An online speakeasy of potent potables and other pabulam.

13 days ago, I was frantically doing laundry and packing.  Suddenly I hit a point where all I could do was wait for an hour or so; I’d just gotten a five pack of bitters from Bitter End Bitters in Santa Fe, New Mexico, so I threw together a drink using a pineapple that I didn’t want to have to throw out before my trip.

So we’ll start with that:

The Express
2 oz Cruzan blackstrap
1/2 oz Flor de Caña 4 yr old
1/2 oz Wray & Nephew
3/4 oz orgeat
1/2 oz  lemon juice
1 oz lime juice
1 dash Bitter End Bitters Thai Bitters

Shake with ice, pour unstrained into a cored out pineapple.  Garnish with a bit of mint if you’d like.

From there it was time for my trip.  I was off to Portland, Oregon, for Drink.Write 2010, our CSOWG conference, coinciding with Portland Cocktail Week and the Great American Distillers Fest.  I’d never been to Portland before and I was very eager to experience it.

I’m going to put it in short: it was awesome.  Hanging out with Darcy O’Neil and Ryan Magarian at the Driftwood Lounge, which turned into a visit to the House Spirits distillery; seeing Jeffrey Morgenthaler in his native Clyde Common slinging drinks; hanging out with folks like John The Bastard, Stevi Deter, Rick Stutz, Matt Robold, and Gabriel Szaszko; meeting tons of new folks (too many people to list here), and in general, I had some of the best drinks, food, and fun I’ve had in a long, long time.

Who are those sexy people? HINT: ONE IS ME

(Picture stolen from the Mixoloseum Facebook page.)

All kinds of folks gave lectures – Erick Castro, the aforementioned Rumdood, Morgenthaler, Darcy, the ever-fabulous Camper English, Craig Hermann, and, of course, Blair “Trader Tiki” Reynolds.  I could go on and on and on about the in-jokes, the fun, how to make ingredients, but hey.  I did name one drink after Craig, and I have an idea for another one; once I dig them both up, I’ll post them on here.  Just to warn, the first one is named “The Grapefruit Fleshlight” (please don’t Google “fleshlight” from work) and the other one is similarly mature.

Unfortunately, I had to leave on Saturday to fly to Orlando, Florida, for work, where the best I can say (drinks wise) is that I explored almost the entire Scotch selection at the Doubletree Resort – though I did have dinner one night at a place called Hannibal’s, and the wine there was very tasty.  I was at the IACP show, then by Wednesday I could head back to my home just outside of Washington DC in Arlington, VA.

Saturday, of course, there was a ton of Halloween parties out and about.  I went to my co-blogger’s house and he had a a whole menu worked up with the Halloween theme.  Hopefully he’ll be posting those on here soon.  Sunday I spent a good bit of time wandering Clarendon with a friend before watching my beloved Steelers lose.

So now I’m back home, watching Monday Night Football.  I’ve got a brain full of ideas that I need to get articulated and out onto the blog.  Repeal Day is coming up on December 4th, and of course, your Scofflaws will be there along with an all-star cast such as Derek Brown, Gina Chersevani, Todd Thrasher, David Wondrich, Beachbum Berry, Jeffrey Morgenthaler (man, that guy gets around!), Dale DeGroff, and possibly, quite possibly, some other cocktail bloggers.

Maybe.

Me, right now, I’m finally feeling like I’m home for a while – and I’ve got entire WEEKS before I have to travel again.  I’m sipping a Tempranillo that I used to wash down my porterhouse and baked potato, thinking about having a cigar – I’m running low again finally, and realized I won’t be able to go to the Rocky Patel event tomorrow at Virginia Pipe & Tobacco in Seven Corners – and thinking about working with some of these new bitters to come up with some more drinks.

What have y’all been up to?  Have any good cocktails lately?

Yeah, believe it or not – it’s just me.  I know I haven’t been around a lot lately, and I’m not going to make excuses for that.  From now on my goal is one post a week!

Feel free to chuckle or what have you.

Obviously, I was posting pretty hardcore up until Tales last year.  Then we hit Tales, then soon after that I was sent to Korea for a month, and then…well, it’s been busy.  However, I’ve been redoing a few things the past few weeks, one of which means cleaning and redoing a lot of my apartment (thanks to mom and dad a lot for that) and it’s made it much easier for me to cook and make drinks in my place.

Thus, right now, I’m sipping a freshly made mai tai while smoking a Rocky Patel Edge Lite on my balcony.  Why a mai tai?

I’m using the Mr. Boston recipe for it, not the original Trader Vic recipe: 1 ounce each light and gold rum (I used El Dorado 3 year old and Scarlet Ibis), 1/2 ounce orange curacao (Creole Shrubb), 1/2 ounce lime juice (fresh squeezed mojito lime from Wegman’s), and 1/2 ounce orgeat, shaken, topped with one ounce of dark rum (Coruba) and garnished with a maraschino cherry (Luxardo – mine didn’t go bad like Marshall’s did).  But it’s the orgeat that made the drink for me.

