Whew.

I was this close to writing another of my FAIL posts about how Mixology Monday has come again, and all my experiments yielded crap. It’s happened before. Also, it’s come close before as well. Well, it seemed to be happening again this time for real, in a big time way. Everything I had on tap just stank.

The Mixology Monday theme this month is a fabulous one. One that I’ve been looking forward to since Rumdood announced it: Ginger.

I wasted a lot of my precious supply of Canton Ginger Liqueur on several failed drinks. That sucked on several levels.

I tried making some cool dried ginger garnishes with a funky homemade drying rig idea that I stole from Alton Brown. They looked so awful, I trashed them.

My best idea, in keeping with my current exploration of Old Fashioneds, was to try a Ginger Old Fashioned. It suffered the worst fate of all: It was boring.

So I gave up. Another MxMo missed, I said, and decided to work on another post for later. I went back to the lab to work with my bottle of Bols Genever that I was sent for review. That’s when the Watson come here, I need you! moment came.

I intend to do a full review and discussion of genever and Bols in particular soon, but since they saved my MxMo, I’ll do a bit of my best thoughts here and now. Genever is one of those sadly almost forgotten spirits that our cocktail renaissance is allowing to emerge from the shadows of history. Commonly called Dutch Gin… genever ain’t gin. It is the precursor to the London Dry Gin so many love (or loathe) today, but while it is also a gin infused white spirit, it has an unmistakably different flavor and especially aroma. The reason I haven’t written my full review on this fascinating spirit is that I’m still searching for the right words to describe the difference between it and gin. I’m a wordy bastard though, so I’ll get it soon enough.

In the meantime, I have found the drink that I’ll be featuring when I do get to the review: The John Collins, which is a Tom Collins made with genever.

So I rolled down to the basement in a failed MxMo funk to make a John Collins and try to find those words I needed. I was halfway into it when I discovered that I had a problem. I rather contemptuously kicked around soda and seltzer water in a recent post, and the fizzy water gods were angry. I had no bubbly water on hand! I was even out of cartridges for my seltzer bottle!

Words failed me. Well, actually they didn’t. I won’t relate the word I used repeatedly, but you should be able to guess from the suggestion that my word choice was a bit scatological.

Then I looked around in frustration and my eyes were drawn to the word ginger! I recently bought a new six of Reed’s Extra Ginger Brew, to replace the bottles I received from the sample fairy. (This reminds me I need to review that stuff too! I’m so behind.)

I had no carbonation for my drink. I was still steamed at not finding a use for ginger. I was thirsty. This is what we in the fiction writing business call a coming together moment.

THE ANTOINE COLLINS

• 2 oz. Bols Genever
• 1 oz. fresh lemon juice
• 1/4 oz. simple syrup
• Reed’s Jamaican Style Ginger Beer

Mix genever, juice, and syrup in a tall glass. Add ice and fill with ginger beer. Garnish with a broad strip of lemon peel.

I was fully prepared for it to suck. To be swamp water. In short, for it to top off my weekend nicely.

But, it’s good. It is refreshing, spicy, and tart. It shows off the unique qualities of the Bols Genever in a gentle way. It leaves your mouth clean and tingly like ginger does. It makes me smile.

Try it, you’ll like it too.

Now go back to Rumdood’s for the rest of this month’s MxMo ginger proceedings. You’ll be glad you did!

Well, I missed MxMo XXXIX this month, as I have all too often recently. Sigh.
Chuck Taggart’s roundup is now posted at Looka!, so go take a gander. Hard as it is to imagine, a MxMo without me somehow manages to scrape by in its usual, thoroughly fascinating way.
The subject, by the way, is Amaro. It is a class of bitter digestifs. Those who like them, swear by them.

This month’s Mixology Monday, hosted by the fabulous broads at LUPEC Boston, asks a question that is of genuine importance: Given someone who has never had a cocktail before (tragic, I know), what would you offer them as their first? You never get a second chance at a first impression, after all.

Let me guess.
You suggest a Pegu!

