Second off – Phil Greene alerted us to this post covering the cocktails from the DC bracket of the Domaine de Canton competition.  I know I’ve tried a couple of those – the Domainatrix by Rachel Sergi, now over at Againn, and the Thai’s the Limit by Gina Chersevani of PS7 (which also features your Scofflaws in the Washington Post video about it).  I want to say I’ve tried the Owen Thomson (of Bourbon) Jack O’ Ginger but I might just be confusing it with another drink.

So – now to drinking and reading.

When I moved into my current apartment my parents commented on how it seemed like all the boxes I brought in had one of two things in them – either books or liquor.  Well, duh, I thought – what are my hobbies?  Cocktails and reading!

Them's a lot of words!

As I settled down recently to reread a ten part alternative history by Harry Turtledove (the Timeline-191 series, if you must know, where the South won the War Between the States thanks to not losing Lee’s Special Order 191 to McClellan), I did it my usual way – most of the time outside, on my balcony, drinking a beer and smoking a cigar.

mmmm, beer and a cigar

As I read through the first book How Few Remain that was mostly fine, but then I got into the Great War series with American Front.  That series introduces what has to be my favorite character in the entire series, Quebecois farmer Lucien Galtier.  Unlike most of the characters in the book (slight spoilers here, I’m afraid) his life doesn’t entirely suck.  In fact, his often humorous sections really help out through the grimmer parts of the series.

It was also his sections quite a while ago that got me introduced to Calvados.  Calvados is an apple brandy produced in France, and while the character drank basically a moonshine variation of it – after all, he’s a farmer in Quebec, not in the Calvados region of France, and it’s so often wartime with occupation forces etc yadda yadda yadda – that I had finally managed to get a bottle a few years ago.

I still remember the first time I actually tried Calvados.  It was on a date at a place called Sonoma here in DC and I was so excited to see it on the menu that I spilled red wine on my shirt.  (Hey, that was like over 2 years ago!  I had no idea what I was getting myself into.)  I didn’t care for it much straight, and the bottle I had tended to only be used in cocktails for a number of years (that number being two).

As I started rereading the series, I thought, hey, I should drink appropriately for the books.  Cigars are fine, a lot of the characters smoke them though the US characters will remind you repeatedly that their cigars are bad compared to Confederate ones (the Confederacy, in these books, own Cuba as well as the prime tobacco growing parts of North America).

At first this started with sipping on Calvados while reading them, which helped with the Galtier parts to feel more “into it”.  Depending on night of the week and compunction, I started adding in other things.  Whiskey, for instance, is an easy choice for a lot of the characters, as well as beer – which I had before, naturally – and occasionally for the characters from Sonora and Chihuahua some mezcal, specifically, Del Maguey crema de mezcal.

Of course, you can’t keep up with the characters in the book, but on the other hand, keeping it close to what you’re reading helps a lot.  I feel an urge to read The Great Gatsby again, since I think it’d fun to drink appropriate cocktails to that – though it is kind of funny to try to figure out what to drink while reading my Warhammer 40K novels.

Right now?  Well, I’m reading The Space Wolves Omnibus and therefore drinking ale.  In fact, I started tonight with a Sam Smith Yorkshire Stingo.  Sure, I probably should drink something more viking, but they drink ale in the books, and I don’t have any Skullsplitter.  A lot of the characters drink amasec in 40K, and the description of that seems to be “brandy” as it’s distilled wine.  Hey, I’ve got plenty of brandy in my house…

What do you drink while reading?

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…)

Cognac, I feel, is often a misunderstood liquor.  People have an impression of it that it’s only for the rich, while that’s not true; on the other hand, when introducing people to the subtypes of brandy that are available, or even for other drinks, cognac is often easily used as an example because people are familiar with it.  All cognacs are brandy; not all brandies are cognac, it depends on where they come from.  (There are other requirements, too, but that’s the big one, at least, in my humble opinion.)

And where cognacs come from is the French area known as, well – Cognac.

I won’t get into Wikipedia-esque detail on VS versus VSOP versus XO, or the other different types.  The important thing to remember when using cognac in drinks, in my opinion, is to remember that while cognacs vary, you can use a cognac to replace a brandy but not vice versa.  Cognacs, in my experience, tend to be richer, and often sweeter – in my opinion – than other brandies from similar areas.  Armagnacs might be able to replace a cognac, but really, if a drink is so specific to request a cognac you should use it.

