Winter Blues

'Tis time for another Mixology Monday (and also time to abbreviate 'it is') and the theme this month is "blue." Naturally, being a tiki guy this meant it was time to break out the blue curacao. But that was only the beginning.

Of course for my drink I turned to the old standby for blue drinks, blue curacao, but that's probably the most mundane of the ingredients in this drink. 

Winter Blues

1 oz Guanbana syrup

1.5 oz Silver Rhum Agricole

1 oz Pineapple Rum

.5 oz Blue Curacao

.5 oz Orgeat

Shake with crushed ice. 

There is a lot there that I need to explain in that recipe. Let's start off with the guanabana syrup. Guanabana is known by many names: guanabana, soursop, cherimoya, custard apple or good old Annona Muricata. It is a tropical fruit prevalent throughout the Caribbean, Africa, southeast Asia and the Pacific and the taste is... unique. As the soursop name indicates it is an acidic tasting fruit, so it's being used here in place of the usual citrus component. It has also been described as having a taste like a cross between a strawberry and a pineapple. Most important for me was that when you don't look closely the bag of frozen pulp looks like it says guava. That's how I came to have frozen guanabana pulp in my life. I decided to treat it like I would passionfruit pulp that I wsa making into syrup and defrost it, mix it with equal parts simple syrup, and then strain it to make it nice and smooth. Tasting a sample I picked up on the pineapple tastes and I decided that my drink needed to have pineapple in it. This gave me an excuse to use the pineapple rum that I made over the summer.

Not being provided with a bottle of Stiggin's Fancy by Plantation Rums, like some people were, I took some fresh pineapple that I had laying around (like I said, tiki guy) and decided to infuse a bottle of gold rum. 

The guanabana also has a certain... 'funk' to it that I felt would best match up with an agricole rhum as opposed to, say, a drier white rum. I tasted the pairing so far and felt that it needed something to help round it out just a little bit, thus the orgeat. Though I feel like coconut cream would have also been a good choice. 

Thanks to Ginhound for hosting this month, we'll see you in February. 

MxMo: Shims

I'll admit it, it's been a while since I've added to the ol' blog. I could give the standard bevy of excuses, family, work, Cocktail Week, but that's only part of the story. It's not that it doesn't interest me or anything, but I'ver really been much more interested in getting deeper involved with the local stuff and building my own knowledge. So I started up a Booze University group where we went through and read 9 cocktail books and talked about them like a college level reading course. I plan on doing it again in the Spring focusing on booze history. But you aren't here for me to talk about myself, you're here for the drinks.
I am once again participating in this month's Mixology Monday.

This month's MxMo, brought to us by Bibulo.us, is all about shims. These low alcohol cocktails are the session drinks of the spirits world. Now, I'm a tiki guy by trade, and those aren't exactly known for their subtlety. Someone recently asked if I new of any lower alcohol tiki drinks, the best I could come up with only had 1.5 oz of rum. I was perusing Remixed for the 705th time and came across a drink called Omar's Delight and I was almost instantly inspired. I have two bottles of ruby port sitting around leftover from cocktail week that I didn't know what to do with. I saw that Omar's Delight was in reference to Omar Khayyam, the Persian scholar most famous in the West for his poem the Rubiyat. Thus was born the Ruby Yacht:

Ruby Yacht:

2 oz Ruby port

1/2 oz lemon juice

1/2 oz Grand Marnier

1/2 oz Peach Brandy

1/4 simple syrup

Stir with ice and strain into a cocktail glass. Twist a lemon peel over the top. 

The lemon, peach, and orange reflect the flavor profile in Omar's Delight. As for how it tastes? i only had a brief taste of the drink before I lost it to my wife. She pronounced it to be quite nice and kept it for herself. So I went and made a Saturn for myself, it was a light tiki drink, only having 1.5 oz of gin. 

MxMo 82: Sours

This MxMo Ginhound invited us to examine sours. Sours are one of the most easily adaptable classes of drinks, to go from a daiquiri to a margarita to a whiskey sour to any number of other drinks requires only a little bit of tinkering. And this month, it seems like everyone is examining their fresh copies of Potions of the Caribbean as I've seen no less than 4 people talking about the Queens Park Super Cocktail. With that in mind I decided that I didn't want to just talk about existing cocktails, though I did want to work through the La Florida daiquiris. Instead I decided that I needed to create something new.

With that in mind I set out to finish reading my own copy of Potions, while setting the depths of my little brain to work on putting together something. Simultaneously, I also have way too much grenadine in the house and need to use (more on that later). So I started thinking about how to use the grenadine in a sour. I decided that I would follow the lead of such luminaries as Trader Vic, and start with an established cocktail. What I ended up with is the Eden Sour.

Eden Sour
1 oz Dark Jamaican rum
1 oz amber Martinique
3/4 oz grenadine
1/2 oz lime
1/2 oz demerara syrup
1/4 oz orgeat

Does the recipe look like a Mai Tai to you? That's the basis for this drink, I toned down the lime and orgeat and added grenadine. The grenadine adds a certain tartness to the drink that is different than the lime juice. It's not too sour, and the grenadine also adds a floral note. While this isn't a Trader Vic original it does appear, to me at least, like something he would have tried at some point.