No. No I don’t, Ms. Smarty-Pants. And for all you who know me and were waiting for me to suggest the One True Cocktail, don’t be silly. For the gin-virgin cocktail drinker, I absolutely suggest the Pegu as a perfect gateway, but that’s another question.
What’s at stake here? You don’t want to offer something so bland or sweet as to leave them with the impression that cocktails are just another form of Mike’s Hard Lemonade, one you have to mix yourself. You want to give them an idea of the depth and sophistication there is to be had in the cocktail world, thus we’ll discard such offerings as White Russians or Strawberry Daiquiris.
On the other hand, let’s be honest. A lot of the favorite drinks we love around here in the cocktailosphere are a bit… sophisticated for a first time drinker. Just as you wouldn’t take someone to King Lear for their first play, you aren’t going to want to spring a Corpse Reviver #2, a Negroni, an Aviation, or even a Pegu on a neophyte.
Let’s answer three basic questions about what our entry level drug should be like.
I’ll start with the base spirit. I’d stay away from gin or whatever variety of whisk(e)y. These may be the kings of booze, providing the most depth and interest, but they have strong flavors what are all, to one extent or another, acquired tastes. Likewise, I’d avoid any specialty liquors, such as tequila, pisco, cachaça, ouzo, etc. That leaves us with vodka and rum. In fact, the case could be made that the best of all possible introductory cocktails would be either a well-made Cuba Libré, or a similarly executed Screwdriver. But either of those would would be too easy for for a MxMo post, and besides, I’d want someone’s first cocktail to be served in a cocktail glass, not a highball. I’m going to go with vodka because it has the fewest negative connotations (to the non-connoisseur), and because it is the blankest of slates.
The next thing is the personality of the drink. Attitude is the core of cocktails and the cocktail mindset, folks. A first cocktail should be evocative for the drinker. It should be publicly cool, and secretly a little silly. Most of all, the neophyte needs a decent chance of having always wanted one of those. So my advice is to go with a well-known, iconic drink. This eliminates otherwise excellent possibilities like the Moscow Mule.
Lastly, is our hypothetical drinker a man or a woman? This last is obviously not about the drink, but the drinker. And yes, it lets me cheat LUPEC’s question by offering two answers. Sue me. It also gives me a chance to get on my old, familiar hobby horse about Broads versus Chicks. The differences are myriad, but for this post, I’ll focus on broads as women who are more robust in their tastes. A chick given a binary choice will always hew to the option perceived as more feminine. A broad will choose based on her personal taste. There is a similar dichotomy with men, but for once it’s more complex than for women. It’s also less likely to come into play here so I’ll save you the time right now.

Thank you, Dr. Doug.
Where’d you get your degree again?

Shut up. The point is to offer two choices, both vodka-based, both well-known to Americans (at least) of all drinking types, one appealing to the bright and lively, the other to the darkly cool. When made properly, both are darn fine drinks. Neither is terribly complex, but both give a hint of the magic mixology can produce. And both will provide a lesson in the importance of skill and quality ingredients in making cocktails; said lesson will be learned later, the first time your new cocktailian orders one of these at an airport bar….

OK, get on with it.
I’m thirsty.

Oh, very well. The offerings shall be: The Vodka Martini and the Cosmopolitan.
Appeal to the guys, and the brassier of broads, with the old-school James Bond cocktail.

Appeal to the chicks, and your most beta of males, with Carrie’s concoction.

Whichever you make for your neophyte, make the same for yourself. Then, for the second round, make them the same, but make yourself a more advanced product like a Pegu, a Manhattan or even a Pisco Sour. Watch their face as they eye your drink and start to get an idea of the vastly greater variety hereabouts than in the world of Bud versus Guinness….

This month’s MxMo is being hosted by the Scribe, over at A Mixed Dram. His theme this month is Broaden Your Horizons. The idea is that we must write about something new to us in the cocktail world. Something we haven’t tried before. He specifically calls out Morganthaler, daring him to find some way to participate. My money’s on Jeff, but keep an eye out to see if he can find anything in the cocktail world he hasn’t done. Maybe he’ll drink a Budweiser….
As for me, well let’s see… I have to do something new… I know!
I’ll mix up a Pegu!
Seriously. For months, I have wanted to try out a Molecular Pegu. Specifically, I want to try the neat trick of spherification, wherein your liquid (played here by the mighty Pegu) is transformed into a mound of tiny spheres, solid on the outside and liquid in the center. You end up with the look and texture of large caliber caviar.
I had hoped to present a clean, concise layout of how to do this. I failed. Oh, I got Pegu Caviar, but the process is difficult, complicated, and not simple. In short, it is some serious chemistry, and Doug never took any chemistry at all. It is still fun, and I will keep working at it. The upshot is, this post will only be an outline, with most of the recommendations being things to avoid.
Here is the basic process for this kind of spherification: You take your liquid, which can be lots of things from pure water to fruit purée, and add sodium alginate and perhaps some sodium citrate (This perhaps is one of those things that straight answers for are difficult to ascertain). You spoon or drip this solution into a bowl of a calcium chloride solution. The outer surface of the drop will almost instantly gel. The longer you leave it in the calcium solution, the thicker the gel skin will become. When it reaches the strength you are looking for, you remove it from the bath and rinse in fresh water to halt the process. The drops are tough enough, usually, to handle, but burst in the mouth when you bite them. The result is outstandingly cool.
The process is outstandingly a pain in the butt. The devil is in the details.
To form the drops, you have a number of options. You can simply spoon them into the bath, carefully, with a small spoon. The results are irregular blobs that are cool to play with and eink (dreat?), but hardly visions of aesthetic prowess. Alternately, you can use a syringe to gently drip tiny drops into the bath. The smaller the drops, the more spherical they will appear. This can take forever, so there is a third, slightly more expensive option. When I first saw this done (with a cantaloupe puree), chef Rosendale used this device, from a company called Chef Rubber. You set it up over your bowl of solution, with a strainer positioned to catch the drops and make removal from the bath easier. Here’s what the setup looks like:

