An online speakeasy of potent potables and other pabulam.

After several errands this morning, I came home and decided to whip up a tasty beverage.? I’m taking today off, and a great day it is!? Sunny, warm, an all around great day.

Anyway, I wanted to use my spiced lemonade as a mixer and remembered that I haven’t shared the recipe yet.

Spiced Minted Lemonade
3/4 cup demerrara sugar
2oz cane syrup
peel of one lemon
peel of one lime
2 cinnamon sticks
6 whole cloves
1/4 tsp cardamom seeds
6 sprigs of mint
1cup lemon/lime juice
6 cups water

1.? In a sauce pan, combine the sugar, syrup, lemon & lime peel, cinnamon, cloves, cardamom and 2 cups of water.
2.? Stir over medium heat and bring to a simmer.? Simmer for 10 minutes.
3.? After the simmer, strain this mixture into a bowl and discard the solids.
4.? Put the mint sprigs in the hot syrup and infuse for about 5-6 minutes.
5.? Discard the wilted mint and allow the syrup to cool to room temp.
6.? Combine the juice from the lime you peeled with fresh lemon juice until you have a cup of juice.
7.? Combine your juice, syrup and remaining four cups of water.
8.? Refrigerate and enjoy!

The lemonade isn’t a bright yellow like one would expect lemonade to be.? It’s color comes from the demerrara sugar and the trade-off for the depth of flavor the sugar adds is fantastic.

As well as straight, I’ve been enjoying in the following libation.

Mexican Sun
2oz reposado tequila
.75oz orgeat
2 dashes peach bitters
spiced minted lemonade

-Shake the tequila, orgeat and bitters with ice.? Strain into an ice filled chimney glass and top with the lemonade.

Cheers!

This will be, I warn you, perhaps a somewhat rambling post, as I take the chance to go over a few things that have been sifting through the old neurons in me brain.

One thing I always try to do – be it in the relative chaos of a TDN or just when sitting around, plotting a drink – is try my best to figure out where the initial idea for a cocktail came from, where the genesis of the taste, in my brain, was inspired.? This could be relatively simple – “Let’s sub this ingredient for this one”.? It could be a bit more cloudy, leading to me thumbing through Vintage Spirits & Forgotten Cocktails or The Joy of Mixology just to say “Ohhhhh, that’s where I’d heard of doing that before.”? More rarely, it’s something completely random, usually in an attempt to use an ingredient that I’m having issues with or because I like something that no one else does.

Both of those were shown in my last drink of TDN Chartreuse the other week when I came up with The Slimer.? Clearly, its name derives from the Ghostbusters character and I mostly only picked it out because of the color of the drink.? The idea, though, came from the desire to use two disparate ingredients, one of which was the theme of the TDN and the other an ingredient I haven’t cared for much so far but I think might have potential.

The Slimer
1.5 ounces green Chartreuse (it must be the green!)
1 ounce Zen green tea liqueur
.5 ounces orgeat
Shake and strain into a chilled glass, garnish with a flamed lime peel

Now, that was one of my weaker drinks of that night – in my not-so-humble opinion – but I didn’t think it was that bad. It is a bit sweet, and could easily be perhaps seen as one of those college bar shooter type drinks, but hey, whatever.? At the end of that TDN I enjoyed it and my tastebuds typically work pretty okay even while drinking.

My second drink of the night (and I’m not counting my mostly-joke of a drink, the Chartreuse Bomb, where I suggested dropping a shot of chartreuse into a hefeweizen) has a rather poor name, I think, mostly because – well, I can’t remember why I came up with the name for it.? However, it has a distinct evolutionary path.

The Initech Cocktail
2 ounces Dolin dry vermouth
1 ounce Anchor Junipero gin
1/2 ounce green Chartreuse
2 solid dashes Bitter Truth Orange Bitters
Stir, strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

The evolution of this drink came like this: when Dolin vermouth came back to DC just recently, a friend of mine (Jake) started drinking “reverse martinis” with it.? At some point, he told me he was basically just drinking Dolin with a float of Junipero.

