Tag: Cocktail Hour

TheMomCat suggests a new drinking game- when Obama says “I agree”, drink.

Arsenic and Old Lace

This a drink with a lot of interesting liquors and subtle variations.  What’s common to all of them is Gin and Crème de Violette.

Gin is a lot older than you think and involves re-distilling neutral spirits with juniper berries for a piney flavor.  I’m terribly allergic to juniper so I can’t drink it.  The recipe calls for a Dry highly distilled modern clear Gin.

Crème de Violette is actually made from flowers and has the scent and deep purple color of its namesake.  Based on brandy or neutral spirits it’s not easy to find, but you don’t need a lot.

It is pretty clear that this is just an Atty cocktail renamed in favor of the Kesselring play and subsequent movie.  You might create a distinction in the substitution of Pastis for the temporarily unavailable Absinthe of the original.

Either one contributes a strong anise flavor that can also be found in the ‘London’ variety of Gin and compliments it.

Finish with some Dry Vermouth if you like it (and I happen to).

The color ranges from a clear purple to a faint opalescent green depending on the substitutions and quantities.  If you use one of the ‘milkier’ recipes you can serve it ‘on the rocks’ in a short (Old Fashioned) glass and the melting ice will create lacy streamers.

Daisy Daisy

I found this listed as a brandy drink, but it’s actually the grandfather of many drinks.

The essential ingredients are a few dashes of a sweet liqueur (about half a shot) usually citrus flavored though not always, some citrus juice (half a lemon or lime’s worth), superfine (sometimes called Bartenders, it’s quick dissolving) sugar, and a generous jigger (about 2 ounces) of whatever spirit you happen to be using.

This is poured into a shaker with ice and shaken (not stirred) then strained into a tall (Collins) glass and topped with seltzer or served over rocks (a more recent variation).

Benedictine and Brandy

Brandy is probably the oldest distilled beverage since wine has such an ancient heritage and in this drink it’s paired with Benedictine which seems ancient because we associate that with the monkish lifestyle and discipline, but is in fact a formula from the 1800s invented by Alexandre Le Grand.

Like Root Beer the mixture of herbs used to flavor it doesn’t really taste like anything else, but it is quite sweet and is mixed with brandy and ice when that quality is less desirable.

So the recipe is just too damn simple to even write down.

A Cocktail that is truly historic is egg nog which was derived from medieval possets.  You can make it with almost any kind of spirit (bourbon imparts a nice vanilla flavor), but brandy is traditional.

When you think about Cocktails you generally think about distilled spirits and sufficiently filtered and concentrated they have no taste at all, just a burning sensation as it reacts with your mouth.  The 2 most common brands sold are Graves and Everclear.

But that’s why mixers were created.

Oddly enough the most frequent thing to mix with neutral spirits is other types of alcohol that have the aromatic impurities we call ‘taste’.  Blended whiskies, which include almost everything except for craft bourbons, single malt scotches, and some brandies, are put together from different distillations to achieve a particular taste and then balanced with water and neutral spirits to create the desired concentration of alcohol by volume (proof).

Use crappy water, get crappy booze.

Most spirits are sold at between 80 and 100 proof, meaning 40% and 50% alcohol (proof is double the volume) but at those concentrations is too strong in my opinion for proper appreciation and enjoyment.  While I encourage sampling it as presented from the bottle (at room temperature and in a snifter), you’ll enjoy even the noblest single malt or bourbon better toned down a little.  With scotch I order straight up with a side of ice and drop the cubes in one at a time until I have the desired temperature and dilution.  Bourbon gets a splash of branch but I leave it pretty strong and chase it with seltzer (no salt).  Either way it’s for sipping and not pounding back.

If on the other hand you’re looking for semi-instant inebriation and unconsiousness you can do far worse than a Boilermaker or its Depth Charge variant.

Use the cheapest, awfullest beer and liquor you have, taste is no object.  Natural Ice and Dubra are perfect.  Chill your beer as cold as you can without freezing, likewise the booze.  For a Boilermaker just pour a shot (or so) right in the beer.  With the Depth Charge presentation is everything, so use a clear mug that will hold a pint (yes, slightly more than the 12 ounces in your can, you’ll see why in a moment).

Take a fairly heavy clear shot glass and fill it with your liquor, position directly in the center of your beer as close to the surface as you can and bombs away!

In either case open your throat for a shooter.  The reason an Ale Horn doesn’t have a flat bottom is you’re not supposed to put it down!  With a Depth Charge be careful not to break your mug when the shot glass returns to the bottom, though all the kool kidz will wrap their lips around it, pull it out hands free, and swab it with their tongue, before planting it on the bar next to the mug.

Oh, and be careful standing up.  You’re much drunker than you were 30 seconds ago.

I’ve been trying to start out with some of the older recipes with which one of the problems is that they’re quite simple.  The first thing to understand is that the core building block of alcoholic beverages is brewing.

To brew you need 3 things- sugar, water, and yeast.  The yeast eat the sugar and poop alcohol until they die of alcohol poisoning.  With the right kind of yeast you can get concentrations of 20% or more.

Almost anything will brew, from a mash of sprouted barley (malt) to grape juice (wine) and it will taste more or less good depending on the 80% that is not alcohol which is flavorless (or slightly astringent because of the chemical reactions that take place).

