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

Has Plymouth gin gone up in price for anyone else? It's gone up $5 since the last time I bought it in NH (six months ago maybe?) It's a good gin, it's a good cocktail gin, but it's not worth $12 more than Bombay, or even $5 more than Magellan.

In perusing the NH state liquor store price list, though, I also find that they list the Whistle Pig 10 year rye - which probably won't show up until Thanksgiving, they always order some premium ryes and bourbons for the holidays and once they're gone they're gone - and that they're stocking Clement Creole Shrubb again, my favorite orange liqueur. I've probably mentioned it before. It's not an orthodox substitution for Cointreau, since it's rhum agricole based, but man it works well.

ya, i go this for $2 at the asian market down the st

http://www.ambianceimpex.com/images/products/grocery/tamarind%20concentrate%2015-09-2009%203-31-11%20a.m.%20360x480.jpg

i also used it in that black daiquiri from upthread, but i think i need to dilute it a bit more. it's already pretty liquidy in the plastic container (as opposed to that block ^), but the drink was kinda thick.

hmm, i haven't checked plymouth recently but i will scout it out tomorrow at the store. i always thought it was a little pricey so an increase would not be good.

i've started to see whistlepig all over the place recently but someone is going to have to convince me that it's 20 bucks better than rendezvous, or 35 bucks better than the new jefferson's rye which i actually want to try, and which is in all likelihood the same juice as whistlepig.

Yeah, as it is Plymouth was already a few dollars more than it used to be - not sure if that was stores raising the price, or if Plymouth raised its price in response to being adopted by the cocktail revival. Between this and the price hike of Chartreuse (whenever that was), the cost of a Last Word has gone up a lot since I started making them.

Torn about the Whistlepig. It'll be a tight-budget time of year with the holidays, and I don't think I can justify more than one super-premium whiskey, which will probably be the 18 year Sazerac or a Thomas Handy

here's a jefferson's rye review--i've seen it for $35 and the major diff from whistlepig is 10 less (fewer?) proof.

http://www.whatdoesjohnknow.com/2011/08/05/review-jeffersons-straight-rye-whiskey/

a 10-year-old canadian 100% unmalted rye whiskey is going to be an idiosyncratic whiskey anyway, and i'm thinking i may enjoy a handy or a fresh sazerac 18 more in general.

bill, do you have any advice on securing items such as buffalo trace antique collection bottles when they're in stock in the new hampshire state liquor system? i will be working up there starting in oct. do you just have to show up and hope? will store managers get/hold things for you?

It's always just been a matter of lucking into it for me - I'll forget all about the expensive whiskeys coming in, and then I'll go into the store (the nearest one is just down the street from me and next to my local supermarket) and there they'll be on display. They've just replaced my store with a new renovated building, so I don't know what effect that'll have on the haphazard appearance of the seasonal displays - they would just sort of put them wherever they happened to fit, before.

That said, I *think* you can just ask the manager to get you a bottle of xyz, if you know it's something in the system. The state liquor store web page tells you how many bottles are at which store, so you may not even have to do that.

cool--didn't realize they put their inventory online to that level of detail.

here's another product question i need help with--anejo tequila for mixing? preferably under 40 bucks? not really a big tequila sipper but keep seeing cocktails that want an anejo.

last tequila that i got was Pueblo Viejo Reposado (~$20) and it's great. looks like they have an anjeo for around $30

anyone know how distinctive Smith & Cross (pot still, navy strength jamaican rum) is? i've seen it turn up in a few recipes recently. how important is using the particular country's rum a recipe calls for? i don't want to end up needing tons of diff rum bottles. thinking a light, a dark, an aged and maybe an overproof would be max you "need" unless you wanna be a rum dork.

i know you don't want this to be the answer, but i'm not aware of anything on the market that tastes or functions like smith and cross. maybe sea wynde? maybe those inner circle rums (i'm not even sure if they're around anymore).

my rum collection is way out of control, but i will re-buy smith and cross when i empty it.

