An online speakeasy of potent potables and other pabulam.

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.

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.

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

Yep, it’s that time of year where our weekends (and the occasional weeknight) are filled with Holiday parties and merriment.  The Christmas Spirit has hit me pretty hard this year.  I’ve been watching Christmas movies and singing carols.  I have my first live tree whose named Elmer.  Now all I need is some snow and I’m going to be as happy as an Elf on the North Pole.

One aspect of this season in particular is that a lot of people ask for cocktail ideas or the contribution of a beverage or two for their party.  Of course I’m not one to turn down either and I’m more than happy to contribute to the quality quaffing of the season.

Obviously there are several usual suspects when it comes to Holiday drinks – Hot Buttered Rum, Mulled Wine, Spiced Apple Cider, & Egg Nogg just to name a few.  And while all of these are great options I wanted to add something else to the list.

This past Saturday Sylvie and I went to a Soup & Cookie holiday party at our friend Josh’s house co-hosted by his lovely gal Jenny.  I was tasked with bringing Egg Nogg to the party and I was happy to oblige.  My go-to Nog is the easy-as-pie recipe from Jeffrey Morganthaler. But being a Scofflaw, I couldn’t just leave it at one drink.  I wanted to come up with an original cocktail that was boozy, non-too-sweet, and really made me think of Christmas.  Even further, I wanted a cocktail that brought the flavors of what I feel are Victorian-esque Christmas desert flavors.  So what could that be?  Plums!  Fruit Cake!  Spices!  Brandy!  Oh for the love of Santa Claus, FIGGY PUDDING!!!

Now just to turn these ideas into a cocktail.  Here’s what I came up with:

Christmas Pudding
1.5 oz Brandy
1 oz White Port
.50 oz Bonal quinquina
.25 oz Cointreau
.25 oz Allspice Dram
.25 oz Trader Tiki’s Cinnamon Syrup
3 d Fee’s Plum Bitters

Stir with ice, strain into a chilled cocktail glass, and garnish with an orange peel and maraschino cherry.

Before you say anything, yes that’s lemon peel as a garnish in the picture.  I didn’t have any fresh oranges on hand so I used what I had.  Sue me.   To me, the flavors that combine in this drink really hit all the high notes of what I was looking for.  It’s boozy, that’s for sure.  But you also have the spices, citrus, and a bit of a dried fruit character from the white port and the Bonal.  The Plum Bitters adds another layer of fruit and helps to marry the sweetness and spiciness from all the ingredients.   I definitely want to give this recipe a try with a tawny port in place of the white port.  I think that will heighten the dried fruit flavors even more.  If you try it, let me know the outcome.

So tell us what your favorite Christmas cocktails are!  Do you have a unique recipe or an old standby?  Leave us a comment and share.

Cheers!

Here we are – day two of my perhaps Quixotic attempt to make up a new drink every day.  In an attempt to get through some of the rum, I decided to make an attempt to make a drink that I’d declare as tiki.  Why’s that?

Why, Trader Tiki, that’s why.

I asked a couple of people what makes a drink tiki and no one really had a good answer.  If you have one, leave it in the comments.  But what I think of is rum and fruit juices, really.

However, there’s something else with tiki – I think of the British.  That might sound weird, but I think about the British influence especially on the high seas.  I really wonder if we’d truly have “tiki” these days without the influence of the British.

Not to mention the East Indian Trading Company even – and we’re talking about someone named TRADER TIKI.

So I did some thinking, some experimenting, and here’s what I ended up with.

The Trader Tiki
1 ounce Lemon Hart 151
1 ounce Plymouth Gin
1 1/2 ounces pineapple juice
1 1/2 ounces passionfruit juice
1 ounce tamarind juice
1/2 ounce allspice dram
2 dashes Trader Tiki’s Aged Falernum Bitters
1/4 (or so) ounces grenadine
club soda
Pour the first eight ingredients over ice into a mixing tin.  Shake, and pour – unstrained – into a tiki mug.  Top with club soda.  Garnish with a long swizzle with a piece of pineapple, a lime wedge, and a mint leaf on it.

No, I don’t have a picture for it tonight.  Sorry guys.  But I’m sipping on one and it’s actually pretty tasty – kind of smokey, but Blair’s a bartender so I’m going to assume he’s usually pretty smokey, too.

And with that unfortunate verbiage behind me, I’m going to go back to watching TV.  Until tomorrow night, suckas!

[Second in a series of drinks named after bloggers, mixologists, and random others who'll hopefully be at Tales.  The first post in the series is here.]

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.