Christmas Drinking

The Holidays have rolled around again, and whether that holiday is Christmas, Festivus, Saturnalia, or all of the above that means getting together with family. And for pretty much everyone (at least that reads this) that necessitates drinking. As to whether you drink with your family or drink because of your family that's up to you, we don't judge here. Of course the classics for holiday drinking will pretty much always work, and if you turn down eggnog, wassail, mulled wine, or possibly just shots I will judge you in a lesser light.
That doesn't mean that there isn't room for new drinks, and with that in mind I set out to create a cocktail for a gathering of local food and booze impresarios. I wanted to make a drink that just screamed Christmas, obviously pimento dram had to be included, gin for the piney influence and finally cranberry juice for the flavor and the color.

Saturnalia Sling

1.5 oz Gin

1.5 oz Cranberry Juice

.5 oz Pimento Dram

Once again I must be off... On Tender, On Acacia, On Harvard and Highland, Butcher and Rye!

MxMo: Fortified Wines

It's Mixology Monday time again, unfortunately I've had to skip the last couple of them but we are back with 

a new drink. This month's theme is fortified wines.  My entry this month is the Puerto Anticado.  Lately I've been playing around with mixing up variations on the old fashioned. I've been using my Christmas presents to play with different bitters, different spirits and different sweeteners.This has been everything from using rum, rye, or even some aged Wigle Whiskey.  I've really enjoyed that so long as you stick to a pretty straight forward recipe and use quality ingredients you are reasonably assured of coming up with a satisfying after dinner drink. I was trying out using some resposado tequila, Maestro Dobel Diamond to be precise, with some of the jalapeno syrup from the B'ak'tun, and Bittermen's Xocolatl Mole bitters. Just as I was finishing up, my ship's decanter full of tawny port caught my eye. On a whim I decided to add some of that to the drink. It turned out a lovely color and the flavors melded well with some very nice depth to it. For once my luck worked out in such a way that it was the next day that the MxMo theme for the month was announced and my drink fit nicely. 

Puerto Anticado

1.5 oz Resposado Tequila (Maestro Dobel Diamond)

1 oz tawny port

.5 oz jalapeno syrup 

4d mole bitters (Bittermen's)

stir with ice strain into a rocks glass with service ice. 

Lovecraft Cocktails

As you can see above I was part of the Horror in Clay Kickstarter campaign to get a Cthulhu Tiki Mug. (You can get yours here.) In the photo above we have my Santa Cthulhu off of my Christmas Tree in my Cthulhu tiki mug, he's so cute and yet so evil. This kickstarter/mug was right in my wheelhouse H. P. Lovecraft has been one of my favorite authors for quite some time now, and my love of tiki drinks is well documented. Inspired by the Lovecraft/tiki crossover I set out to develop a series of Lovecraft themed drinks for my forthcoming mug. The first was the Cocktail of Cthulhu, (already posted here.) The others are Pickman's Punch and Haunter of the Dark and Stormy.

Pickman's Punch

2 oz Pineapple Juice

1 oz Orange Juice

1 oz Grenadine

1 oz Silver Rum

1 oz Gold Rum

.5 oz Lemon Hart 151

.75 oz Orgeat 

.75 Passion Fruit Syrup

blend with 6 oz ice

Haunter of the Dark and Stormy

2 oz Dark Jamaican Rum

1 oz orange juice

.5 oz key lime juice

1 teaspoon grenadine

roll with ice

top with ~6 oz ginger beer.

These are hardly the only Lovecraft inspired cocktails out there. For instance Kaiser Penguin has the Cthulhu Punch recipe.  If you have some other cocktails recipes from the eldritch blackness or cyclopean halls please feel free to share in the comments.

Keeping it Light Pt 2

For part 2 of the Keeping it Light post we'll actually put together a drink or two. We've already discussed what ingredients we can use to put together drinks and keep it within the confines of the 4 Hour Body, but to review no carbs, no sugar is our mandate. This actually opens a pretty wide range of drinks, particularly if you avoid eating the garnishes. 

Some classics that are available to us include the Martini, (either gin or vodka, but no Appletinis, Chocotinis,  or other weird -tinis), the Manhattan, even a Gin and Tonic (you can use diet tonic is you really want to keep it light.) But let's have some fun with our ingredients and create something new. 

This month has a Mixology Monday event going on with a theme of equal parts. 

Smokin' Port
1 oz Laird's AppleJack brandy (if you're not sure about brandy use another brown liquor like bourbon)
1 oz tawny port
1 oz sweet vermouth
stir with ice and strain into a chilled glass.
garnish and rim with a flamed orange peel (how to flame an orange peel from Chow.com)

This drinks makes an excellent digestif with lots of flavor and a very nice mouth feel. It's a light drink with a very rich feel to it. Just because you're trying to keep things light it doesn't mean that you can't drink something with flavor.Curious about some other 4 Hour Body friendly booze? Leave a comment and we can talk about some other possible drinks.  Remember though while these are technically within the guidelines Tim lays out in the book anytime you are drinking alcohol you are drinking calories, (about 94 calories/oz for most spirits) so moderation is key.

