Summer Drinks

On a summer evening, after a long hot day, there’s nothing quite like drinking a beer to relax and cool off. There are some thought that don’t drink this magical elixir and other times (one of us is ashamed to admit) that you might be in the mood for something a little different. While you may think of cocktails as usually the province of winter drinking or in bars, there are surprisingly refreshing ones that can be enjoyed during a summer scorcher.

We begin with an easy classic: the Tom Collins. A classic cocktail dating back to at least the late 1800s, it is a very simple drink. Cool, light, and refreshing, this is perfect drinking for sitting on a beach or on your porch reading that Steinbeck novel that you’ve been putting off for years. 

Tom Collins 
2 oz Hayman’s Old Tom Gin
1 oz Freshly Squeezed Lemon Juice
0.5 oz Simple Syrup
Club Soda
Shake gin, lemon juice, and syrup with ice and strain into an ice-filled Collins glass (or higball glass) top off with Club Soda.

A (if possible more British) cousin of the above is Pimm’s and Lemonade. Unlike the previous drink, this classic English drink is ideal for celebrating the birth of a future British monarch (and also summer days but we digress). While it is possible to make this drink without the fresh fruit and cucumber, it’s really not the same and more importantly, you would earn the stern disapproval of the authors’ British friends.  Because drinking to a new monarch necessitates large quantities for … umm … social consumption, we present just such a recipe 

Pimm’s and Lemonade (four servings)
8 oz. Pimm’s No. 1 Cup
24 oz. Fentimans Victorian Lemonade (chilled)
1/2 English Cucumber
1/2 Orange
4 Fresh Strawberries
Fresh Mint
In a large pitcher mix the Pimm’s and Lemonade. Slice the cucumber, orange, and strawberries and add to the pitcher. Add a handful of mint leaves. Pour into a pint glass full of ice.

Now, if your idea of cooling off in the summer is more drinking till your extremities go numb, then try the Hurricane. Purportedly invented by a bartender who wanted to use up a variety of different rums very quickly (we suspect he just wanted to get his patrons schwasted), this drink certainly packs a punch (no, that was not a pun). It is a strong drink with enough sweetness and citrus to make you completely forget how much alcohol is in it (and also be refreshing, in our opinion). 

Hurricane 
2 oz Black Seal
2 oz Appleton Estate V/X
1 oz Wray and Nephew
2 oz Lime Juice
3 oz Passionfruit Syrup
0.5 oz Grenadine
Shake all ingredients with ice and pour over ice in a Hurricane glass (or highball glass). Garnish with a slice of orange and a cherry.

However you choose to beat the heat, there is a cocktail for you (and the best part is we still have a few more up our sleeve saved for some future posts); what’s more, these go great with spicy food. So there, we’ve solved your evenings for you – some deliciously spicy som tum (a Thai papaya salad) and enjoy one of these drinks with it.

Cheers!

A&B

Ginger Peach Fizz

With the weather becoming increasingly warmer (with the occasional hiccup of course), it is only natural to find oneself wanting a drink that is more well… summery. So, we present a drink that was devised in the dead of a New England winter by someone who asked for a cocktail that tasted decidedly less like winter.  

The Ginger Peach Fizz 

½ of a canned peach 

2 oz Goya ginger beer (chilled) 

1.5 oz Domaine de Canton 

1.5 oz peach brandy 

Mash the canned peach into a pulp (or puree, if that is more to your liking), add the Domaine de Canton and the peach brandy, and stir with ice until well chilled. Pour into an old fashioned glass and add the ginger beer. Garnish with a slice of fresh ginger.

And if that doesn’t help get summer going, then don’t worry, more season appropriate drinks will follow.

Spring is Coming

No, this article isn’t a satire or commentary about Game of Thrones. It’s not even about the weather really, except for the first bit. It is however, a post in two disparate parts and minds, each presented by one of the two authors.

Two weeks ago everyone started proclaiming that spring had arrived; their assertion was based on everything from the observation of various flora and fauna to dates on their calendars to the release of new TV shows. I beg to differ. The arrival of spring is not determined by any of these factors!

The only way to know with any certainty that its spring is when you realize that the scotch that you are drinking doesn’t have the same magic that it did a week ago. The only way to know is when you realize that, suddenly, you really feel like something with some gin in it. Now, don’t get me wrong, I am not sick of whiskey. Please let me die before such a day comes. I just have come to a stage in the year where my marginal utility from gin is higher.

