This week’s Thursday Drink Night featured Chartreuse. I haven’t done much mixing with Chartreuse and I didn’t have the time to do a whole lot of recipe creation for this week’s event. Oh well. That said, I’m pretty happy with the drink below.
End 43
2 oz bourbon (Buffalo Trace)
1 oz dry vermouth (Noilly Pratt)
1/4 oz green Chartreuse
1/4 oz Domaine de Canton
dash Angostura bitters
dash orange bitters (Regan’s Orange No. 6)Stir & serve in a cocktail glass.
Posted in MBH Creations, TDN
Gary Regan has a $1,500 Mai Tai at the Merchant Hotel in Belfast. Why is it $1,500? “Because the Merchant Hotel is the only bar in the world that has a bottle of the original 17-year-old J. Wray & Nephew rum that Victor J. “Trader Vic” Bergeron used when he created the drink in 1944.”
Regan goes on to describe the original Mai Tai as “just heavenly.” I’m sure it is. But I wonder the extent to which it’s “heavenly” because of its rarity or because of the supreme quality of the 17 year-old J. Wray. Moreover – and I think this is the much more relevant question – has Regan ever had a Mai Tai as good or better than the original at a price attainable by an average cocktailian?
This week I received a bottle of Jim Beam’s Distiller Series Bourbon, a 90 proof bourbon aged seven years. The bottling is in honor of Jim Beam’s seven head distillers and its packaging includes printed portraits and brief biographies of each distiller. It’s my understanding that there are seven different bottles; my bottle has Frederick Booker Noe III – the current master distiller – on the front.
Here’s what the press release from Jim Beam says about this whiskey:
“The Distillers Series” celebrates more than 200 years of bourbon heritage and craftsmanship, just in time for the holidays and the 75th anniversary of the repeal of Prohibition. Aged seven years to 90 proof, the new recipe offers a rich taste profile with a warm, lingering, mellow finish – perfect for easy sipping.
“The Distillers Series” bottle showcases key contributions from the seven generations of the Jim Beam family. Each premium bottle features high-quality direct printing, with photos of the distillers and a brief history of their accomplishments. “The Distillers Series” is available a limited quantity of 750ml bottles to legal purchase age consumers, through January 2009, for a suggested retail price of $20.99.
“As the only living distiller among the seven generations honored with ‘The Distillers Series,’ I work everyday to uphold the legacy we’ve created,” stated Fred Noe. “These limited edition bottles are more than nice holiday gifts; they’re the stories of my great-grandfathers and uncles. They’re more than two centuries of history and tradition. And, more than anything, they’re great bottles of bourbon.”
I get that this bourbon is produced to honor the Beam family’s heritage and the timing of the release around the 75th anniversary of the repeal of Prohibition is a good time for it. But I would also love for the Beam company to focus more on what makes this particular batch of bourbon special, not merely the nice packaging that holds it.
The Distiller’s Series bourbon has a beautiful yellowed ruby color. The nose is strong and sharp, with cherry, honey, and pepper scents dominating. The first sip goes in easy; the pepper hits the hardest, then comes cherry with hints of charred wood. What’s most surprising from the strong nose is the the lack of burn. For a 90 proof bourbon, it’s quite smooth – significantly more so than the traditional 80 proof Jim Beam. As I finished the glass of Distiller’s Series Bourbon — consumed neat, in a whiskey tasting glass — I started to get a much stronger vanilla cream flavor, along with more pepper tones on the middle-outside parts of the tongue. It was almost as if the mash was dancing between sweet corn flavors and almost the sugar-molasses quality of an aged rum.
After sipping the Distiller’s Series Bourbon neat and warm, I wanted to try it in a cocktail.
Manhattan
2 oz Jim Beam Distiller’s Series Bourbon
1 oz Dolin Vermouth Rouge
1 dash Angostura Bitters
1 dash Regan’s Orange Bitters No. 6Stir. Pour into a cocktail glass & garnish with a bourbon cherry.
The Distiller’s Series Manhattan was pretty spot on, though a bit more bitter than I’d hoped. The pepper flavor from the bourbon made the cocktail have fairly high punch up front — I’ve found the Dolin Rouge tends to amplify the high notes of a spirit it’s paired with. That said, the honey and cherry flavors work great with Italian vermouth.
