Over at Art of Drink this month, Darcy dons his white lab coat for some cocktail mad science. Entitled Cognac Oil, his post is an entertaining look at employing some non-traditional ingredients, such as the titular essential oil, to create a non-alcoholic drink that tastes like, well, a drink. It’s a fun post, with some great opportunities for drink-geeking out.

I’m not going to rehash what he does to make his drink. It’s his post, so go read it on his site. The link will open a new tab, so go on. I’ll be here when you get back because I want to talk about why you should be interested.

In his introduction, Darcy touches on this with what he calls his “buzz management concept”. This is something every responsible drinker does in one way or another, and with varying degrees of conscious effort. Simply put, if you want your evening to last long, and end well, you need to drink just enough of the right strength of drinks to let the alcohol take effect… without taking over. For a variety of reasons, this can be difficult.

You can always nurse your drink, but with possible exception of red wine, this is almost always unsatisfactory. The great Savoy barman Harry Craddock famously said, “The way to drink a cocktail is quickly, while it is still laughing at you.” Nurse a cocktail, and it gets warm. It was designed and balanced for consumption cold, and almost no up drink will taste as good once it starts to warm. Nurse a rocks drink and it may stay cold, but it will get watery. Ditto on the effects on the flavor there.

You could just go home (or go to bed if you are already there) the moment you reach your safe, effective limit. The less said about this ridiculous option, the better. The chief benefit of social drinking is the social bit. If you shut down just when things get good,you might as well have just curled up with a good book instead. It’s cheaper.

You can always mix in something non-alcoholic between in each round. Some suggest a glass of water between each drink as a way to slow you down and keep you hydrated to ward off some of the hangover. But water is boring, and well fish f*ck in it. You could try a “mocktail” or Preggatini, but I find them usually unsuitable for this task. Many are delicious, but usually they are far too sweet, and almost none offer the balance and depth of a good mixed drink. Very few non-alcoholic concoctions offer any reward if you take a moment to ignore a boring stretch of the conversation and just savor your third sip.

Fixing this last is what Darcy is trying to accomplish with his cognac-esque no or low-alcohol cocktail: An evening extender that you can consume in like manner to a full throttle one. This is a worthy goal, and one every ambitious bartender on Earth should work on too.

Face it folks, booze is a powerful thing. Too much will result in, at best, a bad morning and some embarrassment. But enough, especially if you maintain the right balance between consumption and metabolization, is even more powerful. Moderate drinkers may be more intelligent, and are certainly more creative. Drink well, and rule the world. Drunk too much, and destroy it. Darcy’s just trying to save the world, folks.

I’ll leave you with this little cautionary tale about the power of being just exactly one and a half drinks in, which Darcy’s post led me to recall. (Not safe for work because of mild language and your loud laughter.)

One of my good blog friends Blair Reynolds, aka Trader Tiki, took the plunge a while back and decided to give a go of making his cocktailian obsession into a money-making proposition. This sort of behavior is what makes America (not to mention many cocktails) great. Thus far, Blair seems to be not only surviving, but thriving. You can buy his products online and in stores from coast to coast.
Why?
Because he makes a good product. Mouse Trap, path beaten to your door, etc.

What Blair makes is a variety of specialty syrups. As you might be able to tell from his name, he is something of a Tiki drink specialist, and many of his products, such as Falernum, Don’s Spices #2, and Orgeat are closely associated with that school of mixology. But even if you aren’t a Tiki head, those products, and others like his vanilla syrup and peppermint syrup, are great for all sorts of modern cocktails.
Plus, many have awesome labels by the inimitable Dr. Bamboo….

Now, many of the things that Blair sells, you could make yourself. I’ve written about doing so here several times, and doing that sort of thing is a sort of rite of passage for the budding cocktailian. But doing so on a regular basis is a pain in the ass. Just look at what goes into making a batch of Falernum.
Blair’s stuff is reasonably priced and reliable. And, just as a for instance, his Orgeat is better than my own careful, anal retentive efforts, and beats every other commercial Orgeat I’ve tried like Mr. T at a fools’ convention.

I pity the fool who buys Orgeat from some dude other than Trader Tiki!

My point is, you should try his stuff, if you haven’t already. You should do this because Blair’s cool and his product will make your drinks rule. But if that’s not enough for you, how about 15% off any order over $20 this month? Just tell him I sent you.

