Boston Apothecary

May 8, 2010

daiquiri; an analysis

Filed under: cocktails — Tags: , , , , — sjs @ 1:58 pm

daiquiri

x oz. rum

y oz. lime juice

z g. sugar

the daiquiri is an iconic drink with no specific recipe.  what one believes a daiquiri should be, is all subject to the principles of cultural relativity.  this relative concept is significant because of how polarized western food ways are.  one might find another’s daiquiri to be undrinkably sweet, too tart, or too alcoholic.  hemingway often enjoyed a sugarless daiquiri that most imbibers would find very extreme and probably inharmonious.

with just three ingredients (plus some water!) there is a multitude of options.  rum, which fortifies the drink, is the most diverse spirits category there is.  the range of rum’s aromas is staggering and hard to fully outline.  rum aromas can range from simplistic (and very common in culinary) like caramel or vanilla to rare like iodine, or the enigmatic and un-nameable.  the appeal of rum aromas are also subject to a lot of culturally relative symbolism.  each of us has an “olfactory construct” which we use to categorize aromatic experiences and attach meaning.  in western culture there are some aromas with close to universal symbolism but classification is also often very personal.  to me, the aroma of caramel in rum is a negative.  i find caramel boring and try to avoid rums dominated by the aroma.  i don’t want my rum to go through some elaborate process and end up smelling like something i could just make in my kitchen.  yet the market speaks and those rums sell well.  within rum, many people probably hold the caramel aroma favorably in their olfactory construct.  symbols can congeal.  maybe i used to like caramel as well, but experiences can make your olfactory construct shift.

for many, a daiquiri takes shape with an intense plane of acid.  limes have a very consistent amount of acidity, but their aromas can vary significantly.  the lime aroma is very piney and angular in nature, but the degree of its intensity varies significantly with the lime.  sometimes when limes have a yellowed skin, the aroma of their juice can be obnoxious, overly piney and very hard to enjoy.  if the lime has dimpled skin, the rind is usually very thick and there is little juice inside.  limes with the best juice economy and most elegant aroma are not so intensely green as dimpled limes, don’t feel solid, and have very smooth skin.  these are what growers strive to put on the market.

the character of the sugar source for a daiquiri can vary drastically.  bleached and highly refined white sugars are not aromatic.  bleached sugar sweetness to the daiquiri’s structure but no aromatic contrast to the rum and lime. on the other hand, raw sugars can be distinct and highly aromatic.  at the far extreme, molasses is a concentrate of the aromatic part of sugar, separated during the refining process.  aromatic sugars have a density of aroma that can overshadow many nuances of a rum and should be used with that in mind.  using a sugar source with aroma also has the potential to make boring rums much more exciting.

the relationship of sugar to acid is where the majority of the daiquiri’s emotional content comes from.  aroma, its level of extract, and alcohol pull on these planes of structure, but they are not so significant or predictably manipulated.  the PH of the acid is hard to obsess over so it becomes easiest to describe the acid/sugar ratio as relative to a 400g/l sugar source in a 2:1:1 sour.

1.5 oz. rum (80 proof)

.75 oz. lime juice

.75 oz. sugar syrup (400g/l or very close to a common 1:1 simple syrup)

the above recipe really captures the average of most western tastes and is what is typically served in a restaurant scenario.  as the relative amount of sugar decreases, the drink can be described as “drier” and appealing to less imbibers on average while sometimes gaining in its ability to thrill a minority.  when producing daiquiris for others, the challenge becomes abstracting the drink to an idealized emotional state by changing the ratios of rum, lime, and sugar as well as other planes like temperature, dissolved gas and inhomogeneous elements like ice chips produced during shaking.

switching to stirred in granular sugar while trying to maintain a similar acid/sugar ethic decreases the overall volume of the drink and therefore you need to extrapolate.  using granular sugar without a scale takes intuition, but can increase the intensity of the spirit without having to use a higher proof bottling because the drink is not diluted with water from the syrup.

