An online speakeasy of potent potables and other pabulam.

Ahhhhh . . . There’s a nip in the air and the leaves are starting to change color and drop to the ground. The night descends earlier (or is it faster) and the grip of winter is just around the corner.

It isn’t a secret that autumn is my favorite season. I love the cold air and early evenings. There is nothing better than curling up on the couch under a warm blanket on a cold day watching hockey, football, or hell, even reading a cocktail tome.

But another reason I love the fall is that it is my favorite cocktail season. Tiki drinks and refreshing gin cocktails are replaced with whisk(e)ies and bitter amaros. Pineapple and coconut are replaced with apple and cherry. Limes are supplanted by lemons as the citrus of majority in my fridge.

I mention apples and cherries in particular because I love playing with those flavors this time of year. I love mixing with calvados, Applejack, or maybe some Leopold Brothers apple whiskey or apple liqueur. Bringing some cherry to the party may come from Cherry Herring, maraschino, kirschwasser, or my latest toy, Maurin Quina.

Another thing I love to mix with is apple cider. We had an apple press growing up and every fall made our own fresh-pressed apple cider. It was fantastic! Unfortunately you can only find pasteurized cider for sale nowadays. But if you own a juicer, you can make your own! Lately I’ve been boiling apple cider down into a thick concentrated syrup. Amazingly, along with the concentrated appleness, it develops an amazing tartness. This really comes in handy it you don’t want to add lemon, but need that acidity to balance out your cocktail. To make it, simply boil down apple cider until it has reduced by 75%.

I decided I wanted to play with the cider syrup and thought it would play very nicely with scotch. So I pulled out my new bottle of Great King Street blended scotch from Compass Box and set to work. This is what I came up with:

Orchard Bonfire
1.5 oz blended Scotch
.5 oz cider syrup
.25 oz honey syrup (2 parts honey & 1 part water)
1 barspoon pimento dram
1 dash Whiskey Barrel Bitters

Shake & double strain into a cocktail glass rinsed with a smokey scotch. (I used Peat Monster.) Garnish with a maraschino cherry.

What do you like to drink when fall arrives? Leave a comment and let us know!

Cheers!

PS. Scofflaw’s Den celebrated it’s fourth birthday earlier this month. We thank all of our readers for sticking with us and we plan on providing a lot more content and recipes for you to enjoy for at least another four years. -Marshall

So, it’s rare that I get a liquor package and immediately review it, but hey, that’s how it worked out tonight.

Johnny Walker was hinting that they had something new and asked for my address. I supplied it, and last night got a notification of a new package. Woohoo! I picked it up after work today (since last night I was in bed when I got the message).

That box is 2.5 Mutineers in size!

Well, I was surprised how big the box was! Clearly I wasn’t just getting a bottle of Double Black and being told “have at it, son.” No, there was something going on here.

And oh look! A letter addressed to me!

That was a lot of bubblewrap.

I fought my way through the bubblewrap. It was a noble effort, as there was a lot of it, and tape too!

People don’t understand how much WORK and EFFORT and BLOOD and TEARS go into opening these boxes. I ALMOST WORKED AND PUT OUT EFFORT. Tape made me ALMOST CRY. I had BLOOD almost spill from stabbing myself with a knife.

I’m just kidding, of course. I’m not allowed to use knives. I used a ballpoint pen, because I was too lazy to find my keys.

But man that’s a shiny case! Let’s open it!

Hey look, a fifth of Johnny Black!

Ooooo, a bottle of Johnny Black!

But that’s odd, because they’re advertising something new. I wonder, just wonder, what might be on the other side of that box. DARE I LIFT THE CARDBOARD AND CHECK?

I dare!

Another fifth! And coasters and a USB key and glasses!

There’s a fifth of the Double Black, and it’s in a dark tinted bottle. There’s also two highball glasses, because lord knows I need more of those, coasters because I care about my table (note: I do not), and a USB key I will probably insert into something that’s not a computer while drunk.

BUT SEANMIKE! WHAT…OF THE WHISKEY?!

Oh yeah that, heh heh.

Well, I can’t taste inside, I need a beer, and I need a cigar, and I need to chat with folks. So I carried everything outside, poured a finger or so of each into a glass – the Black into my UVA glass (on the left) and the Double Black in a work glass (on the right). I sniffed each. The Double Black has a more distinct aroma, but for some reason it smells like someone is dumping out their perfume into the night, so it’s hard to tell.

TASTING AND JUDGMENT

Scotch Scotch Scotch, yum yum yum

I don’t feel like I need to talk too much about the taste of Johnny Walker Black. If you haven’t tried it – well, why not? It’s practically ubiquitous and not that expensive. Seriously. Do I need to hold your hand? Do you need mommy to tell you it’ll be okay? Just give it a shot next time you’re at a bar. Or buy a mini of it. It’s practically un-American if you haven’t had it.