For just around $20 for a fifth, this is a pretty good deal. I can see this being a decent bourbon for making Manhattans at a big party — good enough to make it special, but at a $21 price point not so expensive as to be precious. I wouldn’t put it up against any of the $30-40 per bottle bourbons (Maker’s, Knob Creek, Willett etc) and I probably would prefer Buffalo Trace or Wild Turkey 101 if someone forced me to pick my favorite $20 bourbon. That said, it’s not every day that you find a perfectly enjoyable and fun bourbon that only costs $21. If you’re looking for something in that price range, I’d recommend giving the Distiller’s Series bourbon a try.
It’s clear that the Jim Beam Distiller’s Series Bourbon is a very different bottling than regular Jim Beam or Jim Beam Black. I think the company is soft-selling the quality of this product by focusing on the family history and attractive packaging. I get the desire to honor the family tradition. But in my mind, the honor comes in making a bourbon that I, as an enthusiast, will enjoy drinking. What’s on the outside of the bottle just isn’t as important. But your mileage may vary…
Go below the fold for the history of seven generations of Beam master distillers.
In another stint on the New York Times’ Proof Blog, Paul Clarke has a pretty good post on the contentious debate over what constitutes an Old Fashioned. I’ll admit – I like this post more because Paul takes my side of the Old Fashioned argument (while offering some delicious riposte of the fruit salad side of the aisle) than it being a post in which I learned a great deal about the drink. That said, I think it behooves people like Paul and I to point out that while a real Old Fashioned is simply whiskey, sugar, water, and bitters, the cocktail containing muttled orange and cherry can still be quite good, if well done. It isn’t an Old Fashioned in my book, but that doesn’t mean it’s all bad. Perhaps if more time in the Old Fashioned debate was spent on developing an adequate name for the fruit salad version of the drink, partisans on that side of the fight could be content enjoying their drink and not rewriting history.
Posted in Blogs, Media, & Advertising, Cocktails
H&R Cocktail
H&R Cocktail
1 1/2oz dry gin (Broker’s)
3/4 oz Dubbonet Rouge
3/4oz dry vermouth (Noilly Pratt)
dash amaro (Amaro Montenegro)
Stir. Top with San Pellegrino Aranciata
A new drink for Thursday Drink Night. The subject of TDN this week was floats/toppings. I’d call this a float, though the Aranciata sank. I do love how the flecks of orange pulp in the Aranciata float at the mid-levels of the drink. But it was danged delicious.
Posted in MBH Creations, TDN
I started this blog with the intention of doing periodic beer reviews. I guess I’ve never really gotten around to it until now. I got a four-pack of Gouden Carolus Noel last week. I’ve never had the Noel before, though I have had their Tripel and Ambrio. Without further ado, let me tell you about this beer.
Gouden Carolus Noel pours out a deep, dark brown-red with little head. The bouquet is surpringly light and fruity, without a heavy dominant scent. The first taste shows it as complex, but not heavy. Raspberry, raisin, and malt flavors play strongest on the front and mid-palette. What is immediately impressive with the Noel is for a bottle conditioned beer that weighs in at 10% alcohol, there’s almost no boozey flavor. It isn’t a terribly deep flavor, but is about easy to drink as a dubbel with a third less alcohol content. The upside is that it really is complex, more so than the spicy food I had for dinner is allowing me to adequately express unfortunately.
I’m a fan of Belgian dubbels – it may be may favorite single variety of beer. This strong, dark, bottle conditioned beer is somewhat similar and really something I’ve enjoyed drinking. In fact, I’m hardpressed to think of a beer with double-digit ABV that I’ve enjoyed that comes in something smaller than 750 mL. It’s a seasonal, so I may try to track down some more before it’s gone for the year, because this is something I really liked. If you can track it down, I highly recommend it.
Posted in Beer & Cider
A few days ago the New York Times ran an article on absinthe. It’s fairly condescending and wanky. It’s main point seems to be making fun of people who enjoy drinking absinthe and the culture that exists around it. A shorter version of the article would read:
ZOMG! It used to be illegal! Now I know it doesn’t taste like sparkles and cupcakes!
