July 17, 2015
The Princess (created by my wife, Princess Nat) is one of my favorite summer drinks. It clicks all the hot weather boxes: super easy to make, super refreshing, super tasty. Just super. I suggest having one right now, if your locale has temperatures that have risen above, say, 75. Make a bunch, have some friends over, and kick up yer summertime heels. Just don’t forget the suntan lotion. Oh, wait, one thing! Originally, and usually, the Princess has raspberries, but as you’ll see in the below picture, today I’m making it with blueberries. Because they looked better than the raspberries! Hence the Princess B moniker. You can go either way and be assured of loving this drink. Trust me, friends, trust me.
The Princess B (using the recipe from Good Spirits)
Ice cubes
1-1/2 ounces limoncello
5 or 6 fresh blueberries
Chilled club soda
1. Fill a Collins glass (or another glass – don’t sweat about it, just adjust the amount of limoncello if needed. You’ll know) three quarters full with ice cubes. Add the limoncello.
2. Fill the glass to about a half-inch from the top with the club soda. Add the fresh blueberries. Stir slowly, but with purpose. Don’t be afraid (actually you’re encouraged) to bust up the berries a little. You want to stir until every ingredient is well combined.
Tags: blueberries, cocktail recipe, Cocktail Recipes, Friday Night Cocktail, Good Spirits, lemoncello, limoncello, summer cocktail, summer drink, The Princess B, What I'm Drinking
Posted in: Cocktail Recipes, Italy, Liqueurs, Recipes, What I'm Drinking
July 10, 2015
Hey, remember a week ago, when I had a special summertime cocktail featuring Amaro Lucano? The drink was called Good Luck In Pisticci, and was pretty darn amazing (if I can say such without being called someone-who-pats-themselves-excessively-on-the-back). If you missed that post, somehow, go back and read it now. It has lots of info about the particular amari called Lucano, and more. Go on, go read it. Okay, now back to this post, where I’m not going to say anything except that I ended up making two special summertime cocktails with Lucano, and this is the second. It’s also a wine cocktail, for those who understand that wine cocktails are awesome. But enough of this – make the below and be happy.
Fuori Pista
Ice cubes
2 ounces dry red wine (I used Terragoni, from Donini, my favorite Italian winemaker)
1 ounce Amaro Lucano
1/2 ounce Sidetrack Blackberry liqueur (from right here in WA)
3 ounces chilled club soda
Fresh blackberries, for garnish
1. Fill a goblet or other awesome glass (a highball works) three quarters full with ice cubes.
2. Add the wine, Lucano, and Sidetrack Blackberry. Stir briefly.
3. Add the club soda and a few fresh blackberries. Stir again, briefly. Enjoy the sunshine.
PS: The name of this means “off track” in Italian, a reference both to the fine folks at Sidetrack, and the fine Italian ingredients in this.
Tags: Amaro Lucano, cocktail recipe, Cocktail Recipes, Friday Night Cocktail, Fuori Pista, red wine, Sidetrack Blackberry liqueur, What I'm Drinking, wine cocktail
Posted in: Cocktail Recipes, Italy, Liqueurs, Recipes, What I'm Drinking, Wine Cocktails
June 12, 2015
During the summer months (and really, even though we’re not officially in summer, let’s call it summer, okay? June feels like summer to me. Go with it), it’s tempting to have a drink called The Snowball – right? Right. But, there are so many! There’s the one with advocaat (the liqueur made from egg, sugar, and brandy) and sparkling lemonade. There’s another with brandy, simple syrup, an egg, and ginger ale. Both have their moments. But today, this particular day, I’m going with the below, which is wonderful on an early summer’s night, and of which famed drink explorer Harry Craddock said, around 1930, “This is women’s work.” Hah, I’ll show you Harry.
The Snowball, with the recipe from Ginger Bliss and the Violet Fizz
Ice cubes
2 ounces gin
1/2 ounce crème de violette
1/2 ounce white crème de menthe
1/2 ounce anisette
1/2 ounce heavy cream
1. Fill a cocktail shaker halfway full with ice cubes. Add the gin, crème de violette, crème de menthe, anisette, and cream to a cocktail shaker. Shake well.
2. Strain into a cocktail glass.
Tags: anisette, cocktail recipe, Cocktail Recipes, Crème de menthe, Crème de Violette, Friday Night Cocktail, Gin, The Snowball, What I'm Drinking
Posted in: Cocktail Recipes, Gin, Ginger Bliss and the Violet Fizz, Liqueurs, Recipes, What I'm Drinking
June 5, 2015
It was just 3 days and 133 years ago when Giuseppe Garibaldi passed away, after being one of the most formative figures in Italian history, as the general who was largely responsible for unifying one of my two favorite countries. His army, if you didn’t know, was often referred to as the “red shirt” army, thanks to reasons you can guess from the name! And, if all that wasn’t enough, he has a dandy drink named after him, The Garibaldi, which you should be drinking this week in his honor — and also because it’s a citrus-y, tangy number, with a slightly beautiful bitter hint, thanks to Campari (another fine Italian figure).
