Homemade Thai Iced Tea

Cool your boots with a tall Thai tea

Summer is coming. With it comes blazing sun and sweltering nights, the kind of nights you don't want anyone coming near you in bed, much less actually trying to snuggle up next to you. It is the season of cool showers, cold beers, and punch-spiked watermelons — anything to keep the sweat demons at bay. Iced tea production, common enough around here any time of year, goes into overdrive. Some days, I'll guzzle a gallon of plain black Assam or orange pekoe iced teas. For particularly hot nights, though, or when I want a counterbalance to some ferocious curry, I'll make a batch of Thai tea. Poured over ice and dolled up with dairy, it's sweet, soothing respite from the heat.

For many, the making of Thai tea is a mystery. Oddly orange with unidentified exotic smells and tastes, its concoction is often left to restaurateurs and vendors who specialize in such things. That's a pity when it can be made so cheaply and easily at home. And the tastes, while they may be exotic, are familiar enough in other contexts: vanilla, cinnamon, star anise, black tea, and tamarind. Orange flower water as well as artificial dyes sometimes go into the dry tea blend. Come on; you didn't think that orange color came just from natural, wholesome tamarind and tea, did you? The brand I use, Pantainorasingh, comes in one-pound bags and is readily available at many Asian markets or through Amazon.

Thai Iced Tea 

4 cups water
½ cup Thai tea blend (Pantainorasingh brand)
½ cup sugar (white or — my preference — demerara)
3-4 Tbl half-and-half* 

In a 1.5-2 liter pot, bring the water to a boil. Add the tea blend and sugar, then return the mixture to a slow, soft boil. Boil five minutes, then turn off the heat and let the dark, aromatic mix cool 10-15 minutes. Strain it with a fine-mesh sieve or a cotton strainer into a jar or large bottle and refrigerate. 

To serve, fill a 16-20 glass with ice, then pour cooled, sweetened tea to within two fingers of the rim. Finish the drink by pouring in 3-4 tablespoons (1½ -2 oz) of half-and-half.

*The term "half-and-half" confuses some people, so allow me to quote from an earlier piece about goat cheese ice cream:

Half-and-half is, nominally, half cream and half milk in the United States. But that ain’t necessarily so. As Anne Mendelson explains in Milk: The Surprising Story of Milk Through the Ages, it is a “term with no uniform meaning.” Practically, it refers to a light, creamy liquid with 10.5-18% milkfat, depending on the state and manufacturer. Richer than milk, not as rich as heavy cream. Since light cream can range from 18-30% milkfat, there may be some overlap between it and half-and-half. Experiment and substitute at your peril/discretion.

Goes well with:

• Brown Cubes of Joy (coffee ice cubes) in New Mexico.
• Soulless Ginger Lemonade (and plain without the ginger)
• I get serious about the preparation of a proper cup of tea, but still have enough sense to laugh at myself for doing so. I'm not the only one: Rip it. Dip it. Sip it. 
• Masala chai is something I'm less likely to make in the summer months, but when I do brew up a batch on those mornings when I'm up at 4:30, here's how it's done.
• If you know it's going to be especially hot, lay in some bread pan ice blocks for your cool drinks.
• Finally, making plain, everyday, unsweetened iced tea is even simpler than the Thai tea here. Grab some loose tea, a gallon of water, and get brewing. 

Tiki Nights at Polite Provisions

Getting a strong drink in San Diego has always been as straightforward as walking into the nearest bar. In a town where many equate strong with good, however, finding well-balanced cocktails still takes some footwork. Fortunately, the odds of tracking down a good mixed drink has shifted in the last eight years since bars such as Lion's Share, El Dorado, Craft & Commerce, Prohibition, and the Grant Grill at the US Grant Hotel have stepped up the game. What we don't do particularly well (except for individual bartenders at certain bars on particular nights) are tiki drinks.

Schooners: good for bar fights and Prohibition hijinks 

Erick Castro hopes to raise our town's tiki profile a bit with a new tiki series at Polite Provisions, the Normal Heights bar he opened this year with the partners of Consortium Holdings. The second Tuesday of every month, Castro plans to host a Tiki Takedown. Or maybe it's a Tiki Tuesday. He seemed flexible on the name when I dropped by last week. The concept, though, is solid: on that second Tuesday, regular and guest bartenders will riff on classic polynesian-pop cocktails and serve contemporary drinks in the tropical style.

Helping to launch the series, Marcovaldo Dionysos is coming from San Francisco bar Smuggler's Cove next Tuesday, May 14th. Does that name ring a bell? I once asked Marco — to my mortification — for a Guatemalan Handshake. He was kind enough to give me what I wanted rather than what I requested.

Expect plenty of rums, fresh citrus, and lashings of spice. Named after a boat in George R. R. Martin's Games of Thrones series, Castro's Cinnamon Wind uses Jamaican rum and spike of Becherovka, a bitter Czech herbal liqueur with a cinnamon backbone that doesn't get the play it deserves.

Cinnamon Wind

2 oz Appleton Estate V/X
.75 oz fresh lime juice
.5 oz Becherovka
.5 oz cinnamon gomme*

Shake with ice ice cubes and pour — ice and all — into tiki mug. Garnish with freshly spanked mint (don't just fluff it; spank it!), then grate a cinnamon stick with a microplane over the whole thing.

*If your week's plans don't cover making cinnamon gomme, try BG Reynold's cinnamon syrup (see below for a link).

Tiki nights at Polite Provisions (4696 30th Avenue, San Diego, CA 92116) run from 7pm-2am on the second Tuesday of every month. The kickoff is next Tuesday, May 14th. If I get out from under a cascade of deadlines, you may see me there. If not, raise one for me. Either way, break out your finest Hawaiian shirts and dresses.

Goes well with:

• Tiki mugs. If no tiki mugs are handy, a heavy glass schooner is fine. No schooners, either? Sheesh. Get off the pot. Do as I did: get some from Tiki Farm (maybe the new Onigaw mug styled after a Japanese gargoyle) or Munktiki (I'm a fan of both the Stinkfish and hideously adorable Mermaid mugs). 
• This is not the first we've heard of Tiki Tuesdays.
• BG Reynolds' cinnamon syrup runs about $5 at okolemaluna.com.

Max's (Other) Mistake — A Tropical Drink With a Genever Twist

Genever is  — or used to be — a hard sell at the Whiskey Forge where the usual hangers-on prefer American whiskeys and rum. Nothing wrong with those two, but this knee-jerk mistrust of genever bothers me because the stuff is delicious and I'm a bit bummed to the be only one who regularly reaches for it. Genever (or jenever) is a grain spirit from the Netherlands and Belgium. A few varieties are available, some even flavored with citrus, but they all are flavored with juniper, those little blue-black cannonball berries that give gin its characteristic taste. Knowing their weakness for rum I found last night a way to sneak genever into my drinking buddies' cocktails; use it in a tiki drink that calls for gin.

The result? They used almost an entire bottle of Bols genever on multiple rounds of a drink that San Francisco barman Martin Cate dubbed Max's Mistake. I admit the response to the stuff was a little more enthusiastic than I'd hoped.