It's definitely distinctive. In this case it's not just that it's Jamaican rum, it's that it's a specific style of rum that's heavier bodied, less "clean" and uber-distilled. If some 21st century Capn Bacardi Twizted Kiwi 2.0, clean as Polar Springs and perfect for mixing with your favorite diet seltzer, is one end of the rum spectrum, Smith and Cross is somewhere over on the other end. It's funky. Even though it's aged, it's got some of the funkiness that unaged spirits like cachaca and white whiskey have. It's still rum, but whatever the outlying distance in the rum category is, it's somewhere over there.

It's also high proof, which isn't part of the distinctiveness but is a factor when using it in cocktails - I've had to adjust things when using it instead of a different rum, so substituting for it would take a similar adjustment.

I don't like stocking a bunch of different bottles of the same type of spirit, which is the barrier to entry for Tiki drinks for me - I understand why that style of drinks needs half a dozen kinds of rum, because if you're painting all in blue, you need different shades. There's an art to it, and I've decided not to spend the money on that learning curve for now. My experience is that, outside of that school of cocktails, a rum drink will always work fine with a rum that you like - it may not be the same if you make it with a dark rum instead of a light, and you may have to adjust because of proof and sweetness differences, but it's still basically going to work.

Die-hard rummies may not agree, though.

jeff berry's rum guide from beachbum berry remixed sort of puts the tiki thing in perspective. he covers all the rums used in all the recipes, but you can sort of whittle it down to these:

amber martinique
dark jamaican
demerara 80 proof
demerara 151 proof
gold barbados
gold jamaican
gold puerto rican/gold virgin islands
white puerto rican/white virgin islands (these last two can safely be combined with a brand like cruzan or flor de cana)

hah strike at least one "sort of" pls

anyway, it's a lot, especially because most people will also want a good aged rum, and then there's smith & cross which is a more cocktail-focused rum, then there's cruzan blackstrap which is really cheap and fun, and then you're devoting a whole shelf to a spirit you like less than whiskey, and maybe only a little more than tequila or gin.

And to me whiskey has more variation. I mean, two whiskeys might not even have any ingredients in common, but even apart from that, I taste more difference between an unaged whiskey and a standard aged one than between any two rums I've had.

I guess the more important thing is I'm a lot more likely to have a glass of whiskey than a glass of rum, so it makes sense for me to have more whiskeys on hand.

I do want that book, though. And to go to a good Tiki bar where people who ARE that into rum can make me excellent drinks with it.

totally. i'm ok w/having a few bourbon & a few scotches & a few ryes on hand. drink them on their own fairly often, so can pinpoint subtle differences, but not sure putting this rum or that rum w/a few juices is really gonna make that much diff. i dunno. not enough experience w/them yet.

i was pretty hesitant to even get into rum or tiki drinks until recently. i thought they were totally corny, sweet drinks until i went to Smuggler's Cove. amazing amazing place. they have a club where you try each of their >200 rums and you get into some club and get a fez or something. i talked to a guy at the bar who was halfway through last time i was there. definitely some aspie qualities :-/

good tiki drinks shouldn't have any juices imo

The Tonga Hut in North Hollywood (oldest extant tiki bar in LA iirc) has a similar deal - I think if you drink all 100 or whatever of their cocktails you get discounts for the rest of your life + your name on a plaque in the bar

and the range of rums is pretty vast. any random scotch, bourbon and rye seem a lot closer together to me than a flavorless light rum, a really spicy dark rum, and something like a cachaca. although maybe the latter shouldn't be considered a rum.

my attempts at tiki drinks have been a mixed bag, at best. part of the problem is sort of a selection bias thing--like, i'm not going to intentionally fuck up the selection of rums in one of berry's recipes so that i can "appreciate" the correct recipe later. that makes it hard to figure out why so many different rums are called for, beyond an abstract understanding that they do in fact taste different.

that said, it's frustrating that the drinks that are really fiddly (calling for a dash of ango and a tsp of grenadine and 6 drops of pernod and exactly 6 oz. of crushed ice) don't taste more complex. maybe i'm just doing things wrong, idk. maybe i just don't like tiki drinks all that much! or maybe the original mai tai recipe is just impossible to top.

good tiki drinks shouldn't have any juices imo

― the wheelie king (wk), Thursday, August 18, 2011 12:01 AM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

huh?

wow, I'm drunk. that didnt' make sense did it?

lol not really!

is there a tiki drink without any fruit juices? haha

Tiki drinks should just be five kinds of rum in a glass served at room temp imo

I just hate places that think a mai tai has pineapple or orange juice in it

xp as someone who has been creating a spreadsheet of the perishable ingredients in berry's recipes, the answer is not really except for like 3 coffee/dairy drinks.

