Month: March 2016

Green is for the Money

Adam (aka Mr. Muddle)1 Comment

Last Word

3/4 oz Gin <Boodles>
3/4 oz Green Chartreuse
3/4 oz Maraschino Liqueur <Luxardo>
3/4 oz Lime Juice

Shake with ice, strain into a chilled cocktail glass.  Garnish with a cherry.

It’s almost April, which can only mean one thing…Masters Week!  I have the privilege of attending Wednesday’s practice round this year, and could not be more excited.  As such, I’ll be taking next week off*, but I knew whatever drink I wrote about today would be required to have Green Chartreuse in it, natch**.  What better cocktail to choose than the one that introduced me to this herbaceous, floral liqueur…the Last Word.

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A Drink for the Di-Dawg

Adam (aka Mr. Muddle)1 Comment

Funky Diabetic (aka The Five Foot Assassin)

1 oz Dark Rum 3/4 oz Maraschino Liqueur
1/4 oz Orange Juice
Few dashes Angostura bitters

Combine ingredients in a glass and shake with ice.  Strain into an ice filled rocks glass, top with 2 oz Dr. Pepper.  Briefly stir to combine.

I planned on doing a pretty straightforward post this week.  Then I woke up yesterday and heard that Phife Dawg of A Tribe Called Quest passed away. As someone who spent their formative years growing up in North Jersey in the mid 90s, it hit me pretty hard.  After spending most of Wednesday listening to basically the first half of Tribe’s catalog, I decided to shift gears and make a drink to honor the man born Malik Taylor.

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Mixology Monday CVII: Infuse It or Lose It

Adam (aka Mr. Muddle)1 Comment

Photo Negative

1 1/2 oz Vanilla-Date infused Old Grand Dad 114
1 1/2 oz Cocchi Americano
1 barspoon (~1/8 oz) Cointreau

Stir with ice, strain into rocks glass with ice, garnish with a date slice.

 

mxmologo
Hosting this month’s Mixology Monday is Dagreb of Nihil Utopia.  His theme is Burden of Proof, and I’ll let him expound upon it:

My theme this time is overproof. Or rather how you utilize overproofs.  Do you sub them into your standards? Save them for accents in particular recipes? Pour them into ceramic volcanoes and set them on fire? Reserve them only for making liqueres? Whatever it be I’m looking for your recipes that use overproofs as base or as modifier…

Dagreb goes on to stipulate that for the purposes of this MxMo, overproof shall be booze at 51% abv or greater.

Now, it just so happens I’ve had my eye on a bottle of Old Granddad 114 for a few months now at my local liquor store.  The price ($22) was ever so tempting, but for some reason I hadn’t yet pulled the trigger.  So thank you, Dagreb, for finally giving me a reason to make this impulse purchase. Continue reading →

Aged from the Inside Out

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Bling Bling

2 oz Pisco <Macchu Pisco>
1/2 oz Dry Vermouth <Dolin>
1/2 oz Green Chartreuse

Combine ingredients and stir with ice, strain into a chilled cocktail glass. To oak age, make a ten serving batch in a container with a tight fitting lid. Add about an ounce of oak cubes (or a spiral). Shake every day or so and taste every few days until desired flavors are reached. Strain into clean container.

 

In the last few years, barrel aged cocktails have definitely become a thing.  Bars are taking classic cocktails (or even their own creations), throwing them in an oak barrel, and waiting to see what happens.  For brown spirits in particular, kind of takes the whole booze thing full circle.  Bars have the buying power and space to procure and store 3-5 gallon barrels without much hassle.  So what is the home bartender to do?  Fear not, for I have the answer for you.  Even better, you can play along at home. Continue reading →

Liquid Leftovers

Adam (aka Mr. Muddle)2 Comments

Brown Baggin’ It

1 1/2 oz Vodka <Tito’s>
3/4 oz lemon simple syrup*
1/2 oz Benedictine
1/4 oz Maraschino Liqueur <Luxardo>

Stir with ice, strain into chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with lemon twist.
* for lemon syrup, combine 1/2 cup sugar and 1/2 cup water, and boil until sugar is dissolved, remove from heat.  Soak lemon supremes (wedges will work too) for 30 mins, then remove.

The kitchen isn’t just for making drinks, it’s also for cooking food – something I enjoy equally as much, if not more.  Last weekend, those two worlds collided.  I’m trying to step up my lunch game, so I made this toasted bulgur salad to take to work during the week (it was delicious).  One component was candied lemon wedges, which are nothing more than lemon supremes soaked in simple syrup.  They added a wonderful bright sweetness to the salad.  After soaking the lemons, the recipe said to “reserve the syrup for another use”. Of course, I read that as “now I have half a cup of lemon simple syrup for cocktails”.

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Straddling the Line

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Flying Pig

3/4 oz Genever <Bols>
3/4 oz Becherovka
3/4 oz Aperol
1/2 oz Blood Orange juice
1/4 oz Bourbon <Woodford Reserve>

Shake with ice, strain into chilled cocktail glass

Genever is an interesting beast. It lives somewhere between gin and whiskey.  Gin is simply a distilled neutral grain spirit infused with some botanicals; genever is partly that same spirit, but also blended with a maltier spirit made from the same grains to give it a sweeter edge.  Serious Eats goes into a bit more detail, but you get the idea.  Genever is also the proto-gin, as the Dutch were making the stuff and throwing some of the classic gin botanicals (juniper, coriander, etc) into it to take the edge off.  Eventually it made its way to England and the malty base was eliminated, and you get the more familiar London Dry Gin.

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