The original drink uses gin, but an elision to the Dutch stuff was a natural, and tasty, move. Here's Cate explaining the drink and how its name came about on his new cocktail series for CHOW (recipe after the video):

Max's Mistake  

Martin Cate 

Smuggler's Cove, San Francisco 

1 cup of crushed ice
2 dashes of bitters
1 oz passion fruit syrup
1 oz lemon juice
0.5 oz honey syrup (a mix of equal parts honey and water)
2 oz gin [Bols genever]
2 oz sparkling lemonade

Blend 2-3 second and serve topped with ice cubes and fresh mint.

Goes well with:

• Regular readers will recognize Cate as the mad genius behind the koi pond-sized flaming tiki punch at Tiki Oasis (pictures and scaled-down recipe here).
• Bitterballen, little fried croquettes quite similar to Cajun boudin balls, are classic Dutch bar food, perfect for a few shots of genever, even if it is all doctored up with fruit syrups and juices. Here's my recipe. 
• Americans used to have a great thirst for genever, also called Holland gin or, simply, Hollands. Here's Samuel M'Harry's 1809 recipe for making a semblance of the imported article from very local American ingredients. 
• Drinkupny.com has both Bols genever and the barrel-aged version on sale now. This is a good deal, but shop around; liquor regularly goes on steep discount during the 4th quarter and you may be able to find even bigger discounts. 
• Have you a glut of genever? Then consider whipping up a batch of kruidnoten liqueur, a Dutch recipe combining the spirit with...cookies. Those without so much to spare can swap vodka. 

Two Lemonades: Fresh or with a Soulless Ginger Twist

Summer has come on cruelly for parts of the United States. Since last week, temperature spikes in the Midwest and East Coast have made me worried for family...and relieved that San Diego remains, as ever, lovely.

I will be traveling to those hot and humid places over the next few weeks, though, and undoubtedly will keep cool with beer, whiskey, iced tea...and lemonade.

I don't bother with pre-made lemonade, the powders and mixes. I'm not all snooty and think they're too sweet or otherwise unhealthy — it's just that fresh lemonade is easy to make from three ingredients we always have on hand; lemon juice, water, and sugar syrup. Why fake it when doing it properly takes so little effort?

This is an extremely versatile basic recipe. The ratio of ingredients is a straightforward 5:5:3, so use cups, milliliters, coffee mugs, etc. Any volume will work as long as you maintain the ratio. Scale up or down as your thirst, crowd, and container size dictate.

Fresh Lemonade

17oz/500ml fresh lemon juice
17oz/500ml cool water
10oz/300ml 2:1 sugar syrup

Mix in a pitcher. Chill if you've got time. Pour into glasses over fresh ice.

Monday, I was faced with a pot of ginger-infused water. It was leftover from Sunday night's ginger tea. Rather than throw it out, I swapped it out for the water I would otherwise use in the above recipe and made ginger syrup with the rest.

I strained the ginger water and set aside 250ml. About about 350ml remained, so I added twice the volume of sugar (700ml) and heated the mix in a pot just enough to dissolve the sugar. With everything in place, it was simple to make a batch of

Soulless Ginger Lemonade

Soulless? Does it lack the pungency and bite we expect from fresh ginger? No, that's there. It's even more refreshing than the plain version. Soulless because, as even we gingers know, we have no souls.

8oz/250ml fresh lemon juice
8oz/250ml  cool ginger-infused water
5oz/150ml 2:1 ginger syrup

Mix in a pitcher. Chill if you've got time. Pour into glasses over fresh ice.

Of course, if you have ginger syrup on hand already, this is a snap to make. Just use that and plain cool water. Doctor this any way you see fit; blend it with blackberries, spike it with mint or basil, but don't forget the ameliorative effect a stiff dose of bourbon could have on a glass of ginger lemonade. Carbonate the stuff, add a dash of bitters with the bourbon and you've got something pretty close to a Kentucky Mule.


Goes well with:

• Empinken your drinkin' with pink lemonade — a look at its history and notes on execution (hint: use cocktail bitters).

Gooseberries in Hops Syrup

An untried recipe for my brewing friends who have loads of hops lying around. Yeah, I know; January is the wrong time of the year for fresh hops, but come this Spring, there will be hop shoots to eat in the German style like asparagus and, after the vines blossom, plenty of hops syrup for those tempted by such things — either for preserving gooseberries as Helen S. Wright suggested in her 1912 The New England Cook Book or for adding bittersweet notes to cocktails.

To Preserve Gooseberries in Hops

Take large gooseberries, make a small hole in the end and remove the seeds; be careful not to break them. Take fine long thorns or thin skewers and fill the stick of thorn with gooseberries, place in a covered pan, with enough water to cover the fruit, scald, but do not let the water boil, until they are green. Drain them. Have ready a syrup made by boiling whole gooseberries until they break; drain off the water. To 1 pound of hops allow 1½ pounds of granulated sugar; to this add the water and let boil until the hops are clear green; then take them out and lay them on a platter.

Boil the syrup until it is thick. Place the hops in a deep jar, then put in the gooseberries that are on the sticks, cover with syrup, and seal.

Goes well with:

• Real Marshmallow Syrup, a look into a funky, bosky, and deeply odd syrup made from the roots of Althaea officinalis.
• Syrup of Violets, Three Ways — one recipe from 1844, one from 1814, and an even older example of Sirrop of Violetts from 1604.
• Opium syrup. Babies, it was said, cried for the stuff. More likely, the tiny little junkies cried when it was withheld...

Candied Buddha's Hand Citron

Drinking down the liquor cabinets continues. Frankly, our goal is not to drink away the hooch entirely, but to kill off the heels — those few ounces sloshing around nearly empty bottles — so that we don't schlep a lot of heavy glass to the new digs. You'd think, given the imperative to jettison dead weight, that I would refrain as well from canning, pickling, preserving, making ice cream, and like that.

You'd be right. Well, mostly. Old habits die hard.

When I stumbled across a stash of the bizarre Buddha's hand citron last week, though, I seized on the opportunity to crank out one last batch. Unlike citrus fruit with which we are most familiar, Buddha's hand citron is not even vaguely spherical. It has color you'd expect in a lemon, but the shape is more like a cuttlefish or squid. Those with a penchant for old horror stories might find it resembles the tentacled head of HP Lovecraft's monstrous Cthulhu rather than the hand of anyone, but there you go.

Known more properly as Citrus medica, the Buddha's hand or fingered citron, is striking not just for its bizarre appearance, but its strongly fragrant zest. Unlike the pith of lemons, grapefruit, or oranges which can add a distinct bitterness some dishes, this variety is edible pretty much as-is.

But it also takes to candying very well and, since plum pudding season approaches, I wanted a stash of candied citron so that if I catch a wild hare and decide to make plum puddings this year, I'll have the  most elusive ingredient. It will also undoubtedly find its way into breakfast scones and accompany the occasional afternoon tea.

I started with 2 pounds of fruit but the directions below are easily adaptable for whatever amount you may have. Don't be surprised if you don't find any pulp inside. In fact, there probably won't be any at all. If you do happen to find some, simply slice away for this recipe.

