On our menus section, the PS7 menu has been updated!

In case you haven’t heard, the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation Brewer’s Ball is March 12th, 2011. I’ll be there, and if you buy tickets through the site – which I highly recommend you do because it’s an awesome event – use my name as your referral. Lots of great beer, food, auctions, and just fun.

Now it’s time for some infusions and drink experimenting. I’ve been sticking with beer or straight booze lately for the most part – I’ve just been so busy! But we’re going to see what we can do. And, hey, it’s a three day weekend. Might have to throw a cigar or two in there as well.

Happy President’s Day weekend, y’all!

The rules were pretty simple.  We had to create an infusion using Oval and come up with a unique cocktail using at least 1.5 oz of the infusion.  The infusions were to be judged during Tales of the Cocktail by Rick Stutz, Gabriel Szaszko and Chantal Tseng.  The judging criteria was based on infusion aroma, infusion taste, infusion creativity, cocktail taste, cocktail balance and cocktail creativity.  The winner of the contest would have two nights of their stay paid for by Oval.

It sounded like a lot of fun and I jumped at the opportunity.  But then came the “what-the-hell-do-I-make” panic.  I ended up with two infusions.  The first was a clementine infusion using fresh clementines.  The aroma and color was redolent of fresh clementine.  But, a basic orange infusion wouldn’t win on creativity and seemed to run of the mill.  I had been playing with coconut water lately as a cocktail ingredient and decided I wanted to use it as a mixer.

When I think of coconut, I think of tiki drinks, frozen slushy drinks, islands, the sea and Thai food.  Ohhhh . . . thai food.  That would certainly be original!  Next was to think of the flavors associated with thai food and island/Polynesian-type drinks.  Lime?  Ginger?  Spices?  Check, check, check.  But I wanted something a little more obscure.  Lemongrass!

So here is my infusion:

Thai-Spiced Oval Vodka
16 oz Oval Vodka
1 9-inch stalk of lemongrass, cut into small rounds
2 quarter-sized rounds of fresh ginger
peel of 2 limes
1 2-inch piece of cinnamon*
4 cloves

-Place everything in a container and infuse for one week shaking once a day. After a week strain all the solids and re-bottle.

*After the contest, I was speaking with Chantal looking for critiques and her main thought on my infusion was that the cinnamon was too strong.  I tend to agree with that assessment.  In the future, and if you’re making this yourself, I would remove the cinnamon and cloves after three days.

For the cocktail, I came up with:

Andaman Sun
1.5 oz Thai-spiced Oval Vodka
1.5 oz coconut water
1 oz Piloncillo** syrup (1.5:1 strength)
.5 oz fresh lime juice
.25 oz coconut cream

-Shake everything with ice and strain into a chilled glass.  Garnish with a lime wheel.
**Piloncillo is South American unrefined brown sugar.  You can find it in ethnic markets.  If you can’t find it, you can substitute simple syrup made from dark brown sugar (1.5:1 strength) or you can substitute .75 oz simple and .25 oz molasses.  It won’t be exactly the same with the substitutions but you’ll still have a tasty drink.

The contest judging occurred at the Mixoloseum house in New Orleans.  Each of the entries were made by Chris Stanley, a very talented mixologist at the Clover Club in New York City.  Chris worked behind the bar at the Mixo house several nights during Tales.  His drinks were some of the best I had during the entire week.

And the results of the contest?  I WON!!!!

Woot!  Thanks go out to Sam, Chantal, Gabe, and Rick!  And thanks to Oval Vodka for the opportunity! And a special thanks to Steve Raye who offered to pay for the entire cost of two nights at the condo, rather than just my half of two nights.  You can read Sam’s write-up of the contest here.

What a great event and a great surprise during Tales!  Cheers!

Yes, I came up with a drink that when I made it tonight I thought “this had none of the original ingredients I thought to associate with Marshall but I think it works!”  Helped by the lovely and talented Ms. Sergi, we even came up with how to vary it up a bit.

So enough jibba jabba, let’s see the drink.

Another fuzzy pic, another lazy photographer moment

The TMF-aye-aye-aye
1 1/2 ounce cognac (Chalfonte VSOP)
1 1/2 ounce amer picon (Boudreau recipe, made by me)
2 dashes Marshall’s Moonshine Bitters
San Pellegrino Aranciata
Stir the first three ingredients over ice.  Strain into a double old fashioned glass and top with the Aranciata.

The amount of aranciata will determine the drink.  If you use the whole 6.75 bottle you get a nice, light drink, great for hot summer nights.  Use less – like half the bottle, for instance, and you get a stronger drink, with a stronger bitter component and something more of a sipper.

[Fifteenth in a series of drinks named after bloggers, mixologists, and random others who'll hopefully be at Tales.  The first post in the series is here.]

This month Mixology Monday is hosted by Matt over at Rumdood and his chosen theme is ginger.  Big thanks for Matt for hosting this month!

