Aw shucks, it’s like Sean Mike did this for me as well as Blair….

This week’s Thursday Drink Night at the Mixoloseum is working under the theme of Trader Tiki Syrups.
For those who aren’t familiar, TDN is a weekly internet chat open to everyone who want to come. Attendees take turns offering original drinks made with, or in the style of, the week’s theme. Everyone else runs off to their Basement Bars and whips up the recipes for themselves, and critiques the results.
In between drinks, the conversation spirals around general cocktail subjects and everyone’s experiences with Gabe’s Mom….

So help me look for original things to write about here by dropping in to the chat room on Thursday, Tiki Month 3rd, 2011.

I have talked before about Thursday Drink Night. TDN is the weekly gathering of dissolute internet drinkers in the chat room of the Mixoloseum, in which we discuss a weekly theme or theme ingredient. Well, mostly we talk about work, travel, and Gabe’s Mom, but we work in some stuff about the theme, too.
The featured element that holds every TDN together are the recipes. Anyone who wants to, can get in line and offer up original recipes that employ whatever the theme is that week. Some of these recipes are bad. Some use seven ingredients, six of which can only be obtained by cloistered cocktail monks living outside Portland, Oregon. But there are always a few that are pretty damn awesome.
A couple of TDNs ago, the theme was nice and generic: Gin. I had no idea that was what was in store when I dropped in, but as soon as I did, someone piped up with, Doug’s here! Get ready for the inevitable Pegu variant! Faced with a challenge like that, I exchanged insults pleasantries with a few folks and repaired to the Pegu Lounge to see what I could do.
I came up with a variant that ended up being pretty damn good. This, as with all my successes of an original nature, was pure blind luck, but there you are.

Of course, when you are starting from The Greatest Cocktail Evar™, it’s easy to make a good, simple variant. Nonetheless, lots of drinks are simple variants, so I stand by my momentary, accidental awesomeness. If you’d like to drop my the Mixoloseum’s blog and see the other picks of the litter, as well as those from TDN: Spiced Rum, check out this post.
There’s also a poll where you can express which recipe you think is best….
Ahem.
You know what to do.

The Liquor Fairy has struck again, this time bringing to my door a bottle of a most interesting spirit, Square One Botanical, from Square One Organic Spirits. I’ve hit this bottle pretty hard since it arrived, finding lots of great ways to use it. Which is a shame, since it’s not available in Ohio as of this writing (though Square One’s vodka and cucumber-infused vodka are).
I’ll start off by saying Square One gets a win with the bottle, with its crisp square shape, sparse labeling, and nifty indented logo. That’s it below, accompanied by a bowl of the botanicals that make it what it is.

I call it an interesting spirit since Square One Botanical doesn’t really fall into any standard category of liquor. It is most like a gin, since gin is a botanically infused neutral spirit. But any real gin has to have juniper out in front, and Botanical has none. For this product to become as big as it otherwise might, I think that Square One will need to come up with a category name more evocative than that contained in its full and complete name: Square One Botanical Organic Specialty Spirit.
As for what’s in Botanical, it’s all pictured in the bottle shot. You botanists can skip ahead, but for the rest of us, let’s have a list: Pear, Rose, Chamomile, Lemon Verbena, Lavender, Rosemary, Coriander, and Citrus Peel. The resulting spirit has much of the wonderful fragrant complexity of a good gin, while omitting the evergreen punch in the face that puts off many casual drinkers about gin.
All of what I’ve written so far, I gleaned from the materials that Square One sent along with with the bottle, combined with a little sipping and smelling. Since this blog isn’t about rewriting press-releases, I began all that experimenting I alluded to at the start of this review. Since this is at least a gin-like spirit, I of course tried it out in a Pegu. Frankly, I had my doubts as to how it would taste, and I wasn’t disappointed. As in, I wasn’t disappointed by the taste. In fact, this is a seriously delicious cocktail! It is not quite so bracing as a standard Pegu, but it is lighter and more food friendly. In fact, I like it so much, I’ll use the excuse to retype the recipe, for the umpteenth time, here:

Frankly, a success like this with a Pegu-like cocktail could have been enough for me, and the temptation was strong just to set this bottle on the featured shelf and enjoy. But the differences between gin Pegu and Botanical Pegu tweaked something in the back of my mind about another project that had been lying dormant in my bar’s project folder.
I routinely make affectionate fun of Cosmopolitans. I like them, but as a card-carrying cocktailian, I feel obligated to find a way to make them with a spirit other than vodka. The obvious solution is the gin-based Metropolitan. But I’ve tried more of those than I can count, and I’ve yet to encounter or concoct for myself a recipe that isn’t, well, mediocre. Essentially, using gin in a Cosmo is like inviting the brassy broad with the hideous, loud laugh to your party: She takes over things, and not for the better.
But hey now… Here we have a spirit that provides interest and character to a cocktail, yet is minus the in-your-face quality that makes gin so beloved and reviled. That brassy broad is actually pretty funny, you know, if she just didn’t have that laugh….
It only took me two tries to get a very delicious Cosmo With Character. I heartily recommend you try one of these.

THE METRO SQUARE

• 2 oz. Square One Botanical
• .75 oz. fresh squeezed lime juice
• .25 oz. Cointreau
• 1 oz. Ocean Spray Cranberry Juice Cocktail

Combine in a shaker with plenty of ice and shake well. Strain into a cocktail glass and garnish with a wheel of lime.

