in the 2k10 i am learning to make cocktails. this is my mixology thread

Generally speaking alcohol content correlates to shelf life, but as Bill mentions, everything ages to some extent (usually for worse). Stuff that's especially prone to oxidization - wine based products - will be a problem so that includes not just vermouths but port, Lilet, etc.

hey CAD, do you buy exclusively online or do you have a store you go to? I discovered some tiny specialty bodega in the South End on Shawmut that seemed to have a bazillion different bitters on the shelf and was wondering if you knew about it

hey i actually buy most stuff in stores (the boston shaker in davis, liquor world in porter) but am always looking for new places--do you know what the store you found was called?

I don't think I had been bright enough before to piece together that DJP is probably D@n. (Every time I say something like this I feel like I'll sound like an idiot if it isn't.)

On aging and booze - another factor is whether something is distilled or infused. Like, gin is probably going to age so slowly in the bottle that evaporation actually becomes an issue before oxidation does. But St Germain allegedly ages as fast as it does - losing some of its floral character I'm told, but again I haven't hung onto any St G long enough for this to happen to me - because some of its flavor is infused, so you have solid particulates in there that can precipitate out, things that would be filtered out by distillation. This is definitely true of home infusions since we don't have high-quality filtration systems - I made an old-school punch of mostly rum with tea and lime juice, kept it in the fridge because I forgot about it, and it went from an amber-colored liquid to a completely clear liquid with tea sediment at the bottom of the bottle. Vermouth is wine-based, infused, low-alcohol, and sweetened - a lot of strikes against its shelf-stability.

There is probably something about all this in McGee.

you are right about djp.

i have heard a lot of aging claims about st germain--my bottle is 8 or 9 months old, and it seems fine. i guess the only thing to do would be to buy a fresh bottle and compare them.

google is amazing, I would have had to go back and look at the store to find the name without it: http://www.southendformaggio.com/

apparently they have a Cambridge location, too

Sunlight has a lot to do with oxidation too, right? As pretty as the St Germain bottles are, they also tempt stores that do this kind of thing to display them in bright sunny windows, which can't be good if they sit there a while. Not an issue in NH's purely utilitarian liquor stores.

(ps: hi dere poster formerly known as Tep!)

(Hello! Yeah I don't know if I'd said that on this thread yet. Still getting my sea legs.)

This is making me want to crack the seal on the bottle of mezcal that spent several years in a storage building with no climate control in MS. It and a bottle of cognac came as bonuses tucked down into the boxes in an auction lot of old books I bought. Problem is, I don't know what good mezcal would smell or taste like, compared to messed-up (skunky?) mezcal. Maybe it'll burst into flames on contact with air.

I remember hearing that the first few batches of St Germain were notorious for shelf life issues but supposedly it's not as much of an issue now.

google is amazing, I would have had to go back and look at the store to find the name without it: http://www.southendformaggio.com/

apparently they have a Cambridge location, too

― fat fat fat fat Usher (DJP), Monday, April 18, 2011 11:11 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

oh yeah i know where the cambridge one is! i should check this out. looks like a cool shop in general.

wmc you should def crack that mezcal. unless the cork is fucked i'll bet it's ok.

it was just funny, I was lurking on this thread and watching the fascinating bitters conversation, and then on the way to a dinner party a friend pulled me into this store and the first thing I see is like 5 different bitters I've never before seen

a rare cad original:

1 oz. blanco tequila
1 oz. campari
.5-.75 oz. blanc/bianco vermouth
1 dash bittermens burlesque bitters (this was prob overkill)
1 strawberry, sliced

muddle strawberry with liquids, shake with ice, double strain.

sort of a combination of two things i found--a strawberry negroni and a tequila/blanc/campari thing. it's not the most, uh, refined drink around but i kinda like it.

Burlesque bitters! I want to hear about these.

hah i'm still trying to figure out exactly what they're for myself. i think i've tasted them by themselves more than any other bitters i have. they're definitely flowery, and the flavor is brief and kind of sharp. the bottle recommends amari and tequila, among other things, yet the launch cocktail (which can be found on the bittermens site) is an old-fashioned with bourbon, applejack, and grenadine. it's ok but not exactly an approachable cocktail imo.

It's post-thunderstorm muggy out and surprisingly slightly too warm - I have the door to the deck open and the thermostat says it's 80 degrees - and I am drinking Cardamaro Vino (a wine-based amaro) over cubes of frozen blackberry juice. Not a bad way to clean out the freezer.

hey, so if I want to start experimenting with fancy drinkmaking without really following recipes and I have some decent gin in the house and am totally open to pretty much any drink of the spectrum of sweet to bitter, what types of bitters should I start playing around with

(IOW, are there any that are relatively "safe", meaning the resulting drink will likely be potable no matter what I do)

fav bitters with gin: orange, celery, grapefruit. also i basically no longer make gin and tonics without these guys:

http://bittermens.com/products/boston-bittahs/

That's a really good question - I'm not sure I have a really good answer. Bitters right now are sort of like ... if Coca-Cola and Dr Pepper had been the only two sodas for the last eighty years after Orange Crush went out of business, and now all of a sudden everybody else has realized they can make soda too, but the market is in total chaos, without firm boundaries ("this is what grapefruit bitters is supposed to taste like") and without the sort of standardized pantheon of flavors.

