The Brandy Crusta and "sweet" drinks

Every so often it occurs to (horrifies) me that most people don't fart around all day thinking about cocktails and mixology.

Last night for instance: I had just emerged from a three minute rage-blackout caused a customer returning a $12.00 cocktail that involved 6 different ingredients and flamed egg white in favour of a vodka with pineapple juice, because she had wanted "something sweet". 

I took a step back and reassured myself that this poor girl would look back on the error of her ways and laugh, but right now she just wanted a nice glass of juice that got her a little buzzed, her and her pals Cosmo Girl and Sour Appletini chick just not quite ready to step off the Malibu train and join the cool kids at mixology station, but that's okay.

Actually, it's more than okay, I'm beginning to see it as a huge opportunity, I need to identify those perfect "crossover" cocktails. The perfect breadcrumb trail of ingredients that can lead the novice imbiber from Apple Sourz to Campari in a few easy steps.

My first favorite is the Pisco Sour, which is an effective romancer of manys the tentative tippler, but some people just can't get over the whole egg white thing. So my next experiment will be with the 

Brandy Crusta (recipe plagarised almost directly from here)

1 ½ oz Brandy

¾ oz Grand Marnier

¾ oz fresh lemon juice
1/4 oz simple syrup
dash of maraschino liqueur

dash of Peychaud’s bitters

Shake and strain into a sugar-rimmed glass   

Garnish with spiral of lemon peel

I figure that the sugared rim alone is a huge size 13 foot in the door with most ladies, plus the garnish looks really sharp, and this recipe is a little sweeter than the old Jerry Thomas version, never mind the fact that the Peychaud's makes the drink PINK, so that's another sweet little crouton along the trail. 

I've been wrong before about what people want and the venerable ol' Hammy

isn't exactly a magnet for the more adventurous drinker...yet. Maybe high-fallutin pink drinks are the answer.

Living Up To the Name

The  title "Mixed and Malted" took quite awhile to come up with and I was well pleased with myself when it came to me. I took more than a moment to pat myself on the back for conjuring up such a zingy little moniker for what I was sure would be the blog that took over the inter-web in just a few short postings (I've had to lengthen the timeline, but my intentions are still world domination).

Of course, there was just one minor glitch in the master plan, the 'Malted' part of the title implied that there would be a whiskey element to the blog and my whiskey knowledge is pretty average, at best, but I figured that eventually I'd just start buying Scotch and muddle through.

Now, here we are, a month into this thing and Buddha has provided. Last week, one of my friendly neighborhood wine reps stopped by the restaurant, with the global brand manager of Connemara Irish whiskey, and a recently uncorked bottle...or four.

What they uncorked was a unique spirit indeed, Connemara Peated Single Malt Irish Whiskey. Now I was under the impression that one of the easiest way to distinguish Irish and Scotch Whiskey was that the Scots used peat in their whisk(e)y making process and the Irish didn't. Apparently I was misinformed. The story is that the Irish traditionally used peat to dry the malted barley but switched to coal fires at some point in history when it became economical to import coal from Great Britain, Connemara is the lone exception.

Okay, down to the nitty gritty, honey caramel in colour, the nose of the whiskey is heavy with peat with more subtle elements of smoke and even trickier hints of fruit underneath. On the palate Connemara initially tastes more like a standard Irish Whiskey up front, smooth and sweet, but finishes with an eruption of peat and smoke. It was a very unique experience in managing expectations. I was warned about the peat but surprised at the smoothness and sweetness.

The bottom line is that Connemara is a nice experiment for the intermediate whiskey sipper, it's smooth, sweet Irish character make it approachable to all but the introduction of peat and smoke flavours and aromas hint at the Scotch single malts that are usually reserved for advanced drinkers.

Cheers.

Inspiration

I have often sat scratching my head as I read through another bartender's cocktail list, wondering where the hell this guy (or gal) came up with this combination of flavours? What would prompt a rational person to mix Tequila and Midori, and why? Or Tequila and Cassis, why didn't I think of that?