Cocktailian culture is clearly on an upswing. As a result, there is an increased number of traditional media stories about cocktails, bars, and spirits. This is both a blessing and a curse. Last month a series of Times articles on many different aspects of drinking was generally quite good. This piece on absinthe is trite and annoying. Clearly there will be a range of articles in between. Just brace yourself for more wankerdom as the media develops an evolving recognition that there is a growing love for classic cocktails and spirits in America.
Posted in Absinthe, Blogs, Media, & Advertising
Phil Greene of the Museum of the American Cocktail sent me a note announcing the next DC cocktail seminar. It looks great and I want to be sure readers of this blog have an opportunity to attend. Here are the details:
|
|
Posted in Cocktail Culture
Creme de Roses & Vicomte Cocktail
A good friend of mine just came back from a vacation in Paris. She was kind enough to offer to pick me up a present in her travels and I sent her a list of liqueurs and spirits that were produced in France, but unavailable in the US. I told her to surprise me, because I didn’t really know much about any of the liqueurs I was asking for — found courtesy of the Cocktail Database’s Defunct Ingredients category. I was pleased when my friend returned with a bottle of Creme de Roses. Naturally I had no idea what it would exactly taste like, but was hoping for a sweet but not too sweet floral liqueur that could be potent but not overpowering. Fortunately, I think that’s pretty much what I got.
The Creme de Roses is not as sweet or with as heady a bouquet as something like St. Germain Elderflower liqueur. It’s closer to creme de violet. I haven’t found a ton of recipes to use the Creme de Roses in, but did try out the Vicomte Cocktail last night:
Vicomte Cocktail
1 oz gin (Martin Miller’s gin)
3/4 oz dry vermouth (Noilly Pratt)
3/4 oz creme de rosesStir and strain into cocktail glass
This was a pretty great cocktail. It was light and sweet. The creme de roses is subtle enough that while giving the drink real sweetness, it still left meaningful access to the gin and vermouth. I might try this with even slightly less creme de roses or a different gin to see how it can be better tweaked for my tastes, but all in all this was a great first go with the creme de roses.
If anyone know of other cocktails with Creme de Roses or has ideas for cocktails that might work with a liqueur like this, please feel free to leave suggestions in the comments.
Posted in Creme de Roses, Gin
I’m going to do something I rarely do and post recipes that I didn’t make up for cocktails I don’t have pictures of. I apologize in advance for the lack of creativity, but hopefully you’ll forgive me, dear reader, as the goal is to give you some tasty recipes for champagne cocktails to make on New Year’s Eve.
Napoleon
1/2 oz cognac
1/2 oz Grand Marnier
sugar cube soaked with Angostura bitters
Top with ChampagnePut a few dashes of Angostura bitters onto a sugar cube and place it at the bottom of a champagne glass. Shake the first two ingredients with ice and strain into a champagne glass. Top with champagne.
I first had this at Corridor 44 in Denver. Unfortunately that’s the only place that I’ve seen this cocktail described by this name. I ordered one for a friend recently at The Gibson and had the bar stumped as to what it was, most likely because it’s not a widely known recipe. This is a very different drink from the Napoleon Cocktail in the Savoy cocktail book, but it is quite similar to the Olympia Gold Cup — the only difference is the lack of bitters, sugar, and garnish. With all that said, I’m a fan of this particular drink. It gives a nice kick to a traditional Champagne Cocktail, and is a great set of flavors.
Elderfashion Royale
1 oz gin
1/2 oz St. Germain Elderflower
dash orange bitters
Top with ChampagneShake the first three ingredients with ice and strain into a champagne glass. Top with champagne, garnish with a grapefruit twist.
This is the one drink on this list I haven’t actually tried, but a friend reports from a recent party he threw that it’s a great drink and was a big hit. Looking at the ingredients, it sounds pretty perfect to me.
Boothby Manhattan
2 oz rye
1 oz sweet vermouth
2 dashes orange bitters
1 dash Angostura bitters
Champagne floatStir well with ice, strain into chilled cocktail glass, add Maraschino cherry, float one ounce of Champagne on top.
