Tornado through the Haystacks

I've used this recipe for a few competitions, and it's always treated me well for preliminary rounds. This started with Diageo World Class but became a go-to at my regular summer gatherings. Most of my friends are whiskey drinkers, and in Texas, it's hard to drink whiskey outdoors in the summertime. You need to proof it down and make it a bit more refreshing. My drink is a lovely blend of oil, smoke, salt, and spice. That sounds like barbeque to me. Come over sometime. I'll make you a plate. 

1 oz. Talisker 10 Yr Scotch

0.5 oz. Cocchi Rosa

0.25 oz. Citric Acid Solution

2.5 oz. Sparkling Mineral Water (preferably Topo Chico)

Julienned Strips of Lemon Peel

Add the scotch, vermouth, and acid solution to a mixing beaker. Peel an entire medium lemon with a julienne peeler (or use a Y peeler, then julienne with a small knife). Add a third of the lemon peel strips to a highball glass. Fill the glass halfway with ice cubes (preferably transparent), then add another third of the lemon strips. Completely fill the glass up with ice cubes and top with the last of the lemon peel. Add ice to the mixing beaker and briefly stir to chill the ingredients. Strain the drink into the prepared highball glass and top it with sparkling mineral water. Add a straw and serve. The final presentation of the drink should have dozens of little strips of lemon peel floating in suspension around the glass.

To make citric acid solution: 

Mix 94g filtered water with 6g citric acid and mix until the acid is dissolved and the liquid becomes clear.

I recently moved to Texas, and you know the first thing I did with my brother-in-law? We cooked brisket and drank some scotch. That's what you do down here. But barbeque takes a long time, and you can only continuously drink whiskey for some hours to smoke a good chunk of meat. Low and no-alcohol cocktails are a great way to keep cool while you're out in the Texas heat standing over a hot smoker. I love pairing whiskey with meat, especially a whiskey with a nice note of saline. Talisker has a beautiful flavor of the sea and the Isle of Skye. Talisker also has a pleasant oiliness that still comes through in this drink. It stacks with all the oil in the lemon peel gets accentuated by the saltiness, and gets carried throughout the glass via carbonation. The highball, like barbeque, started off incredibly simple in concept. Many people regard highball as a broad category, but historically, it's Scotch and Soda. Barbeque is just meat, smoke, and seasoning. Using the finest ingredients with the most straightforward techniques is how you make excellent cuisine. Barbeque needs to be low and slow to get to that fall-apart tender quality all the way through. A highball must be as cold as possible to keep its carbonation and not become overly diluted.  

Fun Fact: We would not have seltzer or soda water were it not for the fourth Earl of Sandwich. The man accredited with popularizing slices of meat between bread was the backer of chemist Joseph Priestly. The Earl commissioned Priestly to create a method of forcing carbonation into water. He thought it might work as a cure for scurvy. Priestly succeeded in impregnating water with air and is credited as the father of the fizzy drink.

Love isn't all coke and roses

The term "Love is not all wine and roses" is a common idiom I heard growing up as people waxed poetic, knowing little about love, wine, or flowers. It may have derived from a poem by Ernest Dowson, which referred to "the days of wine and roses: out of a misty dream." The great Tim Minchin has a lyric in one of his songs: "Love is not all wine and roses, sometimes it's handcuffs and cheese." I like that version the best. 

1 oz Fords Gin Officers Reserve

0.75 oz Cocchi Rosa 

0.5 oz Agwa

1 barspoon Lime Acid Solution

10 drops Crude Sycophant Orange and Fig Bitters

Stir all the ingredients together with ice and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with an orange twist flower. 

Agwa is a liquor with the prominent flavor of coca leaf, the base used to produce Cocaine. The additive's illegal elements have been removed (where they went, I don't know). There is an invigorating spice kick to this herbaceous liqueur and cocktail. 

Perhaps I overstep here, but I had two bottles of Agwa kicking around and thought the name was funny. I do not partake in anything implied in this drink and discourage anyone from participating in unlawful behavior. But if music, TV shows, and other media are allowed to poke fun at a subject matter, why can't other artistic expressions. I even drank an energy drink named Cocaine, though they did get shut down in some countries. I doubt I'll get any big liquor companies dying to advertise this drink on their own media, but I hope the concept inspires somebody to make something they wouldn't have thought otherwise. Eat and drink the weird stuff. Traditions exist, and you can get by simply following them. But we live in an age where everything everywhere is available to just about everyone if you are willing to pay the shipping costs. Have a laugh

Geez, That's Corny

This was a submission I made during quarantine to be a part of a virtual live happy hour with Hella Cocktail Co. Virtual happy hours were a huge thing during the first few months of quarantine but seemed to teeter off quickly. Drinking through Zoom isn't quite the same, especially when 15 people are on a call and only one person can talk. I forgot to edit my video to under 1 minute for the submission. Whoopsie. But it is still a tasty drink. 