Other people may have better answers. These are my thoughts -

Angostura bitters - this is the one bottle to always get, unless for some reason you really love Peychaud's more. But even I love Peychaud's more, and I still say go with Ango as #1. It's the Coca-Cola, the Heinz ketchup, the pepperoni pizza, the standard-setter and standard-bearer of bitters. Even though I like the medicinal quality of Peychaud's more than the spiciness of Angostura - I grew up drinking gentian-heavy Moxie! - I think that Angostura is a more balanced and more flexible product. You can use it in just about anything you'd use bitters in and other than in a Sazerac, it's never going to betray you. There's a reason there are half a dozen off-brand duplicates of it, an army of Pepsis.

Peychaud's - but Peychaud's is awesome. You can't make a Sazerac without them, and if you add them along with Angostura to any very simple drink - the classic spirit/sugar/bitters drinks - you get something much more complex. (Sometimes more complex than you want.)

Orange bitters - other than the first two this is really the only "classic bitters." Once in a while you see an old recipe calling for peach bitters, but very rarely, while orange bitters were common enough that they were used in Martinis. One reason for this is probably because citrus rind is so heavy in oil, and the oil has such a pronounced flavor, that orange bitters made with 19th century methods will have a more recognizable flavor than cherry, rhubarb, peach, or other fruit bitters made with those methods.

Anyway, the various brands of orange bitters are pretty different. I like Angostura Orange, but a lot of people don't. Regan's was the only thing available for a long time, and then Fee's was introduced. Of course, they're also the easiest to make at home, though this isn't the time of year for it.

Call those the Big Three. I would say that unless you develop a strong preference for a specific bitters, to the point that you're trying to build drinks around it, those are the three you'll use the most often. Grapefruit bitters might come next, or chocolate bitters - chocolate might not work with gin, I haven't tried it, but is surprisingly flexible by and large. Or maybe Dolfin and Dagoba have just conditioned me to accept any flavor combined with chocolate.

Most bitters are either going to be variants on the herbal/medicinal smorgasbord that is Angostura, or are going to have such a specific flavor that you'll only want to use it in a couple of drinks. Celery bitters definitely fall into that for me - I like them a lot but use them hardly at all, and if you just add a dash of them to some random drink, you aren't going to get the "oh that's kind of cool" transformative effect you can get from the Big Three.

That was shorter in my head.

good post. from my experiences of 'what do i do w/that plum bitters??' and you wanting to use gin, i'm sure any fruit flavor you like and a g&t will be cool. you'll only need a dash or 2 to transform your drink.

otm

2 stories i guess: last weekend decided to make real grenadine. had roses on the shelf, but wanted to see the diff. realized the best thing to do w/the roses to get rid of it was make shirley temples. got some 7up and the wife and i were in serious nostalgic heaven. made the grenadine from morganthaler's recipe with orange flower water and realized how amazing it tasted. made a few drinks (jack rose and el presidente), but wasn't too stoked on them. need to do some tweaking.

i went to TJ's today to pick up a lemon or 2 to make drinks w/tonight and noticed there were grapefruits and oranges in stock. said wtf, i've never really experimented w/the beachbum berry tiki drink iphone app i bought, tonight's the night. the most labor intensive and ingredients in a drink i've ever made. realized it's kinda hard to juice a grapefruit (and a rather large orange) if all you've got is a lemon juicer. realized i needed to cut everything in 1/8ths to fit. the first drink i found w/everything i had on stock was actually a punch. split the recipe in thirds.

Blood of the Kapu Tiki
1oz fresh lime juice
1oz fresh grapefruit juice
1oz fresh orange juice
1oz grenadine
1oz simple syrup
3oz rum
dash pernod (i used herbsaint)
dash angostura

swizzle with crushed ice until frost appears.

my first sip was ridiculously sweet and tart. it made me rethink the fact that i'd spent so much time on this kind of drink. but, luckily i'd just read two amazing articles* on ice and dilution and i realized that i didn't have either crushed ice or enough ice on hand (shitty freezer that doesn't have enough room for much of anything). so i added what ice i had on hand, a tiny bit of water and swizzled the shit out of this drink and gosh darnit, it's pretty fucking tasty.

* this essay on dilution of ice and drink making is so ridiculously nerdy and long, but so worth it.
http://www.painkillernyc.com/research
* this one's not as informative, but cool about how you can make diff sized ice at home
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703789104576273114034005624.html

nice! thrilled you decided to make some grenadine. jack roses are pretty hard to balance so keep trying.

re: ice--i do not regret spending 100 bucks on an electric ice crusher and if you have the kitchen space you should not either. barring that, a canvas bag and mallet will do the job as long as there are no close-by neighbors.

well, i think first maybe i need an electric ice maker. seriously our freezer is balls. it's bottom loading pull out and half of the space is taken by some ungodly contraption and weird sliding shelves in there. every time we need to take something out or put something new in, it's a crazy hour long puzzle of frustration. i've only got this tiny ice tray in there and if i know i have friends coming over, i have to start making ice a week or 2 in advance to throw in a ziploc.