This isn’t a champagne cocktail in the traditional sense, as it’s merely a Manhattan with a bit of champagne added. But I’d be remiss to write a post on champagne cocktails and not include the Boothby. It’s one of my favorite drinks…and it’s the sort of thing that makes people who don’t think they like Manhattans learn to absolutely love them. Plus it’s a great way to keep the whiskey crowd and the champagne crowd happy at the same time.
Hopefully everyone has a happy, safe, fun New Years Eve — maybe even while enjoying some of these drinks.
Posted in Champagne, Cocktails, St. Germain Elderflower
It’s a few days old, but worth pointing out that Paul Clarke, normally of The Cocktail Chronicles, has a great guest post at the New York Times blog Proof, in which he talks about great bars he’s found in the US outside of New York City. It makes for an interesting read, especially if you’re in San Francisco or Portland.
Posted in Blogs, Media, & Advertising | Tags: Proof
Photo from Yelp.com
Posting has been light as of late – ironically because it’s the holidays and I’ve been in New York and Connecticut with family, I have less time to post on my recreational blog.
Yesterday I helped a friend move some things and a result got taken out to a bar in Brooklyn called Hotel Delmano for a drink. I’d never heard of Hotel Delmano, which isn’t a hotel at all, before but as soon as I walked in, I knew I’d love it. It’s style is instantly reminiscent of a Parisian cafe, with a fairly long, curving marble bar in front of a tall back bar. Near the ceiling are rows of shelves stocked with even more bottles, accessible by a ladder from bar-level. Even the bathroom sink has steampunk type lever faucets that fit in with everything else in the bar It’s a gorgeous space that speaks with a great deal of style and intent, while conveying a bar that could have been in the same spot for over one hundred years. . In fact, this isn’t the case – I was told the space was recently occupied by a tattoo parlor.
We got there on the early side (a little after 4pm) and the bartenders were doing prep work, but welcomed us in. On the counter were huge baskets of grapefruits, lemons, limes, and oranges — all peeled and zested, probably waiting their date with a juicer. Also on the counter was a bowl of fresh eggs. Other cocktailian detritus – muddlers, jiggers, bar spoons, and syrup bottles – were spread along the bar. That’s about all it took for me to fall in love with this joint before I even had a first drink.
The menu came in three separate laminated pages: cocktails, wines, and spirits. We didn’t look at the wine menu, but the spirits list was pretty interesting. Beyond the usual listings of whiskeys and tequilas, Hotel Delmano gives its customers a choice of rums, absinthe, and amaros. I can’t recall ever seeing a selection of amaro offerings in a bar before and was quite impressed. The cocktail menu is brief – probably ten or twelve drinks ranging from classics to original creations.
Unfortunately I was neither taking notes (as this was an unexpected visit for me) nor did I copy down the menu, so this isn’t going to be much of a post. I ordered a rum cocktail called a Trenchtown Fix, which interestingly included “pomegranate grenadine” as an ingredient… as opposed to grenadine not marketed towards the hipster set? It was strong and tasty with strong orange and vanilla flavors and a warm blood orange color. Honestly I ended up witha Trenchtown Fix because I could have had anything on the menu and I was genuinely intrigued to find out if the pomegranate grenadine was somehow different than grenadine, which is made of pomegranate and simple syrup. Sometimes knowing a little bit about cocktails makes reading bar menus amusing – you see the tricks meant to draw novice imbibers into a cocktail.
I rarely go out in Brooklyn – even though I was born there, I grew up in Manhattan and have always thought of Manhattan as the part of New York I want to spend time in. But I can’t wait to go back to Hotel Delmano, sit at the bar, explore their menu and the abilities of their bartenders. The place looked fantastic and the brief experience I had yesterday was more than enough to make me know I’ll be visiting again in the future.
Posted in Bars, Reviews | Tags: Hotel Delmano, speakeasy
Watching a brutally cold Monday Night Football game last night between the Chicago Bears and Green Bay Packers, I was inspired to make up a cocktail to match. I’ve found recently that I’m a fan of unapologetically big drinks – lots of spirits and lots of vermouth work just fine for me, much more than elaborate drinks with more liqueurs or syrups. I’ve been enjoying a Martinez as a staple lately, as well as classics like an Opera or a Deshler. But the Manhattan remains right there with my all time favorite cocktails.