Candied Buddha's Hand Citron

One large or two small Buddha's hand citron (about 2lb/1k)
sugar (about 6.75 cups)
water (about 3 cups)

Wash the fruit well, trim any greenish or brown spots, and cut into half-inch cubes — including all of the pith and all of the zest. Place them in a large pot and cover with cold water. Bring the water to a boil, reduce to a simmer, and cook about 30 to 45 minutes until the cubes become translucent. Drain the blanched fruit and return it to the pot.

Add 2 ¼ cups of sugar and 1 cup of water. Repeat until the cubes are completely submerged.* Bring the mixture to a boil over high heat, then reduce it to a low simmer. Cook, without stirring, about one hour. You're looking again for translucency. Turn off the heat and let the poached citron cubes remain in the syrup covered overnight until cool.

The next day, strain them from the syrup (don't throw out the syrup) and arrange on a cookie rack set over a lipped tray to catch any syrup that drains from the pieces. Allow to dry at room temperature for 2 to 3 days until the pieces are dry to the touch. Toss them with granulated sugar and seal in an airtight container.

Notes:

*For 2 pounds of diced fruit, I used 6 ¾ cup of sugar and 3 cups of water.

You can, if you want to speed the drying a bit, train a fan on the candied cubes. Do avoid drying them, however, in the oven since this may result in something more leathery than tender and supple.

I haven't yet decided what I want to do with it (except, obviously in, cocktails and perhaps desserts) but this recipe yields about 5 cups of fragrant citron syrup. Gingered citron lemonade is as good a place to start as any...

Tiki Tuesdays

Whether the house specials are tropical drinks or tacos, it seems as if Tiki Tuesdays are cropping up in bars all over these days. Some tikiphiles don't even bother with bars and simply make delicious rum concoctions at home before the work week is even half over. Me? I don't know why we have to make it Tuesday. Seems Tiki Wednesday and Sunday are perfectly fine days to mark the passing of the week. That's not to say I would turn around and leave if I should stumble across a full-blown Tiki Tuesday in progress...and that's exactly what I found at Rogue Ales public house in Portland last month.

Because I intended to catch up with Blair Reynolds of tiki syrup fame, Craig Hermann (aka Colonel Tiki), and their families while there, I packed along a Hawaiian shirt. For this, I was roundly mocked at home. This was, of course, not the first time that has happened. Whenever I don one of those floral shirts, my sidekick Dr Morpheus asks "Is that what you're going to wear?" Sometimes, admittedly, I put one on just to elicit this response. I never said I was not mischievous. Photographer Douglas Dalay will more blatantly lean in closer to me, cup one hand to his ear, and make the most pained expressions when he sees me wearing such a shirt. "What?" he'll mock-shout. "What?! I can't hear you over that loud shirt."

So with those two in tow, I dropped by Rogue Ales to take a load off and try to catch up with distiller John Couchot. John was offsite that day, so we visited him at another Rogue property, but not before discovering that Rogue, too, had a Tiki Tuesday. The deal was that anyone walking in wearing a Hawaiian/tropical shirt would get a free beer. Mine was locked away in the rental car a block away. Ah, well. After much travel, it felt good to sit and enjoy a cool beverage and I wasn't about to go get it.

Dalay had other ideas. Not one to pass up a good deal, he asked for the keys and disappeared. About five minutes later, who should stroll through the front door talking smack about free beer? I wasn't sure because I had one hand cupped to my ear, leaning in, and trying to make out what he was saying over the loud, loud shirt.

Goes well with:

• Simbre Sauce, the pre-batched cinnamon-allspice-vanilla-bitters syrup we use at home for Nui Nuis, ice cream, over granola, etc., is named after Douglas Dalay.
• Rogue Ales. There are several venues for Rogue, but the one we dropped in that day for Tiki Tuesday was at 1339 NW Flanders in Portland, OR [(503) 222-5910]. They also host a Bacon Wednesday. At least, that's what the sign by the host station read. I didn't have a shirt for that.  
• Other Portland stories include Remember the Maine? Hell, I Barely Remember the Walk Home and Pok Pok's Chicken Wings (with recipe).   

Bookshelf: A Taste for Absinthe

In the mid-1990’s, resources for drinkers were nothing like what’s available today. Unless you were a collector of out of print booze tomes and bartenders’ guides, Mr. Boston’s little red book was about as good as it got. If your tastes leaned to the esoteric — moonshine, say, or absinthe — you were especially hard-pressed for reliable information in the United States. At least good moonshine could be found. Recipes for making ersatz absinthe, on the other hand, yielded universally wretched results.

I know. I tried as much of both as I could get my hands on. Most of the moonshine I kept. Most of the absinthe I gave away.

Now that absinthe is once more readily available in the US, it’s been showing up for the last several years in homes and bars that value in well-crafted cocktails. Some serve venerable cocktails, culled from the pages of pre-Prohibition bartenders’ guides. Others also pour more recent creations. R. Winston Guthrie and James F. Thompson’s A Taste for Absinthe examines them both and starts to answer the unasked questions: what the hell is this stuff and what do I do with it?

Guthrie is an absinthe expert and founder of Asbinthe Buyers Guide (see below). The book holds little new information for absinthe aficionados, but for curious novices it's accurate and truthful. Don't dismiss the value of that. With absinthe largely unavailable to them for most of the 20th century, Americans lost what little we knew about the stuff. As remaining stocks dwindled, myth and misinformation took hold. It was, rumor said, a poison. It caused hallucinations and madness.

The truth is far more mundane. Levels of thujone, the chemical said to drive men over the brink of sanity, were claimed by prohibitionists to have been outrageously high in pre-Prohibition absinthes. Modern forensic analyses of unopened bottles show that they weren’t. Whether or not thujone broke minds, it wouldn’t so do in the concentrations found in either classic or modern absinthes. The authors write:

In extremely high doses, thujone is dangerous, but the concentration of thujone actually found in the beverage absinthe is nothing to worry about. You would need to drink seven liters [!] of the undiluted spirit to have any adverse effect directly from thujone. The alcohol, and even the water [if you diluted it] would kill you before!

After dispensing with history, defining characteristics, tools and accoutrements, A Taste for Absinthe dives into 65 recipes of old and new drinks featuring the green fairy. The book wraps up with a buying guide — somewhat dated, but still a good place to start — for brands widely available to American shoppers.

Its recipes come from professional bartenders such as Jason Littrell, Neyah White, Daniel Hyatt, Eric Alperin, and Jeff Hollinger. You’ll find suggestions of mixing absinthes with mezcal, Lillet, fruit juices, egg whites, rum, honey, bison grass vodka, vermouth, rye whiskey, genever, gin, apricot brandy, bitter orange marmalade, and even sweetened condensed milk. Ok, I erpped a little at the last one, but, honestly, if Jason Lograsso mixed a Strutters’ Ball and put it in front of me, I’d give it a go.

Meanwhile, I’m mixing just enough absinthe with some of the newish 45 proof Crown Royal Black into a whisky cocktail the authors dub North of the Border.

North of the Border
.5 oz simple syrup (1:1)
.5 oz fresh lemon juice
.5 oz fresh orange juice
.5 oz absinthe
2 oz Crown Royal Black
Angostura bitters

Pour the simple syrup, lemon juice, orange juice, absinthe, and whisky into a cocktail shaker. Shake well, and pour the drink into a Collins glass filled with crushed ice. Add two dashes of bitters, and serve.

