“Making cocktails is a lot more like baking than it is like cooking.” I hear this all the time from bartenders, the point being that precise measurement is vital to making balanced drinks. A bit too much citrus, too little vermouth, and your finely crafted, expensive cocktail isn’t is as good as it should be. This is why we encourage bartenders and home mixologists to use a jigger. It’s more consistent and delivers better results than “free-pouring” as the bartending academies instruct.
-Jacob Grier

That is how one of my favorite bartenders and bar bloggers starts a new post today that challenges us all to really take drinks to the ultimate level of consistency and quality. Jacob notes that volumetric measurements are problematic, especially the very small measures used in such things as dashes. The solution that people who care about results use when baking is to use a scale.

Go read the whole thing at Jacob’s site. I will note that one reason for measuring the mass of ingredients instead of volume in baking has to do with the compressibility of powdered ingredients like flour. Now, I don’t have a lot of flour-based recipes in my repertoire, but I would not put it past some of our more creative artistes. And more to the point, the real problem in cocktails comes with the smallest of ingredient amounts, such as dashes or drops. If you can’t even count on one bottle of Angostura to the next delivering the same amount in a dash, imagine from one brand to the next. A high-quality digital scale is the answer to this issue!

I will note that the OXO scale shown in Jacob’s picture is not up to the task that he himself lays out for measuring such amounts as .666g of bitters, as it is accurate only to the whole gram. The PeguWife and I have a retired Olympic scale that was first used for weighing the shoes of beach volleyball players. It is sensitive to the thousandth of the gram, so it wasn’t precise enough for the outfits….

via FoxSports.

Since a scale like ours is in limited supply, I’d suggest something like this Ohaus Scout Pro Portable Scale for professional bars, as it appears to be robust enough to handle the rough, wet environment. It is a bit expensive, but only two ought to be enough for most any bar. For the home, I’d suggest something cheaper, like this American Weigh Gemini.

I’m excited by this whole new world of precision in my cocktails, and I expect to see scales in use all over on the next calendar year! It really isn’t that much more exacting effort to use this system. Let’s hope everyone starts expecting this, so the people who do will get exactly the drink they deserve.

Cheers, y’all.

A well stocked home bar is useful for more than just entertaining and mixing delicious social lubricants. Many of the bottles and jars you have in there contain substances with significant health benefits… beyond the increasingly well-documented benefits of simple moderate alcohol consumption, I mean. The saying goes, “A bartender is just a pharmacist with a limited inventory.” To this, I can only say, “whose inventory is limited Kemo Sahbee? Does your Walgreens have Four Roses Small Batch or Old Raj gin behind the counter?” I didn’t think so.

(Somewhat) more seriously, many of the really cool additives and ingredients that are the hallmarks of great drinks came to us first from pharmacists or their historical antecedents, herbalists or even shamans. And just because they are currently nestled on a shelf next to that bottle of Jåger you don’t admit you own, doesn’t mean they have lost any of the health benefits they possessed before becoming a part of our toolkit.

This post is about three of those ingredients, and is prompted by the convergence of some recent symptoms of my own and some chance reading I did recently.
(more…)

Photo stolen from Kitchen Riffs, since my attempt at similar composition stank in comparison.

Gee, what is it about today that has me writing about this particular cocktail?

Well, first, I’d like to offer this up as a little homage and thank you to the long-suffering folks at Windham Brannon who labor each year to do my taxes, whilst I labor to retain my title as Most Needlessly Difficult Client™. (How am I doing this year, Mary Beth?)

Second, I’ve been having a few of these recently anyway, triggered in the experimenting by Rowan’s Bronxathon at Fogged In Lounge.
As Rowan detailed in all 17 posts, the Bronx (a hybrid sour and aromatic cocktail) is a practically infinitely variable drink. But among the very best modifications is the “Bronx Wit’ Bitters”, a.k.a. The Income Tax. I can’t decide whether it is one of the most or least appropriately named cocktails around.

I’d say it’s pretty appropriately named!
My Tax Days are usually bitter.

Yes, though mine wasn’t too bad this year. Unfortunately, one of the earliest aphorisms I coined was, “A bad April 15th means it’s been a pretty good year.” I’m afraid I’m not alone in having a “good” Tax Day in 2011.
Alternatively, it is inappropriately named because the damn thing is delicious. Frankly, I think the name is the main reason a drink this interesting and accessible never really returned to popularity after the end of Prohibition.