This change, then, requires a new cocktail. Something that eases you out of winter and prepares you for summer; nothing too sweet or citrusy since we get plenty of that all summer. But also nothing too smoky and bitter. Luckily, we have the Negroni.

In my experience, one of the least liked cocktails, the Negroni can most easily be described as refreshingly bitter. Because of a lot of its flavor comes from the bitter appertif Campari, people typically find this cocktail to be overpowering and unpleasant. My response, “more for me!”.

For those who can appreciate and enjoy bitter drinks, the Negroni can be a truly great cocktail. Balancing sweet, sour and bitter perfectly without being too heavy, this drink is the best way to usher in the warmer days. 

The Negroni

1 oz Bombay Sapphire Gin

1 oz Sweet (Red) Vermouth

1 oz Campari

Pour all the ingredients over ice into a low-ball glass. Garnish with an orange twist. 

So the next time you want to experience what Blake said when he wrote To Spring “let us taste/ Thy morn and evening breath”, make yourself a Negroni and sip away. 

Cheers!

A 

About a year and a half ago, I began to experiment with cocktail mixing for the first time. Having at that time a very limited bar, I chose to focus on cultivating my collection to make sweet, dessert-like drinks; figuring that these cocktails are almost universally liked (except by people like my blog collaborator) and fairly easy to make. One of the first cocktails that I developed in my bar came about by mixing together four well-loved liqueurs. The resulting cocktail became so popular that in any given evening that I was mixing drinks for a gathering of friends, I could count on mixing (at the very least) a half-dozen of these drinks. Not only is it extremely easy to drink because it’s so smooth (not surprising considering that this drink is largely irish cream), if mixed properly it has almost no alcoholic burn to it. It was soon dubbed the Thin Mint for its similarity of taste to the classic cookie whose arrival is mark of the beginning of spring for many. What follows is this author's official recipe for the Thin Mint cocktail:

The Thin Mint
1 oz Bailey's Original Irish Cream
1 oz Frangelico
1 oz Kahlua
1 oz Creme de Menthe
Combine in a cocktail shaker with several ice cubes and shake until well chilled. Strain into a cocktail coupe and garnish with a sprig of mint.

Cheers!

B

So however you prefer to usher in this new season and whatever your predilection in flavor may be, there is a cocktail to suit your needs. All you need to do is find an excuse to make one, but we will leave that part to you…

The Old Fashioned

Mention an Old Fashioned and the first thing that comes to your mind is probably Don Draper in his suit walking into a bar and ordering this cocktail before an evening of debauchery and advertising genius. As Don Draper’s cocktail of choice then, you would think that the Old Fashioned cocktail has a bit of a retro vibe to it (as if the name were not enough); but the Old Fashioned was retro even in the 60’s. Hell it was first called “old-fashioned” in the 1880s (which makes you wonder how long ago this was first mixed).

The Old Fashioned is perhaps one of the best examples of a “true” cocktail, which is any drink based on the template that appeared in The Balance in 1806; here, a cocktail is defined as “a stimulating liquor, composed of spirits of any kind, sugar, water, and bitters”. While that may not sound very delicious, don’t be too hasty to judge.

Even though this drink fell out of favor after the Mad Men years and is only starting to regain popularity recently, it is certainly a contender for the most distinctly American classic cocktail (although we might prefer to reserve that for the Sazarac, which, come to think of it, is actually a variant of the Old Fashioned).

In addition to its illustrious history, this drink holds a special place alongside the Martini, its name usurping the more technical name for the type of glass in which it is served: the low-ball glass.

Now that we have the historical pleasantries are out of the way, let’s get down to the details. An Old Fashioned is most commonly made with bourbon or rye as its base alcohol. While any bitters can be used (to suit the taste of your drinker or local mixologist), the most common is Angostura bitters (currently the most widely available type/brand of bitters). 

The other essential ingredients are sugar and water. While simple syrup may be used, exercise caution when using commercial syrup since you may not know exactly how much sugar you are using. It is very easy to make this drink far too sweet. For a full-sized cocktail a good rule of thumb is not to use more than one teaspoon of sugar (and in fact, we recommend using less). Similarly it is important not to use too much water. The Old Fashioned is most commonly served over ice, so adding more water will not make it more drinkable and only have the effect of diluting the drink.

With these cautionary notes in mind, what follows is how we might make an Old Fashioned cocktail:

 

The Old Fashioned

2     oz          Makers Mark

1/2 tsp         Sugar

3    dashes   Fees Whiskey Barrel-Aged Bitters

1    dash       Fees Gin Barrel-Aged Orange Bitters (optional)

Add the whiskey barrel-aged bitters to the sugar in an old fashioned glass. Add just enough water to dissolve the sugar and muddle until the sugar is completely dissolved. Place two ice cubes in the glass and pour in the bourbon. Stir well. Add a dash of orange bitters or a twist of orange peel to the glass and enjoy.