You force solution into the tube with a syringe, and it slowly drips through the nozzles into the bath. You let the drops sit for about a minute, and remove.
At least, that’s the theory.
I, of course, dove straight in. I mixed up a Pegu, added an ounce of water to simulate the amount of ice melt that would come from a normal shaking, and added about 1.5% alginate, and 0.5% citrate. Why these numbers? Because that was the upper end of the suggested range. Did I know what was supposed to happen, and what the result should look like? No. Oops. I first off wanted to test some drops before deploying the caviar maker. The drops simply vanished into the bowl, dissipating like any other liquid would.
What the hell?
I tried ten different ways of putting them in, and nothing worked. After some unhealthy suppression of profanity (I was trying to show off this process to my children). I decided my ingredients had to be the problem. I decided to try this with plain water to start, then add ingredients. I took a fresh 200 ml of water, and added 2g of the alginate. I walked away to secure some toys, and when I returned, found the water had gelled significantly. This had not happened with the Pegu. A spoonful into the calcium bath and bingo. I had a cool little bean of water that I could toss in my hands, but that exploded into tasteless water in my mouth.
I was reinvigorated. Apparently, I needed more water. My Pegu caviar would taste less strong than I had hoped, but this was going to work. I settled on putting in water equal to the Pegu ingredients this time, and blooming the alginate in that water before adding the flavorants and intoxicants. It took a stick blender to combine the ingredients, but I had a Pegu-colored bowl of goop.
Into the syringe it went, through the caviar dripper, and thence into the bath. The solution I had was probably too thick, but it eventually dripped into the water. And it formed little perfect caviar pellets. I strained them, rinsed them, and put them in a cocktail glass. Voila!

Maggi and I ate them with a spoon, and it was really quite cool. It tasted like just like a slightly diluted Pegu.
I intended to have video of the whole process, but my older daughter stole the video camera the moment I took it out, and now I have 42 minutes of my younger daughter making faces into the lens.
Here are the problems with this whole process:

• Speed. At this viscosity, it takes ten minutes to make an ounce.
• Wetness. The caviar remains very wet, which reduces the stuff I can do with it. I had intended to serve it on crackers, with a squirt of whipped lime for garnish.
• Color. The excess water makes the beads too pale.

Fortunately, I have lots of the chemicals. I will try this again, but there will be some changes next time. I will be alone in the house. I need this so I will be patient. Patience is a major key. and when I am not patient, I will be able to swear in proper, therapeutic fashion.
I will be prepared to try several concentrations to get one that is fluid enough to produce caviar at an acceptable rate, and will give the strongest possible, least diluted, flavor. I will set up a draining rig to go with the forming rig. Then one batch can be dripping fully dry, while I’m dripping in the next batch. And I will be patient.
I have further ideas, if I can get this process going in a reasonable fashion. I intend to try spherifying each ingredient of the drink separately. I’ll make up a batch of gin and bitters pearls, Cointreau pearls, and lime pearls. Then put 3 measures of the first, and one each of the second and third into a glass and swirl to combine. How cool would that be, with virtually any cocktail? All the flavors there, in the right proportions, but bursting and combining in your mouth.
It will either be a train wreck, or totally amazing. I suspect it will depend on the recipe.
Well, there you have it. My project worked, sort of. It certainly broadened my horizons. And it was fun… in places. Now, I’m sure someone else did this much better than I did for this Mixology Monday, so go read them and see how to do this correctly.

Sorry folks, I got nothing today. More specifically, I got no time today! I just wanted to throw up this post to remind any stragglers to go to Tiki Drinks and Indigo Firmaments and check for Craig’s roundup of all the best the cocktailosphere has to offer on the use of spices in drinks!
Or you could just do the right thing and drink a Pegu.

It’s the best cocktail on Earth after all.

And Angustora Bitters has lots of spices in it.

And so does Gin.

See? I do have MxMo post! And I finally can post a Pegu as my MxMo recipe.

(I know, I’m unspeakably lame. But the drink sure as hell isn’t!)

It’s Monday, folks! Yes, that Monday!

It is time for Mixology Monday XXXIII. Welcome to the thirty-third monthly round up of the sublime and ridiculous best the cocktailosphere has to offer. This month we all are offering you libations made at least in part from homemade ingredients. No matter how skilled you are are making, mixing, and measuring cocktails, your end result is always limited by the quality, or even the simple availability, of your ingredients. Some of us are whipping up brand new components. Some of us are trying to duplicate a product we just can’t buy where we live. Other’s of us just need to replace a commercial ingredient in a favorite recipe with a drinkable version. For instance, Rose’s Grenadine will not be a sponsor of this month’s event….
As an added feature, I’m keeping count of the ingredients each blogger is concocting by category, as follows:

Bitters and Tinctures	Garnishes	Infusions	Umm, Butters?
Liqueurs	Mixers	Syrups

Don’t forget to read to the bottom and take the MxMo Poll!
Update: And a late entry got eaten by my SPAM filter. Check the bottom of the list for The Opinionated Alchemist. Also Rookie Libations, who was so late, he didn’t even bother to mention he was in.

First out of the box on Saturday was Tiare from A Mountain of Crushed Ice. She prepares the Tiki concoction Punch Combava a la Tiare, made with her Rhum Combava. This is an infusion of Rhum with Kaffir Limes, or Combava. In case you are interested, Kaffir Limes look like green golf balls. It looks yummy. We non-tiki types need to setup a month to try being Tiki mixers together….