I think the most common way that is a new drink is born is called the 'substitution method', meaning you take an existing cocktail and start swapping out one ingredient for another and just trying things until you like one combination as much or more than the original. This is definitely the best way to start tinkering with your own recipes, it gives you an opportunity to benefit from the sense of balance of the original drink, you'll definitely notice if you throw a good drink off, but it's very easy to lose your way entirely if you start from scratch, I remember one of my own misguided attempts at originality involving butter ripple schnapps, vanilla liqueur AND sour puss, I think I still have a tartar deposit on one of my lower molars that is a direct result of THAT glass of crap. 

The most important aspect of this method is to take note of the common thread of the ingredients in the existing drink and how your new one connects with this thread, then, you can begin to apply the 'philosophy' of your cocktail to a completely new one. Obviously there will always be an element of trial and error involved and some combinations might never work for you even though someone else has managed to get the ingredients/flavours just right so that it just barely comes off.

If you must begin from scratch, I will reveal to you a secret weapon that will allow you to at least marry complimentary flavours, then all you have to do it get the level of sweetness and strength right. I found this book as I was wandering Granville Island Market here in Vancouver looking for new ingredients to play with. I walked into the soon to be closed GI outlet of Barbara Jo's Books To Cook store, to check out their cocktail book section and saw, sitting out on the counter, a big thick, glossy book called The Flavor Bible,  it is an amazing tool for a mixologist, I highly recommend it.

It's funny though, sometimes I've used both methods and arrived near the same place. This first drink is a direct substitution creation, I was tinkering with a drink from Salvatore Calabrese's Cocktails by Flavor that called for agave syrup, which I didn't have, but I did have a fresh batch of ginger syrup and I knew that the ginger would go well with the grapefruit in the drink so I gave it a shot, you should too.

Primo Jalisco

1.5 oz El Jimador Reposado Tequila

0.5 oz Campari

0.5 oz fresh grapefruit juice

juice of half a lime

0.5 oz of ginger syrup (to taste)

Shake all ingredients over ice and strain into an ice filled rocks glass, garnish with a lime wedge and candied ginger.

The next one started from an attempt to make use of a free bottle of Tuaca that had come my way. Tuaca is a mainly vanilla flavoured brandy liqueur that is about 38% abv so it makes a pretty good cocktail base for a liqueur. Problem is that it's still a liqueur so it's fairly sugary so I knew I'd have to do some bittering and figured that i might as well try Campari, it's Italian, as is Tuaca, and it adds some great colour to any drink it sneaks in to. A bowl of fresh oranges was staring me in the face as I was figuring this one out so I knew that orange goes with vanilla, and that orange peel is an element of the flavouring of Campari, so I squeezed a half an orange into the mix. Around the time that this drink was born, I was afflicted with a bit of an obsession with ginger beer/Moscow Mules, and it hasn't waned much since, so I just poured the Tuaca/Campari/OJ into a Collins glass with crushed ice, topped it up with ginger beer and sipped...and by God it worked, actually it worked really well, I'm craving one right now actually.

Tuscano Toro

1.5 oz Tuaca

0.5 oz Campari

juice of half a medium orange

top with ginger beer

Build all ingredients over ice and garnish with an orange slice.

Cheers

Mai Tais at the ZigZag

It was a dark and stoorrrmmy night...seriously, it was, and the universe had conspired to give me the opportunity to drink in Seattle, which is one of my favorite pastimes. I'd hoped to check out Vancouver expat Jamie Boudreau's new stomping ground Tini Biggs, but a freak snow storm in the Pacific North White kept me and the girlfriend pretty close to downtown, so we headed back to one of the greatest little cocktail bars anywhere, The ZigZag Cafe.

My man Erik was behind the stick on that sloppy Sunday night and I put my drink choice in his capable hands...I wish I could remember what he made me but the crap weather made the bar stools seem so comfortable that I couldn't't seem to leave until I'd enjoyed a couple too many, bah well, they were good anyway. Stacey, on the other hand been hankering to try a proper Mai Tai for a while so I encouraged her to put Erik's skills to the test, so he dusted off the orgeat and went to town. I was slurping away on my boozy concoction for what seemed like about two and a half minutes when she nudged me in the ribs and said "I know I said I was only having one drink, but I need another one of these."