 

Ending this post here though would be a reductive insult to this great cocktail. The Old Fashioned is more than just a cocktail or a recipe. It’s a template, an idea. The beauty of this drink lies in not its exact proportions and ingredients but that it’s a platform for endless experimentation. Try using different bitters or bourbons or ryes; in fact, go further, try using rum and lemongrass bitters. Basically, as any self-respecting scientist says, experiment! Don’t even think about using vodka though.

Cheers!

A&B

Beta Cocktails

Cocktail and mixology books are, if you’ll excuse the cliché, a dime a dozen these days. Most of them feature hundreds, if not thousands, of recipes each either more vile or more banal than the last. In fact, you could print one by writing about 5 lines of computer code in the programming language of your choice. These books are so mind-numbingly dull to read that it would be more useful to use their pages as cocktail napkins. There are a few cocktail books that are genuinely interesting; whether it’s because they have an interesting focus or are just well written, these books are still quite derivative, reformulating well established recipes, albeit with pretty pictures and minor modifications. At best they give you an idea for a new recipe or two and help you pass some time.

Given this rather bleak landscape, it is very heartening to come across a book like Beta Cocktails. Containing recipes and a philosophy compiled by Kirk Estopinal and Maksym Pazuniak, this book(let) really pushes the boundaries of a cocktail book. Unlike most other cocktail books, this one is published by an online print-on-demand publisher. Don’t let the featureless cover throw you off; the book is filled with amazing pictures, entertaining reading and most importantly, some truly inspiring drinks.

It may not look like much but this little book contains some of the best
recipes you will ever come across.

Probably the easiest way to describe their philosophy and the general types of drink included is actually by the very first thing you notice, they do not hesitate to go heavy on the Angostura. And while that may sound like nothing remarkable, that these two are bold enough to use this bitters by the ounce in their drinks shows just how far outside the box they’re thinking. They admit to as much themselves with the Angostura Sour. Recipes that are novel and unique are exciting enough; but these two go further. The drinks they present are almost visionary and inspiring. They challenge the way you mix drinks and force you to reconsider all the tenets you held; even though it is very likely that you will not try all the drinks in this book (since it requires a minor fortune’s worth of booze and several varieties of alcohol not readily available in the states), just reading the book is enough to set your mind working and creating.

This book is definitely not for everyone. Both the types of drinks it features and the required ingredients mean that this book is both for the professionals or the insane amateurs (like us). It assumes a fair amount of knowledge of booze and how to mix it. But maybe it is this targeting that really makes this book so good. By not trying to write to all levels, these two create something special that every cocktail enthusiast can truly enjoy.

And if nothing else, this book is actually a good read (and also features some serious cocktail porn). I mean when you have a recipe featuring bourbon and Carpano Antica that ends with the phrase “and pour into the educated glass,” you know that you’re dealing with some seriously erudite mixologists.

Old Monk

In our blog so far, we have covered a ubiquitous ingredient and a very sophisticated one. This one is neither of those, in every possible way. So if you were expecting to hear about an exotic ingredient that you could add to you bar to be the envy of all your friends, this post is probably not for you. Instead, we are going to be talking about some cheap, shitty booze (not Natty Ice or Franzia or Steel Reserve mind you, we’re not that bad); so say hello to Old Monk!

This is a dark rum from India, and no that is a not a typo. It comes in a bottle that looks like it contains moonshine that barely passed some government inspection. As if that isn’t enough, drink this neat and it will burn more than a shot of fire ants. However, a shot of fire ants wouldn’t leave you with the warm taste of caramel and butterscotch a shot of Old Monk will.

It's not much to look at but that's why we were
taught never to judge a booze by its bottle.

It’s only because of this subtle sweet aftertaste that we’re even bothering to talk about this rum. And boy, if you can get rid of that burn does this rum help make an amazing drink. First, in honor of what countless people in the subcontinent drink, here is a twist on the classic Cuba Libre (presented in slightly different manner from our usual cocktail recipes).

Monk on Coke

Take a tall glass and fill it with some ice, as much Old Monk as you feel like drinking and the rest with Coca-Cola. Add a lime twist for garnish. Enjoy.

