Eighteen: West India Company

If I'm honest, this started out as more of a kitchen special. I recently had the privilege of having my flat inspected by my landlord and in my attempts to make the place look more safely habitable, I turned all kinds of interesting things. There were newspapers dating back to 2007, a stack of comics as big as a five-year-old child, and most intriguingly for the purposes of this post, an airtight jar full of vanilla chai teabags. Masala chai is a blend of tea and aromatic spices that originated in the Indian Subcontinent, usually served heavily sweetened with milk. The practice of adding spices, combined with the increased proportions of milk and sugar, drew disapproval from India's colonial masters but the popularity of spiced tea seems to have outlasted the Empire. These days, masala chai style drinks are available in coffee shops everywhere - Starbucks, Costa, the usual suspects - though the actually chai component tends to be a bit of a cheat. Starbucks, for example, uses a spiced and sweetened tea-based syrup for its Chai Lattes and other commercially available syrups and teabags tend to include nontraditional flavours like chocolate or vanilla.

Just like my teabags! For some reason, I immediately thought of adding rum.

West India Company

50ml 10 Cane Rum
50ml sweetened vanilla chai (black)
25ml lemon juice

Shake all ingredients with ice and strain into ice-filled glass. Garnish with a lemon zest twist.

Seventeen: Fifth Crown

Today - yes, today, look at that topicality - is Cinco de Mayo, a date that carries significance for many on the American continent. For Mexicans (and Californians), it is the anniversary of their victory against the odds at the Battle of Puebla in 1862. Curiously enough, the French don't seem to mark the occasion. For Americans, it is the day on which they consume the most tequila in the year. Mexico's contribution to the world of alcohol extends further than tequila and mezcal - Mexican beer accounts for at least one of the UK's biggest selling bottled brands and provides a handy byword for exotic yet accessible brews. Surely, it'd be foolish not to combine the two.

Fifth Crown

40ml José Cuervo Tradicional
20ml Creme de Mure
30ml lime juice
Top with Corona

Shake the first three ingredients with ice and strain into an ice-filled highball. Top up with the beer and garnish with a lime wheel.

Sixteen: Centre

The galaxy is filled with wonderful things, not least the news that its centre tastes of raspberries and smells of rum. This is great news because both raspberries and rum are themselves wonderful things and because the centre of the galaxy is not actually made of raspberries and rum - rather it contains ethyl formate, a molecule that exhibits both traits. They're good traits to incorporate into a cocktail, too.

Centre

15ml handcrushed raspberry juice
10ml sugar syrup
1 dash Angostura Bitters
60ml Havana Club Especial

Place the raspberry juice, syrup and bitters in the base of a mixing glass. Add ice and stir. Add the rum gradually while stirring. Garnish with a couple of raspberries.

*** 

To make the handcrushed raspberry juice, simply use a barspoon or muddler to force some fresh raspberries through a fine-strainer. You'll need about 10 or so to yield 15ml. Commercially available raspberry purée works as a substitute.

*** 

There's a point to made, I think, about stirring drinks. The handcrushed raspberry juice is opaque so you lose the clarity that you associate with stirred drinks, but the idea behind stirring this drink is to give it the smooth texture you always get.

Fifteen: Mystère

Once upon a time, Cognac was the drink of choice for the higher orders of society and the undisputed leader among spirits, but that was before phylloxera decimated French wine production allowing whiskies and rums to come to prominence, and before the British government started to promote gin over imports from a country it frequently warred with. Cognac has heritage and tradition in spades which adds to the aura of luxury around the category, but it can also make the spirit seem fussy and impenetrable. Which is shame, because that previous dominance is based on the quality of the product rather than mere terroir or aging.

So, I made a conscious choice to make something with a Cognac base which isn't something I do that often. Vermouth seemed like a no-brainer, wine-based modifier with a grape-based spirit. Keeping the complementary theme, I used some Mandarine Napoleon - a brandy-based liqueur not unlike Grand Marnier, only Belgian and more mandarine-y.

Mystère

30ml Courvoisier VS
30ml Mandarine Napoleon
15ml Dubonnet Rouge
1 lemon zest

Stir all ingredients with ice and strain into an ice-filled brandy glass.

Fourteen: Scotch Fusion

We're going to try something a bit new this week: a brief trip into a confused mind.

The thought goes something like this: we know that the action of shaking with ice affects the liquid in the shaker in a couple of noticeable ways:

  • it chills the contents, courtesy of the ice
  • it adds dilution to the contents, again thanks to the ice
  • the motion thoroughly mixes the liquids within
  • it aerates the contents by trapping small bubbles of air within the mixture

The first three effects are also observed with stirred and built drinks, but the fourth is unique to shaken drinks. The first three effects can also be observed in warmed or hot cocktails through the addition of boiling water - a Blue Blazer, for example. Continuing the original thought, would it be possible to create a hot cocktail that is aerated by shaking?

Unfortunately, while ice has the handy properties of reducing temperature while also adding solid matter to aid the physical motion of shaking, there isn't an easy alternative for increasing temperature while adding solid matter. Hot coals, possibly, but I didn't have any handy and there's a possibility of the final drink tasting all carbony. At any rate, I decided to try the same recipe twice - one cold, one hot. Just to see if it's possible.

Cold

25ml Johnnie Walker Black Label
25ml Drambuie
25ml espresso
5ml sugar syrup

Shake with ice and fine-strain into a chilled brandy glass. No garnish.

*** 

The cold version turned out much as expected - a rounded, Scotch twist on an Espresso Martini. For the hot version, I opted to add 40ml of boiling water to add the dilution that would normally come from the ice, and popped the spring from a Hawthorne strainer into the tin as well.

Hot

25ml Johnnie Walker Black Label
25ml Drambuie
25ml espresso
5ml sugar syrup
40ml boiling water

Dry-shake with the spring from a Hawthorne strainer, and strain into a warmed brandy glass. No garnish.

*** 

The hot version turned out, well, weird. It looked the same as the cold one, but the crema formed by shaking the espresso quickly disappeared. The other notable difference was the temperature - it came out of the shaker more towards lukewarm and didn't retain what heat it had for long either. The dissipation of the crema can - I think - be attributed to the difference in temperature (colder temperatures encourage molecules to stay closer together, if my memory of high school chemistry serves) but I think there are steps I could take to preserve a higher temperature - perhaps using a vacuum flask rather than a regular Boston shaker and heating the ingredients beforehand.

There's something here, maybe. Maybe not; but even at a slightly disappointing temperature, the hot version had both striking similarities and dramatic differences to its cold brother. Returning finally to the thought that started this whole diversion, can you create a hot cocktail that is aerated by shaking?

Almost.