Can't Wink in this City

New Cocktail, based on Dale DeGroff's Manhattan East, made with ingredients on hand:

• 2.5 Van Winkle Bourbon
• .5 Domaine de Canton ginger liqueur
• .5 Stoli Vodka (Dale uses Sake here)
• 3 dashes Orange bitters
• garnish: flamed orange peel (I was out of oranges, so this cocktail went naked. Shame!)

Delicious and autumnal. I recommend! 

Featured Ingredient: Chartreuse

It seems like I can't drink anywhere without hearing Chartreuse mentioned these days. So I decided to do a little investigating and whip up some Chartreuse-based cocktails. Like Bénédictine and Frangelico, Chartreuse is an herbal liqueur developed hundreds of years ago by monks, in this case the Carthusians.

I chose the following two cocktails based on availability of ingredients. Both were a success; the flavors of the Chartreuse's 130+ herbs  made for a clean but complex flavor that was fun to savor.

The Bijou

• 4 gin
• 3 chartreuse
• 2.5 lillet
• .5 vermouth
• 2 dashes orange bitters

Bijou, which means "jewel" in French, also has the advantage of being fun to say. It is typically made from gin, sweet vermouth, and chartreuse. I used Lillet because I always have it around, and I like the taste. CocktailDB puts the ratio at 3:1:1, but I fine-tuned it a bit to suit my taste.

From iPhone

The Last Word

• 1 gin
• 1 maraschino liqueur
• 1 chartreuse
• 1 lime juice

This is a prohibition-era cocktail; I found the recipe on Cocktail Chronicles. Equal parts all ingredients makes this an easy recipe to remember!

From iPhone

Two Savoy Cocktails

The Calvados Cocktail


The Calvados Cocktail first appears in The Savoy Cocktail Book, published in 1930 by Harry Craddock, the bartender at London's famous Savoy hotel. That recipe called for using equal parts orange bitters and Cointreau. I've used Robert Hess's modification to use a more reasonable amount of bitters, although apparently with freshly squeezed orange juice, more bitters are required.

• 1.5 Calvados
• 1.5 orange juice
• .75 Cointreau
• 2 dashes angostura bitters

From iPhone

The Pegu Club


Also featured in the 1930 Savoy Cocktail Book, the Pegu Club is a great hot-weather drink.

• 2 Gin
• .75 Cointreau (Orange Curacao is recommended, but I didn't have it)
• .75 Lime juice
• 1 dash angostura bitters
• 1 dash orange bitters

From iPhone

Tonic, Tonic Everywhere and Not a Drop to ...

So after becoming increasingly interested in cocktails, it was growing clear that there was still a road that we had yet to travel.

Making Tonic at Home

After doing some preliminary research we dug up some recipes and how-to advice:

From Jeffrey Morganthaler

4 cups water
1 cup chopped lemongrass (roughly one large stalk)
¼ cup powdered cinchona bark
zest and juice of 1 orange
zest and juice of 1 lemon
zest and juice of 1 lime
1 tsp whole allspice berries
¼ cup citric acid
¼ tsp Kosher salt
~ 3 cups agave syrup

From a commenter further down the above link, this slight variaion was designed for 209 gin:

4 Cups: Water
1 1/4 Cups: Lemongrass, julienned
Zest & juice of 2 Limes
1/2 whole Star Anise
1/4 Cup: powdered cinchona bark
1/4 Cup: Citric Acid
1/2 Tsp: whole allspice berries
1/4 Tsp: whole Cardamom pods, bruised
1/4 Tsp: Kosher Salt

This recipe was also found, along with the somewhat amusing anecdote of the author at this foodie blog.

4 cups of water
3 cups pure cane sugar
3 Tbsp quinine (powdered cinchona bark)
6 Tbsp. powdered citric acid – check bulk bins at grocery stores
3 limes
3 stalks lemongrass, chopped

The Method

We used the first reference for methods and for the choice of sweetener (agave syrup). In order to filter we had very good success by both using cheesecloth and pouring the liquid off the top, leaving much of the sediment behind.

We decided to make both the original recipe espoused by Mr. Morganthaler (which I call mix #1), as well as the variation for 209 (which I'll call mix #2). (We purchased some 209 for this purpose.) We used Tensing Momo as our supplier for the Cinchona bark.

