Ahem.

Sorry about that.? Had to get that out of the system.

This month’s Mixology Monday is hosted by Matthew Rowley over at Rowley’s Whiskey Forge.? I, unfortunately, procastinated and now have the fun of trying to squeeze mine in while wishing I was in bed after a long holiday of meetings and more work in the morning.? Ahhh, I love my job.

Which makes the theme of “hard drinks for hard times” a bit harder for me.? I’m lucky enough to have a great job with a company that I really enjoy working for, and so, I usually don’t pay close attention to how much I spend on booze (too much).? Should I do cheap wine?

Oh lad-dee-dah!? WINE?!? I’m supposed to be giving ideas of how to drink cheaply and I’m sipping on a bottle of Sangiovese I got from Wegman’s?? Oh, sure, it wasn’t THAT expensive, but for some reason I think if you’re going to drink WINE in hard times it needs to be something that barely fits the moniker of wine.? Something you’d drink in college, like Mad Dog or Boone’s Farm.

I ain’t touching those things again.? I might spend my money on stupid things (Ice Pirates on DVD?? YES PLEASE) but I like to enjoy my drinks, such as they are.

Some of you might take offense or something from that when knowing how much cheap beer I drink.? That’s more of a lifestyle choice, I’d argue; both that cheap beer, in my humble opinion, is much more palatable than a lot of cheap wines (sometimes – Two Buck Chuck or whatever it’s priced at now helps disprove that, admittedly) and and also that I’m the type of person who always needs a drink in hand, and I drink a lot of liquids.? Not just booze – sodas, milk, juice, water, I just like to have a drink at hand.? I get made fun of it.

But that really doesn’t work for MxMo. And honestly, the price of a keg is better than a lot of the prices on even cheap beers.

In the keg right now we have Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA.? It ended up being right around $150 or so for the keg.? Never minding the capital costs of a kegerator – the kegerator itself, for instance, the irregular refills of CO2, to name but a couple – the average price for a 12 ounce beer if you get the full 15.5 gallons out of it is about $.91.? They charge you about $5 or so for a pint of it at most restaurants.

Back at Christmastime my parents got me a SodaStream machine.? Now, you’re probably trying to get one ahead of me and say “Oh, HA!? You got Morgenthaler‘s tonic recipe, and ordered cheap quinine from online, and…”

No.? Shut up.? I didn’t.? I drove down to Boater’s World in Springfield and bought at $5 bottle of diet tonic syrup.

Seriously – uh – it’s not that bad.? It’s better than any other diet tonic water I’ve definitely had and I can make a bunch of liters of it for about the same price as a four pack of Fever Tree.? Just gotta carbonate that water…

I really had figured that a gin and tonic is a great “cheap” drink.? Maybe it was the night I ended up drinking 16 ounces of gin in my gin and tonics.? Maybe it’s the reputation that gin has as the beleaguered poor Englishman’s drink of choice (Jay?) (not to imply you are poor or beleaguered).? Maybe it’s…I don’t know.? But what I did know was that I needed a proper cheap gin to drink with it.

A while ago, one of our Thursday Drink Nights over at the Mixoloseum involved stuff that you’d never bought before.? I used a bottle of Beefeater gin but while I was out there I figured, you know, what the hell, and I bought a bottle of Jacquin’s Orange Flavored Gin.

The thing was, it ended up, that it really wasn’t that bad.? Oh, I know, you’re all JUDGING ME and stuff, I can tell it, because I like to drink 3-4 Miller Lites in between cocktails and I willingly listen to Katy Perry.? SCREW YOU.? It’s orange-y, it’s about 66 proof, and you know what, it was like $3 for a pint of it.

So there we go.? I ended up pouring in three ounces of the “makes a great orange collins” stuff and topped it off with diet tonic and a few ice cubes.? Keeping with the orange theme – which always rocks with my UVA glass – I used the orange drink stick.

Now, admittedly, I did drink that whole bottle of Sangiovese before even starting in on this experiment.? And the first taste was kind of rough.? But after that, as I started to drink it, I started to kind of dig it, and think, hey, maybe all it needs is a brown paper bag, and maybe all you critics of what I like to drink need to just shut the hell up, and oh, maybe there’s some kernel of truth to the whole thing about “gin makes a man mean” but you know what I’LL TAKE YOU ALL ON I WILL YOU JUST SEE!!!!

KITTEN THERAPY TIME

Okay, sorry about that.

Anyways, it’s not really a bad drink, and I guess it’s basically a gin and tonic but I’ll think of something cheap and easy to call it…

Orangin and Tonic
3 ounces Jacquin’s Orange Flavored Gin
Dash of Orange Bitters (orange angostura)
Build in a double old fashioned glass over ice.? Stir, garnish with a small piece of orange.

Is that good enough for you buggers?? HUH?? I didn’t need to drink one so FANCY SCHMANCY so you bloody fools can…

DOGGY THERAPY TIME

Okay, okay, I’m all right now.? I gotta get to sleep anyways.