Next in with his submission was Frederick from Cocktail Virgin Slut. He amazes me with the magilla of liqueurs, Vermouth! (I dithered on how to categorize it, but I finally chose Liqueur. Sue Me.)
In addition to his very clear, readable, and duplicatable process for making the Vermouth itself, he offers us three cocktails to make with it: The Fourth Degree, the Marconi Wireless, and the San Martin. Apparently, he got too drunk distracted to use his stuff in a Manhattan….

Then Marshall emerges from the Scofflaw’s Den with two made from scratch ingredients. He gets first licks in on Rose’s Grenadine, then offers up a batch of Swedish Punsch. With these two ingredients, he wields his iPhone/Cocktails-Fu and finds a cocktail that uses both: the C.F.H. Cocktail.

Jon from and of Ednbrg likes the theme this month. He is in cocktailian sympathy with U.S. Patent Commissioner Charles H. Duell, believing that pretty much every worthwhile cocktail ingredient was invented by the 1930s. He reasons therefore that if you want to stand out, you need to go in… to your own kitchen. Jon slips us a batch of his not-so-arrogantly named Ednbrg’s Serviceable Cinnamon Tincture. It is an ingredient in search of a drink, however. Help him out.

Rick at Kaiser Penguin has a bunch of editors who need to be slapped. Tell Rick in his comments that you want him to finish the first part of his post.
Not that his actual post isn’t fascinating. He takes regular cocktails to a baroque level usually found only in Tiki drinks, not with an ingredient but a delivery system! Follow the link to learn of making Bitters Ice Cubes, and what they mean for a Vanilla Old Fashioned and a Sazerac.

Stevi at Two at the Most also gives us a Swedish Punsch, but with a different recipe. While she’s at it, she throws in a batch of Vanilla Simple Syrup to, er, sweeten the deal.
She needs both for her Suédois de Vanille. Vanilla, the world’s most exotic spice (with the world’s most boring reputation), seems to be getting a workout around the cocktailosphere these days.

Nat Harry, the Alpha Cook, taps out Marshall to take her turn giving Rose’s Grenadine the business. She gives us three recipes to replace that… fluid, including one that will likely tick off a few purists in and of itself! Once she has her preferred Grenadine, she treats us to a tasty Ward Eight.

Dinah at Bibulo.us gives us the best kind of made from scratch ingredient: One made by someone else! She takes her friend’s Cherry Whiskey and offers us an Engelhart’s Three-Legged Cat. As an added bonus, this cocktail can be handily modified into a kiddie cocktail that I for one shall be passing on to my junior bartenders.

Christian at Cocktailwelten brings us another appearance by Vanilla. This time the bean nestles in a bottle of Tequila! I confess I never saw that one coming. Then he uses his brew to make us a Tommy’s Vanilla Margarita. Christian’s site is in German, so you can read a Google-translated version at this URL. Fair warning if you haven’t read an automatic translation lately: Anything you are drinking while reading it may get sprayed on your keyboard.

My post went up next. The Rose’s Grenadine slaughter continues apace, folks. I took my cold-process Grenadine and mixed up a Jack Rose—A cocktailan-approvable McTini for the masses.

Matt the RumDood apparently makes a lot of infusions, then gives them away rather than drinking them himself. What a selfless guy! (Note to self, I have never received one of these decoctions….) For this month’s MxMo, Matt elects to use a batch of his Strawberry Rum to mix himself a L’amour de Fraise, which you will also want to drink.

Tristan, at The Wild Drink Blog, comes through in the mixers category with a homemade Cola syrup. (As a Georgia boy, I assume he will burn in Hell for his effrontery of daring to challenge the primacy of Coke.) With this heretical syrup, he proceeds to offer us a frankendrink: The Libero Daiquiri. Step into his lab, and see what’s on the slab!

Anita, who’s Married With Dinner, shows amazingly good taste in her choice of cocktail…. To make it more interesting, she brews up her Jacques Rose with her own Pear Brandy. The only disappointment is that she misses out on an opportunity to pile on Rose’s. Get with the program, Anita!

Jeff lobs cocktails of the non-Molotov variety in the vanguard of the Cocktail Revolution. He conspires to produce two infusions, one Bourbon, one Port. Both use cherries. Alas, the mob’s thirst for blood sends all awry, and his proposed Midnight Manhattan is sent to the Guillotine. Democracy can be so ugly.

Michael, whose blog is called My Aching Head, whips up a batch of Ginger Syrup and goes looking for a way to deploy it. His result is an interesting cocktail which he thinks is called a Not Quite a Dark and Stormy.

Dennis, at Rock and Rye, totally screws up my morning writing this by sending me scrambling for a new category! His ingredient is Compound Butter and his drink to use it in is a chill-banishing Hot Buttered Rum. By the way, he wants you to make your own apple cider too.

Blair, aka Trader Tiki, starts off by suggesting a really cool video, then shifts gears. He lists how many ways (25) that he could hit this MxMo out of the park with the exisiting contents of his bar. But just to show off, Blair whips up a brand new ingredient: Trader Tiki’s Dark Falernum. It’s purpose brewed for the famous Jet Pilot Cocktail. Again I ponder the idea of a whole month of just making Tiki drinks….

