The delicate art of the twist

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There's one phrase you can guarantee that you'll hear at a cocktail competition. It's the one that starts, "This drink is a twist on..." The concept of modifying an existing recipe and presenting it as a new drink isn't new - look at the sheer volume of gin/vermouth/bitters recipes in the Savoy Cocktail Book, for example - but there's a point at which we should ask where the boundaries lie.

This question - what constitutes a "twist"? - solidified for me at the Drambuie UK Cocktail Competition last month. I'd managed to sneak through the heat with an original recipe, but I'd be required to present both that drink and a twist on a Rusty Nail in the final. It's not unusual for brands to ask competitors to present a modified version of one of their signature cocktails but the Rusty Nail struck me as one of the most difficult to change.

The problem is its simplicity. It has equal measures of two ingredients - Scotch and Drambuie - stirred and served on the rocks. There's nothing in the recipe that can be pared down or outright removed without changing the nature of the drink. So, if I view those two ingredients as fundamental to my version remaining a Rusty Nail, the only thing I can do is add ingredients.

That created its own problems. Once again, I felt that adding too many ingredients would detract from the simplicity of the original formula. Adding a souring agent didn't seem appropriate, nor did overly lengthening the drink. After sifting through combinations of complementary flavours, I ended up doing very little. I added a measure of apple juice to counteract the thick texture of the Drambuie and flamed a couple of sprays of Absinthe inside the glass to add a striking aroma.

The flipside to the approach I took was that it could be viewed as unadventurous and subsequently wasn't far enough removed from a standard Rusty Nail. Having seen my scores (which is a rarity in competitions) I guess that's the view that the judges took. It's hard to argue with the decision, and I came away knowing what things I need to work on for future competitions, but the question's still there. What constitutes a twist?

The Rust of Ages

30ml Drambuie
20ml blended Scotch whisky
30ml apple juice
10ml Absinthe (in atomiser)

Flamed a couple of sprays of absinthe into a small, chilled cocktail glass. Stir the other ingredients with ice and strain into the absinthe-rinsed glass.

Forty Nine: L'Étranger Cocktail

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Let's talk a little about context. After all, it's often said that nothing happens in a vacuum - though that's patently untrue given our little marble of evolved consciousness does circuits in one - and so much of the difficulty of creating recipes is creating those contexts in which your chosen ingredients can shine. I've been exploring the idea of seasonally appropriate flavours over recent weeks which, naturally, got me onto thinking about seasonally inappropriate flavours. Things that work in the context of sunny summer afternoons often don't on rainy winter evenings. Beyond that, certain types of ingredient have fallen into specific contexts over time. If I'd thought about it at the start of this project, the notion of using a vermouth in a refreshing citrusy cocktail would have seemed counterintuitive, given my own attitudes towards fortified wines back in the day. Context - or more accurately, the previous contexts in which an ingredient or technique are found - is a useful guide, but it shouldn't be taken as a stonecrafted edict.

And so we come to orgeat. No, this is not supposed to be a non sequitur.

Orgeat is beloved by many, but is rarely used outside of tiki drinks and more rarely still with spirits other than rum. If it appears in a recipe, you'd get incredibly long odds on the drink not falling into Embury's Sour Type classification. This may be as much because including an opaque sweetener in an Aromatic Type drink runs against the standardized aesthetic of a brilliantly clear beverage as it is because orgeat combines so very well with citrus and rum. However, once I'd realized that orgeat is hardly used outside of the tiki/rum/sour context, the obvious thing was to try it in an entirely different one.

This is how we end up talking about hot drinks.

Tea Cup Pot by Eduardo Mueses on Flickr.

There are exceptions - the Irish Coffee being the most notable - but hot alcoholic drinks are rare. It's worth remembering that they existed before iced cocktails, given the difficulty of obtaining a consistent supply ice in the era before refrigeration. One of the most popular concoctions of the North American colonists was flip, which was "mixed with a device called a loggerhead..."

"- a narrow piece of iron about three feet long with a slightly bulbous head the size of a small onion. It was originally created for heating tar or pitch, with the bulb buried in the glowing coals until it blazed red-hot, then quickly withdrawn and plunged into the pitch to make it pliable. The instrument served a similar heating function when plunged red-hot into a beer-rum-and-molasses concoctions. The whole mess would foam and hiss and send up a mighty head." Wayne Curtis, And a Bottle of Rum, p. 83

As I'm lacking in both an open fire and a loggerhead, I'd have to go for less dramatic means of heating my drink. In time, I'd also opt to steer clear of coffee and dairy. Fernet Branca and cloves were chosen as complementary flavours on top of a whisky base, the Glenrothes Select Reserve in this case. As for the orgeat, it really does work in this drink. Sometimes, taking things out of context is the only way to go.

L'Étranger Cocktail

50ml The Glenrothes Select Reserve
15ml orgeat
15ml Fernet Branca
5 cracked cloves
50ml hot water

Combine all ingredients in a mixing glass or suitable heat-proof  container. Fine-strain into a small tea-cup or rocks glass (if you're going for a glass, make sure to heat it first so it doesn't crack). Garnish with a twist of lemon zest and a cinnamon stick.

Fourteen: Scotch Fusion

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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.

Newsdesk: no, you can't

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Nine: Flame's Edge

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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.