But I sipped it anyways, warm and neat, and enjoyed the kind of spicy honey taste that turned hot right at the end. Yummy. Needs an ice cube.

Now, the Double Black. First taste I slip and gulp – just a wave of peaty and smokey, not bad though. Let’s try again.

There, I get a bit more of the honey taste I pick up from Black, but with more spice and smoke and a hint of peat – mostly getting overwhelmed by the stench of perfume OR WHATEVER THE HECK IT IS (seriously yo this is really making me mad). Therefore, we shall do our next tastings – UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF CIGAR! A La Gloria Cubana Serie R #5, to be precise.

(I’m kind of wondering if the smell is my unlit Citronella candle, but man, it ain’t that strong smelling when it IS lit!)

A drink of water later, sipped the Black, and oh yeah – there’s that smoothness. Really, it’s not a bad whiskey! It’s not the most immediately recognizable in flavor, perhaps, but I’m cool with it.

The Double Black is a much more aggressive whiskey in that same taste (though they are both the same proof – 80). To me, it honestly tastes more like what a lot of people would think of single malts.

So – if you had your choice, which should you try?

Honestly, if you’re just getting into scotch, I’d say the Black – but then after trying it, give the Double Black a shot. You might be surprised at what you like!

Once again, it’s Mixology Monday, and for the first time in a while, I’m actually participating.  AREN’T YOU SO EXCITED?!  I KNOW I AM.

Sorry.  Got a little excited with the caps lock key there.  Don’t think that it wasn’t anything like that you dirty dirty person you.

Anyways, this time it’s hosted by Frederic and company over at Cocktail Virginia Slut.  (What?!  They’re blog isn’t named after our precious commonwealth but is actually “virgin“?  Well, fine.)  (Actually I knew that, but typo-ed, and thought it was funnier that way.)

So today’s is tea.  And also today is Robert Burns Day, which means you should be drinking Scotch and eating haggis.  Not that I’ve done either one (…yet) but it seems like despite my initial choice to find that mini of chai cream liqueur and dump it into some tea (which was also negated by it being gone, probably for almost six months now, oops) and avoiding using delicious, delicious Castries because TDN this week is “Nuts” (hee hee hee!) I figured I should do a tea/Scotch drink of some sort.

When I was a kid, my mom taught me how to make iced tea.  She’s a Southerner, so it was sweet tea (and not that damned bastardization of “oh, we’ve got unsweetened iced tea and sweet & low NO THAT IS NOT HOW SWEET TEA WORKS) and my tea was what a friend of mine called “tea-flavored sugar sludge”.  If I didn’t drink it quickly enough – and to be honest, I usually drank it at room temperature – it’d mold up something fierce.

Now today in DC might have been weirdly temperate, but I also wasn’t feeling great most of the day.  (To continue over-using parenthesis, it was one of those “24 hour stomach blech” kind of days.)  Thus, I figured something with hot tea.  And sweet.  Admittedly, it took until – oh, what time is it now – about 10 PM at night to be working on it, which means caffeine late, but fortunately for me a) I’m mostly able to ignore caffeine these days and b) I’ve got some stuff that will take care of that problem.  So off I went.

I usually use Black Bottle blended Scotch for my drinks using that spirit but this time decided to use something with a bit more character to it and thus chose the Highland Park 12 year old.  I’d bought a bottle of the 15 year old for my grandfather, who is also a Scottish Rite Mason – I’m not Scottish Rite yet but as a Mason I’d planned on joining once I remember to, you know, go to meetings and stuff – so I thought it’d be good.

As for tea, I had a variety pack from Twinnings.  Earl Grey, Lady Grey, and English Breakfast Tea seemed too – well, English for a drink with Scotch, so I grabbed Irish Breakfast instead, bolstered by the fact that it’s the strongest tea in the pack.  No, that doesn’t necessarily make sense (other than the “strongest tea” bit) but shut up.

Boiling water, five minutes steeping, let’s pour that into a bigger mug, and we need some liquors and sweetener.  Hey, a friendly PR company sent me Barenjager!  Now I’ve got some ideas…

Now that’s a “get you up and get you going” drink!

Ad Hoc Burns Night Tea Drink #1
1 1/2 ounces Scotch (Highland Park 12)
1 ounce Barenjager
2-3 dashes lemon bitters
Irish Breakfast tea
Brew a mug of black tea like your mom – strong and hot.  In another mug, pour in the other ingredients.  After the tea finishes steeping, pour it over the other ingredients and stir until blended.  Drink, but not at 10 PM at night unless you have a desire to avoid sleep like the plague.