1.5 oz. Mellow Corn Whiskey

0.5 oz. Licor 43

0.25 oz. Lime Acid Solution 

3.5 oz. Hella Cocktail Co. Bitters and Soda - Spritz

Build the drink in a highball glass with ice and stir lightly. Garnish with the peel of an entire lemon (Horse's Neck). 

To make lime acid solution:

Mix 94g filtered water, 4g citric acid, 2g malic acid, 0.04g succinic acid. Or just use fresh lime juice as a substitute.

The Hella Cocktail Co-spritz is a fascinating non-alcoholic cocktail in a can. It's similar to bitters and soda, a popular hangover cure in the industry. The Hella brand has more cinnamon and clove spice than typical Angostura. To balance that, I wanted to incorporate more sweet flavors, not necessarily sugar, but flavors people affiliate with sweetness, like vanilla and sweet corn. Mellow corn was a gut reaction choice for a base spirit to build this highball on, and Licor 43 brings a creamy citrus undertone throughout, further complimented by the massive swath of lemon peel. 

Command of Color

This was my first entry into the Van Gogh Art of the Cocktail competition for Chilled Magazine. It's a fantastic competition where they encourage you to explore the art of making drinks. It's clever in the era of Instagram. I won a weekly prize for this submission. We'll see about the finals.

1.5 oz. Van Gogh Pineapple Vodka

0.75 oz. Strawberry infused Campari

1 oz. Acid Adjusted Orange Juice

0.25 oz. Orange Blossom Honey Syrup

Mango Habanero BBQ Sauce

Shake all the ingredients together with ice. Brush a coupe with a couple strokes of Mango Habanero BBQ Sauce. A squeeze bottle will also do the trick. Double-strain the cocktail into the painted coupe. Serve. 

To make Acid Adjusted Orange Juice:

Mix 1 liter of freshly squeezed and strained orange juice with 32 grams of citric acid and 20 grams of malic acid. Stir until mixed and uniform.

To make Homemade Mango BBQ Sauce: 

Brown 1/4 cup of chopped onion in a pan with 2 minced garlic cloves and olive oil. Stew 1/2 tsp grated ginger, 1 1/4 cups peeled, chopped mango (1 whole), 1/2 cup peach nectar, 1/4 cup tomato paste, 2T dark brown sugar, 2T honey, 3T cider vinegar, 1 T molasses, juice of 1 lime, 1.5 t Worcestershire, 1.5 t mustard, and 1 finely diced habanero chile until mango is soft. Blend everything together until creamy and uniform. Store in the fridge for up to 10 days, or boil the sauce to 190 degrees Fahrenheit and store in sterilized jars indefinitely. 

I studied Art and Art History in college but never much cared for the art that came from Van Gogh. His realism and perspective were always completely out of sorts. The Doctor Who episode "Vincent and the Doctor" drilled home a bit about the artist himself. If you haven't seen it, watch it. You will weep. The color orange was used prominently in Van Gogh's work, from the sunflowers to his own hair in self-portraits. As a hobby during quarantine, I took up hot sauce making, and that mango habanero balance works beautifully. Bringing out that sweetness of tropical fruits with a light tingle of heat has been a joy at every step. 

Loaded Dice

This was my entry for the Patron Perfectionists Tour. It is about consistency in the culinary and beverage world and how fresh ingredients are inconsistent. This cocktail was my attempt to help flatten the curve. 

1.5 oz. Patron Reposado

0.5 oz. Amaro Sfumato Rabarbaro

0.75 oz. Acid Adjusted Pineapple juice

0.75 oz. Orange Blossom Honey Syrup

Add all the ingredients to a shaker tin. Add ice and shake thoroughly. Double strain into a large rocks glass with a large carved cube.

To make Acid Adjusted Pineapple Juice:

To every 100g of pineapple juice, add 4.5g citric acid and 0.7g malic acid. Stir vigorously to dissolve the powder. Shake the solution lightly before each use.

To make Honey Syrup:

Mix Dutch Gold Orange Blossom Honey with an equal weight of boiling water and stir until uniform.