This is a more tart ratio than I use for a straight Cosmopolitan. You can shift the lime and Cointreau back to a half ounce each, but I don’t think it shows off the Square One Botanical’s contribution quite as well. Also, this recipe is balanced for Ocean Spray. If you use another brand, or straight cranberry juice, you’ll need to adjust that as well.
If you are interested in lots of other new ways to use Square One Botanical, I direct you first to the wrap-up of the October 8, TDN, which Square One sponsored. I could not make it myself, which is why you don’t see my Metro Square among the finalists, I’m sure. Square One’s website also has a wealth of recipes on offer. They also have lots of info on their other products, some nice pics, and a collection of Square Trivia(pdf), with stuff about Square Pegs, SpongeBob SquarePants, and Times Square.
I’ll leave you with my own Square trivia. My great, great uncle was a young American diplomat at the Moscow Consulate during the First World War. His bachelor pad overlooked a plaza in Moscow where a rather famous mass shooting took place, a plaza later to be known as Red Square. (He was forced to flee in the ensuing revolution, and was hidden by White Russian peasants for three months. They had nothing to feed him the entire time but brussels sprouts. Upon his eventual return home, his mother hosted a party in his honor at which she served what had always been his favorite food….)

The Liquor Fairy Was Here!
The following product, Square One Botanical, was recently provided to me as promotional consideration to encourage me to discuss it.
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.

I just wanted to mention that Beefeater 24 (reviewed here) is sponsoring this week’s Thursday Drink Night. I don’t usually do a post on TDN, leaving that to others….

Ha!
You don’t write up TDN because you aren’t there half the time!

I try to at least stop in each week. I’m sorry, but life’s responsibilities sometimes override liquor blogging.

Life’s responsibilities?
You go play Poker instead.

Well, Poker is more profitable.

Really?
How about last week?

Here’s the part of these conversations where I tell you to shut up.
At any rate, I haven’t done a real run down in this space on what TDN is, and why I like it. Also, I’d like to talk a bit more about Beefeater 24. I’m developing a bit of an agenda regarding this liquor, and if I can get you to attend TDN, that will further said agenda.

(Picture is the creation of the incomparable Dr. Bamboo.)

Thursday Drink Night is a weekly gathering of intelligent drunks cocktail enthusiasts in the chat room of the Mixosoleum. You are invited to attend. Further, you are invited to drop in to the bar any time. There is usually someone there looking to talk booze.
But on Thursdays, starting at 7PM US Eastern Time and going until the wee hours, you will find a serious crowd of people in there. Recently, the event has added a wrinkle in that a group of chatters will gather at some fabulous bar, in a city where I am not, and participate in front of a web cam. Regardless of where you are or how you participate, the point of the exercise is the same: One by one, participants will proffer up an original cocktail recipe for the rest to mix and try. A few insane souls will try as many as they can. Most of us mix the ones that look good to us, or at least the ones that we have the ingredients for. Certain participants whom I will not name are notorious for proffering cocktails that require things like Rosemary Thyme Syrup, or some damn liqueur from Mongolia made from clover and yak sweat. If you think that you have a well-stocked bar, come to a TDN. You’ll head out that weekend to Home Depot for more cabinetry, and the liquor store for more inventory.
Each TDN has a theme on which we concentrate. Last week, the revelers mixed up nothing but swizzles. I missed that one.

Your banker called.
He says you shouldn’t have.

Other weeks, like this one, we feature a particular brand of liquor or liqueur, and try to make all our drinks using at least some of that.
This week, we will be mixing with Beefeater 24, the new premium offering from London’s only remaining big time distiller of london dry gin. I just this week reviewed 24, but I mostly just wrote about the product, and how much I like it. Here I’d like to write about the roll out of 24, and how puzzled I am by how the owners of Beefeater, Pernod-Ricard, are going about introducing this gin to America.
24 will not be commercially available here until May 1, and then will only be found in New York and San Francisco! I assume that if it is as successful as it should be, we’ll see it spreading out across the country later in the year. I am not enthused about this, since I don’t get to New York or the Bay very often and I will eventually run out of the supply Beefeater sent me for review!

Attention people who entertain in New York or San Francisco!
Hire Doug for one on your parties so he can buy esoteric booze while he is in town.

Thanks. Awfully.
However, 24 should not be an esoteric booze. They have a winner product, backed by a giant multinational industry leader. I think that they are making a mistake by rolling this out as a boutique brand. They would get more commercial press notice with a national campaign, than they will with this restricted distribution that looks more like what you’d see from a new small-batch rum or something. In fact, were I a national editor, I’d actually give less coverage to 24 than to that small-batch rum, knowing which company produces it. Why would I do stories on a brand still essentially in a pre-release phase, when half my readers can’t get the product? I might do one about the rum, if it has a cool enough story. But I’d wait until the inevitable national roll-out to make a mention of a Pernod-Ricard product from one of their most recognizable brands.
Which means it is going to be hard for 24 to get easy traction. And in these hard times, if it doesn’t sell well out of the gate, some bean counter might delay its national distribution for quite a long while. New Yorkers and San Franciscans (both of whom like to say that they live in the City) annoy the rest of us enough already by getting to make our choices for us. Attention City dwellers, it is up to you guys to make this product become successful swiftly, so I can replenish my supply.
In the meantime, whether or not you have access to some 24 yourself, drop by TDN tonight. Try out the various gin drinks that will be offered. Enjoy the laser-like focus of the conversation. Watch as said focus rapidly devolves from laser to flickering oil lamp held by geriatric baboon. It’s fun.