An online speakeasy of potent potables and other pabulam.

This month Mixology Monday is being hosted by Vidiot over at Cocktailians and the chosen theme is vermouth.   Our instructions,

So: your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to present a delectable vermouth cocktail for us all to drool over. Sweet/Italian or dry/French vermouth are fair game of course, as are quinquina, aperitif wines like Pineau des Charentes, or for that matter any fortified, aromatized wine such as Lillet (red or white), or Dubonnet (ditto.)

I can’t necessarily promise a delectable cocktail, but I thought this would be a great opportunity to try something new.  Vermouth, as most folks will tell (and as I’m sure you’ll read in other MxMo posts) is an incredibly versatile ingredient.  Without getting into the nitty-gritty on the correct storage methods, the various types, or the various herbs and flavorings that go into vermouth, the most important thing to know that vermouth brings a lot of complementary flavors to a cocktail.

When I first started getting indoctrinated into the world of classic cocktails, I wasn’t a big fan of vermouth.  Maybe I had some not-so-fresh vermouth.  Maybe my palate wasn’t as refined as it is now.  Regardless, I’m now a vermouth convert.

In wanting to try new a new cocktail, I turned to our old friend the Savoy Cocktail Book.  This is a cocktail I’ve wanted to try for a while but for some reason never got around to it.

ATTY Cocktail (p. 25)
1/4 dry vermouth  (.50 oz dry vermouth)
1 bar spoon absinthe
3/4 London Dry Gin (1.50 oz London Dry Gin)
1 bar spoon creme de violette

Shake (really? please stir this drink!) with ice, strain into a cocktail glass.

Basically, the ATTY is a 3 to 1 dry martini with a little absinthe and a little creme de violette added to the mix.  It isn’t a bad cocktail, the aromatics and herbs of the dry vermouth really shine through.  The absinthe gives a slight anise note and the violette adds color.   You can see from the photo the light purple hue to the drink.  To be honest, the flavor of the violette melds into the herbs of the dry vermouth and gets sort of lost.  Definitely stir this drink really well to get it as cold as you can.

And, in Scofflaw’s Den tradition, I can’t just leave you with one drink for MxMo!  I decided to try another new cocktail and with Halloween around the corner the following number from Gary Regan’s The Joy of Mixology seemed quite appropriate.

Deadly Sin (p. 245)
2oz Bourbon
1/3oz sweet vermouth
1/4oz maraschino liqueur
1 dash orange bitters
orange twist for garnish

Stir with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

The Deadly Sin is definitely a bourbon lovers cocktail.  Unfortunately, I didn’t have any oranges in the house so I couldn’t use the peel for a garnish and I think that would really make the drink better.  As it was made you get a slight cherry note from the maraschino and the vermouth underscores the inherent sweetness of the bourbon.

And this brings another Mixology Monday to a close.  Thanks again to Vidiot for hosting this month!

Cheers!

Ahhh, Mixology Monday – how I’ve missed you!

I was unable to do August’s MxMo, thanks to my trip to South Korea.  Thanks to Tales, we didn’t have one in July.  So the theme for this week, thanks to our hosts at eGullet, is “Dizzy Dairy”.  This means anything dairy, or it seems, egg whites.

I’ve had a lot of debates over what to make for this one.  I also did a lot of searching for heavy cream in case I wanted to do that.  I had bad luck in that regard – I first went to Harris Teeter near me and they were out.  So I got home from work and went to the mini-mart in my building, but they did have Guinness (which I may be using).  Nothing.  Walked up to Courthouse Plaza and tried the convenience store there – didn’t see any, but they had that Bud Light Golden Wheat which I had wanted to try.  From there I went to CVS, but they had none of those things, so I went back to the convenience store, actually found a carton of cream I’d missed (whew!), bought the Bud Light, then went back to my mini-mart for a four pack of Guinness pub cans.

Now let’s see if I use ‘em – because as of the time I’m writing this, I still haven’t made a drink!

Let’s look at some ingredients first.

My first instinct had been to use Castries, a rum-based peanut cream liqueur.  I love this stuff.  LOVE IT IN THE FACE.  It is delicious.  Actually, I typically drink it straight.  Hmmmm.

Then it occurred to me (thanks to a fortuitously timed e-mail) that I also had a bottle of the limited edition Kahlua coffee cream liqueur in my fridge.  As you know, a White Russian is equal parts Kahlua, vodka, and cream, so the easy (and perhaps lazy) thing to do would be a version of that – say, adding vanilla vodka to a measure of Kahlua coffee cream liqueur – but I wanted to do something different.

Thus the Guinness.