Not that many do.  You might see a “special” version of a drink using cognac that has it instead of brandy, but only a rare few use cognac as an ingredient, and there’s one in particular that I know catches more than a few eyes.

I know this because on the last, admittedly hazily remembered, night at Hummingbird to Mars I was offered one – and the bartender (I want to say it was Owen) I seem to remember was surprised that I knew what it was (and drank it anyways).   If you’ve got the Regan’s The Joy of Mixology you might already know where I’m going…

Tremblement De Terre (Earthquake)
2 1/2 ounces cognac
1/4 ounce absinthe
1 lemon twist, garnish
Stir and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.  Add the garnish.

Now, I’ve had that drink, and it’s a killer.  Not bad whatsoever, in my opinion, but oof!

My favorite cognac right now is Chalfonte VSOP.  I just got word that it’s back at my favorite liquor store, Ace in DC, and that makes me very happy.  It’s not expensive but it’s quote luscious in its taste.  My goal is to make sure I have a bottle of two to enjoy in the snow, around a big bonfire, with family and friends next winter.  It was that goal last winter but never happened.

Still, I need a drink for a blogger or mixologist for tonight, and I thought of that drink and Stevi’s blog name.  Hmmm.  It seems to insinuate that you can only have two of her drinks in a night, and what’s a good drink to base that off of, in addition to her love of Peruvian horses, I thought – oh.  I know.

Two At The Most
1 1/2 ounces cognac (Chalfonte VSOP)
1 ounce pisco brandy (Macchu Pisco)
1/4 ounce + 1 dash absinthe (Kubler)
1/4 ounce simple syrup
1-2 dashes Peruvian bitters
Stir and strain into a cocktail glass.  Garnish with a brandy soaked cherry, which sinks to the bottom, and a lemon twist.

Yummy!  But that’s quite a bit of booze there, so be warned – you won’t want to have more than two at the most!

[Third 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.]

I could write about brands of spirits and liqueurs which offer the best quality and variety of purpose for your dollar.  Or, I could write about what I drink when the financial belt tightens.  Or I could just make something up as I go along.  Yeah, I’m pretty much doing that last one if you haven’t guessed.

Now don’t get me wrong.  Articles about the best bang for your buck on the spirit shelf are great and generally contain lots of useful information.  I just feel I’ve read this same story a hundred times since the word “recession” became ensconced in everyday vernacular.  With that said, I can certainly see me writing the same kind of story for Scofflaw’s Den because I feel like it.  Oh well . . .   As far as what I drink when the financial belt tightens, well that’s easy.  I drink the same things I do when I’m not concerned so much about my finances.  Rather, I cut back on purchasing booze and limit my trips to bars/cocktail joints.  I love buying random ingredients and spending an hour or two bellied up at one of my favorite bars having great conversations with the bartenders and friends, new and old alike.  But both of these activities tends to eat into my bank account and by curtailing both, I feel much on much more stable financial footing.

So for this Mixology Monday, I decided to page through some cocktail books and give you two drinks on different ends of the “hard times” continum.  First, we have a cocktail that would perfect for those times when you’re very concerned about your next paycheck.  When your job may fall victim to a lay-off or go to the ATM to check your accounts and the machine laughs at you, I give you;

Gloom Chaser Cocktail
1/4 lemon Juice (.5 oz)
1/4 grenadine (.5 oz homemade grenadine)
1/4 Grand Marnier (.5 oz homemade tangerine ratafia)
1/4 Curacao (.5 oz Cointreau)

-Shake everything until well chilled and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.
(The Savoy Cocktail Book, p. 76)

The Gloom Chaser is one sweet cocktail.  Literally.  I was a little surprised at how sweet this came out considering it only has half an ounce of grenadine.  The Cointreau also adds some sweetness but I’ve never considered Cointreau to be a “sweet” liqueur.  The homemade tangerine ratafia is brandy based, like the called for Grand Marnier.  I’ve found the ratafia works admirably well as a replacement liqueur.   Regardless, the drink isn’t bad, just a little sweet.  Then again, I think that is precisely the point for a cocktail called the Gloom Chaser.  The orange reminds you of brighter sunnier days and the sweetness is like a reminder of childhood sweets.  Certainly a drink that would provide an uplifting step during a hard time.