Why use Old Monk instead of any other rum? This rum adds a hint of vanilla and butterscotch to the Coke making it taste like a grown-up version of vanilla Coca-Cola. Not bad for something that also gets you tipsy.

While a perfectly legitimate use of Old Monk, the cocktail we really prefer it in is our version of the Dark and Stormy inspired by the way Drink, the bar in Boston we recently raved out, makes it. If, like us, you want a Dark and Stormy with a much sharper ginger flavor, try this:

Dark and Stormy

1.5oz Old Monk

3.5oz Goya Ginger Beer

Fill a highball glass a third of the way with ice. Add all the ingredients and garnish with a wedge of lime (if you absolutely must have a garnish).
 

The Goya ginger beer is much sharper and more gingery than the more traditional Gosling’s ginger beer; this complements the butterscotch sweetness of the Old Monk resulting in a truly enjoyable drink.

So, the next time the monsoon (or a thunderstorm for those of you who don’t conveniently live near monsoon prone regions) rolls around, mix yourself one of these and watch the rain.

Cheers!

A&B

Drink (tra la la) - A Review

If you were to sit down and make a checklist of everything you would expect from of an excellent bar, Drink would meet all of those criteria and then some (and if it doesn’t, then you may be looking for the wrong things in a bar).

A bar in southern Boston, I came across Drink when I was visiting the city for a conference. Some friends and I were looking for a place to go for a drink after dinner, when one of my friends suggested Drink, further claiming it to be one of the best bars in Boston. He was quite wrong, by the way: it’s actually one of the best bars in the world, a fact I soon found out and have only been able to reaffirm every time I’ve been there since.

Actually, you don't even need to read the rest of this review.
This sign should convince you how awesome this place is.

At the time of my first visit to Drink I knew a lot less about cocktails and what I enjoy than I do today. What makes this bar so exemplary is that it couldn’t have mattered less (if anything, it was probably better). The bartenders there are so outstanding at recommending drinks based on your taste and preferences that not knowing what you want to order, but having an idea of what you want to drink, is probably the best way to go. Even if you do know what you want, try asking the bartenders for a recommendation, they will not disappoint. A case in point is when a friend of mine walked into Drink asking for “a drink that tastes like summer turning into fall”, he was given a Martinez with a taste profile that exactly matched what he asked for (Hell, it’s such a great way of describing how a Martinez tastes that whenever anyone asks me, I now reply with what that guy said). That a bar is able to so consistently offer excellent drink suggestions to its customers is a rarity, setting Drink apart from all other bars I’ve visited.

Of course, a cocktail recommendation alone not enough, what makes them a world class bar is their ability to follow it up with a perfect drink. From making all their juices and syrups fresh in house to the painstaking detail with which every drink is crafter to the very liquors they use, this establishment does all the right things to make sure that the cocktail you ordered will redefine what you expect from that drink in the future. Take, for example, their Dark and Stormy; this classical cocktail has a well agreed upon (and indeed trademarked in Bermuda) recipe. However, Drink decided that they can do better. Using their own homemade ginger beer and an Indian dark rum instead of the more traditional Gosling’s, they create a drink with a much sharper ginger flavor balanced by the subtle, lingering butterscotch sweetness from the rum. So yes, they can do better, way better in fact, with almost every drink (be it a Sazerac or an Oaxacan Old Fashioned) on their menu, which by the way is very minimal, further encouraging you to talk to their excellent bartenders.

Three realizations of a Dark and Stormy.
Did I forgot to mention that they also gave us free drinks,
and samples and allowed us to taste individual ingredients?

Now, you may say that there’s nothing exceptional about a bar that makes excellent drinks with homemade ingredients considering the speakeasy revival these days; however, Drink sets itself apart from most of these other bars by not doing everything with an air of haughtiness. An unfortunate reality of the modern bar culture is that a lot of bars, especially upscale ones, treat you like shit if you don’t know what you want or look like you don’t know what you’re doing. You’re looked down upon if you order “the wrong thing”. But Drink doesn’t do that. Yes they make amazing cocktails but they do so without any arrogance or pomp. Ultimately, it’s an atmosphere where you can have the most amazing drink of your life while being in a completely comfortable, relaxed and unassuming environment.

I have been to many a high-end bar after Drink, most of them because of the experience I had at Drink and based on suggestions from a bartender there. And while I have had many great cocktails at some great bars, none of them were on par with the sheer brilliance of Drink. My only complaint then about this bar is that it isn’t where I live. Maybe I should just move to Boston.

Oh yeah, one of the drinks was also on fire!
Don't lie, you know you want one.