Alcademics.com: cocktails

cocktails

January 29, 2013

Maximize Your Michelada

My latest story for Details.com is on the many forms that the Michelada beer cocktail takes and what you can do to imitate them.

Restaurants are doing wild wacky things with the hot sauce, savory ingredients, citrus, and salt.

Check it out!

Posted at 08:38 AM in beer, camper_clips, cocktails | Permalink | Comments (2)

January 24, 2013

A Mezcal Drink for the Flu-Ridden Masses

Let's say you're a drink nerd who has the flu. You want to work mezcal into your schedule but how can you justify it when you're sweating through your sheets and spending all day watching soap operas?

Houston Eaves, of Esquire Tavern in San Antonio, has the answer. In my lastest FineCooking.com recipe post I list his recipe for the Espadin Tea. It's a lot like a Hot Toddy using tea and Licor 43 as a sweetener.

The drink calls for mezcal (I'm sure whisky would also work), lemon, Licor 43, and hot tea.

Go get the recipe at FineCooking and make yourelf feel better.

Posted at 04:38 PM in cocktails, mezcal, recipes | Permalink | Comments (2)

January 18, 2013

Fernet Is Hot: Warm Winter Cocktails with Fernet Branca

Fernet is finding its way into hot cocktails this year. Here are three I've noticed in the last couple of months.

Rich Coffee at Rich Table, San Francisco

Fernet, Creme de Cacao, Sightglass Coffee, Brown Sugar, Pistachio Cream, Gold Dust

Strato at Lounge at Atera, New York

Coffee, cream and one and a half ounces of the bitter Italian amaro Fernet Branca.

Robert Simonson of the New York Times says, "It’s insanely delicious. But, also, possibly, just plain insane."

Miziers Demise at The Fifth Floor, San Francisco

Fernet Branca, Strauss Milk, Dark Chocolate, Crème de Menthe, peppermint marshmallow

This is on the just-launched winter cocktail menu.

Posted at 08:30 AM in bars, cocktails, New York, San Francisco, trends | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 17, 2013

The Cocktails of Lolinda from Best to Worst

Chris Lane, formerly of Heaven's Dog and Wo Hing General Store, took over the bar manager position at Lolinda in San Francisco in December. (The original menu was done by Lane Ford.) Lolinda is a large, modern steakhouse owned by the same folks who brought us Beretta, Starbelly, and Delarosa.

The cocktail menu is split between eight original cocktails (six of them Lane's) and nine classics including the Negroni and Americano. This is Lane's first full menu.

Lane says his directive with the menu was to make the drinks as boldly flavored, modern versions of steakhouse cocktails. Most of them are quite spirit-forward, and on average the drinks are dark brown or yellow in color.

I found them to be food-friendly yet not food-dependent. You can definitely just have a drink and grab a snack, like the delicious smoked artichoke.

Modern Cocktails of Lolinda, From Best to Worst

1. Carpenter’s Hand brandy, amontillado sherry, Drambuie, orange peel, served on the rock.

This drink owes its magnificence to the choice of brandy - Marie Duffau Armagnac. It's a little funky and wild, with so much character it carries through over the other ingredients. The chocolate notes of the sherry seem to grow in intensity as the drink slowly melts on the big ice cube. This drink hits it out of the park.

2. Devil’s Backbone rye, islay scotch, Averna amaro, Gran Classico, two bitters, orange peel, served on the stem.

Robust, delicious, surprisingly exciting, and smoky, this cocktail tastes like the cigarette after sex, and also the sex. It should definitely be your last drink of the evening, as it's rich enough to accompany or replace dessert.

3. Flor de Jerez amontillado sherry, jamaican rum, lemon, apricot, bitters,

served on the stem. by joaquin simo

One of just two drinks on the menu not designed by Lane, the Flor De Jerez is credited to Joaquin Simo (Death & Co., Pouring Ribbons). The drink is juicy and citrusy and delicious and fairly low in alcohol and a joy to sip. There are more novice-friendly cocktails on the menu, but I'd recommend this to your cocktail-shy friends.

4. Cloak and Dagger reposado tequila, Cynar, apricot, bitters, orange peel, served on the stem.

Peppery tequila is the dominant flavor note here, with a dry bitter finish. This is a tequila cocktail that will pair well with food.

5. The Lone Palm house spiced rum, lime, grapefruit, honey, bitters, served on the stem.

One of the two crowd-pleasers on the menu, the Lone Palm has that lime-grapefruit-honey flavor combination (often seen at Heaven's Dog) with which it's hard to go wrong.