language to describe the emotional content of a drink is very underdeveloped and because food ways are so diverse, all we really have is trial and error when matching drinks to drinkers which can be costly.  unlike a painting which only needs to be painted once, every time a culinary work is consumed it needs to be produced which is not without expense.  we have developed language effective enough to sell drinks and make them seem enticing, but not effective enough for people to actually understand what they are getting with any precision.  most imbibers just shoot in the dark with a simplistic mentality of “i like ‘x’ trendy liqueur so i bet i’ll like any drink that features it”.  everybody gets by, but with such an asynchronous system (one side knows everything, the other side knows little) for new experiences, the art can’t go very far.  no one is likely to become the arnold schoenberg of mixology, expressing the tricky aspects of the zeitgeist which require new notions of flavor harmony.

anyhow, make my daiquiri like a Markovich Lissitzky or Wassily Kandisnky painting; abstracted and expressionist.  stretch it with the emotionally charged raring to go structure of a 250 gram sour pulled taught by low extract aroma (via non aromatic sugar!).  throw out those common “culinary” aromas.  i want my mind to wander through enigmatic, mermaid-grotesque, aged, cape verdean rum aromas terraced against the gentle piny-ness of a perfect lime.  forget those over oaked, lacquered up whiskey cocktails, this will be like a licking a green marble sculpture, shaped by structure and veined by aroma.  if you come from a snapple-sweet tea life style, be prepared to find out we don’t idealize the world the same way.

April 3, 2010

martini time!

Filed under: cocktail acids, cocktails — Tags: , , , , — sjs @ 11:26 pm

i never really drink gin martinis.  i’d rather have an interesting sour or something more exotic like a sanru.  after making and drinking a few gin martinis i thought i’d muse a little…

martini

(3 to 1)

2.25 oz. citadelle gin

.75 oz. noilly prat dry vermouth

dash orange bitters

homogenized lemon peel (expressed in the stirring pitcher)

this is fantastic and refreshing.  citadel is a gin with a ratio of juniper and coriander that is not as extreme as other more juniper dominant bottlings.  the acidity of the vermouth does not stand out significantly and the lack of sweetness mutes the effect of the orange bitters to elegance.

(2 to 1)

2 oz. tanqueray gin

1 oz. dolin dry vermouth

dash orange bitters

top notes of lemon peel

this version has a different sense of harmony.  tanqueray has a very large amount of juniper relative to coriander, yet in the drink, because of the inhomogeneous lemon peel, the gin’s aggressive angular aromatic nature is intensely overshadowed.  for some, the acidity from the large quantity of dry vermouth is too challenging.  dolin is also a brand known for its gorgeous bright muscat meets elder flower fruit, but even in such a large quantity and paired with orange bitters, the fruit is not readily obvious.

the martini is a drink in love with exclusivity and has a very skewed sense of harmony.  elitists are quick to defend the iconic beverage as high art and their misty prose leaves others with little understanding of what is really going on.

within, the the martini is composed of two well entrenched high art ingredients.  dry gin defends itself by adding extra exotic-seeming botanicals in trace amounts that have no real bearing on the overall aroma.  the extra ingredients are strictly symbolic (gin is all about aromatic symbolism), yet new producers constantly fall into the trap of actually using the extra botanicals to influence flavor with the consequence of their gins often smelling like someone added cracked black pepper.  gin drinkers are often very brand sensitive but the most important, least analyzed difference between producers is their juniper to coriander ethic.  some producers are in love with juniper and their gins can come across as bottled pine trees while others show restraint and can come across as either elegant or sometimes bland if too much overshadowing happens.  no one way is better, each is just a different sense of harmony related to symbolic value placed on the juniper aroma within an imbiber’s osmology.

vermouth is one of the trickiest beverages to understand, eluding language and being defined only as a “beverage that resembles the characteristics of and tastes like vermouth”.  dry vermouth may have been paired with gin because of its alliterative botanical concept as well as its delicacy and inability to overshadow.   gin’s exclusivity techniques look like white lies relative to the many claims of deliberate misinformation in vermouth production techniques.  the main item of misinformation in question is that botanicals are extracted using high proof solvents when the truth is really the opposite.  the solvents are adjusted to the minimum of microbiological stability so they don’t over extract bitter principles.  if aspiring producers fall for the high proof trap they will never figure out how to replicate existing produers’ success.  exclusivity is furthered with claims that formulas are composed of a massive array of botanicals which conflicts with some open producers claiming the use of only a few.

