A rum drink with vermouth? Incredulous. All we have is rum. We’ll just have to make do. Pragmatic. As long as I don’t end up wearing it. Declarative.
This drink is one that I discovered quite by accident in the small print at the back of Paul Harrington’s Cocktail: The Drinks Bible for the 21ST Century. Such little research as I can apply with the few volumes I have at hand turns up no listing. And CocktailDB, bless their hearts, lists sweet vermouth.
I had been looking for a pre-dinner drink to serve as the charger to a main course of petrale sole poached over a bed of fennel, shallots, and celery. This served admirably.
The accident? yes, I was out of gin. Imagine my embarrassment.
the Fig Leaf
In a mixing glass, pour over ice
◇ 1½ oz light rum,
◇ 1 oz dry vermouth,
◇ ½ oz lime juice, and
◇ a healthy dash of Angostura bitters.
Stir. Strain into a cocktail glass adorned with a runner of lemon thyme wound around the stem.
I’ve enjoyed Mt.Gay rum in this cocktail, but my recent introduction to Sea Wynde made me think that it might be stellar in this context. The vermouth must be in fine state; if it is even a little old, ditch it and make a daiquiri instead. The Angostura bitters is the rug that brings the room together.
My Dad and I were waxing poetic over a few beers one evening when he told me that Schlitz used to be a great beer and he drank it all the time. Sometime in the 1970s, the formula was changed and afterwards it wasn’t worth drinking ever again. Of course, I tried it myself and found it basically ran right through me and didn’t taste considerably better in any way than Old Milwaukee (the Beast) or even Miller Lite. Having grown up in NW Georgia, this was immediately linked to the New Coke scandal of 1985. I vividly remember newscasts of protesters pouring out 2 liter bottles of their reformulated swill onto the North Avenue sidewalk. I imagine drunken crowds in Milwaukee did much worse than that after Schlitz’s retooling to cut costs.
Fast forward to 2008. The geniuses what make my favorite session beer, the Pabst Brewing Company – purveyors of those Blue Ribbon beauties, is reintroducing the “old” formula of Schlitz at 10 places around Chicago.
Pabst is relaunching the old brew in long-neck bottles at 10 outlets on Chicago’s North Side with hopes of wider availability next year.
Chicago is the third market for the Schlitz reintroduction, following roll-outs in Minneapolis/St. Paul and Tampa Bay, Florida.
You can bet your sweet, drunken ass I’ll be sampling it and bringing a case down for my Dad should it be up to snuff. Nothing like drinking together brings you closer to your parents.
Check out this bizarre Schlitz commercial from the 1970s which overuses “gusto” and seems to communicate, “Drink Schlitz or I’ll kill you”.
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…
750 mL of Ketel One vodka
three black plums, sliced
…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?
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.
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