Um.
“Hi, Doug told me to come buy your product, so I’d like my 15% off, please,” won’t fit in the box….

Fine.
The way you tell the Trader that I sent you is to just enter the phrase ILUVBLOGZ in the coupon field when you order.

Once you get your stuff and use it, don’t forget to come back here and let me know how you like it! Happy Holidays, everyone!

Bring to me… a shrubbery!

Wait. What?

Ni!

Excuse me?

Ni!

Stop that!

Ni!

Alright, I’ll bite. Who the Hell are you supposed to be now?

We are the Knights Who Say… ‘Ni’!

Please. Get out of here.

No.
The Knights Who Say… ‘Ni’ demand a sacrifice!

Get back in the drawer, Guy….

Ni! Ni! Ni!

Oh for God’s sake.
Alright, Knight Who Says ‘Ni!’, what do you want?

We shall say ‘Ni!’ to you again, if you do not bring us…
a shrubbery!

A what?!?

Ni!

This is a cocktail blog, not a friggin’ nursery. Why are you asking me for a damn bush?

Ni!
Not a bush, I, er, WE want the drink. It is Spring and we are hot.

Don’t blame me Doug.
I just mentioned I was thirsty, and all this crap happens.

He does go to great lengths to make sure you are never thirsty for long…

Ni!

You don’t want a shrubbery, you idiot. You want some shrub.

Ni… er, what?

First off, pure Shrub is a 19th Century non-alcoholic mixer. It is a fruity syrup with a vinegar base. Baker notes that Shrub as mocktail made a comeback of sorts among the law-abiding set during Prohibition… at least when the Man was over for supper. Shrub is dead easy to make without waylaying innocent travelers in the dark woods and demanding sacrifices.

Ni!

I just whipped up a batch of my own, based on blackberries, and it is not only delicious, but a great vehicle for cocktail creativity.
I stole my Blackberry Shrub recipe from Paul Clarke (the Prince of Puget), specifically, his post for MxMo XXX, entitled And everything smelled of vinegar…..

A couple of notes: Paul is not kidding, the entire Tri-State Area will smell of vinegar after you make this. Add the berries slowly so as not to splash syrup on the sides of the pot, which would burn. Finally, when you pour out the syrup, it may spit. Wear aprons, and keep the area clear. Blackberry juice stains.
Once it cools, you can do a thousand things with it.

This is a delicious soft drink for kids or hot, grubby gardeners.
Paul combines it with apple brandy and ginger ale for a nice Buck of sorts.
Rick goes with rum and ginger beer instead.
The Nerd goes the same way, and points us to a commercial source of Shrub, if that’s the way your lazy ass rolls.
Stevi goes with gin to show that you can really use whatever spirit you like with this stuff and it’ll work with the right tinkering.
You don’t have to stick with this simple Buck-type recipe with your Shrub either. Cocktail Klatsch relates three much more sophisticated recipes, by Boudreau, Morgenthaler, and themselves, which use a variety of shrubs. I’ll steal Jamie’s, only because it uses a blackberry base.

For my part, I offered this little concoction for last Thursday’s TDN: Bitters, named with the expectation that no one else would have any Shrub on hand to make it.

In the event you are one of my under-rock-dwelling readers who won’t know what Guy was going on about above, I’ve tucked some classic film-making under the fold.
(more…)

Source

Rick, over at Kaiser Penguin, recently got a message from an American serviceman currently stationed in Afghanistan. Alcohol is strictly forbidden to our troops over there, and this leads to a special problem. He likes to add bitters to his juice or soda for flavor. Since his favorites (and ours), Angostura and Peychauds, along with virtually every other cocktail-quality bitters, come in at about 45% abv, they are against regulations over there.

He’s done what long-distance looking he can and found a few non-alcoholic bitters, but is unsure which are hippie-trippy detoxification blends and which are proper cocktail bitters. Since I guess shipping a bottle of bitters will cost a bajillion times the bottle itself, he needs to be sure what he is getting.

Can any reader out there help out with a good, cocktail/cullinary quality bitters that is made without an alcoholic base? After all, if our fighting men and women can’t properly bitter their juice and sparkling water while on deployment, then the terrorists have already won….