The other reason I wanted to write about The Income Tax is that it is a wonderful illustration of the power of bitters. A basic Bronx does very little for me as a drink. It’s muddled, inassertive, and just a bit dull. Just two dashes of Angostura takes that same drink and wakes up each and every flavor therein, without really imparting any actual, you know, bitterness. It’s lovely. Try one after you let the mail chute close behind your envelope this year.

As a final note, I’m not sure which is more important to be fresh in this drink, the vermouths or the OJ. Play it same and make sure all three are.

56? Really?
This little Blog Carnival of Cocktails might just catch on.
This installment of Mixology Monday is hosted by Turntable Boy, aka DJ Hawaiian Shirt of Spirited Remix. Chris (yes, he’s got a lot of names) has a nifty original idea for a theme this month: Your Best. He asks all cocktail bloggers and sundry to post (or repost) our favorite original cocktail.

So what original concoction am I most proud of? For many of the prolifically creative out there, this question may be hard to answer, but not me. First, I don’t create that many drinks at all, and second, I don’t pretend to be that good at it.
That said, I have made a few that I’m proud of, but one stands out head and shoulders above the rest. I came up with it more than two years ago and since then the only cocktail I have made more of than it is… well, you know.

This month, I (re)offer: The Blue Beetle #2.
The name was stolen from Jacob Grier, whose Blue Beetle is also nice but not at all like my #2. (I was on a Corpse Reviver kick when this drink was created, thus the naming convention.) Here’s the main recipe:

Once you’ve got the blueberry syrup done (see below) this drink is dead easy to make, it has a striking blue-purple color, and most importantly, a fresh flavor and aroma that appeals to all sorts of drinkers. It is particularly effective as a gateway drug for gin. The Blue Beetle #2 damps down the pungency of gin, while still allowing its underlying complexities to make themselves evident. A gin drinker will identify this as a gin drink right off. But a gin skeptic will likely just say, “Wow! That’s good!”
I recommended Whitley Neill since there is something in its African botanicals that marry really well in this drink. But any good dry gin will do well. I do recommend that you stay away from really heavy juniper formulations, and don’t think the recipe’s magical gin-softening powers will let you get away with the cheap stuff either!

The only tough thing about the BB#2 is the blueberry simple syrup. It’s actually easy to make, but a bear to clean up after. I use the recipe Alton Brown gives in his blueberry soda episode of…

You sure do use a lot of my stuff here on this blog, don’t you Doug?

Well, yeah. There’s lots to use.

Of course.
You know, with some good humor, a little culinary know-how, and the right blueberries, a fun little syrup like this can be…

…

What, you’re going to leave me hanging here?

Oh no. I praise you. I link your recipe. Promo your show, Good Eats, yourself.

Ha!
Gotcha!

Damn.
Anyway, here’s the recipe:

I’ll leave you with a last note about the blueberries. They don’t have to be fresh, but they do need to be flavorful. Dole sells American wild blueberries frozen in 12 oz. bags that are much better for this syrup than all the big, beautiful, flavorless Chilean blueberries that you find in the store most of the year. Put those on your Frosted Flakes.

So that’s it. The Blue Beetle #2 is my best. I hope you give it a try. Now swing back to Spirited Remix and give some others’ a whirl as well!
Cheers!

Bitters are shown to stimulate the appetite. Hmmm. This could explain why my pants don’t fit….

Jacob Grier talks bitters in Old-Fashioneds and beyond. Hey, Jacob, you missed a rather important bitters drink….

My daughters’ school just had a three-day weekend and we took the opportunity to head up to Detroit. Maggi had some things to do, but our main aim was to spend a few days at The Henry Ford museum.
I had about given up on finding any interesting watering holes in Detroit to write about here. A few years of blegs, tweets, and FaceBook requests for a top notch craft bar in that city have been met with bewildered silence, so I’m forced to conclude it is a cocktail wasteland. (I look forward to your letters. No, really I do. Prove me wrong… please!) So I was certainly not expecting to get any blog material on this trip.
Instead, I find an unique and extraordinary working cocktail bar than should fascinate any drink geek who enters.
And I found it in a museum.