Back in the day finding good produce was not nearly as hard as finding good water and because wine was not reliant on water as there is so much of it in the juice it was generally of superior quality to beer, though it’s very possible to make horrible tasting wine, just ask anyone who has tried.

The basic motivation for mixing a drink, as opposed to drinking it straight out of the bucket, is taste.  The Greeks probably deserve credit for inventing the mixed drink because they always mixed their wine with water which reduced the slight resinated taste of the local product and lowered the alcohol content that was a little higher than imports.  Indeed the Greeks looked on Romans (who borrowed so much of their culture) as sort of drunken uncouth red neck yahoos because they didn’t follow the practice.

What the Romans would do instead is put a piece of burnt bread in their cups as a kind of charcoal filter.  Believe it or not, this is the origin of the ‘toast’.

A lot of what our ancestors drank we’d consider pretty awful today and they were always looking for ways to improve it.  Sangria, mixing fruit with wine, is probably the very oldest but the various mulls of wine, cider, or beer (heating it with a spice infusion) have been around nearly as long.

Another interesting ancient cocktail is Puggle, a mixture of beer and wine.

Wait.  Won’t that make you sick?

Lots of things will make you sick if you do too much of them.

What makes this drink attractive is the carbonation, not easy to come by without special techniques.  In fact the Champagne method of creating carbonated wine was revolutionary in a medieval Benedictine kind of way.  How you do it is to induce a secondary fermentation, restarting the yeast (those that are not quite dead yet) with the goal of producing carbon dioxide bubbles.

In beer throwing a little more sugar in usually does the trick since beer yeast don’t generally produce suicidally high levels of alcohol.  In wine you have to artificially interrupt the yeast before they fall lemming-like into the abyss, customarily by chilling.  There’s also the minor problem of creating containers that will stand up to the pressure.

So why is fizzy good (or bad)?  Well, it stimulates the pyloric sphincter and allows your beverage into your small intestine where it is absorbed faster.  This can affect your judgment and you may consume more than you ordinarily would.

As far as hangovers go there are basically only 3 factors that govern their severity-

• Amount, amount, amount–  It’s not the alcohol per se that does you in, what happens is that it’s metabolized into a lot of nasty chemicals including formaldahyde, so if someone says they’re going out to the bar to get embalmed they’re not too far from the truth.

• Sugar–  Sorry umbrella drinkers.  The problem with sweet is that sugar, while not enhancing your buzz, gets turned into many of the same nasty chemicals as the alcohol.  Also I have noticed this tendency for people to over look the fact that a Scorpion Bowl serves two because it is so tasty.

• Water, water everywhere–  Most hangover symptoms are caused by dehydration, it takes an enormous amount of water to process and flush your system.  A liter at least before napping is just a good start.  Coffee is a mixed bag, sure it makes you alert but it’s also a diuretic and sucks you dry so that now you’re wide awake AND hung over.

In fact the best thing you can do is get some protein and fat to slow whatever is left in your system, some carbs for energy, and some more alcohol to dull the pain.  Cold pizza and warm beer, breakfast of champions.

If you want to be a mite more hoity-toity, Eggs Benedict and a Bellini.

A definition of cocktail appeared in the May 13, 1806, edition of The Balance and Columbian Repository, a publication in Hudson, New York, in which an answer was provided to the question, “What is a cocktail?”. It replied:

Cock-tail is a stimulating liquor, composed of spirits of any kind, sugar, water, and bitters- it is vulgarly called bittered sling, and is supposed to be an excellent electioneering potion, inasmuch as it renders the heart stout and bold, at the same time that it fuddles the head. It is said, also to be of great use to a democratic candidate: because a person, having swallowed a glass of it, is ready to swallow any thing else.

Compare the ingredients listed (spirits, sugar, water, and bitters) with the ingredients of an Old Fashioned, which originated as a term used by late 19th century bar patrons to distinguish cocktails made the “old-fashioned” way from newer, more complex cocktails.

One of the earliest recipes for an Old Fashioned, written in 1895, specifies the following: “Dissolve a small lump of sugar with a little water in a whiskey-glass; add two dashes [Angostura bitters ], a small piece ice, a piece lemon-peel, one jigger [1.5 fl oz or 44 ml] whiskey. Mix with small bar-spoon and serve, leaving spoon in glass.”

Cocktail Hour is a some times feature where we’ll examine the hallmark of civilization, the production and consumption of spiritous beverages.  It is no accident that among the earliest surviving writings is a beer recipe from Mesopotamia.  Our ancestors were prodigious drinkers in amounts that would make most Deltas hurl, of course they died young and the water was no healthier (“How can you tell he’s the King?” “Well, he’s not covered in shit.”).

The Martinez

(A) popular theory suggests it (Martinis) evolved from a cocktail called the Martinez served at the Occidental Hotel in San Francisco sometime in the early 1860s, which people frequented before taking an evening ferry to the nearby town of Martinez. Alternatively, the people of Martinez say the drink was first created by a bartender in their town. Another theory links the first dry martini to the name of a bartender who concocted the drink at the Knickerbocker Hotel in New York City in 1911 or 1912. The self-styled Court of Historical Review in San Francisco ruled that the martini was invented in San Francisco. A court in Martinez, California, recently overturned this decision. (These “courts” have neither legal nor academic authority and are primarily for entertainment.)