For the relative rankings, we compared the tonics both on their own, and paired with the gin. In the case of mix #2, we also paired it with 209.

Results

For comparison, we purchased tonic by Fever Tree, Q, and 365 (the Whole Foods store brand).

We had a wide range of results about each of the two tonics. We chose Plymouth Gin, which seems to be acknowledged as a good reference gin for gin and tonics among most of the sources we could find.

From here out, as mentioned above, I'll refer to the original recipe as Mix #1 and the variation for 209 as Mix #2 for brevity.

Tasting notes:

Q - Q didn't score very well on its own. It's much less sweet than the others (it has about half as much sugar as Fever Tree). When paired with gin, it fared much better, its lack of sugar giving plenty of space for the gin's flavors to shine. On the other hand, the combination was much closer to a gin and soda than you expect, and it was still considered somewhat too boring by most of the testers.

Fever Tree - Fever Tree was by far our favorite commercial tonic of the batch. It was pleasant and light on its own, and its slightly greater levels of sugar still left plenty of room for the gin to assert itself. It seemed that it was more of a partner with the gin than the Q.

365 - The Whole Foods store brand held its own better than one might expect. It may have been the easiest on the palate of all the naked tonics. Once mixed with gin, it was called 'Tonic Candy', and 'Gin and Tonic for Kids' by one tester. Its unassertive character and sweet almost 7-up like flavor was fine, but it was the least bitter of the tonics, and this may have actually worked against it when paired with the assertive Plymouth. It may fare better if paired with Sapphire or Hendricks, with their slightly less Junipery and more subtle aromatics.

Mix #1 - Jeffery Morganthaler's recipe did quite well overall, chosen by three out of four panelists as their favorite, when paired with the gin. On it's own, however, its mulled character (from the allspice), and the very floral almost patchouli-like aroma from the Cinchona Bark overwhelmed the palate. Personally, I found that it slightly too tart as well. We left the syrup out until the end so that we could adjust the sweetness to match our mood. This gave us some flexibility to reduce it slightly from the amount called for, which I think allowed us to really dial in a sweetness level that balanced the gin.

Mix #2 - This combination may have been hampered by the fact that it was boiled longer. Since it had Cardamom Pods that it was trying to infuse, we left it on the burner another 5 minutes or so, which seems to have resulted in much more bark infusion, resulting in more of the odd floral character, as well as slightly more bitter. This was the bottom of the barrel on all counts. It had an odd aftertaste when considered on its own, and when pared with the Plymouth was not awful, but it just couldn't quite find any supporters. We paired it with the 209 only to be overwhelmed by the piles of cardamom (which is almost undetectable in the pairing with Plymouth or on its own.) 209 already had a notable amount of cardamom, and when tickled by the additional amount in the tonic, it overflowed making it almost undrinkable; it was drunk, do not fear, we have an overwhelming sense of duty when it comes to drinking gin, but it was nearly sink-bound.

Overall rankings:

These are from memory, so I will entreat my fellow testers to reorder as they remember generally. I believe, however, that this represents the consensus of opinion among our group.

Alone:

1) Fever Tree
2) 365
3) Mix #1
4) Q
5) Mix #2

With Gin:

1) Mix #1
2) Fever Tree
3) Q
4) 365
5) Mix #2 (w/ Plymouth)
6) Mix #2 (w/ 209)

Overall:

Overall results are hard to evaluate. Since you're probably going to drink the tonic with gin, I'm tempted to mirror the w/gin results. Among the store-bought tonics, the overall winner is clear: Fever Tree was nice on its own, great with gin, and also for better or for worse, the most carbonated of the ones we tried. Once we include our tonics in the mix, the overall winner is more cloudy. I think that the floral character of our bark means that I still can't place it as #1, but it definitely takes the #2 spot in my estimation.

Final thoughts

All in all it was a good time, we were able to drink some gin and appear thoughtful at the same time. I was surprised at how different the result tasted from standard tonics (and how different the tonics we tasted were from each other). If you have some free time, and some inclination, you can create a result as good as the best tonics we could find.