Of course, the old saying goes “it’s always darkest before the dawn.”  Or “every dark cloud has a silver lining.”  The point is even though many of us are weathering this troubling financial storm, eventually things will look up.  When they do, our worry and dread will seem like a distant memory.  Who knows, maybe it will lead you to greener pastures and brighter skies.  Maybe, you’ll even find yourself as . . .

The CEO Cocktail
2oz Brandy
.5oz Chambord or creme de cassis (.5oz Massenez Creme de Cassis)
1oz Lillet Blanc
2 dashes orange bitters (Angostura Orange)
a lemon twist for garnish

-Shake (stir please) with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass
The Joy of Mixology, p. 237

A nice brandy cocktail that isn’t too sweet.  The cassis adds just a touch of sweetness and really mellows out the brandy.  I was afraid the brandy and cassis would fight in the glass but the Lillet plays mediator really brings the two together.  I wonder how Chambord would change the outcome of the drink.  Seeing as I don’t have chambord, nor am I inclined to go buy a bottle, I’ll just have to wait until these economic waters even out a bit.

Thanks again for Matthew Rowley for hosting MxMo this month.

Cheers!

Every Thursday night (officially) beginning at 7pm EST, cocktail enthusiasts, bloggers, writers, bartenders and other sundry forms of riff-raff gather at the online Mixoloseum Bar.  We usually have a particular theme and everyone throws out recipes utilizing that particular themed ingredient.  Some drinks work, others get tossed down the sink never to be thought of again.  The fun is trying new things and occasionally hitting upon an undiscovered gem.

I’ve been lucky to co-create two drinks that have turned out to be favorites.  The first was way back in December when Rick of Kaiser Penguin and I collaborated and came up with the . . .

Cilician Voyage
1oz Citadelle Reserve Gin
1oz Strega
1oz Lime Juice
.50oz Grapefruit Juice
.50oz Cinnamon Syrup
1 dash Fee’s Whiskey Barrel-Aged Bitters
1 dash Fee’s Grapefruit Bitters
Ginger Beer to top

Build everything except ginger beer in a rocks glass filled with crushed ice.  Give it a good stir and top with ginger beer.  Garnish with a cinnamon stick and a lime twist.  Rick likes to throw a few strands of saffron on the top to gild the lilly.

Thanks to Rick contacting the good folks at Citadelle Gin, they tried it and loved it.  In fact, they liked it enough to send Rick and I a bottle of Citadelle Reserve for our efforts.  Keep your eye on the Den for a write-up on Citadelle Reserve.  It is a fantastic gin!

This past Thursday, TDN was sponsored by Mata Hari Absinthe and we were lucky enough to have a live outpost at the Tabard Inn here in DC.  Gathered at the Tabard’s bar were Sean and I, Rick of Kaiser Penguin, Nathan, a cocktail enthusiast from Pittsburgh, PA, Sam of Brand Action Team and Owen our videographer for the evening.  You can find Sam’s post on TDN here.  Chantal Tseng, head bartender at Tabard Inn was graciously making our drinks as we wrote down the recipes that came across the computer screen.

For my drink, I gave Chantal a list of five specific ingredients and asked her to find a good ratio.  The ingredient list consisted of brandy, amaro nonino, Mata Hari Absinthe, sherry and bitters.  The drink that was invented was . . .

The Bitter Industry
1.5oz Brandy
.50oz Amaro Nonino
.50oz Amontillado Sherry
1 dash Mata Hari Absinthe
2 dashes orange bitters

Stir in a quadrangular motion with cracked ice and strain with the flick of the wrist into a chilled cocktail glass.

And what do you know, The Bitter Industry won for best cocktail of the night!  A platitude I am more than honored to share with Chantal.  If you are interested in reading the full write up of this past TDN, you can find it here on the Mixoloseum blog.  For the brave of heart, there is also a link to the full transcript of the nights festivities at the end of the write up.

Give both of these drinks a try and let me know what you think!  While you’re at it, stop by the Mixoloseum Bar and chat for a while.  And please join us Thursday nights for a great night of recipe collaboration.

Cheers!