as the sum of its parts, the martini has a strange sense of spatial effect.  if made as gin and dry vermouth in a varying ratio, sweetness, which is important to so many other styles of drink, is nearly eliminated.  as opposed to a “sour” style drink with voluptuous pornographic proportions, the martini is tall, gaunt and uniquely very attractive.  the function of dry vermouth in the martini is complex.  for starters dry vermouth simply dilutes gin’s alcohol and aroma.  this all happens with a swap for vermouth’s acidity and its largely self contrasted round aroma.  the change in ratio between gin and vermouth is really the push and pull of numerous planes of spatial effect.  angular aromas and real acidity are not exactly an even trade and many people find vermouth’s acidity to be inharmonious with the absence of sweetness in such a high alcohol environment.

besides imbibers enjoying an easy connoisseurial point to distinguish themselves with, aroma may be the reason the gin martini has evolved to the dry, no vermouth style.  if the nature of aromas can significantly effect our perception of structure, modern gin styles employ aroma to effectively create experiences that can go unameliorated.  no acid necessary, modern gin producers took care of that literally (dissolved acid post distillation) or figuratively (aroma).  no contrasting round aroma necessary, modern producers built that in.  not that anything malicious is going on but eliminate a middle man and you can sell more product.

modern gins have enough angular aroma to be refreshing but not too much that they need to be diluted with vermouth to find common harmony.  there is more citrus peel in modern formulas and coupled with orange bitters, as well as effective use of a twist, martini-esque spatial effect can be maintained without the vermouth.

now that the largest points of contention are squared away, what are thought of as mere garnishes, the olive and lemon twist, often become the most exciting and defining parts of the martini.  the olive adds salt from its brine which is still a rare plane to manipulate in the cocktail realm.  the twist can either be applied into the liquid and stirred or directly to the top of the drink with the difference being the creation of a homogenous or inhomogeneous element.  frontal olfaction is very powerful and strong inhomogenous “top notes” have a large tendency to overshadow aromas within the drink therefore they can make an experience very distinct.  a lemon twist should be wielded with a lot of empathy because it really determines the fate of dollar an ounce gin.

with such a skewed sense of space, temperature becomes a plane that is critically important to the martini.  the gaunt, thin drink becomes very cranky as it warms and is best thought of as a three part shot.  stirring the drink to minimize dissolve gas with an adequate amount of ice is important as well the realization that an unchilled glass will suck the cold energy right out of the liquid.

like the architect ludwig mies van der rohe stated, “god is in the details”.  if you understand the landmarks you can move around and shape an entire world with its own spiritual life.  the martini has a surprising amount of relationships that can benefit from more attention than most.  small changes have a very significant influence on spatial effect and therefore emotional response.  with every decision within the martini having such intense impact,  the drink might actually be worthy of all the obsession and fetishism lavished upon it.

October 29, 2009

cocktails for 400… well more than 200 of 400…

Filed under: cocktails — Tags: , — sjs @ 2:30 pm

last weekend i catered drinks for 350-400 ritzy brooklinites in a large furniture store…

we brought beer, red & white wine, as well as a cocktail… ten gallons of cocktail to be exact.  the biggest cocktail i’ve ever put together.

the cocktail was measured out plus diluted with water into two five gallon cornelius kegs.  i kept putting the drinks up a dozen at a time over ice.  the cocktail was even carbonated ever so slightly to mimic the texture of shaking.

my serving method was awesomely efficient and no one seemed to care about the lack of artistic constraint usually seen in cocktail service.  (i had actually thought the drink was only going to be served on trays from a back room. that didn’t happen)

anyhow the really interesting part came when we got more than 50% of everyone drinking the same cocktail… how the hell did that happen? this was definitely not a room full of foodies or hipsters.  the drinks were flying off the table.  there is no way i would have ever been able to keep up if the drink was not kegged.  (i used a simple “cobra” spout if anyone was wondering)

so i guess i need to explain what the drink was… a riff on a periodista (the passion fruit liqueur makes a similar aesthetic contribution that an apricot liqueur would) .

