

A lot of my family likes Crown & Coke and so I built from there. What’s scary about this drink is how easily it goes down, as the GM just makes it … well, damn easy to drink. Even if you replace the Crown with rum (as one guest did at the reception) or the Coke with diet (as many guests did).

The Cathy
1/2 ounce Grand Marnier
1/2 ounce vodka
Top with sparkling wine/champagne
Garnish with a long twist of orange peel
Build in a champagne flute

Like the other drink, I also wanted to make sure these were easy to make for the bartenders. When I tested this for the first time I was actually asked (surprisingly to me) to make it stronger, thus the vodka.

Warning note: Five of these might mean you nap somewhere you’d rather not do so.

So that’s it for this MxMo. Thanks to DJ Hawaiian Shirt for hosting, and Paul for organizing. Cheers!

And it’s that time again – Mixology Monday! This time it’s hosted by Josh over at Cocktail Assembly and he chose the theme of “flips”. He said:

You see, I figure this would be a great time to strategically use all this combined creative and crafty brainpower to build up a list of recipes to keep me loaded up on flips the entire year.

So I did some poking around. Paul Clarke (he who done gone and created Mixology Monday, amongst other accolades and general Internet sexiness) wrote an article for Serious Eats about flips. In it, he mentions some other ones created (thus seeing my idea of a Fernet Branca flip is already done) but mentioned this about modern flips, something I took to heart:

Contemporary flips are relatively simple: a base of spirit (preferably dark & rich), a little syrup and/or liqueur, and a fresh egg, all shaken together and served with a little nutmeg grated on top.

Okay, enough of the blockquotes.

Here we go Steelers Here we go

I’m lucky enough that my favorite NFL team, the Steelers, is going to the AFC Championship next week. My idea initially was to use Fernet as the “black” in a Black & Gold Flip, but as I just mentioned, the Fernet Flip has been done. I thought about using Averna, in a bit of honor to Dr. Bamboo, but decided against it. Still: what would be an appropriate Pittsburgh area liquor?

Ahhh, screw it. Let’s Google “Pittsburgh Steelers liquor”, look at the first few liquor pictures that show up in the image search, and see if I’m inspired. A few clicks, avoiding stories about Santonio Holmes throwing liquor at someone, and there we go – Kraken black spiced rum and Strega.

Oh. I can work with that.

I love the idea of whole eggs in drinks anyways, so now it was just time to tweak proportions. I think what I came up with is pretty good, and a bit of a solid drink, if I do say so myself.

Black & Gold Flip

The Black & Gold Flip
2 ounces Kraken spiced rum
1 ounce Strega
1 whole egg
Put the ingredients in a glass with a bunch of ice. Shake for 60-90 seconds. Strain into a chilled glass, top with some fresh grated nutmeg.

Ahhh, delicious! If you’re feeling really ambitious, try topping it with some brown ale or a black stout and give it a quick stir. I haven’t tried it yet, though I was thinking of giving it a shot with some Guinness or Bell’s Hell Hath No Fury beer. But first, I’ll finish the one I have.

Cheers folks, and thanks again to Josh for hosting!

Well, it’s been a while, but it was time for Mixology Monday again!  This time it’s being hosted at Rock & Rye by Dennis.  Thanks, Dennis!

The theme is “Forgotten Cocktails”.  Given the resurgence in cocktail culture, and my relative lack of scholarship done “on my own”, I did what I figure most folks would – grabbed my copy of Ted Haigh’s Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails (2nd edition, natch) and started thumbing through it.

I didn’t have to thumb through it for long.

Bourbon has always been a passion of mine.  Lately – and I blame Harry Turtledove’s “American Empire” series of books for this – I’ve been on a Calvados kick.  I don’t make a lot of drinks using Calvados because I tend to drink it straight (and usually while smoking a cigar) that doesn’t mean I avoid Calvados cocktails.

Speaking of sexy, it's Trader Tiki stuff!

The Avenue is one of the first cocktails in the book.  Immediately I noticed the bourbon and the Calvados, but what really got me interested was the third ingredient listed: passion fruit juice (or nectar), which Dr. Cocktail suggests can be replaced with passion fruit syrup.

Why, I have passion fruit syrup – the ever-so-delicious Trader Tiki variety – and I even have Trader Tiki grenadine!  Let’s see here.

The Avenue
1 ounce bourbon
1 ounce Calvados
1 ounce passion fruit juice (or nectar)
1 dash real pomegranate grenadine
1 dash orange flower water
Shake in an iced cocktail shaker and strain into a cocktail glass.  Garnish with a carnation boutonniere.

Sorry.  I ain’t got no boutonniere, carnation or otherwise.

Oooo, golden! But no flowers.

The book suggests that you replace the grenadine with a dash of lemon juice if you use passion fruit syrup.  I really wanted to use the hibiscus grenadine, so I used a dash of it ANYWAYS and DAMN THE CONSEQUENCES.  Actually, I also added a dash or so of lemon juice, too.

The drink ended up still a bit sweet but tasty.  The texture is actually quite silky and I’m really digging it.

In fact, I’m very happy with how this drink came out!  It’s a departure from what I usually look for in a cocktail – it’s not bitter, for one – but on a cool fall evening, it works well.

I’m glad I went looking for a new forgotten cocktail, and I guess that means I have to thank Dennis for hosting this month’s MxMo!  I’d thank Paul, too, but don’t want it to go to his head too much.

What little-known or forgotten cocktails do y’all like?