I don’t normally put lemon in my tea but I had the thought it might help, so I used some Urban Moonshine lemon bitters that they sent me (there you go FTC, yuk it up why don’t you).  They also sent me maple bitters and I’m kind of wishing I’d used those instead – yeah, sure, I could make another drink, but I really don’t need one, especially as I have another idea I want to play with first.  I might also have considered using the Fee’s Rhubarb Bitters (which I paid for thank you very much) or even regular aromatic bitters.  THE POWER IS YOURS TO CHOOSE.

Let’s get back to delicious sweet tea.  That’s all about the summer time to me so it’s time to get rid of the Scotch.  Sorry, Scotch, you’ll have to wait until my next cigar, or next time I hang out with my grandpa.  (And then I can finally share that mini of Highland Park 18 with him too, yummy.)

I thought about making something using Castries, that delicious, delicious Castries, and maybe some of the Chairman’s Reserve Rum (the former I’ve bought a number of times but got a single free bottle of and the latter I’ve already given away bottles of because it’s well priced and delicious and I’m in no way shape or form trying to influence Clyde into hosting a TDN) (maybe), but this week’s TDN is nuts, as I said before, and I’m basically repeating myself.

But sweet tea…

Last year it seemed like sweet tea vodkas were a huge thing, perhaps because, uh, they were.  Maybe not as much in the “cocktail” world, because we can be some snooty bastiges when it comes to stuff like that, but I remember having bartenders telling me how quickly they were selling out of it.  I did a taste test of the Firefly (regular) sweet tea vodka versus Sweet Carolina and the Firefly won by a huge margin.  Let’s put it this way: Firefly is made in South Carolina near a tea plantation.  Sweet Carolina is made from Maine.  One of those tastes like chemicals, and to give a hint, it’s not the one called Firefly.  I haven’t tried the flavored sweet tea vodkas but I can’t be bothered to pay my money for more variations of the same thing, and I haven’t tried Jeremiah Weed for the same reason, but I will admit I do like the Firefly.

And it might not be summer but it hit at least 61 degrees today (seriously, y’all in SoCal, just don’t even say it) so I want a sweet tea drink and I don’t feel like making my own sweet tea because I am very, very lazy.

For a summer type drink, though, I think I need citrus with my tea.  Thus, we have my:

The Citrus-tea
1 1/2 ounces Firefly Sweet Tea Vodka
3/4 ounce lemon juice
1/2 ounce triple sec (Combier – also, again, a freebie)
2-3 dashes Bittermen Bitter Truth Grapefruit Bitters
Shake and double strain into a chilled cocktail glass.  Garnish with a twist of orange peel.

I don’t know what I think of this drink yet – it’s fun, but I think it needs some work, and I think it needs to be in warmer weather.  If it’s warmer for you, give it a shot!

Thanks again to Frederic and Cocktail Virgin Slut for hosting, and as always, Paul Clarke for doing MxMo.  Cheers y’all!

IF YOUR NAME IS DAN OZDOWSKI DO NOT READ THIS UNTIL 5/11 OR LATER!

Just kidding.  I’d be shocked – shocked, I tell you, shocked! – if you actually had the opportunity to read this before you show up tonight.

They say a good salesman can see a sucker coming a mile off, and in my case, that is perhaps not inaccurate.  (I definitely don’t not love me some double negatives, too.)  Or maybe it’s just that I’m special but not the kind of special that necessarily requires a helmet.

I had a very specific goal in going down to visit Ace Beverage again today.  One of my best friends, the quiet-as-of-late

dan_oz

, is in town and will be coming by my place later tonight.  His birthday was the other week so I needed to procure him a present.

I wanted to get him something that he couldn’t get down in smelly ole North Carostinkylina.  Given the fact that he’s a huge rum nut (rummy?  Rumsfeld?  rumoholic?) I thought that a good gift would be a bottle of the Scarlet Ibis rum.

Having that in mind, I also decided that I would like to get myself a bottle of the La Favorite Rhum Agricole Vieux.  That’s the whisky and bourbon barrel aged rum that I tasted at Bourbon a few weeks ago.  Given that I got a couple of the rum barrel aged cigars this week I really wanted to make a ti’ punch with it.

This is what I ended up with when I got home today:

We have, from top to bottom: a fifth of Maker’s Mark and a bottle of Drambuie (both bought at VA ABC), a bottle of Petite Canne Traditional Martinique Sugar Cane Syrup, the Scarlet Ibis, Bloodys by Buz Full Flavor Original Bloody Mary mix, Green Chartreuse, Damrak gin, the La Favorite Rhum Agricole Vieux, and a bottle of Black Bottle five year old blended Scotch (that Master Shake is attempting to taste).

