For this year’s party, I decided to print up a cocktail menu.? The reasons were simple.? First, I didn’t want to end up making forty-five different drinks or deal with the inevitable “Make me something fruity.”? Number B, I didn’t want drunk people rummaging around my hooch.? (Wow, that sounds kind of scandalous and dirty.)? Finally, I wanted to have a little something for everyone in addition to wine, beer and non-alcoholic drinks.

Here is what the menu looked like:

Once opened, guests were treated to six possible drinks, the non-alcoholic options mentioned above and, for the brave, a traditional absinthe drip.? (Or as traditional as I can get without having the huge water faucet drippy thing.)? Below are the drinks, their descriptions as printed on the menu, and the recipe.

Devil’s Daughter
Sugar and spice and everything nice with a heart as black as the night.
Vodka, Lemon, Lime, Egg White

This cocktail is actually a riff on Eben Freeman’s Bazooka Bubblegum Cocktail served at Tailor.? You can find the original recipe here. I followed Eben’s recipe to the letter, except I replaced the regular vodka with Blavod.? The resulting cocktail was dark violet in color but tasted just like bubblegum.? It was a hit with everyone who tried it.

Corpse Reviver #2
The dead will rise over this little refresher.
Gin, Cointreau, Lillet, Lemon, Absinthe

This was the basic Corpse Reviver #2 recipe.
Corpse Reviver #2
1oz Gin
1oz Cointreau
1oz Lillet Blanc
1oz fresh lemon juice
2-3 drops of absinthe

Shake everything with ice and strain into chilled cocktail glass.? Garnish with a maraschino cherry.

Murderous Manhattan
Reportedly the very recipe drunk by David Berkowitz after each kill.
Bourbon or Rye, Vermouth, Maraschino, Bitters

The twist on this Manhattan was that I used Bianco vermouth and added a barspoon of maraschino to the mix.? I also used some cherry bitters and aromatic bitters.? Here’s the recipe:

2oz Bourbon or Rye
1oz Bianco Vermouth
1 barspoon maraschino liqueur
dash of cherry bitters and aromatic bitters

Stir over ice, strain and garnish with a maraschino cherry.

Ignis Fatuus
The hellish flames found in the dark deadly swamps.
Chardonnay, Cognac, Pumpkin, Cider

This is another borrowed recipe.? This time from that crazy Canadian media hound Jamie Boudreau.? His original recipe is here.? This is another cocktail that went over really well.? A few months ago, our friend Roy tasked me with finding a cocktail using pumpkin.? His wife Danielle loves pumpkin and he wanted something that he could make for her.? At the time, he wanted me to use this “Pumpkin Spice Liqueur” that will remain nameless.? But you know what I’m talking about.? Yes, you do.? Well, I toyed around with playing with an actual pumpkin and doing an infusion of some sort, but then Jamie came along with this little number.? I’m still planning on doing a pumpkin infusion this fall/winter (keep your eyes peeled!) but Jamie’s creation was spot on.? Great drink.? Go to his site and see how it’s done.? You won’t be sorry.

Charon’s Dingy
Only the most damned have to cross the River Styx in this leaky vessel.
Brandy, Amaro, Lemon, Cinnamon, Honey, Bitters

This was actually a renaming of a drink I created during Thursday Drink Night at the Mixoloseum.? I based the drink off a standard Sidecar recipe – with a few tweaks of course.? First, I substituted the Cointreau with Ramazzotti Amaro.? Then, to compensate for the lack of sweetness, I added cinnamon and honey syrups.? I also guilded the lilly with whiskey barrel bitters and a flamed lemon peel.? I called the drink “A Sidecar to Milan” to highlight the origin of the Ramazzotti.? For the Halloween party, I simply renamed the drink.? Charon ferried the dead across the river Styx and I thought what would the the sidecar equivalent to a ferry?? A dingy!? So you’ve got Charon’s Dingy.? Here is the recipe (and the original name):

Sidecar to Milan
1.5oz Brandy
1oz Ramazzotti Amaro
.75oz fresh lemon juice
.50oz cinnamon syrup
.50oz honey syrup (or can substitute rich simple syrup, but may need to adjust proportions)
2 dashes whiskey barrel bitters

Shake everything with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.? Garnish with a flamed lemon peel.? After flamed, rub peel around edge of glass and drop in.

Luckily, one of my guests, Victor, brought along his video recorder and through the magic of the interwebs you can see the flamed lemon peel.? And before any of you say it, I was using plastic cups for the cocktails.? I don’t have enough nice glassware for everybody and plastic is a lot easier to get rid of.

Halloween 2008 from Marshall on Vimeo.