I’ve got to take a paragraph or two to explain what The Henry Ford is first, because it helps explain the Eagle Tavern, and because the place is just so awesome in general. If you don’t want to read about it, just skip down to the next break where I’ll pick up again with the drinkie thingie.
The Henry Ford bills itself as “America’s greatest history attraction”. I’m sure a number of folks who work in the legacy of James Smithson would beg to differ, but having spent a good deal of time in both Washington, DC and Detroit in the last few years, I think the Ford folks have at least a good case. Sure, the Smithsonian has the Star Spangled Banner and the Spirit of St. Louis, but do they have an exhibit that makes 60 real trucks every hour while you watch? OK, that “exhibit” is really the Dearborn Truck Assembly Plant in the Rouge Factory Complex. But the tour and exhibits there are a major feature of The Henry Ford and are more than worth your time and dime.
The primary element of The Henry Ford is its main museum, which contains in its massive, multi-day-sized confines at least one each of pretty much everything from the entire Industrial Revolution. There are hundreds of planes, trains, and of course automobiles. There are pre-Victorian steam engines, farm machinery, one of Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion Houses, and the Oscar Meyer Wienermobile. The section called With Liberty and Justice for All reminds us that the entire American experience has been the story of realizing and protecting civil rights. Among the exhibits that will give you goosebumps here are the very chair from Ford’s Theater (no relation) in which Lincoln was shot, and the bus on which Rosa Parks (refused to) make her stand.
The third major element to the Henry Ford is Greenfield Village. This outdoor “village” consists of Henry Ford’s personal collection of, well, history. Ford bought and moved here many of the actual building in which the modern world was created by him and his friends. You’ll see his home as well as the first Ford factory, just a few paces away from Edison’s Menlo Park laboratory, which is around the corner from the Wright Brothers’ bicycle shop. If your feet get tired of walking around to see all this history, you can take a ride in one of many Model Ts that cruise the streets.
The element that most pleases me about The Henry Ford as a whole is the underlying message. What is demonstrated here unequivocally is the unmatched power of private industry to advance and better the world for mankind. And yes, the irony that this message has its home in the city that most clearly exemplifies what happens when management, labor, and government all decide to start treating industry like an ATM instead of a mighty enterprise is not lost on me.

Anyway, among the buildings in Greenfield Village is the Eagle Tavern, an 1831 stagecoach roadhouse moved here from Clinton, MI. This working restaurant is set up in the communal style common to the era, and the food is straight out of that time as well. You can get your fill of Pork & Apple pie, Bubble & Squeak, or Salmagundi. In this writer’s humble opinion, those were dark days if indeed people had to eat as much cauliflower as is on offer here….
As we sat down for lunch, I was surprised to see a drinks menu. And shocked to see what was on it.

The world is filled with many old school cocktail bars. We currently enjoy a wealth of cocktail bars dedicated to classic cocktails. But I doubt that you’ll find another whose menu consists of nothing but Cobblers, Cock-tails, Punches, and Juleps. Nor will you find one where the only regular wine on offer is claret, but they serve hock by the bottle. In the time period represented by the Eagle Tavern, a venerable Manhattan would have seemed as futuristic an offering as something from Quark’s Bar on Deep Space Nine.
Beers are served in ceramic mugs, while all drinks come in the same plain, low, glass tumblers. The only garnish to be seen are long, straight tubes of uncooked ziti (I think) for swizzles and/or straws.

The bar itself has no seating, though there are a few tables in the room for patrons who choose to eat there, instead of the main tavern room. The decor is sparse, as you can see above, and gets only sparser out of the frame. It makes a clean, elegant joint like Pegu Club look like a TGI Fridays. (My girls had the camera, so this image stolen from Flickr) As with everything else in Greenfield Village, a great deal of effort has been put into making this place appear as authentic as possible. The only things present that shouldn’t be are women in the bar, and the only thing absent that shouldn’t be is a pervasive, choking cloud of tobacco smoke.
Before the railroad siphoned off much of the Eagle Tavern’s transient traffic in its original location, owner Calvin Wood must have prepared a vast number of Cobblers, Cock-tails, etc. of all types behind this bar. As the menu notes, the period reconstructed here was the peak of American alcohol consumption, which resulted in the birth of the Temperance movement.