This drink was inspired by every molecule's randomness or lack of predictability. The fermentation tanks of the Patron distillery are open and surrounded by countless varieties of plant life that produce different strains of wild yeast. Each strain will create a different character. Even every piece of fruit will be unique. Two pineapples from the same tree can have wildly different sugar contents and acidity. This just won't do for a competition called Perfectionist. I aim to erase chance and balance flavors as I see fit. Craft comes from taking what nature gives you and using it to create a consistent quality product.

The Dutch Gold Honey comes from a local apiary as well.

Mule in a Mill

This is my creation for Diageo World Class 2020. It's a riff on the cocktail I did for the Philadelphia Summer Cocktail Social. It's a simple riff on a mule where the lime juice is replaced by orange juice that has been tweaked to have the same acidity as lime. The peach flavors of Ketel One Botanicals pair amazingly with the dessert flavors of the amaretto. It's bright, refreshing and will fit palettes for all seasons.

1.5 oz. Ketel One Peach and Orange Blossom Botanicals
0.5 oz. Amaretto Di Saronno
1 oz. Acid Adjusted Orange Juice
1.5 oz. Fever Tree Ginger Beer

Add the Ketel One Botanicals, Amaretto, and Acid Adjusted Orange juice to a mixing tin. Add ice and shake lightly until chilled. Add the ginger beer into a highball glass with a large ice column. Strain the cocktail over the ginger beer. Garnish with a long ribbon of orange peel. Serve with a smile.  

To make Acid Adjusted Orange Juice:

Mix 1 liter of freshly squeezed and strained orange juice with 32 grams of citric acid and 20 grams of malic acid. Stir until mixed and uniform.

This cocktail is really about simplicity and precision. So many cocktails depend on ingredients that can be wildly inconsistent depending on when and where they are sourced. While local seasonal fruit can create amazing flavors, you never know what the acid content or sugar content is going to be exactly. I'm a carpenter. I like exact measurements. If one measure is off by as much as 1% it can make a table wobbly and unbalanced. Wild ornate cocktails have their place but without a stable, anchored base, they fall apart. Nature can be shaped to our will fairly easily. So that's what I did in this drink. The Ketel One Botanicals are a beautiful set of spirits that mix individual essences to turn out consistent crisp clean flavors. Again, building from parts to create a whole. Cheers.

Darcy's Donkey by Gaelic Storm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6N6W59nQh4

Rims and Rimming

Adding a rim to a cocktail adds a whole new dimension to flavor and texture to your cocktails. a good cocktail rim allows a cocktail to taste a little bit different with every sip and allows the guest a more interactive experience with their drink.

A lot of bartenders I see use a simple commercial rimmer for the sake of speed. Please don't use one of those hinged three-tiered monstrosities. The sponge they utilize to moisten the rim of the glass is rarely cleaned often enough and accumulates all kinds of bacterial growth. Also, this wets the inside of the glass as well as the outside. this is then dunked into sugar or salt which almost immediately gets mixed into the drink. and an extra half teaspoon of salt immediately being mixed into any cocktail will throw off the balance. A cool example of when you actually should have a rim on the inside is the Spanish Coffee where the sugar on the inside is actually burnt and turned into caramel which mixed into the hot cocktail.

It is typically far more preferable to moisten the outside of the glass with a citrus wedge. Typically whatever citrus is used in the cocktail makes the most sense, but it's not a hard rule. A beautiful rim of salt around a margarita with a lime wedge is classic. I often use an atomizer to wet the glass. A mister filled with honey syrup was used in a few cocktails I've menued over the years. You also don't have to wet the entire rim. you can do just half or just a little decorative strip.

Fill a bowl or dish with your powdered rim of choice. Always add more than you think you'll need to guarantee a consistent coating overall.  Dunk your moistened glass into the bowl and give it a little twist in the powder. Pull out the glass and give it a little tap to break off any heavier clumps. Fill with your cocktail and you're good to go. 

It's also not unheard of to coat the rim of your glass with melted chocolate and allow it to cool into a tasty band. a lot of dessert drinks utilize chocolate. I've seen smores cocktails rimmed with chocolate syrup and crushed graham cracker dust. I've seen gold dust, gingersnap cookies, bacon salt with old bay seasoning for a Bloody Mary, and more.

Aside from the classic sugar and salt, some of my favorite rims are:

Spicy cinnamon sugar:

12 parts Sugar: 2 parts Ground Cinnamon: 1 part Cayenne Powder. Mix around in a bowl and you're good.