Ginger is one of my favorite spices.  For me, ginger is one of those flavors that is just as tasty in the summer as it is in the dead of winter.  During the cooler part of the year, ginger provides a bright, warming flavor to your cocktails.  During the warmer months, ginger tends to cool you down and provides a certain zing that is down right refreshing.

There are multiple ways you can incorporate ginger into your cocktails.  For the freshest flavor and more of that ginger bite, you can muddle several pieces before shaking or stirring up your libation.  You could also make a ginger syrup.  This route will provide a lot of sweetness along with that fresh ginger flavor.

Additionally, you could go the liqueur route.  Currently, one of the hottest new liqueurs on the market is Domaine de Canton.  Domaine de Canton is a mix of baby ginger and French cognac into a wonderful liqueur.  It is fairly sweet and has a nice fresh ginger bite.  Canton is a high quality product and quite delicious.

One of the most surprising drinks I’ve ever had contained Domaine de Canton.  At PS7 in DC, Gina Chersevani has a drink on the menu titled “The Cure.”  Actually, the full name is the “Recession Blues Cure.”  Priced at $5, it is certainly a cheap drink.  So what’s in it?  Miller Lite and Domaine de Canton.  That’s it.  Sounds horrible doesn’t it?  Well, it is fantastic!

The Cure
2 oz Domaine de Canton
4-5 oz Miller Lite
-Build over ice in a chimney glass.  Garnish with julienned ginger.

Now this may not be the same proportions at PS7, but for me, it is the perfect mix.  The sweetness and bite of the Domaine de Canton really highlight what little flavor is in Miller Lite.  A surprising drink indeed!

Once summer starts hitting full force, my drinking habits turn to long drinks, drinks with plenty of ice, tiki and the like.  There is nothing more satisfying on a hot muggy DC summer day than a tall glass of deliciousness with plenty of ice.

Which brings me to my second drink for MxMo.  I wanted to come up with a tall drink that was refreshing, gingery and easily quaffable.  I started thinking of what flavors went with ginger and I remembered this compote I made last summer.  It was a fantastic rhubarb and ginger compote.  Alright, ginger and rhubarb.  Luckily, I have some freshly made rhubarb syrup!  Thinking about the flavors of ginger and rhubarb my mind immediately went to tequila.  The sweet vegetal flavors of the tequila married with the bite of ginger and the tart/sweet rhubarb had my mouth watering.  Now I just needed something to tie it all together into a tall tasty beverage.  Ting!

(In full disclosure, this was the first time I’ve mixed with Ting and I’m very happy with the results.)

Ginger-Rhubarb Fizz
1.5 oz blanco tequila (I used Inocente)
.75 oz Massenez Creme de Gingembre*
.50 oz Rhubarb syrup**
1 bottle Pink Ting
-Build over ice in a tall chimney glass.  Give a quick stir to combine.  Drink and enjoy!

*A note on the ginger liqueur:  For this drink, I used the Massenez Creme de Gingembre.  I’ve had the bottle for a while and think it is a good product.  It isn’t nearly as sweet as the Domaine de Canton which makes it good to use when you want to watch the sweetness of the drink.  However, the ginger “bite” is a little less pronounced as compared to the Canton.  I think the Canton would be just as delicious in this drink, but with the rhubarb syrup, the sweetness will be proportionally greater.

**For the rhubarb syrup, I combined one large rhubarb stalk, cut into one-inch pieces, with one cup sugar and 3/4 cup water.  Bring to a simmer and cook for 20-30 minutes.  Strain through a fine mesh sieve, pressing on the solids to get all of the liquid out.

Thanks again for Rumdood for hosting this month’s MxMo.

Cheers!

It was kind of a tough topic.  Basically, The Scribe wanted us to think of an ingredient or technique we hadn’t used before and explore it.  I don’t want to act all jaded and like “oh, you know, I’ve been there and done that, har!”  But I was also like “uhh…what to do?”

That’s ’cause I’m typically the type of guy that if there’s something I want to try I just go ahead and try it.  I do the same thing with buying stuff, so it makes me hard to buy presents for, I’ve been told.

There’s one recipe however that I found in Harry Johnson’s classic bar guide that I’ve been wanting to try mostly for one big reason: it uses an egg yolk.  Not the white…just the yolk.

He has pictures in his book of various drinks and there’s one picture of a layered drink with an egg yolk in it so I knew exactly how I wanted it to look.  I had the liquor ingredients – green Chartreuse, maraschino, and Benedictine – so I went to the store, bought a fresh batch of eggs, and got ready to make the drink!

The recipe:

Widow’s Kiss
(Use a medium size wine glass)

1 yolk of a fresh egg;
1/3 glass of maraschino;
1/3 glass of green chartreuse;
1/3 glass of benedictine, and serve.

