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

I had a Cayo Romano last week (light rum, dark rum, ginger liqueur, fresh orange, fresh lime, angostura bitters, allspice dram, nutmeg grated on top) and it was the best cocktail I've had in forever. The only thing I don't have in the house to make my own is the allspice dram, so I started a batch of that yesterday.

oooh that sounds delicious! I'm recently back from Dominica with some local rums; they are not exactly sipping straight stuff, so working them into a nice cocktail will be U&K. How was the drink served--rocks, up?

I'm obsessed with celery/gin and dill/gin cocktails right now. PLZ TO SUGGEST THINGS

xpost
Up. The one I had was tiny and gone too fast, but multiples weren't in the budget that night.

1 oz. dark aged rum
1 oz. silver rum
1 oz. ginger liqueur, such as Canton
3⁄4 oz. fresh lime juice
3⁄4 oz. fresh orange juice
1 dash allspice pimento dram (optional)
1 dash Angostura bitters
Freshly grated nutmeg and superfine sugar, to taste

No sugar in the one I had, I'm glad to say. Enough sweetness in the OJ and allspice dram.

Yeah I feel like most rum reads sweetish to me anyway, no need for additional sugar. I avoid ice in my dranks so up is the best answer, always.

I'm obsessed with celery/gin and dill/gin cocktails right now. PLZ TO SUGGEST THINGS

― kurt schwitterz, Thursday, December 22, 2016 4:01 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i remember this being fun:

celeriac
2 oz Gin
3/4 oz Pineapple Juice
3/4 oz Lemon Juice
1/2 oz 2:1 Simple Syrup
4 dash Celery Bitters
1 Egg White

xxp hell yeah WmC, that sounds great

i picked up the smuggler's cove book more b/c it was cheap on amazon and seemed like an interesting read than b/c i planned on starting to make more tiki drinks, but it's got some really good practical guidance. in addition to the very useful approach to categorizing rum, it's the first book i've read that strongly advocates for the use of a drink mixer/spindle blender as both the original and correct way to make donn and vic drinks. i picked one up for about 25 bucks and it opens a lot of doors that a conventional blender doesn't imo.

oh cool. i have the book and have made a few of the drinks, but i feel like i'm still kind of an amateur when it comes to tiki, and part of that's not having the right equipment. like, with any recipe that calls for crushed ice, i just use mini cubes. glad that you've found the drink mixer to be worthwhile!

also, the rum categorization is interesting, though some of it feels counterintuitive to me. like, it's odd that appleton estate signature blend is in the same category as plantation 3 year, even if both are technically "blended, lightly aged" rums.

the idea behind the system seems super-useful, though. i found rum cocktails (not just tiki) kind of hard to get into at first because i never knew how important it was to have the specific rum a recipe called for.

yeah i feel like that's what they're trying to get around. i'm with you in that some of the rums that share a category don't really seem related (i'd never confuse appleton reserve and el dorado 12), but i do think it gives the knowledgable amateur ammo to go the store and pick a solid mid-priced rum in each category.

disclaimer on crushed ice, i've had and used the waring pro ice crusher the book recommends for years and apparently it's been discontinued which really sucks. for me, sticking the drink mixer right next to the ice crusher lets me handle the whole ice and mixing portion of the recipe in about a minute, and the cleanup is a world away from washing out an entire blender container because you felt like making one or two drinks.

I've held off on all this stuff because I don't love rum enough to buy four different expensive bottles upfront before I make anything

but I do like it when other people make me tiki cocktails :)

i don't make many original recipes since there are lots of great people who are paid to develop cocktails but tonight i did this:

2 oz. spiced rum (chairman's)
.75 oz. tawny port (warre's otima)
.25 oz. coffee liqueur (galliano ristretto)
dash angostura

stir and strain, orange twist would be the right garnish but i didn't bother.

i'm always looking for stirred rum drinks and uh this is a stirred rum drink.

sounds good!

the drunken dodo in the death & co. book is a pretty solid stirred rum drink. i also like the negroni-like ashtray heart.

yeah i like the drunken dodo a lot

speaking of which, i made a rhum-agricole-based Manhattan riff last night, which was excellent.

i saw that on your instagram! been thinking for a while about rhum agricole's potential in stirred drinks given how delicate and complex it can be.

lactart in the house. functionally it's supposed to be the same as acid phosphate.

i was skeptical but it's pretty cool how a tiny amount of this stuff can lift drinks made with like an ounce of drambuie or drinks made with literally no other sour/bitter components.

i've been digging into the dead rabbit drinks manual, which beneath its facade of ridiculously fussy recipes and dry irish humor is one of the few original approaches to mixing drinks in existence. i'm not sure if jack mcgarry qualifies as a genius, but damned if he wasn't way the hell out there. reading the book today comes with a bittersweet tinge as he's a recovering alcoholic and doesn't work behind the bar anymore.

basically the book is a baroque take on the formative years of mixing drinks where herbal flavors are punched up with housemade tinctures, spirits are infused as often as not (usually with teas), and sweeteners are replaced with fruity cordials. the basic approach is why use lemon juice and plain sugar syrup if you can use lemon juice and lemony sugar syrup? similarly soda water is out because flavored soda exists. the result to my palate is drinks that are tighter and more unified than you'd expect given the ingredient lists. there's a lot of flavor bridging at work and i have no idea how he figured some of this stuff out.

anyone who's done some reading on classic cocktails has run into the lion's tail, a humble and random mix of bourbon, lime, and allspice. here's mcgarry's version (this is also one of the easiest 2 or 3 drinks to make in the book):

2 oz. bourbon
.75 oz. white creme de cacao
.25 oz. allspice dram
.25 oz. creme de poire
1 oz. lemon juice
.75 oz. orange juice
3 dashes aromatic bitters (dead rabbit orinoco or angostura)

shake and strain over a small ice cube, garnish with grated nutmeg (oh yeah everything has nutmeg).

it sold me and now i have a bottle of mace tincture and some lemon syrup in the fridge.

