Nine: Flame's Edge

New drinks are weird, intangible things. Sometimes, they can be engineered. Sometimes, they come from little more than an instinct. And sometimes, they just happen. We've been hosting cocktail masterclasses at work for a while now. They've proven to be popular with birthday and hen parties, possibly because it provides a decent excuse for exposing the guest of honour to phenomenal amounts of alcohol. There's a standard format for the session - a champagne cocktail of some description on arrival, followed by a demo of the different ways of making cocktails before getting each member of the group to make their own drink. Depending on the size of the group and how much time we have, I sometimes try to mix up a couple of drinks based on suggestions from the group. Most of the time, it's pretty easy to come up with something that ticks all the boxes. Every once in a while, though, it's a bit tougher.

On Saturday night, they wanted fire.

The problem was that I had totally run out of overproof rum, removing the easy option for fuel. So, I decided to go for Jamie Boudreau's Rubicon - only to discover that the kitchen was out of rosemary.

It was starting to feel like one of those dreams where you turn up to your high school graduation naked, but the idea behind the Rubicon has intrigued me since Jamie posted the recipe. In his words:

The burning Chartreuse also has the benefit of cooking the rosemary, releasing a lot of aroma and allowing the flavors to better permeate the beverage as oils are released. As for the “wow” factor, when you extinguish the flame with the rest of the ingredients, a thick white smoke develops.

I'm pretty certain blue flames come under "wow", too. So, taking the Rubicon as a starting point (after all, there's no going back from this point), here's what we ended up with.

Flame's Edge

An orange
10ml Green Chartreuse
40ml Monkey Shoulder
15ml Lemon Juice
20ml White Creme De Cacao

Strip three long strips of peel from the orange with a channel knife. Place two of the strips in a rocks glass with the Chartreuse, keeping one aside for garnish.

Pour the whisky, lemon juice and Creme de Cacao into a shaker, add ice and prepare to shake. Before you do, light the Chartreuse in the glass with orange zests. Shake the remaining ingredients and strain into the glass, extinguishing the flame. Fill the glass with crushed ice and garnish with the remaining orange zest twist.

Eight: Santa Rosita

Yesterday was National Margarita Day in the US, which is as good a reason as any to play around with a bit of tequila. Edinburgh at the tail-end of February might be some way from ideal Margarita-drinking conditions, but we had a rummage around our pile o' stuff regardless.

Santa Rosita

30ml José Cuervo Tradicional
15ml Cointreau
15ml Rose syrup
60ml lime juice

Rim a martini glass with vanilla sugar. Shake all ingredients with ice and fine-strain into the chilled, rimmed glass.

Seven: Abelinha

Eagle-eyed readers may have noticed that a lot of the recipes I post use honey as a sweetening agent in cocktails. It has become something of a hallmark of my recipes, like the guy who always uses sherbet in his drinks, or the guy who can't not use a foam. One of the things I love about honey is its versatility. As with anything, different kinds of honey have different characteristics, from lighter varieties such as Acacia through to darker, more pungently flavoured ones like Manuka. Choosing the right one to complement the other flavours in a drink can be tougher than you think it's going to be.

Honey also has a great heritage - it is, after all, the original sweetener. In Europe, man was using honey to add flavour to food and drink long before sugar cane was discovered. Since then, sugar spread like wildfire, inspiring creativity, commerce - not to mention war, slavery and cruelty on an industrial scale. Honey, on the other hand, stayed sweet.

Abelinha

50ml Cachaca
1 barspoon honey (works better with a lighter variety)
25ml pink grapefruit juice
25ml cranberry juice
25ml pineapple juice

Shake all ingredients with ice and strain into an ice-filled highball. Garnish with a long grapefruit zest.

