Spirited Cocktails

Another cocktail courtesy of Rachel Maddow. Isn’t she the best?

This excellent holiday punch actually comes by way of Josey Packard of the bar Drink in Boston. You can watch Josey make the punch via this video from Rachel Maddow’s show:

Here’s the recipe (you can find the full details on Rachel’s website). Heed their advice – when playing with alcohol and fire, caution is the word of the day. Have a fire extinguisher handy.

Prep:

Acquire a pyrex bowl or other heat-treated (or otherwise fire resistant bowl).
Stud 3 oranges with cloves.
Roast them for 20-30 minutes at 350 degrees, until softened.

Warm the alcohol for the punch (immerse a container of it in hot water).
Set the spices aside, for the pyrotechnics.
Also warm the diluting ingredients.
Have some sugar on-hand.

Spices for pyrotechnics:

Ground cinnamon
Ground allspice
Ground nutmeg

Alcohol:

1 pint dark rum
1 pint brandy

Diluting ingredients:

Juice of 3 oranges
Juice of 2 lemons
Pint of apple cider
Pint of water

On-hand, for continued extinguishing:

Pint of apple cider
Pint of water

Procedure:

Pre-heat punch bowl with hot water from the tap.
Put roasted oranges in hot, newly emptied bowl.
Pour heated alcohol mixture over oranges.
Use a match to ignite alcohol.
Be aware at all times of how hot the bowl is by touching the outside of it frequently.
Toss pinches of the spices at the flame carefully.

Extinguish the flame by pouring the heated juice/cider mix over the punch.

If the punch doesn’t completely extinguish, pour more cider or water over the mixture.

Cheers!

-Josh

I love a good tweetup. As you probably know, I’m a Twitter addict, and I’ve met so many great people on the Twitter machine. Every once in a while though, it’s nice to crawl out of one’s cave and actually hang out with people in person!

Last night, we were lucky to have two amazing tweetups back-to-back. The first was the evolution of what has become our awesome monthly event (which began with our brown liquor tweetup in Brooklyn, followed by our clear liquor tweetup at Double Crown last month). This month’s tweetup focused on Rum – Tiki-style cocktails in particular. @Sweetblogomine was kind enough to get things organized at Elettaria in the West Village, which has a Mahalo Monday tiki special. My favorite of the evening was the Black Pearl – a twist on the Old Fashioned which includes Old Forester bourbon, Curzan black strap rum, demerara sugar and bitters. Outstanding.

As the tiki tweetup started to wind down, it was time to move on to Keen’s Chophouse for a tasting of The Dalmore, an excellent Highland single malt scotch. Organized by our good friend @livethelushlife and hosted by whiskey expert @the_nose, we were fortunate to receive an expert education on the proper way to taste scotch. Turns out I’ve been doing it wrong this whole time. We tasted both the Dalmore Gran Reserva and the Dalmore 15, both of which are outstanding single malts. The Gran Reserva spends time in both sherry and bourbon barrels, and turns out a bright, intense flavor with a sweet finish. The 15 year spends its time exclusively in sherry barrels, resulting in a more rounded, balanced flavor with a beautiful aroma.

Our good friend @halw also received an exclusive taste of a 1936 single malt, said to be one of the most expensive scotchs on the planet (at around $160,000 per bottle). He seemed to enjoy it :-)

You can read all of our tweets about the event by searching for #TheDalmore on Twitter.

Thanks again to @sweetblogomine, @livethelushlife, and @the_nose for hosting wonderful events! It was also great to see (and in some cases, finally meet!) so many Twitter friends, including @brooklynwino, @shotsandcuts, @halw, @daisy17, @meredithmo, @csmcbride, @paystyle and @selenawrites.

Cheers!

The recipe for this cocktail is long overdue. I’ve been wanting to reconstruct it since I first tried it at the Gramercy Tavern a few months ago. I’ll skip the excuses and get right down to business, with the exception of saying the following: make this cocktail. You won’t be sorry.

The premise is simple: a Greyhound has long been recognized as a a spirit combined with grapefruit juice. The spirit is usually vodka, but you know we don’t use much of that here.