Update: Welcome ONT readers! If anybody can help us our with a really good option here, you will have done a real service!

Somehow, I think I have to thank Bill Clinton and NAFTA for this….
For years now, I have heard of a mystical beverage. An elixir that calls to me. A product of a foreign, exotic land of myth and legend. This ambrosia roils with sparkling effervescence when first you break its seal, and it bestows upon the drinker a swift burst of refreshment, energy, and mental acuity.
What’s it called? Mexican Coca-Cola.

Um. We have Coke here in the US, dude.

Tell me about it. I’m from Georgia. We call it champagne down there. But this is different.

Come on! Coke is Coke.

No, no it is not. In Mexico, the Coca-Cola corporation still makes their product with this stuff called sugar, cane sugar to be precise, not High Fructose Corn Syrup.

Come on old timer, pull the other one. There’s no difference in taste. They have science and stuff to prove it.

Science can kiss my pimply behind. There is one reason Americans are stuck with Coke, and most everything else, made with Karo syrup instead of sugar: Taxes. Pure bulk sugar costs 50% more in the United States than everywhere else in the world, because that’s the way the government wants it to be, and no other reason.
Without these protectionist taxes, Coke would be cheaper, and taste better too.

I’m all for cheaper, but how can you say it tastes better?

For the longest time, I was relying on hearsay, as Mexican Coke was the aforementioned urban legend. But no longer. Maggi came triumphantly home with a case of real Mexican Coca-Cola from COSTCO last week. I hear it also can sometimes be found at Wal-Mart.
Best of all, it comes in this kind of bottle!

Whoa! Cool looking bottles!

Aren’t they?

Totally awesome design!

Um, fer shure?

How come they are using these funky new bottles in Mexico, Dude? I thought we got all the cutting edge stuff here first!

No. See kid, this is the way Coke bottles are supposed to….
Nevermind.
The point is, it took me just long enough to chill a few bottles before I did the taste test. Cane sugar Coke is better. It’s not change your world better, not overthrow the government to get a better import tax code better, but it is worth a few more cents a bottle better. Try it out.
Oh, and since I’d be remiss if I didn’t include a cocktail with a post like this, I’ll simply throw out the simplest, most profound cocktail use for Coca-Cola:

The light rum you use matters fairly little. Fresh lime is better than bottled, but more important is using enough. Squeezing just a wedge into your drink will give you a Rum and Coke, not a Cuba Libre. The Cuba Libre is much better.
Oh, and the Mexican Coke tastes not a whit different in this drink from American Coke. If your budget is super tight, save the good stuff for drinking straight. Oh, and Pepsi can pucker up right along with Science (see above).

UPDATE: Someone from Vinapedia adds, down in the comments, that cane sugar Coke is available in the US through regular outlets during Passover. I look forward to checking out how to identify it.

Tea is important stuff. Wars have been fought over it. Though it does not enjoy the popularity in the States that it does in other nations, we still drink a fair amount of it. The seminal moment that marked the tipping point of colonial relations with the crown was the Boston Tea Party, when Americans lost faith in their government over a massive government bailout. And traditional tea consumption here never recovered. Americans now are coffee drinkers for the most part, viewing hot tea drinkers like myself as just a trifle eccentric.

But while hot tea may be unusual in the US, one way of drinking it is solidly American and rising fast in popularity: Iced Tea. I’m going to do two posts on it. This one talks about how to make iced tea, how to sweeten it, and how to serve it. The next will be a shorter one on a new class of liquor featuring sweet tea flavoring.

It is impossible to determine who really first came up with an idea so elementary as putting ice in tea, but it is abundantly clear where and when the concept of iced tea entered the public consciousness of the world.

The World’s Fair of 1904 in St. Louis was a gigantically important event in many ways, but for our purposes its most important characteristic was that it was freaking hot. Popular legend goes that a tea merchant trying to give away free samples of his tea to fairgoers was stymied by people taking one look at his steaming cups, comparing them to their steaming brows, and heading for the hills. Our enterprising merchant started putting ice in his tea and the World (already being in the neighborhood) beat a path to his door. This is likely not completely true, as many merchants apparently served iced tea at the fair. What matters is that people from all over the world got a chance to experience the restorative powers of tea poured over ice.