MxMo: hard drinks for hard times

This month's Mixology Monday is worried. It worries about its job, its mortgage and, above all, it worries about its future. It's not easy being the internet's premier monthly mixological get-together, but this month's theme proposed by Matt at Rowley's Whiskey Forge could give it a few tips for getting through the crunch. Drinking has seen of tough times before, of course. If outright prohibition couldn't kill hard spirits, then lacking a bit of cash won't either. However, to my mind, when money gets tight it's the fancy imported stuff that ends up first in the firing line and you aim to make do with what's local. Luckily, this means I get to play with Scotch whisky.

(Whisky Galore! by foxypar4, licenced under Creative Commons.)

Much like the global economy, Scotch hasn't had the best of luck over the past few years. 2008 saw blended Scotch overtaken by vodka in UK off-licence (liquor store) sales for the first time and while the category as a whole is still ahead, it seems likely to be caught within the year. But - unlike the economy - some green shoots can be seen, with Diageo building Scotland's first new whisky distillery in 30 years and Glenmorangie investing £45m in new headquarters and bottling site in the Central Belt. Looking back, whisky producers haven't always been that keen on contributing to the economy anyway. As tradition would have it, distilleries were often established in inaccessible glens to confound excisemen sent to tax the stills.

One of the great strengths of a good blended Scotch is its versatility. Quality brands will mix well with dark fruit flavours and heavier notes, but they'll also play with lighter herbal, more aromatic tastes. One thing you can guarantee is that is price will be roughly proportionate to malt content. Dropping less cash will net you a higher percentage of grain whisky in the blend; these will tend toward younger, less flavourful whiskies column-distilled from mixed grains. If economics demand that you stick to a budget, there are gems to be found - Bailie Nicol Jarvie and Black Bottle spring immediately to mind - but if you're planning on spending less than $20/£12 on a blended Scotch, you may be better off pouring some vodka into a barrel and leaving it in the garage for a couple of years.

There's another quality of Scotch that makes it perfect for post-austerity drinking: you don't need to mix it with anything. Sure, you can use it in cocktails and the like, but there's many a purist who will tell anyone with ears that adding anything other than water - maybe, just maybe an ice cube or two, possibly - is heresy of the first order. That said, it feels a little too much like cheating not to include a recipe beyond a Scotch on the rocks. Of course, given no-one anywhere has any money, it would seem foolish to start throwing starfruit and other exotica into a shaker. This month, we're keeping it simple and local. And cheap, hopefully.

Highland Bramble

45ml blended Scotch whisky
30ml freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 barspoon honey
1 dash egg white (optional, I just like the look and the texture)
15ml Crème de Mure

Shake the first four ingredients with ice. Strain into an ice-filled old-fashioned glass and drizzle the Crème de Mure over the top. Garnish with a handful of blackberries and/or raspberries.

Six: La Spirale

(Spiral Staircase by sjdunphy, licensed under Creative Commons.)

Vodka has been described as the most difficult spirit to use creatively. Possibly by me when I was lacking inspiration, but the point stands. After all, vodka comes off the still somewhere north of 95% ABV before being diluted to bottling strength which means that a 70cl bottle is going to contain roughly 60% water by volume and maybe 2% of things that aren't alcohol or water. That's not a lot of flavour to work with.

Think of a popular vodka cocktail - don't pick a vodka Martini, that's cheating - and then ask yourself, "what does this taste off?" The chances are that your answer won't be vodka. Compared to the classic gin, whiskey or rum drinks, vodka cocktails tend to leave their main ingredient in the background.

Then again, there are always flavoured vodkas. They certainly allow you to bring the base ingredient into focus, but that still won't emphasize a "vodka-ish" flavour. It's a tough beat, vodka.

...Yes, I am prepping ideas for a vodka-sponsored competition.

La Spirale

25ml Absolut Pears
25ml Teichenné Apple Schnapps
1 barspoon Campari
25ml pressed apple juice
1 dash egg white

Shake all the ingredients with ice and fine-strain into an ice-filled old-fashioned glass. Garnish with an apple fan.