At ~$8 for four bottles for the boutique tonics, you could really save some dough, as well. If you're not as crafty, Fever Tree is very very good, and as a slightly more budget version, even the Whole Foods 365 brand is better (in our opinion) than Schweppes or Canada Dry.

One final note, Mr. Morganthaler mentioned that the bark from Tensing Momo was particularly floral. To that end, we've ordered from a few other sources as well to see if we can push home-made tonic to an undisputed #1 in all categories. Perhaps there is an edit in this post's future.

Three new Martinis

Ginger-Pear Martini

1 Domaine de Canton Ginger Liqueur

2 Grey Goose Le Poire (Pear Vodka)

1/2 Aqua Perfecta (Poire Williams)

2 drops cardamom bitters

garnish with ultra-thin Bosc pear cross-section

Pear Martini

2 Grey Goose Le Poire

1 Regular Vodka (Stoli)

1/2 Aqua Perfecta

garnish with ultra-thin Bosc pear cross-section

Orange Martini

3 Vodka (Stolichnaya)

1 Bauchant

1/2 Domaine de Canton Ginger Liqueur

garnish with ultra-thin blood orange cross-section.

Vodka tasting details

Four palates participated in this double-blind tasting. All vodkas were sampled from tall skinny shot glasses and kept at temperatures (roughly) between 8.5 and 11 degrees C (48-52 F) by (semi) immersion in a groovily lit ice bath (see Fig. 1). Temperature was monitored absurdly frequently using my favorite new toy, a keychain infrared thermometer. We passed each new vodka around silently, then when all had tasted we started describing our feelings for them (there may have been some loss of objectivity at this stage). Ultimately each vodka was rated on a scale of 1-10 by each palate, and after ingesting palate-cleansing science crackers and the odd chunk of fruit (see Fig. 2), we moved on to the next victim.

After one full round of the 10 samples, we ran the whole set again with further discussion to confirm or deny earlier impressions.

The results rather pleasingly defied all kinds of expectations. The two most hideously expensive (Chopin and Hangar 1) tested poorly, while the oft-maligned Smirnoff was rated quite highly by all tasters. Our super-cheapie on-sale Svedka bested its twice-as-expensive compatriot Absolut. Overall there was even a suggestion, although far from statistically significant, of a negative relationship between price and our blind numerical ratings (see Fig. 3, and also full results in the attached spreadsheet). One final note: the lemony sweetness of Cîroc was instantly identified by a majority of tasters, before we'd even had a chance to discuss it and poison each other's minds. It's unmistakeable.

Infusing Vodkas for Pleasure and Profit

According to my research, the elements of successfully infusing vodka are ingredients, proportion, time, and tasting.

I. Ingredients
Wash and slice the flavor elements into largeish fruit-salad-sized pieces, but leave berries whole after removing stems and leaves.

II. Proportions
If infusing non-berry fruit, use 1-3 largeish fruit-salad-sized pieces for 750ml of vodka. If using herbs, use 1-2 fistfuls of the herb (depending upon the potency of the herb); with berries, use 2-4 fistfuls. You may want to berries or herbs a little before adding the vodka, although if you squish them too enthusiastically this will make the vodka cloudy. In general, the more of a given flavor element you use, the less time it will need to infuse (see section IV).

III. Time
Generally, citrus fruits or strongly-flavored ingredients infuse in less than a week, but mellow-flavored or fibrous flavor elements (like watermelon or fresh ginger) can take a week. Really light flavors like cucumber and lavender can take as long as two weeks.

IV.Tasting
If you can’t tell if it’s done, taste it! If the flavor is too weak, leave it be for another couple of days; if it’s too strong, dilute it with more vodka and allow it to infuse a little longer

V. Miscellaneous
Fruits will continue to ripen while infusing, so remove fruits before they get over-ripe as it will impact the flavor of your recipe (e.g., sliced pears or apples will continue to brown).

If you use a small or particulate flavor element, you may want to strain it out of the final product: line a wire mesh strainer with cheese cloth or coffee filters, set it on top of a bowl or pitcher, and then pour the stuff through.

Our final list was. . .
The Js: Ginger, espresso (grounds or beans?), pomegranate, and mushroom
K & L: Lime, vanilla, raspberry, green apple