I've been playing a lot with the gin martini lately, varying from the gin, vermouth and bitters. Best I've come up with lately has been

2 St George Terroir
1 yzaguirre white vermouth
These Tasmanian pepperberry bitters in blanking on the name of
Thin shave of lemon rind

Herby and delicious, not dry in the slightest but I'm OK with that.

I haven't yet tried paring the St George with Maidenii vermouth - could be great or could tip over into medicinal.

Non-dry (what's the word? sweet?) vermouth-forward cocktails are basically my favourite drinks.

I'm looking more for 'balanced' than sweet but yes vermouth forward is great and it's great that one can lay one's hands on such a diversity of vermouth. .

more dead rabbit:

1.5 oz. cognac
1 oz. bonal gentiane
.5 oz. anisette
.25 oz. amaro sibilla
4 dashes aromatic bitters (dead rabbit/angostura/boker's/whatever you have)
lemon peel

without getting into nonsense superlatives this is an incredible recipe; if you can find the things to make it you should make it.

i have a bunch of oranges that have been peeled for garnish and a bottle of famous grouse that i don't really want so i'm amusing myself trying to fix the blood and sand, which famously consists of 4 sweetish ingredients without contrast. neutral cocktail acids (i have lactart) were pretty much invented for doing this, so now it's about fixndng proportions and moving the result from pleasant to interesting. tonight:

1.5 oz. famous grouse
.75 oz. oj
.5 oz. cherry heering
.5 oz. dolin rouge
1/2 tsp lactart

this is fine! doesn't suck at all. i think a vermouth with more character, or added bitters, plus a smidge more acid could really work well.

What not to do

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWeVRxR1qek

I present to you all tales of true disasters

https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/your-saddest-desperation-cocktails-ranked-1825899419

i once did blue gatorade powder and bacardi 151 and just enough water to make it actually stay a mix, needless to say it was a disaster and ended with me pulling a strange couch into my backyard

that’s a great article. i did some stupid shit but probably nothing as creative as any of those.

Yuck. Didn't they just recently rank two ingredient cocktails? Along those lines, I picked up Robert Simonson's 3-Ingredient Cocktails book. Some good stuff in there, some twists as well as old standards.

friend and i split a bottle of vodka and cherry kool aid once.

but worst drink was probably "turbo diesel"

Tennent's Super lager (9%)
Frosty Jack's Cider (7%)
Blackcurrant
Vodka

My dad used to make snakebite out of Tennents Super and Ice Dragon. Ice Dragon is one of the most revolting white ciders I've ever drank, although tbh all white ciders are pretty revolting. I used to favour "British fortified wine" i.e. sherry for bargain boozing. I think white cider is the most ABV/£ though.

Happy are the days when I can afford to get pissed on Polish lager instead of that shite

You can't beat a good old 4-pack of Tyskie

You can, you can have a 4-pack of Warka Strong, Okocim Mocne or Zubr!

I used to often see groups of Polish workers coming off the nightshift at the britvic factory and supping something looking quite strong at 6am. respect!

Xmas presents included Amy Stewart's great The Drunken Botanist and the Dead Rabbit Drinks Manual, and now all I want to do is make tinctures, cordials, liqueurs and such. I barely drink and the bar shelf in my pantry keeps crowding out actual food.

i've made several of the dead rabbit tinctures. the mace one is pretty cool.

I'm getting better at this! Still bad though, especially at stirring. Dilution is hard.

Last night I made a white negroni with 1.5oz gin, 1oz Dolin Blanc, 1oz Suze - promising for a first attempt, I'll keep tinkering with the proportions.

what kind of vessel and ice do u use for stirred?

my basic outline for stirring is: mixing glass chilled in freezer, cracked ice topped off with full cubes, stir for longer than you think.

i'm loving this dead rabbit sazerac variation using a split base of good brandy from spain and france (they name specific brands but i'll genericize the ingredients where i can):

1 oz. premium cognac
1 oz. long-aged spanish brandy
1 tsp pot-still or blackstrap rum
1 tsp simple syrup
1 tsp creme de cacao
1 dash aromatic bitters
4 dashes peychaud's bitters
oil and peel from two lemon coins

stir all that with ice and strain into an absinthe-rinsed glass

A trip to Manhattan in January inspired this marvelous purchase last Friday:

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41nl8vrpreL._SY445_.jpg

i just got a bottle of that stuff! i haven't figured out its full implications but as a big fan of floral/herbal modifiers it's really compelling.

At Dante the bartender added it to a Negroni. Yesterday it substituted for vermouth (a splash) in my martini -- marvelous.

it's definitely a natural partner for gin

What a coincidence, I was just messing with fresh bergamot tonight. Dehydrated the peel of 2 fruit and started a tincture on Everclear, and had a drink of 2 parts gin to 1 part fresh bergamot juice, with a bit of Aperol for sweetness. I have about 4 oz. of juice left to play with.

while this is bumped, anyone got some good recipes for pisco that isn't a pisco sour? I have a bottle of the Peruvian stuff (aged in glass, not oak like the Chilean version) and I am just not a sour fan.

Ha, Alfred, I love that you're into Italicus. I have a bottle myself. Great mixed with prosecco.

Actually, the main reason I have it is that as soon as it was introduced, my wife fell in love with the Art Deco bottle, and so that was an easy birthday present. To be honest, I'm still trying to figure out how best to use it, too.