One Perfect Moment: Vodka

in ,

Tucked away in a little corner of the Internet, away from the hustle and bustle, you'll find Scans Daily - or its most recent incarnation, after the original fell victim to alleged grumpiness - where comic fans trade in snippets from their collections. Sometimes pages are posted because they're flat out awesome. Sometimes they're posted because they're really, really bad, or obscure, or intriguing, or weird. Sometimes, they fit to the week's theme. Last week, the community started posting scans of their favourite characters' One Perfect Moment - the essence of the character expressed as eloquently as possible in a couple of pages or panels. It's an absolute treasure chest of potential reading material. So far, so geek, but we're not really into drink territory. So here's the thing: working in a bar, you'll come across those same elegant moments that express an idea perfectly. For example, Scottish vodka drinkers...

Customer: What vodka do you sell?
Bartender: We've got [house pour], [insert super premium brands here], and maybe a bit of [random, appallingly expensive boutique brand] somewhere.
Customer: You've got Grey Goose? That's a great vodka, it's my favourite.
Bartender: No worries, one Grey Goose. On the rocks?
Customer: Yeah. With Red Bull.

MxMo XL: Ginger

in , ,

Like other stuff, Mixology Monday happens every month, but is at least 7,000% more fun than paying your rent. This month, RumDood challenges us to find a use for ginger, in any of its various forms. Ginger is a wonderful thing. Its mere presence elevates a run-of-the-mill stir fry towards the awesome and beyond that, it's versatile and easily fermentable. It's worth noting that having ginger hair is often treated as a kind of social disability in Scotland, but combining the physical trait with the root can be a powerful thing.

Fresh root ginger is, as we've already decided, great. The problem is that fresh root ginger is slightly troublesome when it comes to drinks. Muddling it takes a lot of effort and adds time and icky bits of ginger into a drink - we have a cocktail at work that involves muddling fresh ginger and it sells by the hundred. Every time someone orders one, another bartender starts crying, because basically it's a lot of faf for not a lot of benefit. There are other options - ginger beer or ale are the most obvious, but you could use a liqueur like Domaine de Canton (if you could buy it in the UK) or a syrup or jam.

Yes, jam. We will make jam out of anything.

Jams offer a slightly different sweetening agent for cocktails, adding sweetness, texture and specific flavour notes without adding too much volume into the mix. They're a great alternative to liqueurs, particularly in non-alcoholic drinks.

So, yeah. Ginger jam. It's the future.

La Roux

40ml Courvoisier Exclusif
10ml Campari
2 barspoons Ginger Jam
25ml lemon juice
Dash egg white

In a mixing glass, stir the jam with the lemon juice until it dissolves. Add the other ingredients and shake with ice. Fine-strain into a chilled coupette and garnish with a thin slice of root ginger on the rim.

Twenty One: Blackberry

in , , ,

If David Embury is to be believed, mixed drinks fall roughly into two categories - cocktails of the sour type, and those of the aromatic type. The former covers drinks that include - surprise! - a sour element like lemon or lime juice while the latter comprises recipes with some kind of aromatized or fortified wine component, such as vermouth. But I don't think that these two categories have to be mutually exclusive. I don't mean drinks that contain both aromatic elements and sour elements - there are some, most notably the Corpse Reviver - more I think that it is often possible to present both a sour version and an aromatic version of the same drink. There will be differences in the two versions of the drink, but the overall flavor profile will pretty much the same.

I'm going to use a Bramble to illustrate the point. It's a gin-based drink invented by Dick Bradsell in London in the early part of the 1980s.

Bramble

45ml gin
25ml lemon juice
10ml gomme syrup
15ml Creme de Mure

Stir the first three ingredients with crushed ice in an old-fashioned glass. Float the Creme de Mure and garnish with a lemon wedge and a couple of blackberries.

*** 

The thing with sour drinks is that they're not actually sour. It's all about that balance between sweet and sour, finding that spot between zingy and refreshing, and avoiding gum-sucking acidity. The immediate hit is something that is going to be lost in the aromatic version, but that doesn't mean that we're going to lose the citrus notes entirely.

Blackberry

50ml gin
15ml dry vermouth
10ml Limoncello
4 kaffir lime leaves
15ml Creme de Mure

Stir the first three ingredients with cubed ice in an old-fashioned glass. Float the Creme de Mure and garnish with a blackberry and a lime leaf.

*** 

And there we go - complementary sour and aromatic cocktails based on a single flavour profile.

Twenty: Last Night's Party

in , ,

You get asked to come up with a lot of drinks on the fly, working behind a bar. Most times, these drinks tend to be fairly simple - diverting, but not that remarkable. Every once in a while, though, you stumble on something golden.

Last Night's Party

30ml Bols Cherry Brandy
45ml Absolut Raspberri
30ml lemon juice
10ml Orgeat
Dash egg white

Shake all ingredients with ice and fine-strain into a chilled martini glass. Garnish with an orange zest.