The Garibaldi
Ice cubes
2 ounces Campari
5 ounces freshly squeezed orange juice
1. Fill a highball glass three quarters full with ice cubes. Add the Campari and the orange juice.
2. Stir well.
June 2, 2015
I recently received the Uncommon Goods’ Molecular Mixology Cocktail Kit in the mail – without even ordering it! I know, I’m lucky (and trying not to be smarmy about, too). It’s an interesting combo kit in a way, with three boxes covering fun ways to science-up three classic drinks, the Margarita, Mojito, and Cosmopolitan.
Each box contains recipes for three different molecular mixology takes on the drinks, including making “caviar” bubbles, tasty foam, and what I’d call liquid “spheres,” as well as the food additives and some of the tools needed to make the drinks. It’s like a little chemistry kit that just needs booze (and sometimes some mixers and stuff) to take your drinking into another realm, a sorta futuristic feeling place that’s still awfully jolly (oh, I suggest when you get your molecular mixology on, you do it with friends. It’s even more jolly. Of course this is pretty much true with all drinking)!
Oh, wait, before I get in to my experimenting with the kit, I suppose a little about UncommonGoods might be, well, good. Heck, instead of me trying to talk it out, let me tell you what they say:
UncommonGoods is a retailer that endeavors to feature unique designs and handcrafted gifts created in harmony with the environment and without harm to animals or people. We make it our mission to support and provide a platform for artists and designers; in fact, half of what we sell is made by hand. Most of the products we carry are created right here in the USA, and about one-third of our entire collection incorporates recycled and/or upcycled materials.
And now you know! And now we can get to the drinks. I took on (with the help of wife Nat) the Margarita sphereification first (and, I’ll admit, it’s the only one so far, though I look forward to more), cause in some past molecular drinking, I always love the sphere-ing. Really!
The kits come with nice little recipes books. I’m not gonna walk through every step, cause that’d get long. But will give the highlights. You mix a little calcium lactate with some water, orange liqueur, and mango, freeze it into spheres (in the handy sphere freezing tray), mix some water and sodium alginate, drop the frozen spheres in it, then rinse them with water, and top them with tequila, coconut milk, and lime. Boom!
The instructions were by-and-large pretty good (it would have been nice to have a general idea how long the spheres will take to freeze, as the instructions just flow as if that doesn’t take time – but that’s pretty easy to figure out). I wasn’t a huge fan of the tequila-and-coconut milk combo as it was, honestly. But I loved making more of an actual “deconstructed” Margarita (as they call it in the book), just with tequila, lime, and the orange liqueur (I used Gran Gala) mango spheres:
I love, love, love slurping the tequila and lime and sphere, and then breaking the spheres open in my mouth (hah, that sounds bad – but tastes so, so good). The whole process creates this little skin around the orange liqueur/mango liquid combo, and when you bite down, all that flavor is a blast. A blast! Very swell stuff.
I can’t wait to try more, both the other recipes for the Marg and the other two cocktails, but also playing around with my own recipes using some of the science-y stuff that came along. Neato!
May 8, 2015
Recently, as I do, I decided I wanted a new cocktail – and often for me that actually means an old cocktail, an unburied treasure in a glass that I haven’t yet had. This time, the first older book at hand was Patrick Gavin Duffy’s Official Mixer’s Manual (1940 edition), and as I browsed through this worthy tome of libations, I came across The Lord Suffolk. With a name so regal, I figured the drink must be regally awesome (oh, an aside – I haven’t yet had time to browse the library and see where this drink first came from. Sue me). And I figured right!
However, it’s a drink with a sizable wallop of gin, which then mingles with much smaller amounts of maraschino, sweet vermouth, and Cointreau. Because of that, I knew it needed a gin with a fair amount of personality, one that brings layers of flavor to the table. I went with the newish (to me, at least), and award-winning Monkey 47 Schwarzwald Dry Gin, and darn if it wasn’t perfect, thanks to the smooth juniper flavor, sure, but even more the accompanying notes: citrus, spice, pepper, and an intriguing stitch of botanical and berries. It’s tasty stuff, and named after a monkey. That says it all.
And here in this cocktail, with just enough nutty maraschino, sweet and orange-y Cointreau, herbal vermouth, and lovely lemon oil coming along for the ride, the gin is allowed to blossom and not get lost. This is a helluva drink folks. And hopefully, somewhere, Mr. Duffy is smiling that it’s in a small way back in circulation.