Just when Blair reaches out to claim the title of Mr. Made From Scratch, Marleigh of Sloshed pops in and muddies the waters. What does she eventually offer us? How do Olives sound? How about Lemon-Oregano-Vermouth Olives? How about Lemon-Oregano-Vermouth Olives that are almost a year in the making? She serves up these little gems in an Olivette Cocktail. Olive lovers may now drool.

Cocktail Buzz’s Steve and Paul are also at home with this month’s theme, as they hate to settle for just the bottles with commercial labels. They lovingly create a batch of Walnut-Infused Jack Daniels for our enjoyment. They use it to create a truly decadent sounding cocktail, the Jack Twist.

The mysterious Scribe, of A Mixed Dram, deploys three homemade ingredients! He starts off with Grenadine, but forgets to denigrate Rose’s in any way. Shall we forgive him? He then throws in some of Paul’s #8 Falernum and his own Scrivenal Spiced Sherry Pepper Bitters. With these three, he provides us two cocktails: The Chinese Cocktail and the Island Inferno. It’s those Tiki drums again!

One of the Cocktailians, Vidiot to be precise, gets figgy with it. He offers us a Fig-Infused Bulleit Bourbon and a matching batch of Fig Bitters. He combines them in his Figgy Manhattan, which also calls for a homemade maraschino cherry. But he’s so off-hand about that he doesn’t get a Garnish badge….


Jonas, at Drink of the Week, has a brother Michael who also paints with booze. They offer us the Hanukkah Gelt Martini, which sure looks fun. I’m not sure they quite get the theme however, unless that’s potato-infused Vodka.

Craig checks in from Tiki Drinks & Indigo Firmaments. He notes that I really did tee things up for the Tiki crowd with this theme. His offering in response is a recipe for a half a gallon of Pumpkin Liqueur! At least he gives us two drinks to try to use up all that fall goodness: A Harvest Old Fashioned, and the Hot Rummin’ Pumpkin.

Paul at the Cocktail Chronicles offers us a very promising Quince Ratafia. Two versions of the liqueur actually, and neither is ready yet. But he’s got a Cal Ripken going, so let’s give him that pinch-hit appearance in the eighth, shall we? The Ratafia will be done in December, so be sure to refresh his page every hour until then in anticipation.

The inimitable Jacob Greir, the world’s only Think Tank Bartender With an Eponymous Blog, brews up a batch of Honey Lavender Syrup. While he allows that the syrup works well in a Sidecar, the cocktail he offers us is a Bourbon concoction that he names the Kentucky Woman. The description would seem to indicate that Jacob needs to get out more, or stay in more. I’d need more information to be sure.

Kevin, of Beers in the Shower, slips in at the deadline with his Tequila strawberry infusion with rose petals, the Rosa Rojo. He uses it, along with some stolen bitters (also apparently made from scratch), to offer us the grumpily named Mailing it In.


Gabriel of CocktaiNerd claims he has an entry to send in. Probably something about how if you squeeze a lime, you have made Lime Juice from scratch, I dunno. I’m putting this here as a placeholder, since he emailed me to say his post is coming. When it does, I’ll replace this snarky paragraph with something else—Probably just as snarky!

Dominik, the Opinionated Alchemist, extracts himself from the tangled web of his busy life to get in late with his Apricot Liqueur. I’ll seat him after the orchestra begins since he told me weeks ago he was whipping this stuff up! Now go pester him for some ratios to properly make his cocktail, the Paradise.

Chris, who writes Rookie Libations, did a MxMo post that was WAAAAAYYYY late. but since he puts up about fifty tinctures, and a few syrups, as well as a number of ways to put them to interesting use, he gets in too!


And there you have it! Mixology Monday XXXIII: Made From Scratch. I want to thank everybody for sending in your projects and letting me riff on them here. Next month’s MxMo will be on the theme of Spice, and will be hosted at Tiki Drinks & Indigo Firmaments on December 15th.
I’m going to end with something no one has ever done on a blog before:
A Poll!

Mixolopoll
Which post this month most makes you want to get up and give it a try?	Tiare from A Mountain of Crushed Ice. Frederick, the Cocktail Virgin Slut. Marshall from the Scofflaw’s Den. Jon from and of Ednbrg. Rick, the Kaiser Penguin. Stevi at Two at the Most. Nat Harry, the Alpha Cook. Dinah at Bibulo.us. Christian at Cocktailwelten. Doug, right here at the Pegu Blog. Matt the RumDood. Tristan, of The Wild Drink Blog. Anita, who’s Married With Dinner. Jeff, cell-leader of the Cocktail Revolution. Michael and his Aching Head. Dennis, at Rock and Rye. Blair, aka Trader Tiki. Marleigh of Sloshed. Cocktail Buzz’s Steve and Paul. The Scribe, of A Mixed Dram. Vidiot the Cocktailian. Jonas, at Drink of the Week. Craig at Tiki Drinks & Indigo Firmaments. Paul at the Cocktail Chronicles. Jacob Greir, of… Jacob Greir. Kevin, of Beers in the Shower. Gabriel of Cocktailnerd.
	Current Results

It’s Mixology Monday time again. This month’s extravaganza is hosted over at… well… right here! The theme this month is Made From Scratch, and our charge is to make a cocktail that is improved by the use of one or more homemade alternatives to commercially available ingredients. Come back soon for my full rundown on how things went.
My own contribution is a cocktail known as the Jack Rose. It is a cocktail I’ve been playing with off and on for a couple of months now. Something told me that I would love this cocktail when I first really looked at it, and I was (eventually) right. Interestingly, in all my experimentation with this tipple, I’ve never deviated from the first recipe I used; everything I fiddled with related to ingredients.