For Christmas I bought myself (and Marshall) a selection of Trader Tiki‘s syrups.  He’s even having a TDN using the syrups February 11th – be there, or be square, or something like that.  Oh shoot – I’ll be in San Francisco that week!

Trader Tiki, of course, is a friend of the Den and a member of the CSOWG, and so when I saw he was making the syrups, I had to get some.  Also, the only orgeats I’ve had were from Fee’s, and I really wanted to try someone else’s.  I had bought some almonds to make my own but hadn’t gotten around to doing it yet.

Well, tonight I decided I wanted a drink with orgeat in it.  A mai tai came to mind, and a mai tai I did make it.  It wouldn’t fit in a lot of the smaller, vintage cocktail glasses Marshall got me for Christmas but that’s okay.

It’s still quite delicious.

Other than that I haven’t done much non-beer home drinking.  I’ve gone out to the Passenger a few times – and Eventide a few times, PS7 once or twice.

Repeal Day was at the beginning of December and if I thought last year’s was good, this year’s was even better!  Jeffrey Morgenthaler was the MC for the event, we had drinks from all over DC – and bartenders from all over the country – making fabulous drinks, great food from PS7, I wish I’d written this earlier so I could remember more of it.  One of my favorites was a thick, scotch-based drink with oats and I can’t remember what all else, made by the kilt-wearing Dan Searing (and which went great with my cigar from Curtis Draper in the heated cigar tent).  All in all, it’s a night that you shouldn’t miss.

I was also happy to introduce people to stuff that I can get readily in the DC area lately.  I gave my buddy Dan a bottle of Chairman’s Reserve rum, which is a great, well-priced rum that just hit the market (and for the next few months, a portion of its proceeds will go to help Haiti).  My granddad got a bottle of Highland Park 15 year old Scotch which it sounds like he’s enjoying a lot, and I gave my parents a couple of nifty bottles.  That’s my favorite thing about this whole hobby, to be honest – introducing new people to all the stuff that’s out there (like getting my brother hooked on Dark & Stormy-s) that they might not have known about.

I’ve also got a bunch of samples I really need to work up write-ups about, so hopefully you’ll see some of that coming up.  That being said, let me make sure I caveat something just in case you didn’t realize, and also to help cover our butts with the FTC.

From time to time, marketing folks like to send people free samples.  For the most part, we accept almost any samples, though Marshall is a bit pickier than I (and I still feel really guilty about drunkenly making fun of one offered sample back to the marketing person involved – I mean, I just feel bad about that, that’s unprofessional, though “unprofessional” is not an uncommonly used adjective around me).

HOWEVER, a sample does not mean we will necessarily cover it unless we specifically agree to ahead of time and NEVER means we agree to give it a good review.  We will review it as we find it.  We will review stuff we buy on our as we find it.  We will talk about drinks and products from bars, people, etc., that we get, no matter how it’s gotten, truthfully.  The advantage of us accepting samples from marketing folks is that it gives us more of a chance to tell you, our readers about it, and also to use our own money to “fill in the gaps” as it were.

And sometimes it’s also a second chance to try something we might not have wagered the money on again.  I’ll use Bulleit bourbon for an example.  I’d only tried it straight, from a mini bottle, and wasn’t impressed with it.  Mike Manning hooked me up with a sample of it, and I experimented a bit more and found it rather useful in a number of cocktails thanks to its flavor profile.  It’s not a straight-drinking bourbon, it’s a mixing one, but it works well as long as you keep in mind that it’s also not a SWEET bourbon.  The folks representing Bulleit have been very nice and generous, but if someone asks me for a bourbon to drink on the rocks, I’ll be suggesting something else.  If someone asks me for a bourbon to use in a Suffering Bastard, though, or a bourbon that likes to act like a rye, then I’ll say Bulleit.

Okay, enough of that.  It’s making me thirsty for whiskey.  What time do the Saints play?  That sounds like a good time for some Sazeracs…

Annnnnnndddddddd . . . we have a winner!  The rules were pretty simple.  Tell me how you started down the cocktail path, the catalyst if you will, and tell me your favorite cocktail.

And the winner is Helena Tiare Olson from Stockholm, Sweden.  Tiare is also the writer of A Mountain of Crushed Ice.  And without further ado, here it Tiare’s story:

For me it started with a tiny mini bottle of El Dorado 15 year old demerara rum.

It’s a bit odd, I know but that´s what happened. I got that bottle from God knows where and drank a little bit of the rum and discovered that liked it, no – I mean really liked it. Its not the first alcoholic thing I had of course but it was the first alcoholic beverage that really opened my eyes and led me to discover the world of cocktails and this evolved to be where I am today.