So, just how are these vintage drinks? Eh, they’re decent actually. But there is a reason you just don’t see dudes kicking back after work with a good Cobbler these days… like most everything else, we’ve gotten better at making drinks than we used to be. One of the best ways that they illustrate progress at The Henry Ford is by so vividly depicting what things were like before said progress. It’s one thing to go into a museum display of an empty bar and look at a period menu on the wall. It is altogether something more to lean over that bar and ask a living bartender to mix you a liquid time machine. For the casual observer, it is a lasting lesson that there haven’t always been vodka tonics. For the cocktail geek, it’s your imagination come to life, making you both appreciate the history of hooch, and how good we drinkers have it today.

Now, I should say that there is considerable “stage magic” at play here. The preparation of these vintage drinks is anything but historically accurate. They make and use a vast amount of simple syrup to shortcut the preparation, which I doubt was much employed in 1847. What they call on the menu “Holland Gin” is actually London Dry. (Attention Jacob Grier, next time you are in Michigan, head down to Greenfield Village and do your Brand Ambassador thing!) They carefully hide a soda gun in a side closet for making sparkling “Temperance Drinks”. There’s lots of ice.
Even the “applejack” they use, isn’t. It’s Laird’s good 7 1/2 year old apple brandy, not that I complained. And not that Laird’s Applejack is really true applejack either. True applejack is made by “jacking”, or freeze-distilling. With an apple orchard in Greenfield Village, I think they ought to set up a demonstration of real applejacking during the annual Christmas Festival. I can attest that it is certainly cold enough then. I think people would be fascinated, but perhaps it would be illegal.

They do have one problem that I’ll call them out for, that both undermines the accuracy and quality of the drinks in the Eagle Tavern. Sometime not too recently, they ran out of bitters. (Perhaps the Bitterlypse struck?) Regardless, the drinks they are producing right now are missing this historically and mixologically essential ingredient. I snuck a peek at the recipes they use, and they call for bitters in all the right places. They just don’t have the bottle behind the bar. Remember guys, the right amount of bitters don’t make a drink bitter, they make it better, more flavorful. They need to get the bitters back.

Regardless, the Eagle Tavern is a drinking experience for anyone with a taste for cocktails and an inquiring mind, and is simply not to be missed for the serious student of drink.

Brown, Bitter, and Stirred. That is this month’s invocation for Mixology Monday, hosted this round by Lindsey Johnson of Lush Life Productions at her blog, er, Brown Bitter and Stirred. At first glance, it is almost too easy. The phrase itself is practically a recipe for the first cocktail, and three mighty elders of classic cocktaildom leap immediately to mind: The Sazerac, the Old-Fashioned, and the mighty Gospel of Whiskey, the Manhattan. But the challenge with Mixology Monday for me is to offer something that may be a twist for at least some readers who stumble into this blog binge.
I’m going to discuss an Old Fashioned. Specifically, I’m going to offer up the much lesser known Rum Old Fashioned. Like Sours and Rickeys, Old Fashioneds are actually a class of cocktail. While a single spirit is best known as the base, a mixer can open up new worlds just by substituting another. The method of preparation is the same.
I’ll start right off with my recipe for an Old Fashioned. It is not the recipe for an Old Fashioned, which is too damn time-consuming to use for everyday work. Nor is it (thankfully) any of the other recipes for an Old Fashioned.
For the nonce, I’ll just say spirit. You can use most base liquors here, but it works best with certain brown ones like Bourbon, Rye, and Aged Rum.

I use simple syrup instead of the sugar cube in the recipe because I have things to do. I don’t use wads of citrus or cherries because this ain’t no fern bar beverage.

I recently made some disparaging remarks about ice geekery, but the quality and nature of the ice you use in an Old Fashioned has a greater effect on the experience of drinking it than with most any other cocktail I regularly drink. Old Fashioneds are sipping drinks, meant to be savored slowly, while thinking deep thoughts on matters of importance. Yet, they taste best cold. That’s why you serve them on the rocks, rather than up. But they also suffer greatly with dilution. The Old Fashioned is a potent potion, and if you let it get all watery, you go from Don Draper to Dwight Schrute.
This is why I stir the drink first, then strain. This gets the drink good and cold to start. Then I use the largest ice I have available in the drink when I serve it. The large ice will keep things cold, but does not melt with anything like the speed of smaller pieces and their vastly increased surface area. Clover Club takes this to an art form, but I’m pretty happy with what I do.

Hey!
That’s a cocktail glass!

Yes. Yes it is. Your point?

