An online speakeasy of potent potables and other pabulam.

Well, I’ve started this whole series, can’t stop now!

Tonight, as is usual on Thursdays, is Thursday Drink Night over in the Mixoloseum chat room.  The theme is “muddled drinks” and the other day I had an inspiration.  Like last night, it’s a chance to kill two birds with one stone, as the saying has it – this time, to present a new drink for TDN as well as to make one to honor somebody locally, Mr. Derek Brown.

The drink basically jumped almost fully formed into my head.  I just made one, after posting it in the chat room, and people seem to like it!  Kaiser Penguin was even kind enough to take a picture of it and let me use it:

Pretty, ain’t it?

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.

In my opinion, this is a nice, sweet, light drink.  I think it’d make a wonderful digestif or apertif.  Someone else who made one (Chris aka DJ HawaiianShirt) said that it worked well with a “past its prime bottom shelf bottle of French vermouth”, so you have that, too.  Others who thought it was too sweet (such as JohnTheBastard) I suggested additional bitters, though he went with a bit of tonic syrup and something else (I believe club soda).

Enjoy!

[Fourth 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.]

Perhaps keeping in the theme that Marshall started this week, I had a “first” for myself.  This week was the first time I’d made a tiki drink at home for myself.

It’s not that I haven’t had tiki drinks before.  At Trader Vic’s in Atlanta I’d had plenty of them, and occasionally at other random places or made by other people.  I never quite understood the tiki obsession that some bloggers have, but mostly, that was an excuse to make fun of them.

The big thing was, really, my perpetual lack of ice.  I lived in a house with a single ice cube tray – it was hard enough to have to make a few cocktails, much less drinks requiring lots of shaved ice or the such.

Also, while I have a variety of rums, I’m nowhere near as knowledgable about rums as I am about other spirits.  Couple that with a lack of tiki-focused recipe books (all of which I’d bought have gone to friends as presents) and, well, there we are.

So I was sitting at home in my new place and I realized something – I have plenty of ice now!  I have juices!  I have lots of rum!  I can make a tiki drink or two!

But…what to make?

There be the question.

I thumbed through a couple of books and saw one I wanted to try – but then I realized I didn’t have any passionfruit syrup.  Sigh.  I continued to look and saw one I hadn’t seen mentioned before but it sounded tasty so I pulled out the ingredients for the Doctor Funk #2, as listed in the Mr. Boston Official Bartender’s Guide.

Doctor Funk #2
1 1/2 ounce dark rum (La Favorite Vieux rhum agricole)
1/2 ounce falernum (Velvet Falernum)
1/2 ounce grenadine (homemade)
3/4 ounce lime juice
1 dash absinthe (Lucid)
1 dash Angostura bitters
Club soda (Fever Tree)
Shake first six ingredients with ice and strain into a hurricane glass.  Top with club soda and garnish with a lime wedge.

As you can see, I used a rhum agricole for the dark rum.  As I sipped on this drink I found that I absolutely loved it, for one thing, and for the other that I, well, I understood. There’s something about sipping a nice, tall tiki drink that was relaxing.

Also, for any type of fluids, I tend to drink a lot and want something around.  The Doctor Funk #2 gave me a nice tall drink that I could sip on and maybe it didn’t last as long as a beer (because it was goshdarn delicious, that’s why!) but it definitely lasted longer than a lot of cocktails do for me.

I wanted to try something else and since Marshall had made a mai tai the past weekend I decided I’d give that a shot.  I’m still a bit fuzzy about the differences between gold and dark and aged rums, so I just kind of guessed.

Yes, I stuck with the rhum agricoles.

Mai Tai
1 ounce light rum (I used Neisson Rhum Agricole Blanc)
1 ounce gold rum (Scarlet Ibis)
1/2 ounce orange curacao (Creole Shrubb)
1/2 ounce orgeat (Fee’s)
1/2 ounce lime juice
1 ounce dark rum (La Favorite Vieux rhum agricole)
Shake all but the dark rum and strain into a chilled old-fashioned glass.  Top with the dark rum.  Garnish with a maraschino cherry.

I’ve been lazy and haven’t gotten around to making a new batch of maraschino cherries, natch.

This one wasn’t as good as the one Marshall made but it wasn’t bad, especially as the ice melted a bit (I added ice to both drinks) and the flavors integrated a bit more – i.e. I swizzled the dark rum into the drink with a swizzle stick.

Still, what I need to get is more rhum agricole so I can make the “Ed Hamilton” version that uses all three types of rhum agricole.  And also maybe better orgeat.  I’m quite lazy about making that though.

Thus, my first foray into tiki drinks.  They were quite good.  In fact, I’m getting thirsty just thinking about them – I might have to make another Dr. Funk, but before I do I should go out and get some passionfruit syrup…

So, the last Thursday Drink Night of 2008 was sponsored by our friends over at Sandeman’s.  They hooked us up with two kinds of their port – the Founder’s Reserve (a ruby port) and the 10 year old (a tawny).  An accurate depiction of it is shown in Sam’s cartoon about the night here.  I will have you know, however, that at no point did I hiccup!  I think.