Jack Roses are so frustrating because every time I make homemade grenadine, I feel like the sweet/tart balance is SLIGHTLY different from the last time, and it's really a drink where everything needs to be just right. I mean, you can make a daiquiri with all sorts of proportions and be pretty much fine, but a Jack Rose is more tattoo than tie-dye.

I have the same problems with Monkey Glands - I think I've had two excellent Monkey Glands. One is enough to let you know they're possible, two is enough to make you crave one later. But it's like there's no such thing as a good Monkey Gland, only excellent ones and mediocre ones.

xp ok that's weird! i will commence being thankful for my regular-ass freezer and ice trays.

well, i've never had a jack rose made for me, so i actually don't know what it's supposed to taste like. all i know is that the 2 i've made weren't very good. also, have no idea if the calvados we have is any good (Menorval Calvados Prestige). bought it years ago for some dessert, long before i started making drinks. website claims it's best for cooking, so that says something right there.

hmmmmmm that could be part of the prob. even the lairds 80 proof could be an improvement.

don't worry too much about what it's supposed to taste like--esp. with a drink with three ingredients, just go with your instincts/gut.

totally know what yr saying w/the water content of tiki drinks, my gf's a big fan so we make them quite often (and have too many types of rum) and i used to ignore it when some drinks said that you shld blend... this was a mistake, like you said, they were way too sweet. Also we got a cheap hand cranked ice crusher and its worked p well

And jaxon i thought the el presidente was really good! I used this recipe from rum dood which i think is a lil different from the traditional ratios -
1.5oz aged rum
0.75oz dry vermouth
0.25oz curacao
0.5tsp grenadine
Maybe worth giving a go

I know it's a cliche already to find the flaws in mint juleps, but I'm trying to enjoy one right now because the mint in the supermarket was the freshest-looking I've seen (in a supermarket), and it's just ... eh. I think that I really need a cocktail to have either a tart component or a significant bitters presence - I've always liked Manhattans or gin and tonics more than martinis, for instance, even before I knew anything about cocktails.

Okay yeah, I dumped some citrus in and it's great now - the mint just comes alive.

it just isn't hot enough out yet :)

Well there's that, too. I try to psych myself into thinking it's summer by drinking summer drinks even though I haven't even planted the garden yet.

Would a mint daiquiri work, maybe?

at that point u are basically in mojito territory--not a bad place to be

A bartender made me a champagne julep a few nights ago - holy wow.

niiiiice

still wondering what my next purchase will be. considering chartreuse, asked bartender to make me a Last Word. gonna be honest. wasn't totally felling it. wife got a Ninth Ward and it was pretty fantastic. making me rethink not wanting to get St Germain.

The Ninth Ward cocktail created by Brother Cleve

1-1/2 oz Bulleit Bourbon
1/2 oz St. Germain Elderflower Liqueur
3/4 oz Fee Brother's Falernum syrup
3/4 oz fresh lime juice
2 dahes of Peychaud's bitters

Shake on ice and strain into a cocktail glass.

and speaking of ward drinks. this is one i get regularly at the bar around the corner and have made a few times at home

Ward Eight
2 ounces rye whisky
3/4 ounce lemon juice
3/4 ounce orange juice
1 teaspoon grenadine

Has anyone tried Thatcher's elderflower liqueur? How does it compare to st germain? It's half the price at bevmo.

i've seen scattered positive comments online but never tried it.

went to the alameda flea market this weekend looking for cocktail glasses. found some that i'm pretty stoked on.

http://img546.imageshack.us/img546/5153/taill.jpg

made a Rattlesnake for the inaugural cocktail. love this drink.

The Rattlesnake

2 ounces Wild Turkey rye whiskey
1 ounce lemon juice
1/2 ounce Grade B maple syrup
2 dashes Peychaud's Bitters
1/2 ounce egg whites
-- Lemon twist, for garnish

shake once w/o ice to breakdown egg. shake again with ice to chill. strain

oh nice--i got a couple antique-looking glasses over the weekend from a friend who is cleaning out a house. they're actually a little big for cocktails but still v. nice looking.

that recipe reminds me of this which i love and had posted previously in this thread:

illuminations

1.5 oz. reposado tequila
1 oz. lemon juice
.75 oz. dry sherry
.5 oz. maple syrup
.5 oz. egg white

shake once w/o ice to breakdown egg.

yeah! The dry shake has helped cocktails immeasurably over the past few years.

so once i square off some of the work i have to do over the next couple of weeks i really want to start committing myself to cocktailism. first order of business is actually acquiring barware though - any recs on a good starter set? the oxo 7-piece set looks nice.

that set being: http://www.amazon.com/OXO-SteeL-7-Piece-Barware-Set/dp/B0001YH18O/ref=sr_1_7?s=home-garden&ie=UTF8&qid=1304439276&sr=1-7