Remembering that the original martini recipe included orange bitters, I first tried to recreate the float with an addition of chartreuse.? Unfortunately, I could not get the drink to float right, so I just made it a stirred, reverse martini style drink, and I thought it came out quite tasty.

Thus we have:? martini -> reverse martini -> Initech Cocktail via the ideas of multiple people.

My first drink of the night, however, is probably one of the two best received drinks I’ve ever come up with since I got into this whole cocktail thing.

The Chartreuse Blanc
1/2 ounce green Chartreuse
1 1/2 ounces Dolin blanc vermouth
2 dashes Regan’s #6 Orange Bitters
Stir and strain.

The evolution of this one, really, was based off a single ingredient tasting.? I knew that the theme of TDN was Chartreuse, obviously, and when I tasted Dolin for the very first time I was amazed at how it had some of the floral/herbal taste of Chartreuse in it.

I feel like the Dolin can eat the Chartreuse right up; I kept the proportion down to keep this as a lower proof drink (remember that Chartreuse is pretty strong!) but from what I’ve heard you can really crank it up.? I wouldn’t suggest that, though, if you’re using the Martini & Rossi bianco (which is just not as good, by any means).

But why did I get to all this?

Last night I was sitting at The Gibson, chatting with Derek and a visitor to DC named Rich at the bar.? We were talking about drinks in general, and how there are so many ingredients that you can always seem to come up with new combinations.? I mentioned how after I come up with a drink, I try to do some research to see if I can find similar ones that might’ve unwittingly inspired me, and if I know where the inspiration comes from, I do my best to credit all involved.

Our conversation drifted through a number of different topics in addition to that, including football (go Steelers!), work, travel, etc.? At one point, Derek decided to make a Manhattan variation for Rich that we tentatively called the Pittsburgh.? Simply put, it was a standard rye whiskey Manhattan with port instead of the sweet vermouth and also used a dash of whiskey barrel aged bitters from Fee’s, garnished with a cherry.

I sipped on one as well until my ride showed.? From The Gibson, my friend Mary and I headed down to the Verizon Center to visit Gina Chersevani at PS7.? I hadn’t been able to make it there since she moved from EatBar to there (having bailed last Friday to hang with my brother instead) and so we wanted some place that would be cool to check out.

First off, that is a GREAT place to do so, and the drinks that Gina is coming up with there are awesome!? There was a bit of a crowd when we got there but it emptied quickly and soon it was just a few of us – Gina and Lauren behind the bar, a few people who mostly knew each other at the bar, and chef Peter Smith coming in and out to try out things – when I mentioned to Gina about the Pittsburgh.

She took the opportunity to point out one of the drinks I’d already tried that evening: the “Across the Pond”, made with Bulleit bourbon, Six Grapes Port, and lemon.? Still, the drinks tasted nothing alike, in my recollection – and then I remembered the Sandeman’s sponsored TDN back in December.

The Portugese Manhattan
2 ounces rye or bourbon
1 ounce Sandeman’s Founder’s Reserve Port (ruby port)
2 dashes cherry or orange bitters
Stir, strain, garnish with either cherries or a twist of orange peel – or flamed orange peel, if you’re into that kind of thing.

That was at 10:52 PM EST on December 18th.? What am I, prescient?? No…it just seemed, to me, to be a fairly obvious substitution:

SeanMike -> I can’t believe we haven’t had something like the “Portugese Manhattan” – 2 ounces bourbon/rye, 1 oz Sandeman Founder’s Reserve port, 2 dashes orange or cherry bitters
rumdood -> SHUT UP SM
BonzoGal -> So logical
rumdood -> Damn you you bastard
DrinkPlanner -> no-brainer
SeanMike -> that’s why rumdood also thought of it

Now, I will admit – I wouldn’t have thought of this had it not been a Sandeman’s sponsored TDN, and probably wouldn’t have tried it if I hadn’t had an open bottle of such port.? Still, my memories of that drink are still at odds with the Pittsburgh and the Across the Pond – which also shows how three different drinks of nearly the same ingredients can be completely different due to the styles of the ingredients.