(per keg)

2 gallons clear rum (i got stuck using three different puerto rican brands plus some seagram’s brazilian rum)

1 gallon fresh lime juice

4 750ml of azorean passion fruit liqueur (750ml is nearly a fifth of a gallon hence they are sometimes called “fifths”)

1 750ml of portuguese triple-sec

3 oz. angostura bitters

1 gallon of water

so why was this drink able to capture the average of so many peoples’ tastes?

well first of all whether foodies or not i think the room had in common that it was from a wine consuming background.  jug wine maybe, but what they share in common is a love of an acidic structure to their beverage.  the flavor contrasts in cheap wine might be boring but what most people seem to identify with is the “structure”.  people that come from a snapple culture (and america has a lot of snapple-sweet tea culture) are more likely to be adverse to acid.  one thing that really seems to hit that average of wine oriented peoples taste is a 350-400 gram/l liqueur contrasted against an equal volume of lemon or lime acid.  i think the passion fruit liqueur is in the upper bound but it is blended down slightly by the triple-sec (250g/l probably).  the triple-sec also has a tonal effect on the passion fruit liqueur lightening it to a beautiful androgynous shade.  lime as opposed to lemon brings more extract (lessening the “sweet-tart” phenomenon changing the hollowness of the sour perception) and lime adds angular contrast which creates more depth in the drink (useful because the rum has none).  the bitters add huge amounts of extract (which people seem to love) and more angular contrasts to all the round fruitiness of the liqueurs.

so i built this thing out of “spare parts” on the theory of how they added up and it worked.  some of the only negative comments i got from the entire room was “i don’t drink rum”.  but its very hard to defeat superstitions like that.

i will definitely be using the same keg setup again… hopefully i can provide a guideline for the perfect carbonation pressure to strive for. (keep in mind too much carbonation can make the drink taste far too tart and spoil all your careful averages. i’m forgetting to spill some details about how i made the gas push the liquid with out carbonating in more than i wanted)

oh, i forgot to mention that i used 9 of 10 gallons which is like 350 portions. and cost about 30 cents an ounce… (undiluted i think)

August 22, 2008

an extinct style of drink?

Filed under: cocktail acids, cocktails, vermouth — Tags: , , , , — sjs @ 7:25 pm

due to the pathetic circumstances of my life i have some how evolved in a vermouth drinker. somehow this stuff called vermouth went from totally being in vogue to being completely ignored and barely written about where nearly all real knowledge of it has been lost generations ago and the producers seem to be as quiet as moon shiners. no one is exactly interviewing them for wine spectator which i’d pay to read. luckily with all this decline of things the price, for the most part, has stayed down in two buck chuck territory as well. one reason i think all this persists in modern times anyhow, is because true connoisseurship and afficion is really challenging. vermouth is kind of alienating because its flavors are so adult, and apparently for many people its alcohol levels are too low for most people (the lushes) to bother with which i think is really significant to its decline.

cocktails also are a problem for vermouth. the worst vermouth cocktail ever created was the dry martini. i’m not talking about a 1/8 dry vermouth cocktail or a wave of the bottle. i’m speaking of dry vermouth and gin in any ratio with bitters or not. for some reason variations with little deviation had such a profound impact that so few people moved in other directions after its popularity began… erosion of taste slowly stripped away all the wine and an impatient culture that needed their buzz from one glass took over.

you don’t have a real vermouth drink until you mix up some flavor contrast. and most importantly you can’t be afraid of having two or three if a buzz is your goal. a couple evenings ago i was looking for a drink for the Cocktail Chronicle’s MxMo event. in browsing the always inspirational cocktailDB, i came across “stephen’s cocktail”. i was really impressed by this forgotten Stephen’s good taste. it totally read as my style…

1 oz. sherry (i interpreted this as dry sherry to get a good balance so i used la cigarrera’s manzanilla)

.75 oz. dry vermouth (european noilly prat)

.75 oz. benedictine (sweet enough to need that much dry balance!)

the drink has a serious flavor to alcohol ratio and a really elegant acidity to sweetness ratio. i wish i could have a good bar experience somewhere drinking maybe five or six of these and pay beer prices because it has close to a craft beer cost basis. another big problem for vermouth is the nature of our gouge restaurant economies. to sum it up quickly, distributors and marketers push super expensive products on the market leaving generations not even knowing that 12 dollar liters of rye whiskey and rum are stunningly delicious and to add insult to injury, restaurants in so many cities rather be half dead all night long, gouging guests with super expensive drinks than actually work hard, understand spirits and use products that don’t have pharmaceutical style promotional expenses.