Kill-Devil Punch
A misnomer: The Devil will kill YOU over this punch.
Rum, LIme, Pineapple, Bubbly

I found this recipe at Epicurious and it turns out to have been supplied by Phil Ward of Death & Co.? Everyone seemed to really like this punch and by the end of the night I had gone through an entire bottle of prosecco.? The recipe makes enough for six drinks.

Kill-Devil Punch
9oz Rum
6oz Pineapple Juice
5oz Simple Syrup
4oz Fresh Lime Juice
5oz Champagne/Cava/Prosecco

Combine everything except the bubbly in a container and chill in the fridge for a few hours.? Pour over ice and top with the champagne/cava/prosecco.? Garnish with lime wheels, frozen raspberries, blackberries or other fruit.? Or garnish as I did, with a stick of sugar cane.? One note regarding the recipe, depending on how sweet/dry your bubbly is, you will probably want to adjust the amount of simple syrup.? For a dry champagne, leave at 5oz.? If using a sweeter sparkling wine, you may want to use less.

There you have it.? My Halloween 2008 cocktail menu.? Give these drinks a try and feel free to leave a comment and let us know what you think.

But what to take?? Taking various bottles of spirits, mixers, mixing tins, strainers, jiggers, etc. would be a hassle and too labor intensive.? So I decided to make a bottled cocktail.? For those of you looking for more information on bottling cocktails, I highly recommend reading this post.? But what cocktail to bottle?? I wanted something that said “HEY IT’s FALL AND KIND OF CHILLY.? DRINK ME BECAUSE I’M LIKE FALL.”? Okay, so maybe not so much with the yelling, but you get my gist.

I searched through my cocktail books and even tried out the Virginia Autumn that I made last year but nothing was really tickling my fancy.? I then came across Paul Clarke’s site and more specifically, this post on the Northern Spy.? Now this little number had promise.? So I whipped one up to give a try before committing to an entire bottles’ worth.? It was good.? But still wasn’t exactly what I wanted.? I was afraid that the dryness of the cocktail, and the inherent boozyness, would be off-putting to some people.? I wanted something that was a little sweeter, mainly because I wasn’t sure of my audience.? Usually, sweeter things are more appealing to the masses and I certainly wanted my drink to be a hit.

Paul mentions that the Orchard Apricot can be replaced with ginger liqueur, pimento dram or another flavor enhancer.? Well, I don’t have Orchard Apricot.? I know, I know!? I should have some, but every now and again, something slips through the cracks when I go booze shopping.? (Shhhhh . . . don’t tell Joe at Ace Beverage.? He’ll have me buying some within 15 minutes of reading this!)? Anyway, I do have the Orchard Pear, so I figure that’s a good place to start.? I also wanted to get some extra fall flavors into the drink, so I thought about a few dashes of Fee’s Whiskey Barrel Bitters.? But then again, Paul unknowingly guided my hand with his suggestion of using pimento dram.

So after a few tasty trials and errors, here is the recipe for my finished cocktail.? Which I have called,

Fort Hunt Fall
2oz Applejack
1oz Apple Cider*
.5oz lemon juice
.5oz Pear Brandy (I used Rothman & Winter Orchard Pear)
.5oz Pimento Dram
.5oz Apple Cider Syrup**

-Shake everything with ice and strain into an ice filled rocks glass.

*For those of you not in the US, by “apple cider,” I’m referring to fresh pressed apple juice.? Not the hard stuff.

**To make apple cider syrup:? Take one cup of apple cider and reduce by half on the stove.? Stir in a quarter cup of sugar.? Let cool and bottle.? You can play around with the sugar you add to get a sweetness you like.? The cider will have a lot of residual sugar already so you may not need too much.? This is a great syrup to add an intense apple flavor wherever you like.

I’m happy to report that this drink was very well received.? In fact, the bottle was empty when I went to gather my belongings.? Some even topped it off with champagne; which was very delicious as well.? I saw a few people (cough, cough Heather) go back for seconds.? I was just happy that those who tried it, seemed to enjoy it and that their introduction to my cocktails was a pleasant one.

Of course, in true Scofflaw fashion, I couldn’t just show up with one drink.? I also brought along a small bottle of Trader Tiki’s Primitiva which I had just bottled a couple of weeks prior.? If you want to make a tasty liqueur, this stuff is money!? The Trader knows his spirits and is second to none in concoctioneering.? Seriously.? Make this stuff.? It’s fantastic.? Anyway, back to the picnic.? I brought a small bottle of primitiva and was pouring about an ounce in a small, ice-filled plastic cup and topping it with champagne.? Fantastic!? Mixed together with a Fort Hunt Fall – fantastic.? Swigging straight from the bottle maniacally laughing at the poor poor people who couldn’t fathom the tasty treat they were missing out on – fantastic.? You catch my drift.