(Courtesy of Harry Johnson’s New and Improved (Illustrated) Bartender’s Manual and a Guide for Hotels and Restaurants, copyrighted 1900, reprinted 2008 by Mud Puddle Books.)

Wow.  Hit a few issues right away.  I didn’t have a great cordial glass for this (like the ones in Harry’s illustrations).  I wasn’t certain how much to use of each liquor and couldn’t be bothered to look that up in something like David Wondrich’s Imbibe!.  I also wasn’t certain which order to layer them in because Gary Regan’s The Joy of Mixology only had Benedictine listed of those three drinks.  His book did list ingredients in order to layer them in so I figured, hey, what the heck, I’ll try it that way.

But before I actually made the drink, I thought I’d get the yolk out first.  The first egg I managed to break the yolk of and so I didn’t want to use it.  The second egg I was much more careful with and the yolk was intact.

Then it was a glass.  I ended up grabbing a tasting glass from Horton vineyards; it was one of the smaller glasses I have and it seemed like it’d be a good shape and size for the drink.  It holds six ounces, so in a bout of not-thinking-things-through-completely (see below) I decided to use one ounce of each liquor.

Grabbing my bar spoon and measuring glass, I poured out the drink.  I put the maraschino in first, then the yolk – basing that off some random thing I’d read during the day – then the Chartreuse and last the Benedictine.  Looking at the picture, it might’ve been the wrong order to do them in.

But the drink looked neat!

As you might be able to tell, the chartreuse appeared to float up to the top right away.  The egg yolk didn’t stay perfectly in the middle – there might’ve been a bit of egg white left – but hey, I thought it looked kind of cool.

Then I realized something.

How in the name of Captain Tightpants was I supposed to drink this monstrosity?!

I took a sip off the top and really, that just gets you Chartreuse.  Not that I mind a nice dose of Chartreuse, but it wasn’t going to work (particularly when I’d get to the maraschino – ick!).

So I manned up, took a deep breath, and drank that #%()!-ing thing in one long pull.

THAT WAS THE WRONG THING TO DO AND DON’T DO THAT UNLESS YOU USE SMALLER PORTIONS.

Let me reiterate that:

DO NOT DO THAT.

My eyes watered.  My throat choked up.  I haven’t reacted that poorly to a shot in a long, long time.

I can’t even tell you what it tasted like – let’s just say, uh, wow, it was intense, and I would consider trying it again if I made it smaller.  (And if you want to make a “that’s what she said” joke, go for it, just … well, that’s the kind of thing that’d happen more likely maybe over in the Mixoloseum chat room, I’d bet.)

While I had gone through all that I’d made up a new batch of simple syrup.  This syrup I was going to modify a bit.

You see, I love vanilla.  I don’t know when that happened – I guess as I grew up, I discovered a big love for vanilla.  Kind of like when I realized that my favorite color was no longer black or blue (emo SeanMike for the win!) but red.  Weird.  And — I’ve never used vanilla simple syrup in a cocktail.

I tried my best to polish off my demerara sugar and let it cool off as a simple syrup then I added some Penzey’s double strength vanilla extract.

It cooled, I added an ounce or so of 100 proof vodka to help preserve it and add in about 1/4 of an ounce or so of the vanilla.  Tasting it straight, I thought it tasted pretty vanilla so I decided to try a drink with it.

In the middle of my debates inside the aforementioned chat room, wondering what to make with it (and getting very good suggestions from Stevi for dacquiris and French 75s) a horde of future in-laws showed up and I was forced to shut down my computer rapidly less they see some of the less-than-family friendly site titles in my Windows bar.  DARN YOU VISTA!

I thumbed my way through The Joy of Mixology and through Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails before suddenly thinking: HEY!  A Sazerac!

You know how I love a Sazerac.

I grabbed my Old Overholt, the Peychaud’s bitters, my little dripper bottle of absinthe, and a lemon.

If you know my favorite recipe for a Sazerac, you know how I made it.

Sazerac

3 ounces rye
3/4 ounce simple syrup
2 solid dashes Peychaud’s Bitters
Mix the rye, simple syrup, and Peychaud’s over ice.  Rinse out a chilled rocks glass with absinthe, dump out the absinthe, and strain the stirred mixture into the glass.  Squeeze a lemon peel over it and toss out the lemon peel.

(Recipe based off Gary Regan’s in The Joy of Mixology.)

The drink wasn’t bad – though the vanilla tones to it were really wiped out after the bitters and rye.  I might need to add more extract to the mixture.

But before I do that, I’ll probably have to go ahead and make a French 75.

I’m sure it’ll be delicious.

Anyways, thanks again to The Scribe over at A Mixed Dram for hosting this month.  Me, I’m going to walk back over to my precious, precious vanilla syrup.  What?  You want me to mix you up with an egg yolk in a some kind of layered drink that doesn’t have the same ingredients as before?  Hmmmm….