is there any room in the market for this class of fortified and aromatized wine drink? in matters of taste, sherry with its intense barrel treatment is like whiskey flavored wine (i group sherry drinks with vermouth drinks). i feel like people should be able to relate to it more than they think. vermouth and sherry are also damn cheep relative to distilled spirits. tapas places often sell small glasses of them for $5. additionally, restaurants are trying to get people less drunk these days in the world of liability and conservatism and many people have to work increasing hours but still need time to unwind with some adult tasting stimulus. if in milan the vermouth drinkers happy hour is extended well into the evening by the perfect alcohol content and affordability of aromatized wine, couldn’t this new style of drink help revive many lagging urban bar cultures?

so now your curius and want to mix up some vermouth? the king of these drinks is the “half sinner, half saint”

1.5 oz. sweet vermouth

1.5 oz. dry vermouth

.5 oz. absinthe (floated)

twist of something…

i still have yet to find someone that doesn’t like this drink. the sweetness to dryness ratio is perfect. this drink also makes a dramatic mockery of absinthe. the cloying versus the relief… you can’t know pleasure until you know pain… i think i also need to give No. 9 park credit for introducing it to me. now one or two is a daily ritual… the two mentioned cocktails illustrate some of the really simple formats but just a few of the many players… when you know their simple properties like whats sweet and whats dry things can easily be substituted to your wildest imagination.

the players…

sherry: sweet or dry… oxidized to elegance with flor yeast… in love with oak like whiskey flavored wine. fresh styles like manzanilla are very chamomily while 30 year old sweet sherries as made by matuselem are like liquid bread pudding…

vermouth: sweet, dry, or “bianco”… with so many different brands having styles that are hard to nail down, but with little exception all being good. some drys have more fruit than others. some sweets are sweeter and some are more intense… some biancos are more bitter than others…

played out iconic… brand names lillet and dubbonet are usually sweet, usually really orangey… and more or less other stuff is more fun.

forgotten savoy… the savoy which covers parts of southern france and northern italy in and around the alps is aromatized wine country. there are so many forgotten specialties like “chamberyzette” which is vermouth heavy handedly aromatized with alpine strawberries. chocolates best friend is the epic “barolo chinato” which is elegantly bitter aromatized barolo wine. this region makes aromatized wines that would remind you of a more handsome campari or a more complex lillet. (great one are made by vergano)

americano: more intensely bitter aromatized wines that kind of overlap with the savoy specialities. great producers are vergano, gancia, and i would say vya of california. i’ve even made my own with good success.

aromatized cheaters: bitter and low alcohol but do not have a wine base (to my knowledge anyhow…) cynar, campari, aperol, picon bier…

monastic contrast: incredibly masterful aromatized high alcohol liqueurs… cloyingly anisey absinthe producing masochistic flavor contrast, the chartreuses which are an artistic synthesis of the flavor “rocket fuel” via booze and botanicals, and benedictine which is liquid cigar concentrate…

the wines: passito, botrytised, ice wine… sauternes, port, madeira (cercial, bual, malmsey, rainwater!) fresh or oxidized styles, honeyed, mysterious, and made under rare circumstances…

what can be surprising is how well certain brands perform in the randomness of it all… cribari sweet vermouth anyone? try it with some dry sherry like “la cigarrera” manzanilla and a finger of saint james “royal ambre” rhum. there are a million ways to mix this style of drink and a million of them are already on the books. check it out and see how much less whiskey you end up drinking…

July 23, 2008

manzanilla a.k.a. chamomile acid…

Filed under: cocktail acids, cocktails — Tags: , — sjs @ 12:18 pm

i did double post this on egullet also but hopefully i can expand it to a couple more cocktails that pair hendrick’s gin and manzanilla sherry… i just acquired the “la gitana” which is a classic bottling from bodegas hidalgo. these dry sherries are often beyond the average of most people’s tastes to drink alone, but so is straight lemon juice and that means they can mix spectacularly…

i just entered boston’s hendrick’s cocktail contest… this what i settled on…

1.5 oz. hendrick’s gin
1 oz. manzanilla sherry (la gitana, a very classic bottling…)
.5 oz. sloe gin (plymouth)
.5 oz. yellow chartreuse
dash of peychaud’s bitters
stir…