I showed up to the TDN late having been out to dinner with some friends.  The action was already going strong when I opened up the Founder’s Reserve – not realizing that it’s one of those corks with a plastic cap on top.  Oops!

I didn’t want to open both up but at the time, I thought that both were tawny.  I was surprised but not displeased when I found my mistake.  I’m much more of a ruby port drinker than a tawny one.  I sipped a bit of it first to get some ideas because, well, I don’t think I’ve ever really mixed with port before.

My first instinct was something easy.  I said at one point in the night something to the effect of “Why not just make a ‘Portugese Manhattan’ by going two parts whiskey, one part ruby port?”

Which, evidently, had been somebody’s idea to post, and they just hadn’t gotten to it yet.  Oops again!

But I did come up with a few drinks over the course of the night.  To me, mixing with port seemed a bit like mixing with sweet vermouth, only without the vegetals/herbal notes that you get with vermouth.  It’s easy for the vermouth to get swallowed up by the ingredients so if I keep doing it, I’ll have to learn how to work with it.

For instance, my first drink I called “The Outstayed Welcome”.  I’d been stuck on the idea of mixing port (which is brandy added to wine) with brandy.  They’re also both traditionally after-dinner drinks which led to the name of the drink.

The Outstayed Welcome
2 oz. brandy (I used St. Remy XO)
1 oz. lemon juice (note: I might adjust this down to 3/4 of an ounce – I can’t remember if I did that or not)
1/2 oz. simple syrup
1/2 oz. ruby port (Sandeman’s Founder’s Reserve)
1 dash orange bitters (Regan’s #6)
Shake and strain.  Garnish with a flamed orange peel.

Basically, I made a brandy sour, and then added in the port to add some complexity to it.  It wasn’t bad for a first try and I’d like to play around with the proportions a bit.  The irony of taking brandy and port for an after-dinner drink, when both are typically drank at room temperature at least in those circumstances, and making it a chilled drink wasn’t lost on me, but I really don’t think – even if I added water to it – that you’d want to drink it warm.

The previously mentioned Portugese Manhattan was technically my second drink.  The variations of it call for a lot of discretion on the part of the person making it.  Does the drinker prefer a fruity or more herbal Manhattan?  What type of whiskey are you using – bourbon or rye – and how spicy is it?  A sweet light bourbon, like Maker’s Mark, mixed with port would demand different bitters and maybe a different proportion than, say, Old Overholt.

Portugese Manhattan
2 ounces bourbon or rye (Bulleit)
1 ounce ruby port (Sandeman’s Founder’s Reserve)
2 dashes bitters (I used cherry)
Stir and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.  Garnish appropriately for the bitters.

There’s a lot of leeway there in the bitters.  If I’d used Maker’s Mark, for instance, I might’ve gone with Angostura or Peychaud’s, or maybe even something a bit more random like rhubarb bitters.  With the Bulleit, a fairly spicy bourbon, I used cherry bitters, but I kind of wished I used maybe some cherry-vanilla bitters I have.  I might play with this drink more tonight.

For my last drink of the night I wanted to do something a little different than what other people were doing.  I’ve been experimenting at times with the combination of tequila and falernum.  I feel like it’s a good combination and from there it’s just a matter of what to add to it.  Given the sweetness of the port, I thought maybe a bit of an herbal taste and there’s only one place to go for that…

Okay, okay, there are multiple places, but I know what *I* wanted to use!

Cactus Needles
2 ounces tequila (I used Corazon blanco)
1 ounce ruby port (Sandeman’s Founder’s Reserve)
3/4 ounce falernum (Velvet Falernum)
1/4 ounce green Chartreuse
Shake and strain into a glass.  Garnish with a piece of cactus – yeah, right – or a twist of lime.

I think that this was a fun drink, if more of a summer drink.  I didn’t garnish it that night but I have a mental image of a hunk of cactus on a sweating double old fashioned glass with this.  I’m betting that lime will also work stylistically and perhaps also with the tastes.  After all, lime and tequila get along like gangbusters.

There were a ton of other drinks that came out that night and I still have a lot of ideas for things I can do with the ruby port – and I haven’t even opened up the tawny yet!  Keeping up with the “sweet vermouth” replacement, I could see doing a Negroni with gin, Aperol, and ruby port, for instance.

I guess this will have to do it until 2009 for TDN.  Hopefully soon we’ll see the recap of this TDN and see what other port drinks are coming up…and hey, playing with port will give me something to do through Christmas-time!

Arggghhhhh, Matey!  I guess’d ye be searchin’ for a cuppa grog . . . or maybe ye tongue wants to lash at a Zombie or a Mai Tai . . . ye look like scurvy dogs from down here in ye old Scofflaw’s Den. 

But AYE!  It be yet another Mixology Monday hosted by the esteemed Trader Tiki.  The poison this Cap’n of the High Seas has chosen is that nectar of Aphrodite, that elixir that keeps a Scofflaw’s tongue whetted . . . RUM.