R. Winston Guthrie with James F. Thompson (2010)
Photos by Liza Gershman, foreward by Dale DeGroff
A Taste for Absinthe: 65 Recipes for Classic and Contemporary Cocktails
176 pages, hardback
Clarkson Potter Publishers
ISBN: 0307587533
$24.99

Goes well with:

• Absinthe Buyers Guide, Guthrie’s website with history, articles, and reviews of absinthes both for the US and international markets. 
• Amazon sells A Taste for Absinthe here

Honey Loquat and Elm Syrup to the Rescue

We're sick.

And by we, I mean everyone in the house except me.

There's coughing, sniffling, snoring, tossing, turning, couch-sleeping, daytime nap-taking, walking-in-a-room-and-forgetting-why, and slack-jawed 15-second stares at nothing. I'm keeping everyone at arm's length. Sympathetic, but cautious. Make them tea? Yes, of course. Cook dinner? Duh. Yes. Drive everyone to get pho? Pile in, boys.

I'm also dispensing doses of Pei Pa Koa, a sore throat syrup from Hong Kong. I learned of this honey loquat syrup years ago in Philadelphia from Ben Robling — the same erstwhile cheesemonger who provided inspiration for a Dumpster grappa recipe in my book Moonshine. Ben and I were shopping in an Asian market when he spied a display of red boxes and seized on them as the best cough syrup he'd ever known. He, in turn, had learned of the stuff from an opera singer who took a preventive spoonful before performances as a throat-soother.

What the hell? Why not try some? It was South Philly where colds in the winter were more common than parking spots and anyone with a cough was to be avoided as if she had the zombie plague.

It turned out to be one of the best the best cough syrups I've ever known. I've never seen any in a Wal-Mart, Duane Reade, or Walgreen's, but the decorative red boxes are commonplace in US Asian supermarkets. The dark, almost molasses-colored, syrup has a hint of amber if you hold it up to the light, and tastes strongly of honey. Peppermint jumps out with noticeable licorice and ginger notes. There's a longer list of esoteric ingredients that reads like a Jerry Thomas bitters recipe, but the one that excites herbalists is elm bark, widely regarded as a demulcent — that is, a throat soother. It means nothing more than a medicine that makes sore throats feel better.

I have no illusions that Nin Jiom Pei Pa Koa (Nin Jiom is the Hong Kong manufacturer) will actually cure the stricken in my house, but if it makes them feel even a tiny bit better, they will continue to have some.

Amazon sells 300ml bottles of the stuff for a little over $15. Sure, you could buy it online. Or you could venture into the nearest Asian market and find some yourself. The 300ml bottle I picked up yesterday was less than $6.

And — me being me — you know I'm eyeballing that bottle and mulling over drinks ideas. There is, after all, that whole list-of-esoteric-ingredients-that-reads-like-a-Jerry-Thomas-bitters-recipe feeling that's hard to shake.

Taking a Tiki Shortcut with Simbre Sauce

Last summer, I uncovered a stash of underpriced Zaya Gran Reserva rum in a coastal mom and pop liquor store. I rolled away with a single drink in mind and half the stock in my trunk. This aged rum from Trinidad and Tobago is big-flavored, slightly sweet, and a lot of my friends use it as a sipping rum. In my book, though, Zaya shines as a mixer, especially when it’s one of multiple rums in a drink. In fact, the odd snifter and Mai Tai aside, we’ve used almost all of it mixed in a Depression-era tropical concoction: The Nui Nui.

The drink dates back to the late 1930’s and is credited to legendary self-promoter and tiki forefather Don The Beachcomber. How much do we like the Nui Nui? So much that we’ve downed three bottles of Zaya since this summer — and each drink, the way we make it, calls for only an ounce. The other ingredients are just fruit juices, Appleton rum, and a syrup we’ve dubbed Simbre Sauce.

We came up with Simbre Sauce because of the sheer volume of Nui Nuis we were downing. The sauce has perfectly legitimate non-boozy uses and sometimes gets drizzled on ice cream or yogurt and granola around here. But its real purpose is to cut down the time it takes to make a drink. Rather than pouring the various syrups and tinctures called for in the original recipe every time we wanted a batch, our friend Douglas pre-batched them as a single syrup to streamline the process. I dubbed the result Simbre (SIM-bray) Sauce after an old name in his family.

Simbre Sauce

350ml cinnamon syrup
175ml vanilla syrup
175ml pimento dram (an allspice liqueur)
5ml Angostura bitters

Mix, bottle, and store under refrigeration.

Ingredient notes: I use homemade syrups in the concoction above, but Trader Tiki’s range of tropical syrups make blending something like this a snap. If you do use Trader Tiki syrups, be aware that the cinnamon is strong and you may need to use a little less. This is good: it leaves more to go around. If you want to make your own, add 6 4” cinnamon sticks to 2 cups of water and 2 cups of sugar in a pot, simmer about 2 minutes and allow to cool before straining and bottling.

Trader Tiki himself crafting Nui Nuis

For the pimento dram, unless you're the sort to make your own, use St. Elizabeth Allspice Dram. Eric Seed of Haus Alpenz has been importing the stuff and since I bought my first bottle, I’ve never been without some.

And now, the Whiskey Forge variation of this old tropical drink. It lacks the traditional long orange peel and uses block ice rather than crushed ice. If you want to make one that adheres to the old method, see Kaiser Penguin’s take on it below.

Simbre Nui Nui

3 oz Appleton Estate V/X
1 oz Zaya
1 oz fresh lime juice
1 oz fresh orange juice
1 oz Simbre Sauce

Combine the ingredients in a shaker and shake with ice. Strain into ice-filled mugs. Sip. Smile.

Goes well with:

• RumDood looks at Zaya
• I show a few ways to make vanilla syrup.
• Trader Tiki’s Hand-Crafted Exotic Syrups
• St Elizabeth’s Allspice Dram at DrinkupNY
• Kaiser Penguin’s take on the Nui Nui 
• Beachbum Berry's Tiki+ App is Back

Pink Lemonade II: Charlatans at the Circus, Racetrack, and Church

Earlier this week I mentioned how I make pink lemonade. Same way as pink gin: with cocktail bitters. That’s just one way, though, and older bartending manuals include many ways to make the drink pink. In 1908, the Honorable William T. (Cocktail) Boothby published The World’s Drinks and How to Mix Them. He addresses the pink stuff under the heading Circus Lemonade.

A casual glance at the recipe suggests that Boothby is an old-school charlatan, but he’s actually getting in digs at unscrupulous vendors at circuses, fairs…and churches.

Shocking—A bartender pointing out ecclesiastical lemonade hypocrisy. His method of adding raspberry syrup's not a bad drink, but ease off the sugar if that version tempts you.

