Outbound: storm in a julep cup

How big of a deal is three percent? If you're talking about whiskey, apparently a lot. Last weekend, the news that Maker's Mark was to be bottled at 42% ABVinstead of its current level of 45% ABV brought forth the full range of reaction from the Internet - y'know: disbelief, anger, torches and pitchforks. While the subsequent decision to reverse the ABV reduction has been broadly welcomed, some are starting to draw differentconclusions.

(Not that any of the above is actually relevant in certain markets.)

Topically, there's a very interesting NYT article from Harold McGee. The title? To enhance flavor, just add water.

The eternal Sydney/Melbourne rivalry takes another turn as the former is named Australia's bar capital.

A lot of good people in the Edinburgh bar/cocktail scene get some well deserved exposure, courtesy of the Scotland on Sunday, though the thing itself makes everything feel a little more like Portlandia than I remember it.

A couple of gems via the excellent if acronymically-complex TYWKIWDBI - Mixing alcohol with diet soda may make you drunker  and a pretty epic wine poster for the oenophile in your life.

Fifty: Maple Union

This project is on the home stretch and after forty-nine drinks, it's time to look at the elephant in the room. Over the past twelve or so months, we've seen rum drinks and Scotch drinks and vodka and gin and good God, we've even seen Genever a couple of times. What we haven't seen is bourbon.

Elephant Room by S.A. Young on Flickr

Bourbon was declared as a "distinctive product of the United States" in 1964, but it's stood as the flagship of American spirit production for long before that. There are a couple of key distinctions between bourbon and European (Scottish and Irish) whiskies, not least the sour mash process. Arguably, given that pretty fundamental difference in production combined with the different grain base (at least 51% corn for bourbon versus the traditional malted barley for Scotch), comparing the two is like comparing apples and oranges. Maybe not so much apples and oranges - oranges and grapefruits might be more appropriate.

Lunch at the Pendennis Club by Southern Foodways Alliance on Flickr.

The natural question at this point is why has it taken me fifty weeks to feature one of the major spirits? Unfortunately, there's no easy answer. For one, dark spirits are not as popular as white spirits in the UK market, and bourbon is somewhere behind rum and Scotch in that category. As such, it doesn't feature in my thinking all that often and while it would be unfair to say that brands don't support their products with competitions and the like - Maker's Mark recently held took their UK finalists to the States and held the final in the Pendennis Club - but these are often a rarity among a calendar filled with events sponsored by vodka, gin and rum producers.

However, even on these distant shores, bourbon is deserving of more than a tip of the hat. Bourbon is the whiskey on which the cocktail tradition is built which makes it impossible to ignore. When talking about it in cocktails, the obvious point of reference is the Manhattan - I'm hearing an imaginary chorus of people shouting about proper Manhattans being made with rye, but if I put my hands just here over my ears, we'll be ok - and the overwhelming urge is to go old school. And if we're thinking old school, the obvious point of reference is the Sazerac and yes, the rye chorus has a point here. It's the aromatic rinse that makes the Sazerac great, and although absinthe pairs well with rye, it tends to overpower the more delicate flavours in most bourbons. It'd be incredibly opportunistic to claim that adding a rinse to a Manhattan constitutes a whole new recipe, so I've opted to add a couple of complimentary flavours from the great American tastebook in the form of maple syrup and Fee Brothers' Aztec Chocolate Bitters. Still incredibly opportunistic, though.

Maple Union

40ml bourbon (I used Maker's Mark)
20ml sweet vermouth (Cinzano Rosso)
1 barspoon maple syrup
1 dash Fee Bros. Aztec Chocolate Bitters
10ml Yellow Chartreuse

Rinse a chilled martini glass with the Chartreuse. Stir all other ingredients with ice and strain into the chilled, rinsed glass. Garnish with an orange zest twist.

Forty Four: Remember Remember

So, November. The long nights are here, forcing a day's worth of warmth into the slivers of daylight that punctuate the week. Winter is most definitely here and there's only one thing to do: blow stuff up. It's funny how we feel it's appropriate to celebrate a failed detonation with fireworks, but if you can't spin festivities out of a treasonous plot then what can you do? After a long evening enrapturing children and scaring pets, there'll come a point when the thing you really want is to be inside with something warm - a nice hot cocoa, perhaps - and if that point happens to coincide with a powerful need for a cocktail, then you'll likely be disappointed. There are some options: a liqueur coffee of some description, a hot toddy, or - if you're still feeling particularly pyrophiliac - a Blue Blazer; but on the whole, the hot cocktail is something of a lost art. It's worth noting that before the advent of refrigeration, mixed drinks would have been served either cold-compounded (whack it in a vessel and give it a stir) or heated, either indirectly (by adding some hot water, for example) or directly (by, say, shoving a red-hot poker from the fireplace into the drink. If you wanted to be all refined, I'm sure there were more subtle ways of doing it).

Of course, making and serving a cocktail hot will usually require some extra equipment. For this week's drink, I went all in and headed toward the much-abused coffee machine at work, though not with the intention of making any coffee. Sure, there's a coffee flavour in the recipe but not everyone's looking for a caffeine rush in a warming, late-night tipple. We don't all wanna get a buzz on.

Remember, Remember

In the base of warmed brandy balloon or coupette, combine:
25ml bourbon (I used Bulleit)
15ml Kahlua (or your choice of coffee liqueur)
1 barspoon maple syrup
25ml hot water

In a milk jug, combine:
50ml half & half (25ml milk and 25ml double cream if you don't prep half & half)
15ml white creme de cacao
10ml Navan vanilla cognac liqueur

Using an espresso machine, steam the mixture until creamy. Layer over the bourbon/Kahlua/maple syrup combination and garnish with a sprinkle of shaved chocolate.