Thanks to Frederic of Cocktail Virgin Slut for hosting this month's Mixology Monday.

Grog Talk

I'm off in Virginia for a photo assignment shooting OpSail for Spinsheet magazine. That means that I'm going to be on one of these bad boys.

Naturally this has me thinking about what is probably the mother of all Tiki drinks: Grog. I'm not thinking of the classic Tiki drink Navy Grog. I'm talking the real thing, daily rum ration, lime juice to prevent scurvy grog.

No one know the exact recipe for grog, likely I suspect it's because there wasn't one recipe for grog. I've seen and heard many different versions of "original" grog recipes. Everything from "1 of sweet, 2 of sour, 3 of strong, 4 of weak," (which is patently wrong as this is a punch recipe) to 1:1 of rum and water.

Now a little history:

Up until 1972 the British Navy regulations specified 1 pint of ale per day per sailor. This was fine while they were sailing the cold and gloomy North Atlantic close to home. As they began expanding their travels the ale soon became impractical. It would often go bad before the men could drink it. So the Admiralty responded in perhaps a strikingly practical way. They allowed the ale to be replaced with whatever the local drink that they could procure. In the Caribbean that meant rum. That's the first ingredient for grog.

The second important ingredient was citrus juice. Scurvy was a huge issue for sailors going back at least to the Romans, probably earlier. As early as 1497 citrus was known to have a curative effect on scurvy, though vitamin C wasn't isolated and identified until 1937.  Thanks to Admiral Edward Vernon of the British Navy, (known to his sailors as Old Grog for the grogram cloak that he wore) in 1740 citrus juice was added to the daily ration of rum. At this point we can say that we have grog consisting of water, rum, and citrus juice. Sailors likely would have added whatever they had handy to make this drink more palatable.

Me being me I decided that it would be interesting to play with a drink based on the idea of grog that would have been Piratically inspired. So I decided to create the drink below with the idea of an English Privateer using what they had available from successfully taking ships in their own version of a trading triangle.

Pirate Triangle
1 oz lime juice
1 oz white grapefruit juice
.5 oz lemon juice
.5 oz pimento dram
1 oz vanilla simple syrup
1 oz brandy
1 oz dark Jamaican rum
.5 oz Lemon Hart 151
Shake with  crushed ice.
Garnish with fresh grated nutmeg

Yard Work

So, I'm going to try changing things up around here a bit. We're still going to have the visual who's who of Pittsburgh's craft drinking scene on the same schedule of roughly every two weeks. The change is that in the off week between the portraits I'm going to write about my own experiences in Pittsburgh boozery.

My very first portrait subject for the blog was Dr. Bamboo, a member of the CSOWG, invited me to their Thursday Drink Nights (TDN).The TDN is basically an excuse for the members to meet up in a chat room and invent new drinks around a theme. While at first intimidated by the idea, and lacking sufficient ingredients and knowledge, I stayed away for longer than I should have. Finally getting into it I found a welcoming, if slightly odd, group of guys.

In early March Wigle Whiskey began selling their fine product, and I came home from opening night with 2 bottles of Rye, (one to drink, one to save from batch 1).  Largely unsure what to do with this white whiskey i began experimenting on my own. Of course, a sour was easy and quite tasty. it became my wife's favorite drink, which mainly meant that I had to make it for her.
 White Whiskey Sour:
1.5 oz white rye
1 oz Lime juice
1 oz lemon juice
.5 oz simple syrup
Shake with ice and pour into a rocks glass.

While simple enough, I didn't feel like I was really putting the rye to it's best use. Shortly thereafter the TDN theme was Spring. An abstract theme, I could use anything that I wanted for ingredients. I knew then that I wanted to make use of the rye in some way.  Sticking with the spring theme I felt like I should use some sort of fresh herb, problem was I didn't have anything growing from my garden. I took a look at the herbage available at the grocery store and came up with the idea of using lemon grass. The lemon grass gave my spring theme a double hit with the fresh herb and the implications that I would have to start mowing the grass again. Building roughly on a mojito style construction I started mixing. I stuck a small stalk of lemon grass in the glass, added a 1/2 ounce of simple syrup and muddled. To my concoction I then added 1.5 ounces of the white rye and shook. I strained it out over ice and then needed something to top it off. After mowing the lawn there is nothing better than a cold beer so I went with that, but rather than adding a lager I went with ginger beer, Reed's to be precise.

To finish the drink I topped off the rocks glass with the Reed's and stirred to integrate the ginger and the lemon grass.  Happy with the result, I sent the recipe over to Wigle, who now feature it during their cocktail nights on Fridays and have it listed on their website. Now when I finish doing yard work I come inside to cool with a Yard Work.

Yard Work
• 1 1/2 oz White (unaged) Rye
• 1/2 oz Simple Syrup
• 1 stalk Lemongrass
• 3 oz Ginger Beer
Muddle the lemon grass in a mixing glass along with the rye and syrup. Strain into a rocks or highball glass filled with ice. Top with ginger beer and gently stir to mix.