Big thanks as always to Paul for setting up MxMo and to Matt Rowley for hosting this month.? Also props to The RZA and Master Shake, our two cats in the first picture, and Cosmo, my parents’ dog in the latter, for helping me resist the urges of demon gin.

Maybe just one more drink…

Damn.

Marshall had, in fact, given me a bottle of spiced pumpkin liqueur.? For some reason that got me feverishly thinking and I announced to my roommates “I’m going to make Marshall gin for Christmas!”

My brother – the criminal defense attorney – was not amused at that statement until I pointed out that it would be an infused gin, not a distilled one.

You see, someone had shown me a recipe in Gourmet for “kitchen gin” and I’d decided to make that.? I wandered over to Penzey’s, bought some spices and herbs and what-have-you, then hit the ABC store over near West Falls Church and got a bought of vodka that I bought as much for the bottle itself as anything else.

Then something hit me (ow!).? Did I have to use vodka?? What if I used a different base…like unaged corn whiskey?

Giggling, I set about getting everything together.

Once that was done, I wrote down the recipe.? Okay, we’re starting off with just the juniper berries over night, aren’t we?? That’s fine.

Two tablespoons of juniper berries went into each bottle.? Well, they went into the Georgia Moon bottle – that was an easy bottle to use for your infusing needs!

The 360 vodka bottle, on the other hand, was a little more annoying, so I ended up having to use a different container for infusing.? Not a huge deal.

That infused over night.? The next morning I got up and went to add the rest of the botanicals, etc., to infuse while I was at work.? Of course I was running late for work, and thus forgot to take pictures, and I made a huge mess through my kitchen because I hadn’t had any caffeine yet.

But, none the less, I got it done.

When I got back I had that kind of wondering feeling – I’d used ground allspice, since that’s all I’d found, and should I have used whole allspice berries?? Unfortunately, it was too late to go back, and after filtering it – and being out of cheesecloth and coffee filters dammit – there was still some allspice in the bottom of the bottles.? I hoped it wouldn’t hurt it too much and packaged it up.

It’s definitely cloudy but I was warned that it would be that way.? I smelled it and, well, it smelled like gin.? As I had kind of hoped, the whiskey one smelled a bit like genever gin, so I was eager to see how that turned out.

How did it taste?

Well, I can’t rightly tell ya.? We were going to taste it New Year’s Eve but didn’t get around to it.? So maybe Marshall will follow up and say if he has tasted it yet.

If it sucks – hey, whatever.? Could’ve been worse.

My parents gave me my presents this year a bit later.? I’d asked for an iSi soda siphon and instead they gave me a SodaStream after doing some research online.

The SodaStream works by carbonating clean, cold water – and that’s it.? You can pick how carbonated it is by pushing a button on top.? After it’s carbonated (in the provided 1 liter bottles) you add concentrate to make it flavored.? Included was a sample pack of flavors – I found most of them pretty darn close, and pretty tasty, to their equivalents.? I will probably buy more of their diet cola and energy drink versions.

They make a tonic water but it didn’t come with that, so my big complaint is this: to buy it in a store, I have to go to freaking SPRINGFIELD to some store I’d never heard of before (Boater’s World?!) to buy it!? Even though Williams Sonoma (of which there are a GAZILLION near me in places I’d rather go than SPRINGFIELD) carries the CO2 tanks, they don’t carry the mix!

STU-PID.

I’ll probably just end up ordering some cichona bark online and making my own tonic syrup starting with Jeffrey Morgenthaler‘s recipe.? I’m going to end up a member of the Cult of Morgenthaler or something.

Of course, researching that today got me looking into making some of Jamie Boudreau‘s amer picon recipe, too…

I bought a bottle of Tanqueray 10 just to get ready for it!

First, the tonics by themselves.  I was going to add Schweppe’s in here but, man, did the diet kind suck!

In the pour, the Q was much more carbonated.

By itself, the Q was very subtle and nice in taste.  I also like the fact that it’s relatively low in calories.

The Stirrings had a much more pronounced taste to it, I believe of the quinine.

I then made two gin and tonics, SeanMike-style.  That’s adding in 2 ounces of Tanqueray 10 to each and an eighth of a lime.  (Actually, normally I’d use two ounces of Rangpur and a quarter lime, but that’s when the tonic water was bad…)

Again, the word for the Q was subtle.  It might’ve could’ve used a touch more lime, but that would probably run rough shod over the tonic.  I had chilled the tonic water instead of using ice, but I can’t help but think of the perfectly square tonic water ice cubes at PX…

There was a nice pop to the Stirrings and gin.  Again, that quinine taste stood out.

Both are very good in their own way.  For a day to day tonic, I think my preference would be for the Stirrings, as it’s bold enough that it would stand up to the abuse that I do to gin and tonics in the summer (for they really are summertime drinks for me).  However, if I wanted to show off some cocktails, I’d probably go for the Q.

The fact that I can only get the Q mail order in the DC area, and the Stirrings has disappeared from World Market, may make both of those moot…