Depending on who I end up going out drinking with there’s a good chance I end up with a car bomb at some point – usually made where we go with Bailey’s and Irish whiskey.  That gave me an idea, though using the Kahlua coffee cream meant I should use something like a Spanish brandy, I thought.  Alas, I didn’t have any, so I went with some Armagnac XO.

I'm glad someone reminded me that I had this!

I fiddled around a bit and came up with a drink that’s delicious whether or not you use the beer.  I thought about naming it something related to the car bomb but thought some people might not appreciate it so much – whatever, I know, but hey, let’s think up a different name.

Uhhhh…I hate thinking up drink names!

Anyways, here it is:

The Cross Hemispheres
1 1/2 ounces armagnac (XO if you have it – I used Castarede)
1 ounce Kahlua coffee cream
1-2 dashes Fee’s Aztec chocolate bitters
Add ingredients to a mixing tin with ice and shake.  Strain into a chilled cocktail glass.  Alternatively, strain into a chilled pint glass and top with Guinness.  Let the Guinness settle, give a light stir, and drink.  If you add the beer, call it a Cross Hemisphere Fizz.

nom nom nom

But you know what the problem is – here at the Den, we like to give you two drinks for your Mixology Monday fun!  I’ve come up with a brand new drink (I think) so this time I thought I’d take a look through my copy of The Joy of Mixology (as much because it happens to be sitting right next to me) to see if there’s a drink I’d like to make in there involving dairy.

Unfortunately, I failed to be inspired.

Then I remembered that I’d come up with some drinks for the Thursday Drink Night we did with Kahlua coffee cream.  It was during the Steelers-Titans football game and, unfortunately, the last game that the Steelers won, so my two drinks named after various Steelers players I decided to skip – especially as my last drink is a bit fuzzy in my memory.

But the first one had some potential, so it was time to tweak, rename, and try it again.  Originally it actually used two cream liqueurs – Castries and Kahlua.  I kept that, but tweaked the proportions on those and the bourbon, added a garnish, and renamed it.

Tastes great and wakes you up! Oops…

That TDN was really the first one I’d done since – well, longer than I could remember, thanks to Tales and Korea.  My first drink, therefore, was called “I’M BACK” and, well, I don’t think that is such a great name.  Therefore we have a new name for it along with the before-mentioned tweaks.

The Bloodhound
1 1/2 ounces bourbon (Willett Pot Still)
1 1/2 ounce Kahlua coffee cream liqueur
1/2 ounce Castries
2 dashes Fee’s Aztec chocolate bitters
Shake with ice, double strain into a chilled cocktail glass half-rimmed with ground espresso.  If desired, sprinkle some additional ground espresso on top.

Man, this drink came out good!  It’s waking me up a bit, not necessarily a good thing right now, but it’s darn delicious.

If you notice, I had the same bitters in both.  There’s two reasons for that.  One, I haven’t got the Bittermens mole bitters yet, so I can’t compare and contrast.  More importantly, however, is that the combination of flavors I feel like works really well with the Kahlua coffee cream liqueur.

I think that’s about all for tonight.  I want to thank the eGullet folks for hosting, and I should also thank Kahlua for providing me with the sample bottle of Kahlua cream liqueur.  (I should note, too, that this bottle of Castries was also a sample, but lord knows I’ve bought enough bottles of it already…)

_This month’s Mixology Monday is hosted by Rumdood and the theme is “Ginger”.  Immediately I thought of Domaine de Canton, though like Marshall I have some G.E. Massenez creme de gingembre, and to be honest, it should include things like ginger beer, muddled ginger, and anything else with ginger in it.  WELL LA DEE DA!

I have all that stuff but good day in the morning, am I lazy.

You might be surprised to hear that because if you’ve been reading the Den in the past week or so I’ve been coming up with a new drink every night to name after people going to Tales even including one that already had ginger liqueur in it.  I had already figured on combining Mixology Monday with my perhaps Quixotic quest but when Marshall pointed out how much he liked ginger I thought, hey, I should name one after him.

I wasn’t happy with how it came out.

That’s not entirely true; it wasn’t bad, it just didn’t seem the right drink for my cohort in crime drinking cocktails so I debated what to do next.  As I gathered up the fixin’s for a cigar a name popped into my head.  Sure, it’s not perhaps as custom as some of the drinks I’ve made, but when I got it right it felt like you could drink a lot of these, and that’d get you pretty sloshed.

Stop making fun of my pictures or I'll take pictures of you and make fun of them.

The SLOSHED
2 ounces rye (Rittenhouse 100)
1/2 ounce lemon juice
1/2 ounce Dr. McGillicuddy’s Vanilla Liqueur
1/2 ounce Domaine de Canton
1-2 dashes Dr. Schwartz’s Cherry Vanilla bitters
Combine all ingredients in a shaker with ice.  Shake, then strain into a chilled cocktail glass.  Garnish with a whiskey soaked cherry.