I got into drinking pernod because of that book. I picked one of the recipes out and bought a bottle of pernod, not realizing it only called for a dash. So then I just ended up drinking the pernod.

So I just attempted a drink that Stevie D likes called the Elder Sage, which is made by a vegan restaurant in Philly. I tried:

1.5 oz Hendricks gin
.75 oz St Germain
Dash grapefruit bitters
1 sage leaf, muddled

Stir with ice

Not bad, but would use less St G next time methinks

that said, it's frustrating that the drinks that are really fiddly (calling for a dash of ango and a tsp of grenadine and 6 drops of pernod and exactly 6 oz. of crushed ice) don't taste more complex. maybe i'm just doing things wrong, idk. maybe i just don't like tiki drinks all that much! or maybe the original mai tai recipe is just impossible to top.

― call all destroyer, Thursday, 18 August 2011 05:07 (3 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

^^ have been wondering this too

and the range of rums is pretty vast. any random scotch, bourbon and rye seem a lot closer together to me than a flavorless light rum, a really spicy dark rum, and something like a cachaca. although maybe the latter shouldn't be considered a rum.

I really think this is an individual palate thing - like, if you drink rums more often than I do, you pick up the differences I don't, and vice versa with whiskey. It's hard for me not to go further and say that whiskey is just "objectively" more diverse - I mean, single-malt Scotch and bourbon don't even have any ingredients in common, vs all rum being derived from sugarcane.

(Including cachaca as a rum definitely expands the distance, though.)

(What we need are some rum-like liquors made from other sugars - coconut syrup, maple syrup, pomegranate molasses, honey, date sugar - but distilled and diluted to the same level of cleanness as rum, not 170 proof firewaters.)

This weekend's cocktails are mostly going to be geared towards using up the last few fingerlimes in my fridge and the last cubes of frozen strawberry juice in my freezer - probably something Pimm's cup-ish and probably something with my barrel-aged gimlet - but I also have a four pack of Fentiman's tonic water to check out, found at a local farmstand of all places. (The supermarket carries the Fentiman's sodas, but not the tonic.)

Or milk sugar. I have a vodka made from milk sugar, but what if you treated it like a rum instead of a vodka, and left as much flavor in as possible?

So I just attempted a drink that Stevie D likes called the Elder Sage, which is made by a vegan restaurant in Philly. I tried:

1.5 oz Hendricks gin
.75 oz St Germain
Dash grapefruit bitters
1 sage leaf, muddled

Stir with ice

Not bad, but would use less St G next time methinks

― clams cassingle (donna rouge), Thursday, August 18, 2011 12:28 AM (9 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah i would approach this sort of like the alaska cocktail which is a good starting point for gin/liqueuer/bitters. more like 2 oz/half an ounce/2 dashes of bitters. i like st. g but it will just obliterate other flavors sometimes.

i totally agree w/ all of your claims about tiki drinks not being complex enough no matter how many things you add. i have found that i like tiki drinks w/bitters or absinthe or allspice dram added to them. more than just sweet/sour. i've been on the hunt for rum drinks that are pretty low in juice. here's one i saw that looked interesting, but i need to get punt e mes (is that swapable for sweet vermouth in other drinks? just ran out) and smith & cross.

Ashtray Heart
1 oz Smith & Cross Jamaican rum
1 oz dry vermouth
1 oz Punt e Mes vermouth

stir with ice and pour into mezcal coated glass

that's from beta cocktails! i think i posted about it upthread.

you can swap punt e mes for sweet vermouth most of the time but it's got a more pronounced flavor than most s.v.'s so you may want to adjust your base spirit up and your punt e mes down a bit in stuff like manhattans.

Crazy, I just read a bit more about that cocktail and the guy that created it tends bar 2 blocks from my house. I should go try one.

just found this website. super stoked to start exploring it. can search by name or ingredient. background on tons of liquors. can make lists of your faves. can add your own drinks. before this, i just added bookmarks to delicious. and searching on google, oftentimes w/o the greatest luck.

http://www.kindredcocktails.com/

i remade the elder sage tonight with the proportions you suggested, CAD - much better

made this last night. it's supposed to smell/taste like celery. i didn't totally get it, but the wife thought it might. either which way, it was pretty good.