Circus Lemonade

This drink in a barroom is a Plain Lemonade colored with raspberry syrup; but a proper Circus Lemonade is a beverage that is made to sell at large gatherings, such as services, fairgrounds, race-courses and church affairs, and is made in the following manner: —

Procure a large tub or headless barrel and fill it nearly full of water, add enough citric or tartaric acid to suit, and sweeten to taste with sugar. Two pounds of acid will make over 30 gallons of lemonade. Cochineal coloring…will make it a beautiful red color. Always slice up a few lemons or oranges and throw in. If you have no ice handy with which to cool this delightful beverage, procured a piece of glass and fasten to the sides of the barrel with strings, so it will float near the top, and put some of the sliced fruit on it. This little deception causes the drink to appear more inviting on a warm day. A strawberry is usually added a church fairs, and two or three berries might possibly be used for a picnic.

Hon Wm T. Boothby (1908)
The World’s Drinks and How to Mix Them
143 pages, paperback
2009 reprint by Mud Puddle Books
ISBN 978-1-60311-189-8
$19.99
Buy it here.

Rowley’s Gift Guide for Drinkers: Homemade Vanilla Syrup

In twenty years of cooking my own meals, I have made some flat-out amazing dishes. So far, none has been as delicious as my own homemade vanilla syrup.

If you are inclined to make your Christmas presents, here’s one that drinkers on your gift list should get some miles out of. It’s an integral component to the tropical Nui Nui, lends an ethereal air to a Ramos gin fizz, and in small doses lends a velvet softness to whipped cream for topping Kahlua-spiked hot chocolate.

There are two primary ways of making the syrup at home. One uses high-quality vanilla extract. The other—the one that I feel gives superior results—uses actual vanilla pods. We will take a look at both. First, a quick-and-dirty version that starts with a sugar syrup that I tend to keep around in large quantities.

Quick & Dirty Vanilla Syrup

1 cup 2:1 simple syrup*
1 tsp vanilla extract

Stir the vanilla extract into the syrup and bottle. And Bob’s your uncle: It is now ready for use.

Note: use a high-end vanilla extract or don’t bother making your own syrup. Reputable brands include Penzey’s and Nielsen-Massey Vanillas. I use the heady Mexican brand Orlando Gaya Hijos from Veracruz.

Now, here’s the recipe I use when I don’t need a bunch of syrup immediately. As in Philadelphia-style vanilla ice cream, tiny black seeds are shot throughout.

Rich Vanilla Syrup

2 cups sugar
1 cup filtered water
5 vanilla pods

Pour the sugar and water into a small, heavy saucepan. Slice each vanilla pod along its length and open like a book. Scrape as many of the tiny black seeds as possible into the pot. Using kitchen shears, snip each pod into 1” lengths. Add these to the pot and bring all to a boil. Immediately reduce to a simmer, beat gently with a long-handled whisk to release even more seeds from the pods and allow the syrup to simmer about two minutes. Let the syrup cool in the pan. Strain the larger pieces of vanilla pods and set aside, but leave in all the small black seeds in the syrup. Bottle and refrigerate.

Air-dry the pods and toss them into a bin of sugar to infuse it with the aroma of vanilla. Next time you make Rich Vanilla Syrup, use this vanilla-scented sugar.

* Using the term “simple syrup” is enough to raise voices among some bartenders and cocktail aficionados. “Simple” in this instance does not refer to a perfect one-to-one ratio of sugar to water. It means simply that the syrup contains no ingredients other than sugar and water. Bartenders had no special claim on the term which has, in fact, been used by pastry chefs, soda jerks, confectioners, and home cooks for a very long time. Each of these has different ideas about the correct proportion of sugar to water in “simple” syrup. Increasingly, you may hear of “rich” syrup when proportion of sugar is higher than that of water. This 2:1 rich syrup is the one we use almost exclusively at home. It’s just so simple.

The easiest way to make rich syrup is to add two parts sugar to one part water in a saucepan, heat only until the sugar dissolves, then cool and bottle. Store under refrigeration.

See the gift guide as it grows here.

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Happy Halloween!

I'm not what you'd call a tiki carver by any stretch of the imagination. But with Halloween here and a load of pumpkins begging for the knife, I couldn't resist bringing a little South Seas fantasy to the traditional Jack-O-Lanterns.


Happy Halloween, ya'll.

With a tip of the hat to Trader Vic's Scorpion Bowl, here's a punch for just such a carving.

Skellington Bowl

6 oz fresh orange juice
5 ounces lemon juice
2 oz boiled cider
1 oz orgeat
.5 oz cinnamon syrup
6 ounces of light rum
1 oz brandy

Blend with two cups of crushed ice. Pour into the hollowed out pumpkin. Add ice cubes to fill, and insert 2 or 3 straws.

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Boiled Cider, an Old New England Syrup

There is nothing especially technical about serving cider
if you bought it at the right place
and kept it cold long enough
for it to harden a little.

~ Louise Andrews Kent
Mrs. Appleyard’s Kitchen (1942)

Once the temperature dips, my thoughts turn to hearty meals. For the last fifteen years or so, that also means cider: sweet, hard, mulled, or boiled. If it's apple squeezin’s, I'm in. I’m not talking about distilling hard cider (though that has its own appeal and I particularly like Mrs. Appleyard’s commonsense approach to such things), but simply pouring fresh apple cider in a broad pot, turning on the heat, and letting it boil down until it becomes a sweet syrup.

There. That’s more or less the recipe.

Although lately I’ve been livening up cocktails with the stuff, it’s versatile syrup that’s put to good use in both sweet and savory dishes such as pies, baked beans, fools, wild rice pilafs, and pork roasts—even gingerbread. Bacon, oranges, and mustard are especially nice complements (see below for a boiled cider pie recipe).

For cocktails, I find that boiled cider goes particularly well with applejack, Calvados, brandy, and rum. I’m not in any particular rush to try it with gin, but let me know what you think if you give it a shot.

In more detail, here’s how to do it. Make it enough times and you’ll get to understand when to take it off the fire just by its smell, dark color, and thick consistency. Until then, cheat: Once the cider is in the pot, but before it comes to a boil, insert a cake tester, wooden BBQ skewer, or wooden chopstick straight down into it. This is your dipstick.

Mark the depth of the cider on the wood. Then mark half of that. Then mark half again. Then mark half of the last mark—this should be 1/8th the original height. Cook until the level is almost down to the last mark. You’re looking for about a 7:1 reduction. A little more or a little less isn’t going to hurt.

Boiled Cider

1 gallon/4 liters of fresh sweet cider

Pour the cider into a broad and deep heavy-bottomed pan (I use a large enameled Le Creuset Dutch oven). Turn heat to high.

Boil the cider, uncovered, until volume is reduced to just under 400ml (about half a whiskey bottle’s worth).

Let cool and bottle. I tend neither to filter or to refrigerate the syrup, but do as you please. In any event, keep it in a cool, dark place.

Right. That pie I mentioned.

Richard Sax’s Classic Home Desserts is my go-to dessert book. If I could only keep one dessert book out the whole library, this would be it. This, in fact, was the book that introduced me to boiled cider. Here’s an adaptation of his recipe. If you don’t have his book but enjoy cooking desserts, go get a copy.