As I’ve come to appreciate Manhattans (not to mention Martinis) to a greater and greater degree over the last year, it’s become clear that strong pours of whiskey or gin with the mere idea of vermouth don’t cut it for me. The traditional recipes call for vermouth and it’s for a quite good reason: vermouth is good and cocktails aren’t an excuse to pour three ounces of your preferred spirits in a glass with ice.
With that said, I wanted to make a monster cocktail last night, something to honor a huge football game on a frigid night. Something that were I in Chicago in subzero weather, I’d want to have. What I came up with is a twist on a Manhattan with a lot of punch and a nice, cherry depth to it.
Soldier Field Manhattan
2 oz rye whiskey (Wild Turkey 101 Rye)
1 oz sweet vermouth (Carpano Antica Formula)
1/2 oz Dubonnet Rouge
2 dashes Fee Brothers cherry bitters
1 dash Fee Brothers whiskey barrel aged bittersBuild in a large rocks glass. Stir. Garnish with two rye cherries.
I’ve made a number of different batches of cherries with different spirits to use in my cocktails. My rye cherries are merely a batch of frozen sweet cherries covered and jarred with 80 proof rye whiskey. After a few weeks of maceration, the cherries are jam packed with whiskey and add a nice kick to the rye Manhattan.
I’ve been looking for my preferred variation of a Manhattan for a while and this is probably my favorite version so far….maybe even my keeper.
Posted in MBH Creations, Rye, Vermouth
It looks like I’m continuing my inadvertent “Bar Pilar Week” at A Jigger of Blog…oh well.
A few weeks ago I was at Bar Pilar and I asked Adam Bernbach to make me a cocktail with Del Maguey Crema de Mezcal in it. I was up for something original and I figured he could do something interesting. He came back with a deep-red colored concoctation that he said had amaro, red wine, and orange bitters in it. As expected, it was something I never would have thought to order. It started out with a heavy smokey flavor from the crema de mezcal. As the drink progressed the smokiness seemed to subside and the amaro balanced out with the sweetness of the wine and took a coequal place with the crema de mezcal. It was a delightful, unique drink and the evolution of the flavors as the drink progressed was a statement of its complexity.
After finishing the mezcal cocktail I asked Adam to make me a Martinez. He laughed and asked why I ordered a Martinez. I remarked that it’s recently become one of my favorite cocktails and I’d been making them for myself at home with some regularity and I merely had a hankering for one. He shrugged his shoulders and said, “Oh, well you pretty much just had a Martinez.” I not so politely expressed my disbelief. A Martinez is made with gin, sweet vermouth, maraschino, and orange bitters. It had no real similarites that I could discern with the crema de mezcal based drink Adam had just made me. Adam insisted that the drink I’d just had was in fact a variation of a Martinez and promised to draw me a map explaining how he got from the Martinez to the unnamed crema de mezcal drink I’d just had.
When I was at Bar Pilar this week for the Tuesday Cocktail Session, Adam offered up the chart below, which showed how he started with the ingredients and flavor elements of a Martinez and evolved to the crema de mezcal drink. He said the process took him over six months to perfect and there were many, many failed versions along the way. What you see below is by no means a simple process, only a reproduction of the top-line notes on the movement from one cocktails ingredients to another’s. With that disclaimer (hopefully-adequate to Adam’s concerns), here’s the chart:
Click to Enlarge
I want to thank Adam for drawing this up for me. I do now believe that the crema de mezcal cocktail he made me a few weeks back is, in fact, a relative of the Martinez. I hope that the chart can stand out to readers of this blog as a testament to how creative a bartender Adam is. I encourage you to try this drink next time you’re at Pilar, though I don’t know what it’s called.
If you want to learn about sugar and sugarcane, go read Tiare’s latest post at A Mountain of Crushed Ice. Really interesting stuff and as usual it’s accompanied by gorgeous photographs of her handiwork.
Posted in Bitters, Fruit, & Syrups
A Jigger of Blog 