Well, there is a different kind of glass that people usually use. It’s got a funny name… Whatchacallit… Oh yeah, an Old Fashioned Glass!
What is wrong with you?

More things than I’ve got space for here….
I just think that the ice ball looks better in a cocktail glass than the traditional low ball. And I’m an iconoclast.

Lastly, let’s talk about the spirit that makes this drink different from the regular Old Fashioneds that I more often make. Old Fashioneds are obviously going to be very sensitive to the quality of the liquor you use, since that liquor is almost the entire drink. Less expensive rums that may be just fine in more complex cocktails will be a waste of time, money, and liver in a Rum Old Fashioned. And many top shelf rums have the wrong profile to be really happy in the drink either. I prefer a rich, mellow rum on the sweeter side in an Old Fashioned.
I’ll make a suggestion here of Zaya Gran Reserva rum. I do so for two reasons: The Liquor Fairy sent me a bottle recently, so I’ve been experimenting with it; And since I first tried it in a Rum Old Fashioned, I’ve been hoarding the remaining amount solely for this use. (As is so often the case with really good stuff, it isn’t available locally in Ohio. Sigh.)
Zaya is a blackstrap rum from Trinidad. It is a luscious dark color, with a viscous consistency, and redolent aromas. It is a lot of fun in Tiki drinks, but it is so rich on its own that I think it best reserved for drinks like this one instead. The makers are positioning it as a sipper as well. RumDood points out that the connoisseurs may be split on how this rum ranks. I think that that is a good sign of interesting character in a product. I also like to see this since it means the stuff isn’t likely to cost twice as much next year….

Regardless of the rum you use, the Rum Old Fashioned is a markedly different drink from the more common whiskey variety. It is a happier and less introspective drink in general, though it will still do the job when deep thoughts must be thunk. Now, go back to Lindsey’s place for more Brown, Bitter and Stirred! Thanks for dropping by, and don’t be a stranger.

Rachel Maddow makes some good cocktails and discusses the Bitterlypse. In other news, upon Doug linking Rachel Freaking Maddow, Hell promptly freezes over….

Recently, the Liquor Fairy brought a nice selection of sakes from Saké One, an American maker of premium rice wine. It was a package that had me feeling psyched, but a little scared as well. See, my experience with saké has heretofore been mainly consuming little ceramic jugs of hot plonk while getting my eyebrows singed off at my girls’ favorite kind of restaurant….

NOT Smith & Wollensky….

So, though I’m no expert on Saké, I now have to write about it. But cocktails are a journey, and journeys are boring if you always go to places you’ve been before. I put the bottles on the top shelf of my wine fridge to give them the slightest chill, and the experimenting began.
The first bottle I tried was Saké One’s Momokawa Organic Junmai Ginjo (their filtered, basic saké, if you will). I started out sipping a glass to get the feel of it.
Yeah, about that. Three days, and I had sipped it all.
I checked myself, and determined that I would work try the unfiltered Momokawa Organic Nigori only for mixing, and see if I could produce something on my own worth drinking, before resorting to the recipes in Japanese Cocktails.
I’m rather pleased with myself that my instincts were good, and I had produced something pretty damn good, and less than halfway into the bottle!
Behold:

This is a very light drink, but the flavors marry well. The essential astringent sharpness of the saké remains intact, with some nice exotic sweetness from the cider for fun. This drink is a great illustration of how bitters work to improve a drink. You can’t taste them in the drink at all, but if you don’t put them in, you can darn sure taste their absence! Make sure you bruise the mint pretty well, as its aroma is important.
The Cranesblood is not really a Tiki drink, but it would be a nice, evening extending, intermezzo between Zombies.
If you want to make your own hibiscus cider, here’s a recipe at Food & Wine. The commercial stuff I use is Five Star Foodies Hibiscus Cider, which I find at Whole Foods.
I also have a simple variant, if the Cranesblood is too mild for you. Simply add an ounce of shōchū (or three-quarters of vodka) to kick it up a bit. This version gives the drink a more standard cocktail kick, but loses some of the delicate softness of my preferred original.

The Liquor Fairy Was Here!
The following products, Saké One Momokawa Sakés, were recently provided to me as promotional consideration to encourage me to discuss them.
For a complete disclosure of my policies regarding promotional items and all other financial interests, please click this link, or follow the Liquor Fairy link in the header of this page.