New England Boiled Cider Pie
Adapted from Richard Sax (1994) Classic Home Desserts

1 unbaked pie crust
2/3 cup boiled cider
2 Tbl sugar, or to taste
2 Tbl plus 1 tsp unsalted butter, melted
2 Tbl fresh lemon juice
Pinch of salt
2 large eggs, well beaten
2 tart apples, such as Granny Smith, peeled, cored and coarsely grated
3 tablespoons packed brown sugar
1/8 tsp fresh-grated nutmeg
Vanilla ice cream or whipped cream for serving

Roll out pie dough on a lightly floured surface to about 1/8” thick and place into a buttered pie pan. Trim all but ¾” around pie, then turn edge under and make a fluted border, then chill in the fridge.

Preheat oven to 375°F/190°C.

In a bowl, whisk together the boiled cider, sugar, melted butter, lemon juice, salt and eggs. Add the grated apples and stir to blend well. Pour the filling into the prepared pie crust, sprinkle with brown sugar and nutmeg and bake until the center is just set, about 50 minutes.

Cool on a wire rack and serve warm with vanilla ice cream or whipped cream.

Goes well with:

Willis and Tina Wood’s family has been making their boiled cider since 1882. If you don’t feel like making your own, give them a jingle.

Wood’s Cider Mill
1482 Weathersfield Center Road
Springfield, VT 05156
P: 802.263.5547
Fax: 802.263.9674

email: orders@woodscidermill.com

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Rowley's Raspberry Syrup

Two bottles of raspberry syrup are in the fridge and all I think of is liquor and Joe Satan.

Haven’t laid eyes on Joe in twenty years, but he was a regular at the Kansas City home of my friend Pete Helmkamp. Pete played metal and breathed fire on stage. Still does, but I'm not sure about the fire-breathing part. Joe appreciated that. No idea what his last name really was—just Joe Satan. Nice enough guy, but he had a habit of making one-word proclamations. While some metal aficionados might raise their fore- and small fingers to proclaim “Metal!” Joe would declare the initial letter and pronounce the remainder of the word. “Capital M!” he might throw down, then follow it sotto voce with “Lowercase etal.” Or, on returning from a beer run, announce to the living room crowd “Capital B! Lowercase eer.”

As I regard these corked bourbon bottles filled with fresh raspberry syrup, I can’t help but think to myself “Capital M. Lowercase oron.”

Not because the syrup’s bad. Far from it: Because it’s so good. For years, I’ve avoided 19th- and early 20th-century cocktails such as the Knickerbocker that called for raspberry syrup. Expensive, fey, pain-to-make syrup—who needs it?

But with raspberries on sale this week, I broke down and got a flat. Expensive? Nope: a lot cheaper than buying the stuff at a gourmet shop. Pain to make? Barely more difficult than opening a beer. Fey? Meh ~ that was just me hunting for excuses not to make it.

I suppose you could drizzle it over pancakes, ice cream, or poached peaches, but it’s particularly good with rum. As I said: lowercase oron.

Old recipes for raspberry syrup are all over the board with proportions of fruit to syrup and even sugar to water in the syrups. Jerry Thomas (The Bartender's Guide, 1862) even insists that the fruit mash ferment for about three days to prevent it from jelling before adding sugar. I went with a 2:1 syrup, knowing the water in the berries' cells would dilute the final concentration somewhat and I didn't want to start any spontaneous fermentations. Thomas' recipe follows my own.

Rowley's Raspberry Syrup

32 oz fresh raspberries
32 oz white sugar
16 fluid oz water

Gently wash the berries under running water in a colander, taking care not to crush them. While they are draining, pour the sugar then the water in a pan. Heat the sugar and water, stirring frequently, over high flame until the sugar dissolves.

While the syrup is heating, transfer the berries to a bowl (about 4-6 quart capacity) and mash with a potato masher or the back of a spoon, being careful not to splash. Once the sugar is completely dissolved, pour it over the mashed berries.

Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and allow it to cool. Refrigerate and, after 24 hours, strain, first through a metal strainer, then (if you want to remove even finer particulates) cotton or cheesecloth. Using a funnel, pour the final strained syrup into two 750ml bottles.

Yields about 47 oz/1.4 liters.

And from his classic 1862 The Bartender's Guide; or How to Mix Drinks; or The Bon-Vivant's Companion, here is

Jerry Thomas' Raspberry Syrup

2 pints of filtered raspberry juice
4 1/2lbs of sugar

Select the fruit, either white or red. Having picked them over, mash them in a pan, which put in a warm place until fermentation has commenced. Let it stand for about three days. All mucilaginous fruits require this, or else they would jelly when bottled. Now filter the juice through a close flannel bag, or blotting-paper, and add sugar in the proportion mentioned above; this had better be powdered. Place the syrup on the fire, and as it heats skim it carefully, but don't let it boil; or you may mix in a glass vessel or earthenware jar, and place in a pan of water on the fire. This is a very clean way, and prevents the sides crusting and burning. When dissolved to the 'little pearl' (see No. 12) take it off; strain through a cloth; bottle when cold; cover with tissue-paper dipped in brandy and tie down with a bladder.

12. Little Pearl

This is when you separate the thumb and finger, and the fine thread reaches, without breaking, from one to the other.

The "little pearl" Thomas talks about is also known to confectioners as le petit perlé — 110-112°C or 230-233°F

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Syrup of Violets, Three Ways

“My God, have mercy upon me! " and, uttering a fearful cry, Barrois fell back as if he had been struck by lightning. D'Avrigny put his hand to his heart and placed a glass before his lips. "Well!" said Villefort. "Go to the kitchen, and get me some syrup of violets."

~ The Count of Monte-Cristo (1893)
Chapter 79: The Lemonade
Alexandre Dumas

Given the number of bottles laced with violets at Tales of the Cocktail this summer, smart money says we'll be seeing more floral drinks mixed at some of our favorite watering holes. Obscure-spirits wrangler Eric Seed of Haus Alpenz already imports a 20% abv Crème de Violette made from Alpine Queen Charlotte and March violets. Rob Cooper—whose St Germain elderflower liqueur has achieved such popularity that it’s been called “the ketchup of bartenders”—showed his Crème Yvette, a liqueur that also incorporates violets. It should be hitting shelves this fall.

Violets have an aroma that reminds some of old ladies’ perfume. Yet Crème Yvette is a core ingredient in classic cocktails such as the Blue Moon of which Ted Haigh waxes to eloquently in his Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails. Marleigh Riggins over at Sloshed! teases us with a sampling of Blue Moons which—for a while at any rate—will be difficult to create at home until Crème Yvette achieves wider distribution. She presents a version with Crème de Violette.

Until then, I offer a workaround: Syrup of violets. Alexandre Dumas knew of violet syrup over a hundred years ago, but this erstwhile kitchen staple has an older history in English cookery. Though I haven’t tried these recipes, I suspect adding spirit to a violet syrup base may make an interesting addition to the bartender’s arsenal, especially if the spirit is Grand Marnier or another orange liqueur, vanilla-infused rum, or other liquors with more character than vodka or plain neutral spirits. Clearly, these aren't substitutions for either Crème Yvette or crème de violettes, but nonalcoholic bases from which to experiment.

