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.

(Sorry the picture isn’t the greatest.)

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.

(A much better picture!)

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!

This past Friday I happened to be in DC and I decided to drive up to this little store on 14th St., NW that I had heard about over the Tweeters called Smucker Farms. The store sells products from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and many of the producers are Amish and Mennonite families. Although not very big, the store contains mainly food products from Lancaster County. Now to be honest, one of the main reasons I went to Smucker Farms was in the hope I would find a Shoo Fly Pie.

Unfortunately, I didn’t find any Shoo Fly pie but I did find a few interesting things that will lend themselves to cocktail making very well. First was the jams and jellies. Tons of flavors and all looked delicious. Jams and jellies are a great way to add flavor, sweetness and texture to cocktails. The best thing I found though were shrubs!

A shrub is usually the juice of a fruit mixed with an acid and sugar. Most of the time the acid is vinegar. The Tait Farms Cherry Shrub I bought is made with cherry vinegar, lemon juice and cane syrup. On the first sip, you get a burst of fresh cherries. Then, on the back end, your lips start to pucker and your tongue will tingle from the acidity.

For a great article on shrubs and how to make them, check out the Serious Eats article.

I picked the Cherry Shrub because right now, DC is in the middle of the famed Cherry Blossom season. As a result, I’m constantly thinking of a way to create fantastic cherry cocktails. This shrub definitely made a great addition to the following cocktail. It’s sweet, tart, refreshing and has a pleasant cherry flavor.

District Cherry Blossom
1.5 oz London dry gin
1 oz Cherry Shrub
.5 oz simple syrup
.25 oz maraschino liqueur
.25 oz lemon juice
2 dashes Bittermens Burlesque Bitters

Shake all ingredients with plenty of ice. Strain over fresh ice in a chimney glass and add seltzer water. Stir briefly to combine and garnish with mint.

I’m curious, what are your favorite cherry flavored cocktails? Let me know in the comments!

Ahhhhh . . . There’s a nip in the air and the leaves are starting to change color and drop to the ground. The night descends earlier (or is it faster) and the grip of winter is just around the corner.

It isn’t a secret that autumn is my favorite season. I love the cold air and early evenings. There is nothing better than curling up on the couch under a warm blanket on a cold day watching hockey, football, or hell, even reading a cocktail tome.

But another reason I love the fall is that it is my favorite cocktail season. Tiki drinks and refreshing gin cocktails are replaced with whisk(e)ies and bitter amaros. Pineapple and coconut are replaced with apple and cherry. Limes are supplanted by lemons as the citrus of majority in my fridge.

I mention apples and cherries in particular because I love playing with those flavors this time of year. I love mixing with calvados, Applejack, or maybe some Leopold Brothers apple whiskey or apple liqueur. Bringing some cherry to the party may come from Cherry Herring, maraschino, kirschwasser, or my latest toy, Maurin Quina.

Maurin Quina is a liqueur with cherries, bitter almond and quinine. It isn’t very sweet but has a fantastic delicately bitter cherry flavor.

Another thing I love to mix with is apple cider. We had an apple press growing up and every fall made our own fresh-pressed apple cider. It was fantastic! Unfortunately you can only find pasteurized cider for sale nowadays. But if you own a juicer, you can make your own! Lately I’ve been boiling apple cider down into a thick concentrated syrup. Amazingly, along with the concentrated appleness, it develops an amazing tartness. This really comes in handy it you don’t want to add lemon, but need that acidity to balance out your cocktail. To make it, simply boil down apple cider until it has reduced by 75%.

I decided I wanted to play with the cider syrup and thought it would play very nicely with scotch. So I pulled out my new bottle of Great King Street blended scotch from Compass Box and set to work. This is what I came up with:

Orchard Bonfire
1.5 oz blended Scotch
.5 oz cider syrup
.25 oz honey syrup (2 parts honey & 1 part water)
1 barspoon pimento dram
1 dash Whiskey Barrel Bitters

Shake & double strain into a cocktail glass rinsed with a smokey scotch. (I used Peat Monster.) Garnish with a maraschino cherry.

Smokey, apple-y, sweet & tart, this is a great autumn cocktail if I do say so myself.

What do you like to drink when fall arrives? Leave a comment and let us know!

Cheers!

PS. Scofflaw’s Den celebrated it’s fourth birthday earlier this month. We thank all of our readers for sticking with us and we plan on providing a lot more content and recipes for you to enjoy for at least another four years. -Marshall

Sometimes an old favorite cocktail is just what is needed. Something familiar, comfortable, and preferably, easy to make. The other day I was in the mood for just such a cocktail. After a few moments of thought (which caused a bit of a sweat) I decided on a whiskey sour.

My normal whiskey sour is something like this:

2oz Bourbon (or Rye)
1oz fresh lemon juice
.75oz simple syrup

-Shaken, double strained and served up. If I give it a taste and the particular lemon I used is intensely sour, I’ll pour the drink over fresh ice in a rocks glass.

Ahhh . . . that hit the spot. But I couldn’t leave well enough alone. I am a big fan of Averna. If you attended the 2009 Repeal Day Ball, you probably already knew that. That’s all I’ll say because I have a constitutional right not to incriminate myself.

Moving on . . . I decided to play around with the basic whiskey sour and see if I could come up with something tasty using Averna. There were several attempts that just didn’t work – too sour, too sweet, strange finish, etc. etc. I soldiered on and after the kitchen drain was drunk from my toss-aways, I hit upon a formula that hit the spot. So I give you,

Whiskaverna Sour
1.25oz 100 proof Rye
.75oz Averna
.50oz fresh lemon juice
.50oz simple syrup
2 dashes orange bitters

-Shake, double strain, serve up with a lemon twist.

This combines the lovely sweet-bitterness of the amaro and the classic whiskey sour wonderfully. I would love to hear comments on the recipe or any tweaks you may have in the comments!

And I have the share my latest toy. While visiting my mother over the holidays, we went to several antique stores. Always on the look out for cocktail gear, I found some interesting items. There were some glasses, but compared to what I can get at Good Will, they were over-priced. There were a plethora of shakers. Most novelty shakers from the 80′s but a few from the 60′s and 70′s. Eh. They just didn’t catch my attention enough to buy any. But then! While walking through one store, I found IT!

An early 1900′s soda siphon! The gaskets on the inside are completely corroded so I’m pretty sure it is unusable. (If anyone out there knows of a way to restore this gorgeous thing, please let me know!) It weighs about 5 pounds, is double walled glass with what looks like a glass pipe in the chamber. The removable CO2 chamber is made of iron. It was part of an estate and the store owner said the syphon was found in a box in a barn. I gave the top a little elbow grease with some Bartender’s Helper and it shined up nicely. It’s a great piece and I just had to share.

Finally, I wanted to leave you with a final cocktail I enjoyed tonight.

Les Voûtes
1.5oz Rye
.50oz Sweet Vermouth
.50oz Yellow Chartreuse
1 barspoon of kirschwasser
2 dashes orange bitters

-Stir with cracked ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

Ummmm, delicious!