Ingredients:
1 pint Guinness stout
1 shot glass, filled with loosely packed psychotropic mushroom dust
Drop the shot of psychedelics into the pint of Guinness and consume the entire contents immediately. Go to Logan airport and board the shuttle to New York after upgrading yourself to first class. Enjoy your flight.
The second half of the Oregon Bartenders Guild seminar was led by Matt Mount, the distiller at House Spirits. He led the discussion on what is perhaps the first cocktail, what we now call the Old Fashioned.
Last Sunday I attended a seminar on cocktails presented by the Oregon Bartenders Guild. This is a group led by some of the most interesting and serious bartenders in Portland (and Eugene). The program was hosted at the Carlyle, a wonderful bistro pretty much under the westside 405. I had a gorgeous walk over to it from Old Town.
This program was titled “Lost in Translation”, being concerned with two lines of classic cocktails that have been abused and mis-shapen over the decades: the Sidecar and the Old Fashioned. It was more how-to oriented than the January session (a seminar on gin, in which we tasted 3 Oregon-produced gins and enjoyed an overview of the history of gin and talks from the distillers of each).
The preceding is a pretty piece of writing, but I expected better from an accomplished mixologist like Ouroboros. Maybe a little of the real history to go with it? And I’ll be blunt: that recipe needs work. Look, I’ve been to Scotland, I’ve drunk the Vicar or whatever in its birthplace.
Five years ago I concocted a mixed drink to bring to a fantastic weekend party in Portland. On the fifth afternoon of the weekend, after the house had been cleared of nearly all the liquor, a local drove me to a liquor store. That liquor store (shuttered in the time since) did not stock maraschino, so I fell back on Clear Creek Distillery’s Kirschwasser. We had a serotonin-depleted night watching Cohen Brothers films, having cigarettes on the back porch, and drinking this cocktail. The next day, conform and I each wrote competing fictives about it.
This slightly golden-hued elixir brings together two liqueurs from opposite ends of Europe. The honey in the Drambuie lends its sweetness to support the cherry hints in the maraschino. The smoky peat supports the almond flavor of the cherrystones. The vodka provides a neutral base in which these liqueurs may come to symbiosis*.
A little less than a week ago, I set about to infusing vodka with plums, mostly because I had a bunch of plums and no real interest in eating them. Therefore I took…
…threw them together in a jar, stuck it in the fridge, and peered in at it from time to time, shaking it occasionally. Overnight, it had acquired a pinkish hue (or, I guess, a light plum hue), which has darkened considerably (see below). I took a small taste today, and was surprised by not just by how much flavor it had, but how unidentifiable the taste was. I don’t think anyone will recognize it as plum. But it’s good.
So, a few questions for you infusers. How long should this sit? At what point should I remove the fruit? Is there a point of diminishing returns with regards to flavor?
For this month’s Mixology Monday, Jimmy Patrick at Jimmy’s Cocktail Hour proposed a theme of variations.
The Maiden’s Prayer is one of those odd formulations of four ingredients in equal proportions: gin, light rum, Cointreau, lemon juice. It is a drink that has been handed down to us from the early part of the 20th Century, along with a sister drink, the Between the Sheets, which replaces the gin with brandy.
This variation on the Maiden’s Prayer is one that I built using the generative principal of variation by substitution. Starting with the ingredients list for the Maiden’s Prayer, the Cointreau is replaced by Maraska maraschino. This exchange results in a very different drink, which I call the Hope Chest.
the Hope Chest
In a mixing glass, pour over ice
◇ ¾ oz Bluecoat gin,
◇ ¾ oz Mt Gay Special Reserve rum,
◇ ¾ oz Maraska maraschino,
◇ ¾ oz Meyer lemon juice.
Shake. Strain into a cocktail glass.
Garnish with a lemon twist.
My normal pour for this drink is Tanqueray, but since I had recently received a bottle of Bluecoat gin, I tried that. The Bluecoat gin lends a wonderful citrus aroma that plays very nicely with the Meyer lemon juice. The Maraska, being somewhat more syrupy and less fiery than the Luxardo maraschino, is close to the sweetness of the Cointreau (which it replaces) while delivering cherry and almond notes to replace the interest that the triple sec would have. In all, it is a fine late-night drink, for the hour in which sweeter things should be contemplated.
For the past two Februaries, a glowing white pyramid has materialized in Portland to deliver light-based therapy and party atmosphere to the seasonally affected masses in an attempt to bleach the inky gothic from our souls.
LIGHTBAR was a candle against the accursed darkness. The 10000W hand-blown tungsten bulb that hung from its highest point was a shard of the sun fallen to earth, a reminder that spring would return.
This year, however, events have conspired to cancel LIGHTBAR. We are left with our hazy memories of the scent of cardboard and cinnamon. And recollection of the inspired White Feast.