First off is Eleanor Parkinson who gives this 1844 version in The Complete Confectioner, Pastry-cook, and Baker:

Syrup of Violets—One pound of violet flowers, one quart of water, four pounds of sugar. Put the flowers cleared from their stalks and calx, into a glazed earthen pan; pour on the water boiling hot, and stop the pan quite close; let it remain in a warm place for a day, then strain off the infusion through a thin cloth; add the sugar, and place in the bain-marie: stir it well and heat it until you can scarcely bear your finger in it; then take it off, and when cold, bottle.

English botanist Nicholas Culpepper offers us in his Complete Herbal (1814) a recipe that’s essentially the same—down to the glazed vessel—but without heating.

Syrupus Violarum

Take of Violet flowers fresh and picked, a pound, clear water made boiling hot, two pounds, shut them up close together into a new glazed pot, a whole day, then press them hard out, and in two pounds of the liquor dissolve four pounds and three ounces of white sugar, take away the scum, and so make it into a Syrup without boiling.

Going back another two centuries, Elinor Fettiplace, in her handwritten 1604 recipe book, gives directions To Make a Sirrop of Violetts:

Elinor Fettiplace’s Sirrop of Violetts

First make a thicke sirop of sugar and clarifie yt well, then take blew violets and picke them well from the whights then put them in the sirrop, let them lye in yt 24 howres keepinge yt warme in the meane time, then straine these violets out and put in fresh, so do 4 times then set them on the fire, let them simper a good while but not boyle fast put in some Juice of limonds in the boyleinge then straine yt and keep yt to yor use.

Both Fettiplace and Parkinson hit on a detail sometimes missed by those who don’t often make floral infusions: they remove parts of the flower before infusing. Naturally, the stems have no place in a delicate syrup such as this, but neither does the whole petal. The “whights”—or white part of the flowers—are removed before the infusion. Rosewater and rose syrup recipes often call for the same procedure. The idea is to eliminate bitterness that can result from including the white parts of the flowers.

Now all I need is a gallon or so of unsprayed, aromatic violets and a pair of sharp scissors.

Goes well with:

• Hilary Spurling (1986) Elinor Fettiplace’s Receipt Book: Elizabethan Country House Cooking. Viking Press, New York. Spurling, wife of a modern relation to the 17^th-century Fettiplace, has admirably presented the cookery styles, concerns, patterns, and recipes of a housewife at an age when England enjoyed immense power and wealth (yet still had trouble putting down those pesky Irish). The book is out of print, but well worth tracking down for an understanding of household management, including the products of stillrooms.
• Diane Ackerman's Natural History of the Senses includes a discussion of violets and their peculiar effect on human smell: unlike, say, the aroma of steak or cigar smoke, humans' ability to smell that of violets is not constant. Our perception of their smell comes in waves. Ionone, one of the flower's components, temporarily short circuits our sense of smell. After a few minutes, we can smell violets again and their aroma comes on clearly and strongly. Buy Ackerman's book here or check it out in your local library. Then get some flowers and try it for yourself.

Blue Moon photo courtesy of Marleigh Riggins.

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MxMo XXVI Hard Drinks for Hard Times, A Savings in Two Parts

Hard Drinks for Hard Times: Part I

Bad news, everyone: I’ve been laid off.

Damn. Advertising exec was one of the coolest jobs I’ve ever held. Smart coworkers, great clients, challenging and rewarding work, right on the coast—almost a dream job. Until clients’ advertising budgets started circling the drain, that is.

The layoff isn’t the morale-crushing, bank-busting defeat it might seem. I’ve been boning up on Spanish; refamiliarizing myself with French, Dutch, and German; traveling; giving talks; learning basic HTML; reading voraciously; and working on a new book (three, actually—two have legs and one is a back-burner vanity). Freelance gigs the pay the bills. I’m concerned, but not panicked.

The effect is, however, increasingly evident in our cocktail hours. And so, as an experiment for the 36th Mixology Monday and its hard-times theme, I’ve stopped buying liquor.

That’s right: In the last two months, I haven’t bought a single bottle of liquor other than a liter of Bombay Sapphire at the Tijuana duty-free shop. Instead, I’ve tapped our sizable collection of rums, whiskeys, brandies, and miscellaneous spirits, finishing some bottles and cracking open others I’d been hording. For war, apparently, or perhaps another Prohibition. In more ways than one, the layoff has forced me to take stock of what I’ve got and to use it.

I haven’t drunk so consistently well in years.

If getting laid off sparked this experiment in liquor frugality, a Buddhist cook inadvertently shaped it. See, there’s nothing particularly hard-times about the ingredients themselves for this month’s contribution, the North Park Cocktail. It’s how they came together once I was laid off that resonates with the theme.

This Buddhist cook once explained that he began each day by emptying all his kitchen cabinets and cleaning every single bottle, jar, and bag. This daily tedium served two purposes. Obviously, the regular wipe-down kept his larder organized and clean. The underlying benefit was that, by handling every container every day, he maintained a precise mental inventory of quantities, conditions, and patterns of use.

Turns out that this is a rewarding way to approach liquor cabinets.

Pulling everything out every day would be a little OCD, but once a week, I pick up each bottle of rye or absinthe or gin or apricot brandy or whatever and give it a dusting. Of our hundreds of bottles, those dwindling past half-capacity get earmarked for accelerated consumption. I can tell you exactly what we have, where it is, and how much there is. Cocktails suggest themselves much more readily when I know without looking what’s available.














Last month, I turned that gimlet eye to the refrigerator. Although the fridge was jammed with bottles of homemade syrups, jams, marmalades, and other creations intended for the cocktail shaker, I’d forgotten making more than a few. Once forgotten, they languished. Those that had lost their scents, their taste, their oomph I pitched. I consolidated others, cleaned the shelves, and can now see the back of the box. Every bottle and jar is getting used now, if not in cocktails, then as ingredients and condiments for meals.

Without spending an additional dime, I’ve made smarter use of existing resources by knowing exactly how much of what I’ve got. Vermouth, in particular, gathers no moss around here. The cocktails have been fantastic: bijoux, Hoskins cocktails, dozens of tiki drinks, Martinez cocktails, cocktails that incorporate generous doses of herbal concoctions such as Benedictine, Chartreuse, and Averna. Absinthe cocktails. Sours and highballs and squirrels.

I wouldn’t say thank you for laying me off, but better understanding the riches we do have makes me perversely happy.


Hard Drinks for Hard Times: Part II

Now, despite my general affection for cocktails, it’s not for nothing that this blog is called my Whiskey Forge. I’m a fan of whiskey and of those who make it openly or in secret, but the world would be a darker place without bourbon. Booker’s, Old Fitzgerald, Evan Walker, Four Roses—all fine or even sublime in their own right and all are getting tapped as we systematically work through the shelves.

One of the most consistent Kentucky values out there, though, is Bulleit Bourbon. At 90 proof, it’s what I drank to assuage the pain of lopping off chunks of my fingers, it goes into my mom’s Manhattans when she visits, and if I had a dollar for every bottle I’ve bought…we’ll, I’d score a few more bottles once I start buying booze again. F. Paul Pacult over at the Spirit Journal gave it a “superb” rating and I’m right behind him. The grain bill’s high rye proportion is part of the appeal to me, but the sound of the cork popping out of its bottle always brings just the barest little smile of anticipation.