chartreuse and sloe gin are my favorite liqueur duo’s at the moment… the yellow works especially well. the contest was looking for cocktails that highlight a botanical besides cucumber and rose petal within hendrick’s botanical formula… manzanilla as a sherry style was named after the chamomile flower because its flavor has that earth apple character, but it also has badass cocktail craving acidity! a classic example of the sherry (unlike the la cigarrera manzanilla that i really like) gives “chamomile acid” to balance and contrast the liqueurs and support the gin…

when i tried the drink with green chartreuse all it brought out in the wine was the intimidating oxidized wine character… yellow chartreuse really highlighted the “earth apple” character of the sherry…

now i need a name…

more to come if i can find the time and sobriety…

July 10, 2008

capturing the big easy… (or not)

Filed under: cocktail acids, cocktails, vermouth — Tags: , — sjs @ 8:49 pm

so i’m on the edge of my first real vacation in quite a few years which i’m making out of the tales of the cocktails event down in NOLA. part of getting ready is a little bit of practice drinking. to keep up with everyone else i need a strategy. i’m taking advice from chris charmichael of the tour de france training fame and using a high cadence with smaller sips technique. many great drinkers of the past have used the technique to hold their booze over arduously long evenings… i’m also trying to acclimate myself with cocktails that capture the spirit of new orleans. easier said than done with out every having been there… the first go at it looked something like this:

2 oz. baby sazerac rye (thanks to the people at bauer wines and spirits, noone else has it in boston)

.75 oz. pimento dram (homemade, but alpenz corp.’s product would probably be better)

.25 oz. yellow chartreuse

1 oz. dry vermouth as tart as a lemon (9 grams of malic acid per 250ml of gallo dry vermouth)

dash of peychaud’s bitters.

this drink was ok, but needs a better balance and maybe something other than yellow chartreuse or just more of it. i wanted gross excess and no compromises by way of lots of liqueurs and also the flavor of vermouth but also a dry, refreshing drink that you could only get with lemon or lime juice… i got what i was looking for to some degree, but the particular allspice in my dram may be too fiery to be elegant. as easy going as i hear new orleans is, there still may be a dress code at times and that may hold true for good drinks.

my second try took a different direction. i almost thought of changing up the first drink then i put on some jazz… i wanted a style of drink that could give more length to my night (lower alcohol, fuller flavor).

1 oz. baby sazerac rye

1 oz. dry sherry (la cigarrera manzanilla, but any thing else “highland” like would work)

1 oz. sweet vermouth (noilly prat)

stir over ice then float…

.5 oz. peychaud’s bitters (7 dashes?)

those that drink a lot of vermouth may recognize the “half sinner, half saint” in all of this, but with a couple different notes… flavors like sherry always remind me of either a rich solo by stephane grappelli or sometimes an upright bass. sherry is the greatest expression of wood and oxidation that i can consume to my heart’s desire because of its low alcohol level… i’ve also found that absinthe is the most overrated product in beverage (i’ve never encountered one that was more adult tasting than good & plenty candies). i’d take a large dose of peychaud’s bitters over absinthe any day of the week…

for breakfast i just revisited the riff on the half sinner, half saint…

1.5 oz. sweet vermouth (noilly prat)

1.5 oz. dry sherry (last of la cigarrera’s manzanilla)

.5 oz. of floated peychaud’s bitters

this drink is most satisfying. i personally enjoy the taste of the bitters over an absinthe, but it just doesn’t float the way i’d like it to. the thin barrier of absinthe in a half sinner, half saint coats your lips in a briefly cloying way to enhance the refreshing experience of the vermouths underneath. sinners and saint, pleasure and pain… one can’t exist with out the other and the drink exemplifies. i keep coming across sherries like matusalem that use biblical marketing and they seem to fit in with the role of the saint without missing a beat…

on its own, by the way, this noilly prat sweet vermouth is kind of interesting. it seems to have a drier finish than other sweet vermouths but i guest i taste of its acidity could reveal if that is true. this vermouth seemed darker in character. in a moment of clarity a couple days ago, i thought i perceived strong notes of wormwood relative to any other sweet vermouth. this might be in line with the noilly’s reputation as being more bitter than they others. whether they can actually use wormwood or not who knows. tasting it is from my experience of using it in my projects… this vermouth feels like its in danger of tasting too much like coffee or too much like chocolate… coupled with a whiskey i suspect one might end up with a flavor dead end… i’m willing to invest the drinking to figure out if that’s true or not…

2:1 manhattan baby sazerac to noilly prat sweet vermouth plus a dash of bitters…

not bad at all. hard to describe but dark and quite integrated with no stuck flavors… sazerac is a pretty incredible whiskey relative to the price.