As we’ve already written about here and here the picnic was awesome.

Next up on my calender is the second cocktail class by Gina Chersevani at EatBar.? This is the Halloween themed class and I’m really excited about it.? Friday night, I have my Halloween party and am in the process of creating the cocktail menu for it.? I need two more cocktails for the menu and I’m hoping Gina gives me some good ideas.? I won’t give anything away until after the party, but expect to see plenty of pictures and the recipes for all the drinks from the menu later that weekend.

Hope everyone has a frightful (and safe) Halloween!? Cheers!

I was trying to decide what to make to drink tonight that was appropriately themed.? Of course there is Satan’s Whiskers or a Zombie.? Maybe I could try to mix something up myself or use a little food coloring to make a drink more forebodding, but honestly, I didn’t want to take the time and effort to do that.? But I did want to find something that was new to this blog.

Over at Jamie Boudreau’s blog he posted several halloween themed drinks.? I saw these earlier in the day and filed them away to try at some point (not necessarily tonight.)? Then after reading Sean’s post below, I started thinking about shaking versus stirring.? Two of the drinks Jamie posted, the Corpse Reviver #1 and the Corpse Reviver #2, used different mixing strategies.? The #1 was stirred while the #2 was shaken.? Hmmmm . . . seems that multiple forces are telling me I should try these drinks . . . and who am I to argue with the etheral specter compelling me to imbibe.

Quick aside:? Plus there has been the pint glass that mysteriously cracked while sitting in the sink . . . seriously, the bottom of the glass sheared off in a perfect cut.? And my clock radio deciding that it wanted to display time one hour earlier than it should . . . a week before we normally change the time.? So maybe my apartment has a friendly spirit roaming around.? Or maybe I’m just reading too much into those happenings.

Back to our regularly scheduled program:? With apologies to Mr. Boudreau, I decided to use the two versions of the Corpse Reviver which he posted yesterday.

So I actually made the #2 first.

Corpse Reviver #2
3/4 oz gin (I used Plymouth)
3/4 oz lemon juice
3/4 oz Lillet
3/4 oz Cointreau
dash of absinthe (I used Pernod)

Shake everything with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

Here is the final product:

The drink was really good.? No particular flavor stood out, as should be the case in a well balanced drink.? It was tart, sweet, slightly fruity with that back flavor of the pastis that worked very very well.? Doing a little reading on several websites and in a book or two, I learned that both corpse revivers were originally a “hair of the dog” type drink.? One usually drank them in the morning to give energy and shake of the effects of the prior evenings festivities.? The #2 would definitely go down easy in the early morning and could lead to some seriously interesting hours after that!

I then tried the Corpse Reviver #1 containing:

1.5 oz brandy
3/4 oz apple brandy (I used Laird’s Applejack)
3/4 oz sweet vermouth

Stir over ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

Here is the #1:

This cocktail was pretty good.? I think my main issue with it is the sweet vermouth.? I have been using M&R vermouth exclusively because that is what I’ve been able to find easily.? This weekend I’m going to see if my grocery store as the Noilly Prat (keeping my fingers crossed).? But I tend to get turned off by drinks with vermouth in them.? I think it is the slightly musky aroma and taste that the vermouth has.? Anyway, other than that, the cocktail was nice.? You can taste a nice sweetness from the vermouth and the applejack that slices through the brandy very nicely.? Stir this drink very well to get it as cold as possible.? It really rounds out the edges and makes if go down easy.? (Insert inappropriate joke here.)

Notice the difference in textures of the two drinks.? The #2 is cloudy while the #1 is clear.? This is because the #2 contains lemon juice (an opaque substance) so shaking to chill it is appropriate.? Shaking also incorporates a lot of air into the drink which gives it a bit of froth (which disappears fairly quickly, unless you add some egg white) and clouds up the drink.? The #1 is not cloudy because by stirring, less air is incorporated into the drink.

So what are ya’ll drinking on this most Hallowed of Eves?? Leave a comment and let us know!

Now, because I love Halloween so much, I’ve decided to have a pre-Halloween shin-dig at my place tonight for a few friends.? Nothing fancy, a few small Halloween decorations, some candles, a horror movie playing in the background for ambiance and good conversation.? Of course, I plan on serving beer, wine and cocktails.? What cocktails to serve on this most unholy of gatherings?? (insert evil laugh here)

So far, these are drinks I plan on serving.? I’ll post recipes and impressions later in the week.

Virginia Autumn
Satan’s Whiskers
Death in the Afternoon
Asylum Cocktail
red or black or orange martinis

Should be a frightfully good time.