Cocktail recipes are interesting beasts.? Like in music, there are tons of combinations, but not all are harmonious.? It can be hard if not impossible to properly attribute all of the influences on any new cocktail and every trip to a good bar, every read of a new cocktail book (no matter how old), every discovery of a new ingredient and even every conversation with a fellow cocktail enthusiast can lead to new or only-thought-new cocktails.? Short of direct, clear plagiarizing – something that I, personally, haven’t seen a lot of in the community, as most cocktailians seem eager to give proper credit for recipes – inspirations are everywhere.

It can be an interesting challenge though: much like Matt Browner-Hamlin showed us in terms of the Adam Bernbach‘s “taste of a drink evolution” post, the actual inspirational heritage of a drink can be greatly illuminating.

As Sean mentioned yesterday, I have been working on my first brand new cocktail.? I wanted to create something that reminded me of one of my favorite times of the year, autumn in Virginia.? So it kind of named itself the “Virginia Autumn.”? I checked a lot of cocktail databases, blogs, food websites and the Mixosphere and didn’t find any drinks that used the ingredients I had in mind.

I wanted to base the drink on apples.? Virginia has a lot of apples and growing up, we had a small apple orchard on our property that produced great apples, so apples it is.? For the main spirit, I decided to go with Laird’s Applejack because, well, it is an apple brandy and it is a true American spirit.? Check out the link to learn more.? I also have my new bottle of St. Germain elderflower liqueur that I really wanted to incorporate.? I also wanted to add a background flavor/essence that would remind me of apple pies, fall baking/cooking and those great smells of cinnamon, nutmeg, and a warm fire.? Luckily I had some Fee Brothers Whiskey Barrel-Aged Bitters that provide the perfect oaky-cinnamon-baking spice that I was looking for.

Finally, after several trials and errors, with consultation and advice from

runoknows

and a great mixologist and good all around guy Jamie Boudreau, here is the final recipe:
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Virginia Autumn

1.5 oz Laird’s Applejack
1.0 oz? Apple Cider
0.5 oz St. Germain
3/4 tsp Rich Simple Syrup*
1 dash of Fee Brothers’ Orange Bitters
3-4 dashes of Fee Brothers’? Whiskey Barrel-Aged Bitters

Shake well with cracked ice until your hands feel like they’ve been blasted by a cold November wind and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.? Garnish with a small apple slice on the rim of the glass or a paper thin round of apple floating on top.

*To make Rich Simple Syrup, heat equal parts of water and demerara sugar until dissolved.? Remove from heat and let cool.? Add about an ounce of high proof vodka for shelf-stability, bottle and keep in fridge.
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The glass is a cocktail glass from a set my father purchased after he graduated from the University of Virginia in 1965.? The rim and seal of The University are in gold leaf.? This seemed a very fitting glass to my first foray into classic cocktails.

On another note.? I GOT SOME NEW SUPPLIES LAST NIGHT!? YEEE-HAWWWW.

I got (from left to right) some tiki and palm tree cocktail stirrers, a bottle of Fee Brothers’ Orange Flower water, a bottle of Fee Brothers Orgeat syrup, a bottle of Fee Brothers West Indian Orange Bitters, a bottle of Fee Brothers Falernum (which I have been dying to get!) and a bottle of Fee Brothers Peach Bitters.? Let the mixing begin!

Finally, because I love this picture so much, here you go:

This is my bottle of Thomas H. Handy Sazerac Rye Whiskey, a part of the 2006 Buffalo Trace Antique Selection.? It is unfiltered and bottled at barrel strength.? If you look closely, you can see the handwritten proof on the label . . . yes it does say 132.7 proof.? Yes, Homer, it makes me happy too . . .