While bottled iced tea has been available for a long time, and there is a minor explosion of products on offer right now, most iced tea is still drunk when (hopefully) freshly brewed. It’s just much better that way, trust me.

Making iced tea is very easy, but also easily messed up, if you don’t avoid some common pitfalls. I’ll walk through my preferred method and discuss what to make sure you do and do not do on each step of the way.

First up is your choice of tea itself. Do not use standard tea. Most tea bags and premium loose leaf teas are made for drinking hot, and their flavor balances will usually change when chilled. A few will work, and if you are lucky or very knowledgeable, a few will be great. For most of us, it is simplest to use tea bags blended specifically for iced tea making. My favorite brand is Luzianne, which is a blend of pekoe and orange pekoe black tea. You can get it just about everywhere, and 999 out of a thousand of you tea snobs out there who are sneering at commercial tea bags can shut up now. These guys know what they are doing when it comes to iced tea. Tetley and Lipton also make iced tea blends as well, I just prefer the Luzianne.

Another question to answer before starting is whether or not you will sweeten your tea. Your answer is yes.

What? I said, you will sweeten your tea. It’s better that way. Trust me. If you claim not to like your tea sweetened, then you haven’t had it done right. If you must have your tea unsweetened, simply ignore all references to sweetening below, and you’ll be fine. Bored, but fine.

Further, you will sweeten your tea when you make it, not when you serve it. This is the only way to properly and reliably sweeten tea. You can pour in sugar to a glass full of tea and ice and stir for half an hour, and the stuff will not fully dissolve. You will either have insufficiently sweet tea, or you will have a sludge of corporeal diabetic shock in the bottom of your glass. Please understand, the rest of America. For a hundred years, when southerners have ventured beyond the bosom of Dixie and ordered sweetea, we have usually heard this in response: Sure hon! We have sugar packets right there on the table!

It is fortunate that few folks nowadays carry horsewhips, for I assure you, visions of employing one in an educational capacity dance enticingly through the head of he or she who just ordered the tea.
If you must make unsweetened iced tea at home, keep a bottle of simple syrup at hand. It will do the job, albeit with a lot of unnecessary rigamarole. If you are in a restaurant and the only iced tea is unsweetened, may I suggest a Coke?

Thus endeth the sweetening sermon. Let’s hear no more debate, because while I do not own a horsewhip, I do have a Taser….

To begin, bring 2 1/4 cups of water just to a boil. Put 6 regular sized tea bags (or 2 family sized) in a 1 quart pyrex bowl or measuring cup. Pour the water over the bags and let sit for fifteen minutes. Do not fiddle with the bags during this time. Go read a blog post or something.

When the time is up, gently lift the bags from the water, let them drain briefly while hanging over the water, then throw them away. Do not, for the love of all that is good and holy, squeeze the bags to remove any extra liquid! We don’t need that last bit of flavor because,

1. All we need has naturally migrated out of the bags already.
2. Most of the flavors still lurking in the bags are bitter ones. Bitter is great in a Pegu or Old Fashioned, not so much in iced tea.

While the water is still warm, sweeten it. Add between 1/4 to 1/2 cup of white table sugar and stir for a few seconds to dissolve. I like to use about a third of a cup. And yes, that’s all the sugar you really need. Many recipes call for vastly more sugar, and I think this is why a lot of people get turned off to sweet tea. Resist the urge to make your tea as sweet as soft drinks. I love sugar as much as the next guy, but you want to be able to taste and appreciate the tea as well.

Once the sugar is dissolved, pour into your serving and/or storing pitcher and add 6 more cups of cold water (not ice). You are ready to serve in a tall glass with big, luxurious ice cubes.

While nothing else is needed for a great drink, there are two traditional garnishes for iced tea that each bring more than just curb appeal to the glass. The most common, largely because it is much easier to provide in commercial settings, is the wedge of lemon. It looks nice and adds a bit of zing to the drink. Many people won’t have tea without it. I’d like to expand on the other option.

With the growing season upon us, consider using fresh mint. Cut a good stalk of mint about an inch or so taller than the inside of your tea glass. Gently rumple the lower leaves to release the oils, leaving the top leaves, those that will rise above the surface, pristine in appearance. Stick the mint in the glass with the ice, then pour in your tea.

Sublime.