It also doesn’t hurt that while other California stores sell Bulleit for $23-26 per 750ml, good ol’ Trader Joe’s sells it every day for $19.99. That’s a deal whether you’re fully employed or—like me—willfully misapplying a little zen to the world of liquor.

A bittersweet cocktail, swimming with heady notes of orange, corn, rye, and spice. Get you some.

The North Park Cocktail

1 oz Bulleit bourbon
1 oz Aperol
½ oz sweet vermouth
½ oz dry vermouth
¾ oz Don’s mix

Shake with ice and strain into an old fashioned glass with 2-3 fresh cubes. Garnish, if desired, with a single whiskeyed cherry.

Notes—The name comes from my neighborhood in San Diego where I've only recently discovered little gems that had been here all along. The Bulleit was free (thank you, Tom, Mike, and Gillian); the Aperol had been hidden in the fridge; both vermouths were open and would fade if left unused; for the Don’s Mix, the grapefruit was a gift and the fragrant cinnamon sticks were bought way cheap in bulk from a nearby Middle Eastern grocer last Autumn; and the garnish is from a batch of cherry bounce I put up more than a year ago with about two gallons of, yes, Bulleit.

Total 2009 cost? $0.00.

Suck it, Wall Street.

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Don’s Mix and the Wood Eye Cocktail

“Would I? Would I?”
“Pegleg!”

~ punchline to a 2nd grade joke

The thing about making mixtures, tinctures, decoctions, and infusions for particular drinks at home is that doing so encumbers one with, frankly, an overabundance of mixtures, tinctures, decoctions, and infusions. In a bar, such things could well be consumed over the course of a single shift. Not so much at home—even my home.

This is not frustrating per se, but when the siren call of beverages calling for yet more homemade ingredients becomes irresistible, it seems a bit…excessive. Other than butter, ginger, a tin of Rougie foie gras, and tubes of Hungarian paprika paste, my refrigerator door is filled to capacity with such bottles. Simple syrup, palm syrup, mint syrup, syrups of ginger, black pepper, mango, and demerara.

But the one labeled Don’s Mix I keep refilling.

Don’s Mix, as revealed by tiki master Jeff Berry, is a 2:1 mix of freshly squeezed grapefruit juice to cinnamon syrup used by Donn “Don the Beachcomber” Beach in his seminal 1934 Zombie Punch. It is a disarmingly simple, but fantastic cocktail ingredient for mixing in a variety of rum drinks, but it’s best used within a day or so ~ a week at the very outside. My solution? I make a big batch and give some to folks I know will make quick use of it, then several little batches using additions of fresh grapefruit juice to the more stable cinnamon syrup.

After my friend Carlo hooked me up with a glut of grapefruit, I made a batch of cinnamon syrup, then started mixing. So far, we’ve made 1934 zombies, Donga Punch, and—among other trials—a potent little experiment I dubbed the Wood Eye Cocktail that brings together three different rums, a dose of lemon, and a few of those bottle contents. Careful, though: despite its diminutive size, too many of these will leave you feeling a little wood-eyed.

Eye Wood. Wooden Ewe?

Wood Eye Cocktail

1 ½ oz Jamaican rum (Appleton V/X)
¾ oz lemon juice, freshly squeezed
½ oz orgeat
½ oz Don’s Mix (see below)
½ oz Pusser’s rum
a float of Lemon Hart 151 rum

Shake all but the Lemon Hart over ice and strain into your favorite tiki mug or an old fashioned glass with fresh cubes. Carefully float enough Lemon Hart 151 on top to give it a discernable layer about as thick as two American quarters or, for our British friends, a one-pound coin. Sip the drink through the top layer and repeat as necessary.

Don’s Mix

2 parts grapefruit juice, freshly squeezed
1 part cinnamon syrup (below)

I like Dale DeGroff’s take on Don’s Mix in part because his recipe for the cinnamon syrup that goes into it yields an even liter (despite his note that the recipe yields 2 cups) that actually holds its own for several weeks under refrigeration.

Cinnamon Syrup

5 cinnamon sticks, each about 2 inches long
20 ounces bottle or filtered water
1 quart sugar

Break the cinnamon sticks into pieces to create more surface area. But the cinnamon, water, and sugar in a large saucepan over low heat. Stir until all the sugar is dissolved, and then returns the heat to very low simmer for 30 minutes. Let cool completely, then fossil; keep covered in the refrigerator for up to one week.

Oh, and, uh, bad ol' Cashmere.
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Given a Glut of Grapefruit

Fruit experts disagree about the origins of grapefruit,
how it was named, and even what species it is,
but there is little debate
about how delicious grapefruit are
and how they perk up tired taste buds.

~ Alice Waters
Chez Panisse Fruit

Not long ago, I was blessed with a huge bag of grapefruit. More precise, perhaps, to say that my friend Carlo called to say I could harvest as many as I liked from his side yard. Otherwise, they would just be left, untended, unloved, on the trees. The thought of hundreds of orphaned grapefruit was almost more than I could bear.

It turns out that dozens of grapefruit also were more than I could eat. At the end of a week, some peel had been candied, some dried and powdered for marinades and stews, the flesh sliced into a bowl with oranges, bananas, maraschino, and mint for a fruit salad. There was sufficient grapefruit bitters to last through the summer.

Breaking out the reamer, I juiced the remaining fruit. The dozen or so fat yellow globes yielded a liter of strained juice. Tasty enough—if tart—to drink straight up. Better to hit it with a splash of seltzer. Better still to measure it into a cocktail shaker to perk up them tired cocktail taste buds.

For sipping tequila neat, I favor more aged selections, but inocente puts out a clean blanco, a triple-distilled 100% blue agave tequila that stands up quite nicely to puckery grapefruit juice. Out it came.

Both Marleigh Riggins at Sloshed! and Chuck Taggart on The Gumbo Pages have written about Eric Alperin’s tequila-and-Campari cocktail, the sculaccione. I enjoy it as well, but bitter is sometimes a hard sell around this house. Fortunately, the Italian amaro Aperol (flavored with orange, gentian, and rhubarb among others) plays bitter roles with great success. With the switch of spirits, I dubbed this one the

Gudageen

2 oz blanco tequila (inocente Platinum)
¾ oz fresh lime juice
½ oz fresh grapefruit juice
½ oz Aperol
½ oz simple syrup
dash Angostura bitters

Shake with ice. Strain into an old fashioned glass filled with fresh ice.

Given the hundreds of cocktails in Dale DeGroff’s The Craft of the Cocktail, a casual reader might be forgiven for skimming right past the salt-and-pepper martini. Me? I’m not an unbending martini purist, but the glut of chocolate martinis, appletinis, and endless what-the-hell's-this-itinis has made me leery of deviations from the classic gin-and-vermouth formulae, so it was a while before I sampled this grapefruit-spiked version. Plymouth gin is lovely in this one. Oh, if I could only have back those misspent days.

Salt-and-Pepper Martini

1 ½ oz. gin
¾ oz. lemon juice
¾ oz. grapefruit juice
1 oz. simple syrup
2 dashes of Angostura bitters

Shake all the ingredients with ice and strain into a chilled salt-rimmed martini glass.

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