(Note: Like so many of my best cocktail adventures, including the Pegu itself, I first noticed this cocktail in Paul Harrington’s Cocktail: The Drinks Bible for the 21st Century.)
My first run through this required a quick stop at the store for a bottle of Laird’s Applejack. Applejack (American apple brandy) was a spirit I had never tried before, and I was pleasantly surprised to see how inexpensive it is. I mixed up the Jack Rose as shown and tried it. Frankly, it was nasty. I smelled and tasted the Applejack and it did not seem to be the source of the funkiness. I was contemplating scratching this off the list as a drink that just wasn’t for me, when the good fortune of running out of storage space for all my bottles struck.
My eyes fell on the bottle of Stirrings Grenadine that I had bought a month before on a whim. I had not reorganized my cabinets yet, and the bottle was standing guard in a corner of my back bar. The incredible, radical, nay revolutionary thought occurred to me that the Rose’s Grenadine that works so well in my daughters’ Shirley Temples might not be ideal for my purpose here. I popped the seal on the Stirrings, which is made with actual pomegranite, and mixed up another batch. The resulting drink was much paler in color, thinner but more complex in flavor, and only a little better tasting while actually less attractive in the glass.
I would be remiss here if I did not report that my daughters both gave the Stirrings a hearty thumbs down in the Kiddie Cocktail department.
The drink was still not working, but I thought I had the problem identified. There was a distinct canned flavor present that was killing the drink. As stated, it wasn’t the Applejack. And it darn sure wasn’t the really good limes I happened to have in inventory! That left the Grenadine, and I thought I’d have some fun and give it one last try. After all, I had a bottle of pretty good Lakewood Pure Pomegranate Juice sitting in my bar fridge, the leftovers from some earlier failed experiments with Pama. Longtime Pegu Blog readers will know I’m partial to Lakewood, since they won the shortcut competition a while back with their lime juice.
I cast about the web for articles on making Grenadine and was gladdened to see a write-up by someone I knew and trusted, Paul Clarke at The Cocktail Chronicles. He presents both a cold process Grenadine and a cooked version. I made both. I’ll let you follow the link if you want to learn how to make the hot process version. It’s good, but I prefer the cold process version. My daughters quickly used up the cooked stuff in their Shirleys, but the little Visigoths still prefer Rose’s!

What?
You are going to leave them with those instructions?

Ladies and gentlemen, my lovely wife.

It takes forever that way, and you look like an idiot the whole time!
Not that you don’t look like an idiot regard….

Thank you, Dear! I’ll tell them.
The second time I was making up a batch of Grenadine (the first being consumed fairly rapidly), Maggi walked in to see me madly shaking the Ball Jar. She simply shook her head, walked over to the cabinet, pulled out the stick blender, and handed it to me. Then left wordlessly.
Shaking this stuff by hand takes several minutes all told. More as you try to get the last couple of tablespoons to dissolve. The stick blender takes about 15 seconds. The resulting mix is more stable and will hold even more sugar if you want. When you are first done, it’ll have so many bubble that you’ll think it’s carbonated, but they settle out very quickly if you leave the bottle alone. Mix your Grenadine this way; it saves time, embarrassment, and Bartender’s Elbow.
Back to the Jack Rose. I took my concoction to the bar and had a third go at this baby.

Wow. It is a magnificent cocktail.
It was big fat hairy deal in the 20’s and 30’s, and almost no one drinks it now. I had thought this was because few bars have Applejack in stock, but I’m now betting that the real reason the Jack Rose faded was the rise of modern, commercial Grenadine.
The cocktail is clean and crisp and smooth. While redolent of apple cider, lot of subtle flavors come out to play when the canned overtones of commercial Grenadine are removed. It is a little sweeter than most cocktails I drink, but it is not sweet, per se. It isn’t too strong a cocktail either.
I really think that a bar which keeps homemade Grenadine in the well ought to promote the Jack Rose as a more interesting, elegant alternative to the Cosmopolitan. It’s a chick drink for broads. Or a broad drink for chicks.
In fact, with the Appletini dead and buried, its stinking corpse the plaything of voodoo doctors, perhaps we should slip the Jack Rose in its place. That’s it: The Jack Rose—The Appletini for the Craft Cocktail Generation! I’ve been trying and failing to come up with a drinkable Appletini for months, and now I realize I’ve been drinking them all along.
And there you have it. The Jack Rose is a cocktail that is made better (is made drinkable at all) by a Made From Scratch alternative to a commercial product, Grenadine. The homemade stuff is easy to make and stores well. You should add the syrup to your fridge, and the drink to your repertoire.