Alright, so a full post in pirate talk would be a bit much and I’m about ready to kick my own ass if I keep this up much longer. 

I love rum.  There isn’t any other way to say it as clearly as that.  I love it.  This has also been a pretty hectic weekend for me and unfortunately I’m afraid it is going to have to infringe on my MxMo day.  But I don’t want to make a bunch of excuse, lest you make me walk the plank.

When I started thinking of what to write, I decided to first take stock of what rum I had in this Scofflaw’s Bar.

From left to right I have:

Ron Zacapa 15yr
Depaz Blue Cane Rhum Agricole
Dogfish Head Honey Brown Rum
El Dorado 12 yr Demerara Rum
Mt. Gay Rum
Cruzan Black Strap Rum
The Scarlet Ibis Rum
Dogfish Head Wit Spiced Rum
Neisson Rhum Agricole Blanc

After I took stock, I felt completely overwhelmed.  I guess I should take a perverted sense of pride in this feeling.  Most folks probably has a bottle of rum . . . maybe two.   I also wasn’t sure of what to do for a cocktail for you good folks.  Should I go tried and true tiki?  I love me some tiki (as I have said over and over), but think a lot of folks will do traditional tiki drinks.  One I idea I had, and will do eventually, is a tasting of Rum Collins – try each of my rums with a squeeze of lime and some tonic water.  Sounds like a great way to spend a Saturday afternoon if you ask me.

So I turned to the books.  Again, tons of rum drinks and none that really grabbed my attention.  Maybe it was the feeling of rushing around and I was trying to force something . . . not allowing the spirits (heh!) of those by-gone Pirates flow through me and give me inspiration when I needed.  I needed the spirit of William Dampier to infuse my soul with a yearning to find something new. 

So when all else fails, pick something at random!!!

I chose the Tahiti Club from Gary Regan’s Bartender’s Bible.  It goes something like this:

Tahiti Club
1 oz light rum
1 oz dark rum
1 oz pineapple juice
.5 oz lime juice
.5 oz lemon juice
1 tsp maraschino liqueur

Shake, strain over fresh ice cubes in a rocks glass.

As you can see from the picture, I used the Depaz and the El Dorado.  Just a quick note to say that I really love the Depaz Blue Cane Rhum Agricole.  It smells of sweet grass, fresh sugarcane and has almost a whiskey/bourbon undertone as well.   It is also one of the few (maybe the only one?) rums to receive the Appellation d’Origine Controlee from the French Government. 

The cocktail was good – but very tart!  For my tastes, I think the tartness hid some of the nuances of the Depaz and the El Dorado.  I think a dash of rich simple syrup would really bring the inherent flavors of the rums from behind the juices.  The maraschino liqueur lent an interesting funkiness to the nose of the drink, but worked very well with the fruit juice flavors.

Hmmm . . . now that my whistle was whetted, I wanted to do a little concoctioneering.  Actually, I was going to use this space for a drink I came up with while over at Sean’s Friday night, but he beat me to it and posted it here.  That scurvy bastard . . .     So check out his post for an extra-special-hey-look-there-is-an-extra-chest-of-booty-type rum drink from your’s truly.

So yeah, concoctioneering.  I had some coconut milk left over from some coconut sticky rice I made a few days ago.  I decided to try and use that in a drink.  This isn’t the pre-sweetned Coco Lopez stuff, rather it is what you find in the Asian section of your market.  For help using it, I turned to some notes I had written one afternoon playing with some coconut water.  The water is the clear juice that is inside the coconut right when you open one up.  One of the recipes I had tinkered with was the following:

2 oz rum
2 oz coconut water
.5 oz lime juice
.5 oz falernum
.25 oz grapefruit juice
.25 oz raspberry syrup
1 dash maraschino
1 dash absinthe

I really liked this mix.  It was boozy, sweet and had flavors and aromas coming out of the waa-zoo.  For me, definitely a keeper.  But at some point I’ll need to name it . . . .  But this was the launching pad to use the coconut milk.  What I came up with was this:

2 oz rum
1.5 oz coconut milk
.5 oz lime juice
.5 oz falernum
.25 oz Aperol –> I ran out of grapefruit juice and wanted a substitute for the bitterness in grapefruit.
.25 oz raspberry syrup
.25 oz grenadine
1 dash maraschino
1 dash absinthe

Now to be honest, the drink came out looking kind of funky.  It was a creamy dark pink color.  Not unappetizing by any stretch, but just not a color that I normally associate with drinks.  It kind of looked like the pinkish hue you find on seashells.  Hmmm . . .

The taste was also something I wasn’t expecting.  It was much more tart than anticipated.  It was creamy, sweet and tart.  The rum gave it a good backbone (I used the Mt. Gay) and the Aperol tamed the sweetness of the syrups.  (If anyone out there tries their hand an making this, please, please let me know what you think . . . any and all feedback would be greatly appreciated!)

Alright, I think it’s time for me to bring my MxMo post to an end.  Again, I want to thank Mr. Blair Reynold’s, aka Trader Tiki for allowing us on deck for this rum soaked episode of Mixology Monday!

Cheers!