Mykle, all of us here at the Prince of Cups and North American Booze Council hope that 2009 will see a return of the UFO-beacon known as LIGHTBAR.
Thanks to misuba for the photos. I owe you a drink.
“Next round’s on me.”
That’s when you know you’ve got the bartender in your pocket. It’s New York City and you know your bars. You will juice your local dive for whatever amenities you can find: free jukebox, cheap pool table, even free food. You will not pay more than five dollars per pint.
Five bucks a pint seems outrageous outside this city, but in New York it’s basement price for good beer. This is one of the many virtues of living in NYC; you will never feel that anything is overpriced anywhere else. Rents in Manhattan and Brooklyn are high, driving drink prices higher. But obviously no one is going to stop drinking. NYC is a drunk city, permanently. (If it weren’t for a Bloody Mary over brunch, New York would collectively die every weekend.) Competition between drinking houses is intense; bar owners must, as a matter of survival, provide additional enticements to woo customers away from the bar next door.
Bars in other cities offer the standard accoutrements outlined above. In New York we have a concept that is maybe not unique to the city, but no other city has made it an institution: the buy-back.
The buy-back is when your bartender buys you a drink. Your bartender does this because he likes you, and he may like you for several reasons. Examples follow.
Some time ago, between the time when Jurassic Park left theatres and Dummy hit the airwaves, we acquired a case of Bud Light through the aide of some false identification and some liquor store clerks who could be described as “less than vigilant.” Sitting on a tree stump by the froggie pond knocking back twenty four Bud Lights (the 30-pack and the wide-mouthed cans had yet to be invented) seemed to be the right thing to do on a summer’s eve as we looked back at high school and forward to college. For a night, we would be kings…
Our driver and booze procurer Jim drops us off at the entrance to the woods and makes us solemnly promise not to start drinking until he has found an inconspicuous parking space and has made his way back into the forest. Naturally, as soon as we’ve disappeared into the woods, the first of the mellow gold is cracked open. We’ve scarcely reached the trusty drinking spot and sat down before we hear rustling in the woods.
“Is that Jim? It can’t be Jim already,” wonders Ryan allowed.
“It’s probably an animal,” I posit.
“Animals don’t carry flashlights,” replies Tim.
Shit. Very calmly, very slowly, we set down our hoard and walk in the opposite direction of the light, back towards the other, more public side street that abuts the wood. Just seconds after exiting, a cruiser pulls up behind us and starts coasting slowly. “Just relax,” said Ryan. His words are quickly interrupted by WOOP WOOP.
That’s the sound of the police.
The flashlight-wielder emerges from the woods and catches up with his cruising buddy. Along with his torch, the Standard Issue Street Soldier has brought with him our beer. After several denials by the party of the first part, Office Crothers makes several threats ranging from arrest to calling our parents, gives a passionate and lengthy speech about the dangers – and illegality – of underage drinking, and finally decides that we have learned our lesson and lets us off with a warning.
Naturally, while all this is happening, Jim is in the woods wondering where the hell we all were. He comes to the conclusion that we’ve fucked him over, so he drives home in a sour mood (and apparently watches cartoons for the rest of the night), leaving us without a ride home. Ryan decides to have a little fun with him.
“Jim,” he says into the phone the next morning, while we sit in his living room giggling like schoolgirls. “This is Ryan. Yeah. I bet you’re wondering what happened last night. Yeah, well… no, we didn’t dick you over… no, listen… oh FOR FUCK’S SAKE THE COPS CAUGHT US. <silence> Yeah. Uh, we have to go to court, probably community service. <silence> Yeah, I guess you did sidestep that one. Heh. Funny thing… about that. Uh, the cop asked us who bought the beer, Jim, and I had to say it was you. <silence> JIM, HE MADE ME SWEAR TO GOD. I HAD TO TELL THE TRUTH! Yeah, well, anyway, the cop said they were going to stop by your house today, and you’ll have to go to court, too. The cop mentioned something about taking away your car or suspending your license or something.”
At this point we are rolling on the floor like we are comic geniuses. The reason for this is because Jim’s summer job is delivering pizzas, and believe it or not, without the income from this bustling, high-profit industry, he has no way to pay for Syracuse. So telling Jim he couldn’t drive was like telling him that college was right out.
After about two minutes of Jim cursing him out with every possible swearword and swearword derivative, Ryan gets sick of it and interrupts him.
“Jim…. Jim…. JIM!” He pushes the speakerphone button, and we all gather around. “Just kidding!”
We all laugh loudly and obnoxiously as Jim realizes he’s been had. He swears a few more times and is clearly planning on launching another tirade when Ryan interrupts him again. “Basketball at Magnolia. 1 o’clock,” he says and hangs up.
Jim didn’t show up for basketball and threatened to boycott our company indefinitely. That is until we offered to pay for his share of beer the next night. So yeah, we bought his integrity for about five dollars.