The Cruzan Silver Greyhound follows that premise with two minor variations: the addition of a little sugar, and the critical addition of grapefruit bitters. If you don’t have any grapefruit bitters, you can order them online (Amazon). They play a huge role in giving this cocktail the depth that sets it apart from the standard Greyhound. 

Here’s what you’re going to need:

2oz aged white rum (I used Cruzan, as they provided me with this recipe)
3oz fresh grapefruit juice
1/2oz simple syrup (optional, if you prefer your cocktails on the sweet side)
2 dashes grapefruit bitters

Combine all ingredients in a cocktail shaker with ice, shake well, and strain into a tall glass over fresh ice.

When I enjoyed this cocktail at Gramercy Tavern, it was garnished with candied grapefruit peel. This was certainly a wonderful touch, and if you have candied grapefruit peel, I recommend including it as a garnish. Sadly, I didn’t have any lying around, so I omitted it this time.

Again, I really enjoyed this cocktail at Gramercy, and I’ve made it a number of times since recreating it. I really recommend you try it, and I look forward to hearing what you think!

Cheers!

Last week, I told you about a mistake I made in preparing the Queens Park Swizzle (I used gin instead of rum, but I learned a lesson!) Well, since I teased you with one of my favorite rum cocktails, I thought it was time we walked through it for real.

A quick aside: this is the first cocktail I ever had prepared for me at a “real” cocktail bar – Milk & Honey (of London and New York City fame). Milk & Honey is largely credited (and rightfully so) with reigniting the love for the classic cocktail in New York, and whether or not that’s true, they definitely lit the spark in me. The staff and Milk & Honey are infamous for matching their customers with their ideal cocktail. Before serving you, they ask insightful questions about preferred spirits, flavors, and even mood. The first time I went to Milk & Honey, this is the cocktail they prepared for me, so it will always hold a special place in my heart :-)

So let’s get started. Here’s what you’re going to need:

2oz aged white rum
1/2 of a lime
1/2oz simple syrup
2-3 sprigs of mint
A few dashes of Angostura bitters
Club soda
Plenty of crushed ice

The technique for this cocktail is a little different than anything we’ve used in the past. There’s no shaking involved, so we’re going to build the entire cocktail right in the glass. Start by squeezing half a lime into the glass. (Some people will choose to drop the shell of the lime in once you’ve squeezed it – your choice.) Next add the simple syrup, and the leaves of 2-3 sprigs of mint. Finally, add the rum, and fill the glass with crushed ice. The use of crushed ice here versus cubes is important – you want the ice to really mix with the ingredients. Once you’ve added the crushed ice, use a swizzle stick to – yes – swizzle the cocktail. That is, use the swizzle stick to agitate the ingredients along with the ice, which will not only help mix everything, but also chill it (you’ll notice a nice frost form on the outside of the glass within 30-60 seconds.)

After swizzling, top off the glass with some fresh crushed ice, an ounce or two of club soda, and a few dashes of Angostura bitters.

So this cocktail is slightly more work than some of the others we’ve tried so far, but I guarantee you it’s worth it. I’m anxious to hear what you think.

Cheers!

There’s currently a thunderstorm raging outside my window, so it’s not all that difficult to figure out why I decided to whip up a Dark and Stormy cocktail tonight. When the rain is pelting your windows, nothing will whisk you away (mentally, anyway) faster than rum and ginger beer.

This one is really as simple as it gets. Here’s what you’re going to need:

2oz dark rum (Goslings Black Seal seems to be widely preferred, but I didn’t have any on hand, so I used an aged Barbancourt, which worked quite well)
3oz ginger beer
1/2 lime juice (optional; I personally didn’t find it necessary)
Lime wedge for garnish

Simply combine the rum and ginger beer over ice and give it a quick stir. Garnish with a lime wedge, and you’re good to go. It really doesn’t get much easier.

Now if you want to get a little fancy, you can make your own ginger beer. Doing so will result in not only a better taste, but a non-carbonated ginger beer that you can shake with your cocktails. Expert mixologist Jeffrey Morgenthaler provides the ginger beer recipe of record. The little bit of extra work is well worth it!

So off you go, away from the rain and on to a Bermudian beach.

Cheers!