The Lord Suffolk
Cracked ice
2-1/2 ounces Monkey 47 Schwarzwald gin
1/2 ounce Luxardo maraschino
1/2 ounce Cocchi Torino sweet vermouth
1/2 ounce Cointreau
Lemon twist, for garnish
1. Fill a cocktail shaker halfway full with cracked ice. Add everything but the twist. Stir well.
2. Strain into a cocktail glass, and garnish with the twist. Give a toast to the past, and then the future.
Tags: Cocchi Torino sweet vermouth, cocktail recipe, Cocktail Recipes, Friday Night Cocktail, Gin, Luxardo Maraschino, Monkey 47 Schwarzwald gin, Official Mixer’s Manual, Patrick Gavin Duffy, The Lord Suffolk, What I'm Drinking
Posted in: Cocktail Recipes, Gin, Liqueurs, Recipes, vermouth, What I'm Drinking
April 24, 2015
Sometimes, I even surprise myself when making drinks. This is one of those times! When I started messing around with the three ingredients in this drink, I was all, “there is no way these will come together,” and then, “yowza!” they worked better together than Sonny and Cher. During their good period. It started with Sidetrack Distillery’s new Shiso liqueur, which is made from the Asian herb it’s named after, and which is a singular, herby, botanical elixir that must be tasted to be believed, and which has a brilliant color to match its taste. I figured (rightly, as it turned out) that it would go well with gin, but I needed a gin that had a solid juniper taste, but also a little citrus, and some botanicals as well – and Copperworks gin is just like that (and it’s local to WA, much like the Shiso, so that was nice). But the third ingredient is a wild card – the Italian orange-y and a wee bitter-y aperitif, Aperol. I just worried the cocktail would get muddled with all those flavors, but dang, instead they all just shared the spotlight in a way that let the flavors shine. This is swell spring drink, and if you can track down these three, give it a whirl.
How Does Your Garden Grow
Cracked ice
2 ounces Copperworks gin
1 ounce Sidetrack Distillery Shiso liqueur
1 ounce Aperol
Orange twist, for garnish
1. Fill a cocktail shaker or mixing glass halfway full with cracked ice. Add everything but the twist. Stir well.
2. Strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with the orange twist.
Tags: Aperol, cocktail recipe, Cocktail Recipes, Copperworks gin, Friday Night Cocktail, How Does Your Garden Grow, Sidetrack Distillery Shiso liqueur, What I'm Drinking
Posted in: Cocktail Recipes, Gin, Italy, Liqueurs, Recipes, What I'm Drinking
April 3, 2015
You might think if I told you that I made up this cocktail with a cherry-ish liqueur and also Merry Cherry Bee Knee’s (whatever that might be) that it’d be sweet in all the wrong ways, and make your teeth hurt. Well, pals, you’d be wrong! But don’t take it too bad, cause really, you probably didn’t know that the cherry liqueur in question was Boomerang, the new release from Washington’s broVo Spirits, which was created in conjunction with Micah Melton, beverage director at Chicago’s Aviary, and which isn’t just cherry, but cherry mingled with apricot, walnut, cinnamon, orange, vanilla, and peppercorn. So, savory, and not too sweet at all.
But that’s really just the half of it! The Merry Cherry Bee’s Knees is also the kicker, and really what gives this drink the umph that I (and I’ll bet you) love so well. Bee’s Knees, in this situation, means a spirit distilled from mead, the honey-fermented-and-fruit-beverage that probably makes you think of Vikings, or Renaissance Fairs. However, jump back from that thought. These Bee’s Knees are made by the Hardware Distillery, also in WA, and while they take characteristics from the mead and fruit (beyond Merry Cherry, there are Peachy Keen, Fig, Raspberry, and Plum varieties), they’re still a spirit, and aged in oak, and have the heft and personality of a whiskey.
So, what’s that all mean? Come to WA (or, if you’re here, stay here), get these ingredients, and try this drink. Then you’ll see what it means. And be happier for it. Also, if you can tell me where the name comes from, I’ll buy you three drinks.
Like to a Double Cherry
Cracked Ice
2 ounces Merry Cherry Bee’s Knees
1 ounce Boomerang liqueur
1/2 ounce Cocchi Torino sweet vermouth
Rainer cherry, for garnish
1. Fill a cocktail shaker or mixing glass halfway full with cracked ice. Add everything except the real cherry. Stir well.
2. Add the cherry to a cocktail glass. Strain the mix into the glass and over the cherry.
Tags: broVo Boomerang liqueur, Cocchi Torino sweet vermouth, cocktail recipe, Cocktail Recipes, Friday Night Cocktail, Hardware Distillery, Like to a Double Cherry, Merry Cherry Bee’s Knees, Washington distillery, What I'm Drinking
Posted in: Cocktail Recipes, Liqueurs, Recipes, vermouth, What I'm Drinking