Smoked Citrus Sugar:

1 part bruleed citrus peels (finely minced), 2 parts sugar. Take any assortment of citrus fruits and peel them. Take a brulee torch to the peels until they dry and start to curl. Chop up the peels into a fine mince, and add your sugar. Muddle this around a bit to get out all the oil you can.

Garam Masala Sugar:

4 parts Sugar: 1 part Garam Masala (mix of cumin, coriander, cardamom, black pepper, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg).

Green tea cocktail rim:

Matcha green tea, sugar, citric acid powder.

"You have no idea how hard it was to not make sex jokes in this post."

- Me

Juicing

Picking a juicer really depends on how much you plan on juicing. Hand juicers are fine for home use and cocktails to order but most bars need the help of something a bit more industrial. Check my post about different juicers here.

Juicing citrus is fairly simple. If the stem of your fruit is a "pole", cut the fruit in half along the equator. insert the fruit cut side down onto the juicer, be it a hand juicer, press, or mechanical. If there's an interuption you can leave the cut fruit up to 2 hours before juicing.  Apply pressure manually, or through the lever until the juice is extracted down to the pith. Juice into a china cap over a cambro. When juicing to order (a la minute) you can squeeze directly into a jigger for cocktail service. This has some drawbacks though.

I don't recommend juicing anything a la minute. every different piece of produce you juice will have different sugar and acid content. Also depending on the pulp in your juice and how you strain the cocktail, you could be getting wildly different yields. juicing in large batches and straining allows for greater consistency over the course of the shift. Some people like the pageantry of seeing the fresh juice squeezed in front of them but it does lead to less consistency overall.

A simple way to juice berries or other soft fruits like kiwis at home is to just muddle them through a mesh strainer over a container. After you've mashed a bit, scrape out the spent pulp from the inside. This keeps the strainer from getting too clogged. The mesh will catch all the skin and seeds and the liquid will flow through. Depending on the density of the mesh you made need to filter the juice more times.

Fresh juice has a fairly narrow window for their ideal flavor. Lemons, limes, and grapefruit are delicious freshly juiced but many people think they get even more flavorful after a few hours of rest and are good up to 2 days (48 hours) later. The shelf life of oranges is a bit less forgiving. Oranges contain substances called lactones, which after juicing, develop into limonin which has a bitter flavor. Fresh is best wish oranges but you can use it up to 4 hours after without much issue.

Myth: Room temperature citrus yields more juice than cold produce.

This theory is odd. People think that the fruit sacks or cells are scrunched together and warming them up will ease the process of juicing. Some people even think that microwaving the fruit will make it possible to extract more juice. Don't do that. Everyone who has tested this has disproven this concept.  The yields are the same regardless. 

Myth: Rolling the citrus yields more juice.

This is the same silly idea. Even Jamie Oliver thought this works. No, it doesn't. People have tested it. Don't waste your time. A good press juicer extracts all the juice possible, you're not manifesting new juice.

Walking in Little Shoes

This was my entry for the Gentleman Jack Whiskey Sour Classic competition. I've been playing a lot with acid solutions, but they tend to fall a bit flat compared to fresh juice. They tend to lack some body and texture, and there are all kinds of flavors in juice besides just acids. We talk about balance in cocktails as a ratio of sugar to acid, and while that is crucial, it is also boring. 

2 oz. Gentleman Jack

1 oz. Acid-Adjusted Apple Juice

1 oz. Honey Syrup

2 dashes Bar Keep Apple Bitters

Add the fluid ingredients in a mixing tin, add ice and shake well for 6 seconds. Rinse the rim of a rocks glass with honey and rim with spicy cinnamon sugar. Add a large ice rock and strain the cocktail into the glass.

Spicy cinnamon sugar: 

Mix 16 parts sugar, 2 parts ground cinnamon, and 1 part cayenne pepper.

Acid-adjusted apple juice: 

To every 100 grams of apple juice, add 1 gram of citric acid and 4 grams of malic acid.

I loved my time down at the Jack Distillery. Kevin the Barrel Man was a hoot. The story of walking through the caves with a chicken on a string was absolutely hilarious. Bluffing his way into massive concerts is something that charmer could do without even trying. Amazing stories all around. Miss Mary Bobo's was a very eclectic, warm experience. The legacy of Jasper "Jack" Daniels lives on all the loyal workers of that entire town. 

"Basically, I'm for anything that gets you through the night - be it prayer, tranquilizers, or a bottle of Jack Daniels."

- Frank Sinatra