I made sure to get a sip of the next one and wasn't surprised to find that it was a perfectly crafted Trader Vic Mai Tai, it featured and enhanced the flavours of the rum, I think Erik used Brugal, without being harsh or too strong, had the perfect limey acidity that compliments all rum so well, and very nice subtle nutty sweetness of the orgeat. It's got to be one of the greatest ways to drink too much. Though I cursed the name Trader Vic all the next day on my six our flight to Halifax the next day. Being hung over and flying really, really sucks.

Here's my attempt to repeat the ZigZag's greatness at home the other night, I think this is a damn good representation.

Mai Tai 

2 oz Appleton Reserve Rum

0.5 Cointreau (actually I used Triple Sec because it was all I had)

1 tsp demererra sugar

0.5 oz Giffard orgeat

juice of half a lime

Mix all ingredients in a mixing glass and shake well over ice then pour, ice and all into a highball glass. Traditional garnish is a mint sprig, but who has mint laying around in January? So a lime wheel did the trick nicely.

Cheers

Home Made Syrups

Okay, I have a confession to make...sigh...I used to be a really, really, crappy bartender, and not just because I was new at it, I was crap for a long time. I NEVER tasted the drinks I sent out, I knew nothing about the ingredients I was using and I thought muddling was really really stupid, why muddle when you can just buy a premix? right? (insert vomiting sound effect).

Whew! It feels good to get that off my chest.

Anyway, after I came to my senses, one of the first mental hurdles that I had to overcome was the notion that I could make my own syrups for cocktails. Believe it or not, you don't need a factory and a sugar cane plantation to make a fancy pants syrup of your cocktails, or your coffees, your sodas, or desserts. My eyes were opened on this subject, as well as many others by Jeff Hollinger and Rob Schwartz's fantastic cocktail tome The Art of the Bar. They convinced me that I could, and should, make ginger syrup, which turned out to be easy. Ginger syrup lead to cocktails like the Ginger Rogers, hotted up Moscow Mules, and eventually brewing my own ginger beer. 

You'll have to go buy the book to get the exact ginger syrup recipe but any flavored syrup is just infused simple syrup. The first one of my own that I tried involved one of the few fruits we had in the walk in that wasn't a lemon or lime, pears. The kitchen uses them in an awesome salad with stilton cheese and candied pecans, so I pilfered one and headed out front to the bar, hot plate and pot in hand.

Pear Syrup

2 cups white sugar

2 cups water 

1 whole pear (washed)

Okay, don't jump ahead here, to make pear syrup, we must make simple syrup, which is, well, simple. Mix two cups of sugar with two cups of water in a pot and simmer and stir until all the sugar is dissolved, voila, simple syrup. Next, cut the pear into thin slices, try to keep them looking nice and uniform because we can use them later, and put them in the simmering simple syrup. Again, don't get ahead of yourself, don't cut the pear until you have the simple syrup ready or you'll end up with brown pear slices and dingy looking syrup AND, leave the skin on the pear, it'll give the syrup some colour.

Well, you're pretty much done, just let the pot simmer gently for half an hour or so then let the syrup cool and strain it into an old wine or booze bottle, keep it capped when not in use and it'll keep for a couple of weeks.

Now hopefully you didn't throw away those pear slices yet because we're gonna make garnish with them. If you are lucky enough to have access to a dehydrator, then just spread the slices out on the rack and press on, in a couple hours you'll have some tasty pear chips you can float on top of cocktails or perch in an egg-white foam, or you can just eat them. If you don't have a dehydrator then fear not. Just lay the slices out on a piece of foil or parchment paper over a cookie sheet and stick them in the oven on a very low setting overnight, this works just as well. If you're doing this in a restaurant/bar, just make sure you leave a note for whomever opens the kitchen otherwise they will crank the oven up to full as soon as they come in and you'll be left with little wheels of soot.

Cheers.