An online speakeasy of potent potables and other pabulam.

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?

First note: don’t forget to vote for me in the Mixoloseum blog entry for last week’s TDN!  I’m tied for first!  My drink is “The Derek” if you remember it from last week.

Before I left town on Saturday I’d tried to come up with a drink for the esteemed Mr. Camper English of Alcademics.  I despaired of this task on Friday night as I had to deal with maintenance men cutting holes in my drywall and just a general inability to get the drink where I wanted it.  I went to the other dream which Marshall so generously published for me yesterday and decided to leave it for after the Pink Ribbon Polo match down at King Family on Saturday and hanging out with my parents.

After a long drive home Sunday from Amelia – there was an accident on I-95, it seems, so we got to route over to 301 – I got home and went into a serious vegetative state, getting nothing done at all, for a while.  I eventually went out and got some food – and there’s a chance I did that with my fly down, which means now I get to shoot myself – and definitely stuck one of my fingers deep into a surprisingly decayed citrus fruit of some now untellable type.  Ewwww.

My initial thought  had been to work on a ginger-based drink for tomorrow’s Mixology Monday but I was too distracted.  However, I’d had a mini-epiphany about the drink I wanted to make for Camper, which I knew had to a) include tequila and b) be pink.  This was after watching dad make mom a Cosmo on Saturday night.

I grabbed a non-decayed lemon and my housemade (cold method) grenadine.  Soon I had a drink that was better than I could’ve expected and the only regret I had was not having the perfect garnish for it!  I’ll describe what I wanted to garnish it with and we’ll see.

The garnish would've been PERFECT.

The Camper
2 ounces blanco tequila (Tequila Ocho)
1 ounce lemon juice
1/2 ounce grenadine
1-2 dashes Peychaud’s bitters
pink Ting
Shake the first four ingredients together in a cocktail shaker with ice.  Strain into a chilled cocktail glass and top with pink Ting.  Garnish with a piece of pink grapefruit on a skewer.  Your choice the shape it is in; I would’ve done a heart, myself.

I’m really happy with how this drink came out.  If you can’t find pink Ting, you can try regular, or another grapefruit soda.

[Seventh 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.]

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.]

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…