July 6, 2008

after midnight kind of flavors…

Filed under: cocktails — Tags: , , — sjs @ 12:27 pm

so i still have a bottle of pisco infused with some dried apricots that were laying around. like in “the bolivar” cocktail, a good use for the simple infusion was for diluting over the top single malt scotches like lagavulin 16 to create a nice fruit and smoke contrast. last night a guest wanted a bitter challenging drink so i served one up as so…

1 oz. lagavulin 16.

1 oz. apricot infused pisco. (handful of dried apricots in a bottle)

1 oz. “cerasuolo” americano* (substitute vergano’s “americano”)

spoonful of chestnut flower honey liqueur (2 parts cognac, 1 part chestnut flower honey in a bottle)

stirred with a flamed orange twist.

the drink really delivers on the fruit and peaty smoke contrast. and the different fruit elements overlap to create a very sexy shade of something… like of like a plum or cherry, but definitely stone fruit summery goodness. the bitter is evidently wormwoody and helps to lengthen the finish of the drink… this is like s&m in a glass so only serve it after midnight…

*this drink uses some proprietary ingredients but besides the cerasuolo “americano” i made myself the ingredients are pretty easy to construct. the main technique is to put stuff in a bottle and then strain after a week or so… the chestnut flower honey liqueur is so worth making… the alcohol works as a great solvent and a crystallized honeys with lots of comb solids can easily be made clear and easy to work with… vergano’s aperativo “americano” is slowly popping up in major cities…

June 25, 2008

sloe gin two ways…

Filed under: cocktails — Tags: , , , , , — sjs @ 2:49 pm

i just got a bottle of plymouth’s sloe gin and find it quite satisfying… i did describe it on egullet as so…

“i just picked up a bottle of plymouth sloe gin ($40) at charles street liquors on beacon hill… its pretty cool. the nose has a charming cough syrup kind of character. its is elegantly sweet but finishes almost dry like there is much more acidity than a liqueur like cointreau. the botanicals seem to add only subtle nuance and there is no piny juniper leaping out at you…”

my first attempt of playing with the stuff was as follows…

1.5 oz. st. james ambre (my favorite martinique rum)

.5 oz. plymouth sloe gin

.5 oz. yellow chartreuse

1 oz. lemon juice

dash of angostura

this was fantastic and integrated and even the small amount of sloe gin gave this sour style drink unique identity… i could drink many of these without getting bored from the repetition… but i remembered it so vividly that i didn’t feel the need to drink it again… instead i animated it with my beloved seagrams distiller’s reserve gin…

1.5 oz. seagrams distiller’s reserve

.5 oz. plymouth sloe gin

.5 oz. yellow chartreuse

1 oz. lemon juice

dash angostura

the next day (today) this variation relative to the first was beautiful… the accompaniments are the same but with the change in base, the first thing that came to mind was the aroma of chamomile with a salinity on the palate that didn’t really exist, but might have been brought on by the drier perception of the spirit… this reminded me of a manzanilla sherry lurking under the fruit of the sloes… (but certainly not something heavy relative to the manzanilla style like “la cigarrera”). this drink’s synthesis of flavors lurking in my own mind’s personal flavor reference library was really fun but probably lost on less kinky drinkers… oh well.

