An online speakeasy of potent potables and other pabulam.

…as made by Rachel Sergi…it is, after all, my birthday…

She names it after Dante Argento’s 1977 horror film.? Don’t ask me why.

oooOOOOOooooOOO

The Suspiria
2 ounces grain alcohol
.5 ounces Campari
.5 ounces Fernet Branca
.5 ounces Ramazzoti amaro
Shake over ice, strain into a cocktail glass with a long lemon twist

It might be scary sometimes but it drinks smart!? Yummy.

[Twenty-fifth 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.]

Molecular Mixology is about playing with the expectations of the drinker.? Much like molecular gastronomy, where diverse ingredients form what appears to be familiar forms, or molecular genetics, where the helical DNA strands mess with the scientists’ heads, molecular mixology means you never know what you’re going to get.

Much like one of the blogging masters of the trade, to truly make a cocktail for Jamie Boudreau I had to get into molecular mixology.? Let’s get to the true essence of alcohol.

190 proof of fun!

If Sprint’s picturemail worked, you’d have beautiful pictures of the finished cocktail, but let’s go over the steps.

STEP ONE:? Get a genuine replica glass circa mid-1800s.? A bit of leaded glass helps this drink.? Barring this, go to Crate & Barrel.

STEP TWO: Fill the glass with 190 proof grain alcohol.

STEP THREE: Swirl.

STEP FOUR: Remove grain alcohol.

STEP FIVE: Set on fire.? Add lemon twist on the side.

Presto!? The sheer essence of alcohol, on your palate!

The Boudreau Boudreau
2 ounces grain alcohol
1 lemon twist
1 match
Follow instructions above.? Inhale alcohol fumes.

It’s past brilliant, it’s to Brillat Savarin!

[Twenty-fourth 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.]

John

you

Bastard!

John the Bastard
3/4 ounce Fernet Branca
3/4 ounce Cynar
top with Grain alcohol
Layer the shot, if you can tell the difference between the first two.? Set on fire.? Blow out and drink.

SIP IT YOU BASTARDS!

[Twenty-second 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.]

So here we go – my first post using the new WordPress blog. If any of this gets weirdly formatted, blame WP, as I’m trying to do it in “Visual” mode and I’m not seeing a hell of a lot of difference between this mode and “Code” mode. (As an aside, I’m using Firefox 2.0.0.15, so if anyone has any advice for a WYSIWYG visual editor, it’d save me the time of remembering to HTML tag everything.)

A couple of interesting things for me this week. I went out both Monday and Tuesday nights with my old friend Roy. Monday night we went to Ireland’s Four Courts, an Irish bar in the Courthouse area of Arlington, and the bartender knew him from a while ago. We had fun and at one point she bought us each a whiskey (Jameson’s for me, Powers for him). That’s always cool.

Tuesday night we went to Velocity Five, a sports bar/restaurant near him that he’s been wanting to try. I stuck with Pilsner Urquell that night but at the end of our run there the bartender offered to buy us a shooter. We ended up with SoCo (Southern Comfort, if anyone is actually unfamiliar with it) and lime.

If you haven’t had that shooter before it’s one of those odd ones, in my opinion. It seems like (and really is) a very college drink. However, it’s surprisingly refreshing and not a drink to back down from. I’ve done shots of it in a number of different bars – all of which use Rose’s Lime, I believe, and not regular lime juice – and I’m very tempted to buy a bottle of Southern Comfort and experiment with it.

That’d be a huge step for me. My first year in college was not kind to me in regards to Southern Comfort, especially living with a first year roommate like Roy who enjoyed his Southern Comfort mixed with Diet Dr. Pepper.

Enough about SoCo. Now on to exploding bottles and this is something about which I really want the advice of those y’all in the blogging world out there. Maybe not necessarily advice but feedback…

A while ago I picked up a few extra bottles of Creole Shrubb. I gave one of them to a kickball teammate who is a huge fan of Grand Marnier. He said he would pay me back by giving me a bottle of homemade limoncello. I tried it at a Memorial Day cookout – it was very good, made with Everclear and vodka as the alcoholic ingredients and tons and tons of lemon and (I believe) sugar.

On Saturday he gave me the last bottle of limoncello from his current batch kept in a ceramic stoppered bottle from World Market. He had it on ice when he gave it to me – I put it in the cooler with the rest of the ice. After the cookout was over I put it in the freezer of my fridge at home, and after a day or so in there I moved it into smaller fridge I keep in my room for bar supplies.

Wednesday night I’m sitting in my room reading right before bed and my cats are running around. I hear what sounds like them knocking something over – but I don’t see them, and I don’t see anything fall, so I forget about it and go back to sleep.

Thursday morning I get up and go to get a Coke Zero out of the fridge. The bottle had broken in half and a large part of the fridge was covered in limoncello.

Let me tell you what, that stuff is hard to clean.

But what could’ve caused the bottle to break?

There was no impact against the fridge that I saw or noticed.

A materials science degree friend suggested thermal shock, but there are no warm spots or heat sources that I could find on that part of the fridge, nor was it in a drastically different temperature place as long as I had it. I had not opened it yet.

The only thing I can think of is that the glass simply was weak and doomed to fail. Unless the fact that it was the last of the batch, and unopened, and some secondary process amongst the booze, lemon, and sugar caused a pressure build-up…

But I don’t know.

Any ideas out there?