Let’s go over each.

Maker’s Mark – my standard mixing bourbon, especially for the always popular bourbon and cokes and for mint juleps.  My brother Matt wiped out my bottle recently so it was time to replace it.  I thought about going for the liter bottle but the price point per liter in Virginia is almost the same between the fifth and the liter.

Drambuie – I thought that it was the same price in Virginia as it was at Ace.  Unfortunately, it was $5 more.  I was already stuck though with either getting it in Virginia or going back out, and I didn’t feel like doing the latter, so here we are.  I first tasted Drambuie a few weeks ago after kickball one night and I quite enjoyed it.  Given the Scotch, I wanted to try a Rusty Nail at some point as well.  In general, I feel like you can’t have too many liqueurs of this sort because they’re really quite very tasty especially after dinner while smoking a cigar.

Petite Canne Traditional Martinique Sugar Cane Syrup – whew!  When I mentioned to Joe that I was going to make a ti’ punch with the rum, he asked me if I was going to use sugar cane syrup.  Slightly befuddled, I responded that I usually use rich simple syrup.  He poured me a taste of this stuff, adding that it made him think of pancakes, and it was “BIFF BAM BOOM!” right to my head.  Damn good stuff.  It’s simple syrup on crack.  (Actually, I think Joe said “simple syrup on steroids” but that makes me think of Jose Canseco making simple syrup and my brain cries a little bit.)

The Scarlet Ibis – this is the rum formulated specifically for Death & Company in NYC.  I haven’t opened my bottle yet but everyone seems to rave about how good it is and thus I figure Dan will get a big kick out of it.

Bloodys by Buz Full Flavor Original Bloody Mary Mix - According to my mom, I make really good bloody marys.  My granddad agreed.  However, mom always insists on using Clamato, and seriously, clam juice and tomato juice is just not a combination that makes me a happy camper.  I thought about buying a bottle of clam juice so she could just bring regular tomato juice, or maybe juicing my own clams (JUST KIDDING) but both thoughts made me unhappy.  Joe had highly recommended this mix, and, well, you know what, I just looked at it and saw that it had clam juice in it, so maybe it’ll make mom happy.

And maybe I should be careful about adding horseradish infused vodka to it.  Ingredient List: Tomato Puree, Water, Horseradish, Clam Juice, Sugar-based non caloric Sweetner, White Distilled Vinegar, Mustard Seed, Anchovies, Tamarind Extract, Buz’s Full Flavor Original Spice Mix, Sodium Benzonate, Potassium Sorbate added for freshness.  I bet it’s the Sodium Benzonate that really makes it sing!

Green Chartreuse – Chartreuse is one of those expensive liqueurs that’s needed in so many drinks.  Ace had a good price on it so I went ahead and pulled the trigger on some.  They only had green, however, so I’ll still need to find yellow somewhere.

Damrak Gin -

tmfiii

was over last night and between beers, an unexpectedly shaken Sazerac that I made (oops), and the very very good Padron Anniversary Edition cigar I smoked (did I mention very good?), I found that I couldn’t stop thinking about his bottle of Damrak Gin.  Seriously.  I’m a little disturbed by how fixated I was on it.  I didn’t mention it to him because, I don’t know, it might seem creepy or something, but there it is.  And now here it is.

In honor of last night, here’s a recipe Marshall pulled out of the air:
Marshall’s Randomass Tiki Drink
2 oz. pineapple juice
1 1/2 oz. gold rum
1/4 oz. brandy (he used the E&J brandy I had that is slightly infused with apricot)
1/4 oz. maraschino liqueur
5 solid dashes Regan’s Orange Bitters
1 dash Angostura
1 big dash rich simple syrup (my bottle, she is very big, and pours quickly)

(Master) Shake with ice.

Strain and drink and pontificate.

La Favorite Rhum Agricole Vieux – Obviously, I’ve talked a good bit about this one already.  Is it time for me to go outside and drink it?  Maybe if I can just shut up on here!

Black Bottle Five Year Old Blended Scotch – Just as I was about to leave I asked Joe about a good mixing Scotch.  I’d tried Pinch before and it had seemed to work but I trust other people’s impressions.  The thing is that you can always mix with single malts, but, I’ve found, they’re so different in tastes between bottles that it can take a lot of guess work in how something will work with one versus another.  This was a good deal so I had no problems giving it a shot.  It appears to be the same company that also makes/distributes Deanston, Bunnahabhain, Ledaig, and Tobermory Scotch.

So that was my unexpectedly expensive liquor run for today.  If you’ll excuse me, I’m finding that sobriety is become more and more of a chore on this lazy Saturday afternoon, so in the words of a wise man: “Screw you guys, I’m going home.”