***update!***

so some friends came to visit for the afternoon and i took the opportunity to make another cocktail… this theme was fresh in my head with plenty of flavor references ingrained in my subconscious self so i opted to use my distilled version of hitachino’s white ale from japan. this is basically a gin like system derived from a highly regarded beer that i’ve drank on many occasions. the botanical system differs from gin by using hops instead of juniper accompanied by orange peel and coriander… the results of hitachino’s efforts are amazing and completely validates the nearly $2/oz. price. my strategy for working with something charlie trotter decadent like this is to use a drink that i’m really familiar with and enjoy so i get a better chance at understanding the new spirits contribution. in this drink the hops create the most beautiful floral quality. in beer you usually encounter it with little fruit flavor contrast but in a cocktail anything is fair game… here there is the contrast of diluted sloes and chartreuse. nothing is redundant and everything gets a chance to speak… wow…

1.5 oz. hitachino’s “kiuchi no shizuku” distilled white ale

.5 oz. plymouth sloe gin

.5 oz. yellow chartreuse

1 oz. lemon juice

dash angostura

June 22, 2008

“bolivar soy yo!” (if you drink enough of these…)

Filed under: cocktails — Tags: , — sjs @ 1:10 pm

every now and then when its scorchingly hot and i crave a respite in cool marbled halls, i slip into the old wing of the boston public library and make sure everything is still there where i left it last summer… the lions still guard the staircase and my favorite busts are still lurking in the cool shadows… an interesting one to insight some day dreams is at the top of the main staircase and to the left by the window that over looks the most underused and stunning courtyard garden in the city… ” el libertador”, simon bolivar… this guy liberated all of my favorite booze producing countries from the colonial grip of spain so that they could start their own paths to culinary greatness. and so, if a drink is named after bolivar, it doesn’t exactly have to contain any of the fruits of the revolution, it simply must be bolivar-esque a.k.a. heroic in the spirit…

“the bolivar”

1.5 oz. lagavulin 16

.5 oz. dried apricot infused pisco (a handful per 750ml of barsol)

1 oz. chamberyzette

1 oz. lime juice

spoonful of simple syrup

dash of angostura bitters

shake!

this smells like nothing but intimidation, but its all scotchy smoke and mirrored reflections off mixing glasses… those brave enough to imbibe the “bolivar” will find a refuge more fun than the BPL…

June 16, 2008

fun with la cigarrera’s manzanilla

Filed under: cocktail acids, cocktails — Tags: , , , , — sjs @ 2:35 pm

i picked up a half bottle of “la cigarrera” manzanilla… it is really pale and dry like every other manzanilla i’ve ever had but has a pungent and intoxicating nose of the likes i’ve never come across… the character and complexity of the wine really shows what sherry cask finishes do for highland whiskeys. as hypnotic as this stuff is on the nose, its not really that much fun to drink without the appropriate food to elevate it. i find it beyond the average of anyone’s taste for dryness, which makes it perfect to a cocktail… pair the sherry with something sweet and its back into balance. if paired with a highland whiskey like macallan you can get the acidity a cocktail needs with uninterrupted flavor continuity…

1 oz. macallan cask strength

1 oz. manzanilla (la cigarerra)

.5 oz. luxardo maraschino

.5 oz. cynar

2 dashes peychaud’s bitters

this drink is a beautiful attempt at pairing sherry cask seasoned whiskey with sherry as a cocktail acid… i get an uninterrupted highland experience with no annoying lemon or lime interrupts… the sherry alone with its acidity balances the sweetness of the liqueurs… the whiskey and sherrys’ own flavors are so good together they don’t even need to be elevated with vermouth… i typically despise maraschino, and its subtle almond note always reminds me of poison putting me on edge, but here it works… another beautiful liqueur like strawberry would probably work even better… the cynar really moves this drink deep into the bitter cocktail genre but definitely isn’t the only way to go… hopefully i can come up wiht a drink that is unforgettable…

***update!***

1 oz. macallan cask strength

1 oz. manzanilla (la cigarerra)

.5 oz. sloe gin (plymouth!)

.5 oz. yellow chartreuse

2 dashes peychaud’s bitters

this drink turned out really well with decadently powerful flavors. if blind tasted the cocktail almost resembles a manhattan with fruit and botanicals contrasted against brown liquor. hopefully it wouldn’t be called over engineered… everything is a little more advanced than a manhattan because the blackthorn fruit is more exotic and there is more well integrated structure from the sherry. i would really love to try this again with a common rye whiskey like old overholt instead of the macallan. i think that with the sherry in tandem the cocktail would be wildly fun to drink for low dollars…

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