This happened a couple of years ago.

So I tasted some of that rum neat and then I took the rest and mixed a ”tropical drink” having not much clue how to mix a proper cocktail – even though I had some vague idea still after my years in the restaurant business. But I threw together some fresh fruit juices, a little simple syrup and the rum with plenty of crushed ice and made some kind of elaborate fruit garnish. All happily served in a hurricane glass!

After that I got myself a big bottle of El Dorado and now I started to experiment more seriously.

I searched the net which eventually led me to tiki drinks,The Ministry of Rum and some of the cocktail blogs where I was a lurker for quite a while, without commenting – I didn´t dare to…but reading and absorbing everything I came over that interested me. I kept experimenting at home with cocktail mixing and ingredient making and garnishing. Eventually the whole thing grew to a lifestyle and I became a cocktail geek.

Then one day (a year ago) I started to write my blog, and the rest is as we say – history.

Today I’m much more into learning the classics, so i have started in a bit of an odd way, otherwise i believe tiki drinks is maybe not usually the first type of drinks you start with.

I will never abandon my first love – the Mai Tai, it will always be my favorite cocktail, but only if its made the way it should be and with good rum. The recipe I use is Trader Vic`s and I use either Appleton Extra, Havana Club 7, St James Hors d´age, Clemènt VSOP and various demerara rums.

Why do I love cocktails? Oh – its the craft, the art, the culinary and experimental aspect, and of course the aroma and taste – and then, they do look so beautiful! And a well crafted cocktail really is something very special.

When I think back I`m quite amazed myself how it all started with a tiny mini-bottle of El Dorado.

Mai Tai
1 oz dark Jamaican rum
1 oz Martinique rum
1 oz fresh lime juice (one lime)
0.5 oz orange curacao (or Cointreau)
0.25 oz each of orgeat and simple syrup

Mix all ingredients and shake with ice.Strain into a double old fashioned glass over crushed ice.Garnish with lime shell and a sprig of mint.Serve with 2 short straws placed near the mint.

Great story Tiare.  Congrats on your win and I hope you enjoy the 2009 Tales of the Cocktail Recipe Book!

Cheers!

Way back in April I announced a little contest here at Scofflaw’s Den.   The contest was to celebrate Templeton Rye and share some of their lovely whiskey.  The rules were fairly simple; the main rule was entries had to be a spring-inspired cocktail with rye whiskey as the base spirit.  Now I fully admit that using rye as a base in a spring cocktail poses certain, shall we say, problems.  But that was part of the fun!

And yes, I realize that it is now June and spring and sprung and we are on the verge of summer.  Well, sue me.  But the good news is we now have the winners!!!

Before announcing the winning cocktails, a note about the grading process.  Each submission was graded on a ten point scale for the following categories:

-Does the cocktail have a spring theme?
-Is it a rye whiskey base?
-Taste
-Color/Presentation
-Uniqueness

Sean and I both tasted and judged the cocktails on the aforementioned scale.  This meant each cocktail could score a maximum of 100 points total.  When Sean judged the cocktails the only info he was given was the name of the cocktail and the recipe, he didn’t know who submitted what drink.  The combined scores determined the winners.

And now without further ado:

Third Place:  Prize – Recipe and photo featured here.

The Revivalist by Gabe Szaszko
2 oz Rye
.5 oz Tarragon-Bergamot Syrup*
.5 oz Amer Picon
.25 oz lemon juice
.25 oz Maraschino liqueur

Shake all and double strain into a chilled cocktail glass.  Twist lemon peel over drink and garnish with a lemon peel

*Bring simple syrup (1:1) just to boil and remove from heat.  Add tarragon and bergamot leaves and leave to sit and cool in syrup for at least one hour.  Strain all into a sterilized container.

The Revivalist

Second Place:  Prize -  Same as third place and a 50ml bottle of “Marshall’s Mountain Moonshine Bitters.”

The Capone Sour by Jeff Fulcher
1.5 oz Rye
1 oz grapefruit juice
1 oz brown sugar syrup
1 bar spoon orgeat
1 dash Angostura bitters
2 dashes orange bitters (I used Angostura Orange)

Shake all with ice, strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

The Capone Sour

First Place:  Prize – Same as third place and a 100ml bottle of “Marshall’s Mountain Moonshine Bitters” and a bottle of Templeton Rye.

Jetpack by Craig “Dr. Bamboo” Mrusek
1 oz Rye
1 oz Zubrowka Bison Grass vodka
.5 oz Schladerer Kirschwasser (I used Clear Creek)
.5 oz simple syrup
.5 oz lime juice
1 dash Fee’s Mint Bitters

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

The Jetpack

Congratulations to Craig, Jeff, and Gabe!!!

There you have it.  Mix up one or all of these drinks and let us know what you think in the comments.

Cheers!