It’s not a bad drink at all.  I ended up using vanilla liqueur for two reasons: 1, I didn’t want to use vanilla vodka, and 2, I didn’t have any vanilla simple syrup.  Had I had the latter, I would’ve considered also cutting up some fresh ginger and muddling it in the vanilla simple syrup.  I also did completely ruin one cocktail by forgetting the bitters, generously given to me by sylvan, didn’t have a “dasher” thingamabob in the top of it.  OOPS.

If you try it with the G.E. Massenez, I think it’s also good, and this drink could definitely use some tweaking.  I’d love to hear if you tried it, and if so, if you tweaked it at all!

[Eighth 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.]

This month Mixology Monday is hosted by Matt over at Rumdood and his chosen theme is ginger.  Big thanks for Matt for hosting this month!

Ginger is one of my favorite spices.  For me, ginger is one of those flavors that is just as tasty in the summer as it is in the dead of winter.  During the cooler part of the year, ginger provides a bright, warming flavor to your cocktails.  During the warmer months, ginger tends to cool you down and provides a certain zing that is down right refreshing.

There are multiple ways you can incorporate ginger into your cocktails.  For the freshest flavor and more of that ginger bite, you can muddle several pieces before shaking or stirring up your libation.  You could also make a ginger syrup.  This route will provide a lot of sweetness along with that fresh ginger flavor.

Additionally, you could go the liqueur route.  Currently, one of the hottest new liqueurs on the market is Domaine de Canton.  Domaine de Canton is a mix of baby ginger and French cognac into a wonderful liqueur.  It is fairly sweet and has a nice fresh ginger bite.  Canton is a high quality product and quite delicious.

One of the most surprising drinks I’ve ever had contained Domaine de Canton.  At PS7 in DC, Gina Chersevani has a drink on the menu titled “The Cure.”  Actually, the full name is the “Recession Blues Cure.”  Priced at $5, it is certainly a cheap drink.  So what’s in it?  Miller Lite and Domaine de Canton.  That’s it.  Sounds horrible doesn’t it?  Well, it is fantastic!

The Cure
2 oz Domaine de Canton
4-5 oz Miller Lite
-Build over ice in a chimney glass.  Garnish with julienned ginger.

Now this may not be the same proportions at PS7, but for me, it is the perfect mix.  The sweetness and bite of the Domaine de Canton really highlight what little flavor is in Miller Lite.  A surprising drink indeed!

Once summer starts hitting full force, my drinking habits turn to long drinks, drinks with plenty of ice, tiki and the like.  There is nothing more satisfying on a hot muggy DC summer day than a tall glass of deliciousness with plenty of ice.

Which brings me to my second drink for MxMo.  I wanted to come up with a tall drink that was refreshing, gingery and easily quaffable.  I started thinking of what flavors went with ginger and I remembered this compote I made last summer.  It was a fantastic rhubarb and ginger compote.  Alright, ginger and rhubarb.  Luckily, I have some freshly made rhubarb syrup!  Thinking about the flavors of ginger and rhubarb my mind immediately went to tequila.  The sweet vegetal flavors of the tequila married with the bite of ginger and the tart/sweet rhubarb had my mouth watering.  Now I just needed something to tie it all together into a tall tasty beverage.  Ting!

(In full disclosure, this was the first time I’ve mixed with Ting and I’m very happy with the results.)

Ginger-Rhubarb Fizz
1.5 oz blanco tequila (I used Inocente)
.75 oz Massenez Creme de Gingembre*
.50 oz Rhubarb syrup**
1 bottle Pink Ting
-Build over ice in a tall chimney glass.  Give a quick stir to combine.  Drink and enjoy!

*A note on the ginger liqueur:  For this drink, I used the Massenez Creme de Gingembre.  I’ve had the bottle for a while and think it is a good product.  It isn’t nearly as sweet as the Domaine de Canton which makes it good to use when you want to watch the sweetness of the drink.  However, the ginger “bite” is a little less pronounced as compared to the Canton.  I think the Canton would be just as delicious in this drink, but with the rhubarb syrup, the sweetness will be proportionally greater.

**For the rhubarb syrup, I combined one large rhubarb stalk, cut into one-inch pieces, with one cup sugar and 3/4 cup water.  Bring to a simmer and cook for 20-30 minutes.  Strain through a fine mesh sieve, pressing on the solids to get all of the liquid out.

Thanks again for Rumdood for hosting this month’s MxMo.

Cheers!