You know I don’t really do much in the way of brand-specific work here at Spirited Cocktails. I haven’t done many brand reviews (though I’ve had a lot of requests, so I may start), and I very rarely call for a specific brand of spirit in any of my recipes. I think it benefits the consumer to try different brands on their own and determine what suits their own tastes.

Earlier this week, though, @NYBarfly (whom you should be following on Twitter) was gracious enough to invite me to join him in meeting Andrea Bearbower, an educator at Cruzan Rum, at Gramercy Tavern. Many brand ambassadors claim to be “educators”, but Andrea is the real deal. She knows more about rum than I think she cares to admit, and I couldn’t help but truly respect her once she went all “spirits geek” on us and the bottles of molasses came out at dinner!

As Andrea taught us, Cruzan Rum has a long and rich history on the island of St. Croix. You may know them well for their wide variety of flavored rums (including guava, coconut, pineapple, and more.) But Cruzan seems to be trying hard to really expand their line of “pure” rums – a line which now includes a single-barrel estate rum, a black strap rum, and others – in order to help rum win the respect it truly deserves.

All too often, we think about rum and we form an immediate association with mojitos. Mojitos aren’t all that bad, but they’ve been so over exposed (thanks to brands like Bacardi), that they’ve become a sugary shadow of their former selves. In fact, rum is used in some of the most classic cocktails (like the Daiquiri) as well as some of the earliest punches. A quality rum can also be mixed in a number of modern cocktails (as I’m about to show you), or even sipped straight on its own.

The supremely-talented bartenders at Gramercy Tavern were kind enough to mix up a few different cocktails with Cruzan rum. I didn’t capture all of the proportions for each one, but I’ll give you a rough description, and because I’m so dedicated, I guess I’ll head back to Gramercy Tavern soon and dig up more detail for you!

Here, Andrea is holding up the Orange Blossom – made with Cruzan rum , champagne, St. Germain, lemon juice, a sugar cube, and orange peel.	The Cruzan Silver Greyhound was very grapefruit-centric (as you’d expect), including Cruzan rum, grapefruit juice, grapefruit bitters, cane sugar, and candied grapefruit as a garnish.	As an after-dinner drink, the bartender whipped up what a Cruzan Hot Toddy, with Cruzan Rum, Hot water, Orange Juice, Lemon Juice, Velvet Falernum, and cinnamon sticks. (This one was my favorite!)

If you ever have a chance to catch up with Andrea and hear her speak about rum, I highly recommend it. I believe she’ll be appearing at the Tales of the Cocktail event later this summer. In the meantime, maybe I can talk her into a guest post here at Spirited Cocktails.

As I said, I’ll be working diligently to dissect the three cocktails I described above and recreate them for you here. If you just can’t wait, swing by Gramercy Tavern here in New York and ask one of the talented bartenders there to help you out – I’m certain you’ll enjoy them!

Cheers!

Update: Check out @NYBarfly’s post about our trip. Trust me – he’s a far better writer than I!

Today is Memorial Day in the US. Certainly above all else, a day to remember those who are no longer with us, and to pay special recognition to the men and women of our armed forces. Coincidentally though, it also happens to be the generally accepted opening day of the summer season. Shutters fly open on beach houses, shorts and sunglasses come out in full effect. Warm weather is here.

Of course, nothing celebrates summer quite like a “beach drink.” Beach drinks are the type you’d order at a beach bar, perhaps on some tropical island. They’re generally bright in color (pink works), sweet, and fruity. So in celebration of the opening days of summer, I bring you The Flamingo.

Here’s what you’re going to need:

1.5oz rum (preferably white rum if you have it, but no big deal either way)
1.5oz pineapple juice (always fresh squeezed if possible, but you can see here that I’ve cheated, and it turned out OK. But fresh is always better.)
1/4oz lime juice
1/4oz grenadine
A splash of simple syrup (optional, if you like your beach drinks on the sweeter side)

Combine all your ingredients along with ice in your cocktail shaker, shake well, and strain into a chilled martini glass. No garnish is required.

It’s really as simple as that.

So as your beach umbrellas go up, and the sun block goes on, give this cocktail a try. Even if you can’t make it to the beach yourself, this drink will turn your mind to sunshine and seagulls in a snap.

Cheers!