Celery Sour

1 1⁄4 oz Gin
1 oz St. Germain
3⁄4 oz Lemon juice
1⁄4 oz Fernet Branca
1⁄4 oz Pastis, Herbsaint
2 ds Aromatic Bitters
1 Lemon peel (Garnish)

well i was in search of a drink before going out to dinner and lo and behold this popped up. maybe a little celery in the aroma but this is just too much pastis for me--would make again and reduce that shit to like a teaspoon.

this drink cheats in that it actually uses celery bitters (though i think it uncheats by using pineapple juice in this context) and is really good:

celeriac:

2 ounces London dry gin
¾ ounce pineapple juice
¾ ounce freshly squeezed lemon juice
½ ounce simple syrup
4 dashes Bitter Truth celery bitters
1 egg white

Ya, I went a lil easy on the herbsaint. Kinda reminded me of a more complex corpse reviver #2. I liked the floral notes of the st germain and the weirdness of the fernet.

I also tried someone's riff on a sazerac with equal parts herbsaint, peychaud's, rye & simple and it was pretty pointless. All I tasted was the herbsaint. Glad I made it only using 1/4oz of each.

tonight i made

Root of All Evil
2 oz Bourbon
3⁄4 oz Orange liqueur, Grand Marnier
1⁄2 oz Fernet Branca (i'd cut this to 1/4 tbh)
1⁄2 oz Maraschino Liqueur
2 ds Orange bitters, Regans' orange bitters
1 twst Orange peel (as garnish)

this is really good. herbal, aperitif style cocktail, even though it's pretty spirit heavy. this was the "his" cocktail to the next cocktail's "hers". fernet sorta took over and made everything pretty minty, but i def could see drinking this again w/less fernet.

Bourbon Crusta
2 oz Bourbon
1⁄2 oz Triple sec, Cointreau
1⁄2 oz Maraschino Liqueur
1⁄2 oz Lemon juice
2 ds Orange bitters

nice, sweet, agreeable, "girly" cocktail. in a good way. (i tend not to choose these, but i know what mrs jaxon is into)

Punky Monkey
3 pieces Cardamom (pods, muddled)
1 oz Añejo rum
1 oz Bourbon
1⁄2 oz simple syrup
1⁄2 oz Pineapple juice
1⁄2 oz Lemon juice
1 ds Angostura bitters
1 ds Peychaud's Bitters

and after i said that about the last drink, this one is weird and savory and really great and she's loving it.

anyone got recipes/pointers re sangria? late summer and i should really be making this.

i haven't made this but i would trust this guy to have a good basic recipe: http://www.jeffreymorgenthaler.com/2010/sangria/

I found this white sangria to be very good:

1 750 ml bottle of white wine
1 medium orange sliced into wedges
1 lemon sliced into wedges
1 fresh pineapple sliced and diced to your preference (may use canned pineapple, substitute two 15.5 oz cans of crushed or sliced pineapple)
1/4 cup of sugar
4 cups of ginger ale
3 shots of coconut rum
sprig of mint (optional)

Preparation:
Pour wine into a large pitcher and squeeze the juice wedges from the lemon and orange into the white wine. Toss in the fruit wedges (leaving out seeds if possible) and pineapple then add sugar. Chill overnight. Add ginger ale, rum and ice just before serving. If you'd like to serve right away, use chilled white wine and serve over lots of ice. However, remember that the best Sangrias are chilled around 24 hours in the frig. - allowing the flavors to really marinate into each other.

And I use a Spanish white from Rene Barbier called Mediteranean White, which I find for $4 - $5 dollars (Cost Plus/World Market).

Had a great time at jamie boudreau's new bar, canon last night.

First: roulette!
Pick your spirit, he does the rest.

I ended up with an old pal (rye, dry vermouth, campari) - perfectlt suited to my taste.

Second round: went for 'the vermouth experiment': a flight of rye manhattans made with dolin, punt e mes, and one other I for got that starts with a c.

I think I am now ready to buy my own bottle of dolin.

Camparo Antica