Addendum:
There was one other experiment I did with this cocktail that had nothing to do with the Grenadine. When I had this drink down the way I liked, I stumbled across a bottle of Calvados in a liquor store I haunt. Hmmm. Laird’s is fourteen bucks. Calvados is forty five! And it’s French! Oh La La! Let’s make a really premium Jack Rose….
Let this be a lesson to you, children! The more expensive liquor is not always the best choice. Don’t waste your Calvados on a Jack Rose. Or don’t waste your Jack Rose on Calvados. Regardless, the two are not interchangeable. I’m sure the French would agree.

OK, I my MxMo post stated almost self-evidently that my Guilty Pleasure was made with Vodka. Further, I expected to find a lot of others who would do the same, and comment that part of the guilt was the Vodka itself! Since Stevi has put up the roundup, I have been eagerly perusing everybody’s very fun posts in search of how many joined me in saying we liked this or that Vodka drink, and what are you going to do about it?
Unfortunately, I announced this intention to all and sundry over in the Mixosoleum chatroom, setting the Over/Under betting line at 15 such posts. The CocktailNerd took the under.

And?
How’s that working out for you?

Shut up.
Here’s the scoop:
Out of 40+ posts, there were 20 that mentioned vodka. 3 of them seemed a bit ashamed about it, but not enough for the purposes of this study. The critical number, including two that mentioned Vodka as being shameful, but choosing to go with another brew as their personal Guilty Pleasure, was…

Fourteen!

Yay!
Yay!
Yay!
I won! 14 is less than 15! That means it’s under!
Yay!
Yay!

Fine. At least you’re are showing more class in victory than I expected….

I still feel that I should be entitled to count Jeffrey Morganthaler’s world-shattering admission of Vodkaphiledom as five posts. I mean come on! It’s Jeffrey-Freakin’-Morganthaler!

Fat chance,
No-Munich-For-You-Boy!

Don’t forget, you are one of the fourteen….

All I have to say to you can be found in the comments of this post on CocktailHacker!

I think I’ll close with some of my favorite lines on the subject from this month’s festivities:

But Dr. B., White Russians are made with vodka, and don’t booze nerds universally loathe vodka??
— a proto-sockpuppet on Dr. Bamboo

This triple threat of suck; vodka, craptastic Creme de-freaking Banana, and a bomb of uber-sweet Cream of Coconut
— CocktailNerd, who doesn’t know the difference between a colon and a semi-colon. (can you tell I’m bitter about losing my bet?)

…all the requirements of an embarrassing drink. It’s pink, it contains vodka….
—Jay at Oh Gosh!

I badmouth the spirit in private and trash it in public…. For all of the shit I’ve talked over the years, vodka is my number one guilty pleasure drink…. (But) after a long night of making – and tasting – drinks full of ingredients like single-malt Islay scotch, housemade Madeira cask-aged bitters and various bitter Italian liqueurs, I get a little tired of flavor.
—Jeffrey Morganthaler, who lies through his teeth with more conviction than Joe Biden in the very first sentence of his MxMo post (Not part of this quotation). Read it. You’ll see.

Oh, and one final, non-vodka-related comment on this MxMo: Read Jacob Grier’s Post on the Irish Car Bomb. Best. Cocktail. Photoblogging. Post. Evar.

For the ones of you who find this post without knowing what day it is, it’s Mixology Monday! This month’s theme is Guilty Pleasures, and the rest of the Cocktailosphere’s dark secrets may be found via Stevi Deter’s new all-potables effort: Two at the Most.
For myself, I want to write about Maggi’s and my very own Guilty Pleasure, the Kamikaze. Actually, it is my guilty pleasure, Maggi drinks whatever the hell she likes without regard for what anyone else thinks. But that is because I am a tender-egoed aspirant to the ranks of the cocktailscienti, while Maggi is a Great Broad. To forestall a long story from becoming longer, the Kamikaze is the second most frequently constructed cocktail in my Basement Bar.
I’ve alluded to the Kamikaze several times here, but why have I refrained from blogging up a storm about one of my favorite cocktails? Well, because it is a Guilty Pleasure!
The Kamikaze is important to me not just because it’s a good drink (at least mine is, see below), but because in learning about my version, I also learned something about bartenders. Something important. I discovered that bartenders are not just a glorified soda fountain on two legs. Prior to 1999(?) I had no understanding of bartenders or the concept that intelligence and individuality had anything to do with the profession. As far as I was concerned, they were waiters who poured measured amounts of beer and wine, and mixed drinks according to the recipes found in some book. And I thought there was only one book.
But mein frau and I were at the late Desert Inn in Las Vegas, waiting for the Dennis Miller show and in need of refreshment. We found a small quiet bar of the sort that no longer exist in strip casinos, and sat down. I ordered a VeryDryVodkaMartiniShakenNotStirred, because that is just the sort of poser that I was. Maggi asked for a suggestion. The guy asked her several questions, then offered her a Kamikaze. She replied that she didn’t want a shot, and he said this was his cocktail version. She tried it and really liked it. So did I. Enough that I hurriedly emptied my Martini to have “one of those”. I even asked how it was made, and he explained his recipe, and how and why it differed from most of the ways people made Kamikazes. It was a wonderful on-off conversation that lasted a half-an-hour, and it changed the way I looked at bartenders forever. Yes, most really are waiters who pour measured amounts and think a Jack and Coke is a signature cocktail, but many are much more, and I’m richer for that. And those bartenders are richer for me….
Now, on with the drink. A Guilty Pleasure must be both guilty and a pleasure, so I’ll address both.
My last post previewed the main reasons I see for the Guilty portion of a Kamikaze:

• It has one of those names. Kamikaze. Really. It just sounds stupid, ignorant, and silly. You could even find a way to make it racist, if professional outrage is your life’s calling.
• I’m pretty sure it started out as a shooter. At least, that is the reaction most people have when first offered one.
• The third item is largely limited to dealing with mixological mavens: The Kamikaze is a Vodka drink. Horrors! If you call Vodka poser fluid, well then this is not the cocktail for you! Of course, I’m betting a lot of guilty pleasures we see today from Vodka snobs will be based on the stuff….

Another reason, and a quite legitimate one, that the Kamikaze gets no love is that no two mixers on Earth seem to make it the same way. Is it a shooter, or a cocktail? And why, oh why, does it bring out the worst in hot-button awful cocktail miscues?

Seriously?
I hate few cocktail-related things more than someone pouring Rose’s and calling it lime juice. And while I admit Cointreau is Triple Sec, in the sense that a Ferrari is a car, don’t use the good stuff and pretend that generic will produce anything similar. Oh, and I’ve tried this variant. Ugh.

At least the next contestant gets the Rose’s right…

I’m not sure about her Triple Sec, but the bottle is square like Cointreau. And more importantly, who serves a shot on the rocks? Finally, I am not even going to try that recipe.
My point is, Kamikaze has become a generic name for white hooch and limeyness. No one orders them because they have no idea what they are going to get, but odds are, they won’t like it.

So why do I love Kamikazes? I iterate (never use the non-word reiterate around here, or Maggi will break out the Ban Hammer!) that I love my Kamikaze. If the world came to its senses and standardized the drink to my specifications, then it would not be a guilty pleasure anymore. Let’s look at the recipe:

What, not the good stuff?

No. Any cheap stuff that doesn’t taste nasty will do. This drink is not subtle enough in flavor for any alleged subtleties of premium Vodka to show through.

You just said no premium stuff! Then you call for Cointreau. I think I’ll use my generic Triple Sec.

Put down that bottle and walk away. The difference in flavors with this ingredient would be more than readily apparent.

But you just slammed that guy in the first video for using Rose’s!

No, I slammed him for calling Rose’s lime juice. you actually need Rose’s for this. It is the only legitimate use for the gnarly stuff, except for in a Gimlet.

Whoa! Hold on! What happened to your shortcut? You’ll use crappy bottled lime juice in your precious Pegus, but demand “fresh” for your Guilty Pleasure?

Get over it. When I say “Fresh Lime Juice”, I mean “Fresh Lime Juice If Available-If Not, Use Good Bottled Juice And Move On with Life”.

I will never, ever
give up this fight!

I’m sure you won’t, Gabe.

What results is a lightly sweet, very tart, and subtly funky cocktail. It does not seem very strong, but it very much is. And interestingly, it will still taste pretty good as it starts to warm up, which is good, ’cause this ain’t a petite recipe. The Kamikaze is not terribly challenging to make or savor. It is refreshing in Summer or Winter. And it goes better with food, at least hearty fare, than most cocktails.
In short, it is the ultimate McTini, even better than the Cosmopolitan. Most anyone will find it drinkable, and you can serve it to the most timid of drinkers. Of course, the world is not going to standardize on this recipe, so you will have to enjoy it in the confidential safety of your Basement Bar, a Guilty Pleasure forever.

I just picked up a copy of Eric Felten’s How’s Your Drink?: Cocktails, Culture, and the Art of Drinking Well and began reading it yesterday. I ran across a passage in the Forward (or Aperitif) that I thought I’d share in advance of Monday’s soirée at Stevi’s, revolving around Guilty Pleasures.

It is possible to be serious about drinking without being a serious drinker, especially without taking oneself too seriously. It’s never been clear to me what it is about liquor that brings out the mandarins in people. Perhaps it is a nagging social insecurity that makes for diffident drinkers. We cling defensively to uninspired, socially safe glasses. We find ourselves not unlike Phillip Carey in Somerset Maugham’s Of Human Bondage, disparaging even things we enjoy out of fear that our tastes might be suspect.

I think Eric’s words are particularly applicable to those of us who blog about cocktails. That’s why I’m glad for Stevi’s choice of theme. If you cocktailblog, how many times have you hesitated to write about something because it seemed silly, or looked down upon by others. surely we have all thought at least once, Wait, I have a reputation to maintain! I’ll admit this is particularly bootless for those of us without much of a reputation….
Still, I’ve thought on how many things could make up a guilty pleasure in our environment. I’ve chosen a McTini with three elements that would get me kicked out of polite cocktailosphere society on other days:

• Stupid name
• Shooter lineage
• Made with Poser Fluid

What elements makes your Guilty such a Pleasure?