6. Rock n’ Rolla bourbon, apple, lemon, maple, allspice, bitters, nutmeg,

served on the rock.

The other crowd pleaser and the top-selling drink by far at Lolina. It's all about apple cinnamon with maple in this one. Even your grandmother would like it.

7. Bergen St. aquavit, Plymouth gin, lime, vanilla, Galliano, absinthe, served on the stem.

This cocktail was created by Lane Ford and rolls over from the previous menu. Despite all the ingredients it screams Gimlet in flavor profile. The aquavit, absinthe, and Galliano all dance around the anise flavor note.

8. Oaxacan Cross mezcal, ruby port, lime, pineapple, ginger, maraschino, orange peel, served long.

The pineapple juice was a little vegetal tasting on the day of my visit and maybe that's the reason, but overall I just couldn't get into this mezcal cocktail. But heck, one out of eight ain't bad!

The Carpenter's Hand by Chris Lane at Lolina in San Francisco

Posted at 08:45 AM in bars, bartenders, cocktail menus, cocktails, San Francisco | Permalink | Comments (3)

January 15, 2013

Hot Oatmeal Stout in a Warm Winter Cocktail: Rum & Oats

Hey, I had this drink at Wo Hing General Store in San Francisco and it is delicious.

The Rum and Oats, by bar manager John Codd, contains steamed oatmeal stout, dark rum, vermouth, cinnamon syrup, and bitters, and is topped with whipped cream.

Hot beer? Hot damn.

Get the recipe at FineCooking.com or hit up Wo Hing in person. There is a nearly all-new menu (the Pina Colada is still there) to try as well.

Posted at 08:13 AM in bars, beer, cocktails, recipes | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 09, 2013

Cocktails in the Champagne Style

For CLASS Magazine/DiffordsGuide.com, I interviewed Jeff Josenhans of San Diego's US Grant Hotel.

He's been quietly doing pretty cool stuff over there. He implemented one of the first cocktail herb gardens, has barrel aged cocktails that he is able to sell commercially, and now features the "Cocktails Sur Lie" program.

Cocktail ingredients (minus the base spirit) are fermented like wine, then put into champagne bottles and fermented a second time like champagne. Then they pop off the caps to get rid of the yeast and add base spirit in the 'dosage' step.

As he partnered with a winery production center, he now has the winery do the production work after he develops the recipes, which not only ensures consistency in the bottled beverages, but they can legally sell them at retail.

A truly clever part of this system is that the hotel does tons of events, and having these fancy bottled cocktails that pop open like champagne allows them to serve the same quality cocktails as you'd find in the bar at the events- just pop off the cork.

Read the interview here.

(normally the bottles have a cork unlike in this picture)

Posted at 08:15 AM in bartenders, camper_clips, cocktails, molecular mixology | Permalink | Comments (4)

January 07, 2013

The Wide World of the Ward Eight

In my latest column for FineCooking.com, I talk about how the Ward Eight cocktail is everywhere these days.

You know how you learn the definition of a word and then suddenly you keep hearing that word everywhere? Over the past month it has been that way with me and the Ward Eight cocktail.

I had just finished reading the book Drinking Boston: A History of the City and its Spirits by Stphanie Schorow, in which the author spends a great deal of time discussing this drink and its history. The Ward Eight is the most famous classic cocktail from Boston, supposedly invented at the Locke-Ober restaurant in 1898.

In trying to verify the date of the drink's creation, Schorow studies the history of grenadine, the pomegranate syrup used in the drink. It was a new ingredient in America right around this time.

Coincidentally, I was also studying the history of grenadine on my website. I performed a literature review and drew some conclusions, including the surprising finding that grenadine has been made as an artificially flavored cocktail ingredient forover 100 years!

In another coincidence, two of my favorite drink writers also decided to look into the Ward Eight in the January 2013 edition of magazines. Historian David Wondrich took a look at the cocktail's history in Imbibe magazine, and writer Wayne Curtis covered the drink in searching for the quintessential New England cocktail in Yankee magazine.

I went to look up a recipe to put on the post on Fine Cooking, and found that the Ward Eight recipe is different in nearly every book.

The simplest is just rye, grenadine, and lemon juice. The most complex is those ingredients plus mint, bitters, and simple syrup.

So I settled on a common recipe with rye, grenadine, lemon, and orange juice. Get the recipe here.

Posted at 08:42 AM in cocktails, recipes, rye | Permalink | Comments (0)

December 31, 2012

Shirley Tipsy: A Boozy Shirley Temple

Thinking of a clever name for an alcoholic Shirley Temple isn't easy. Shirley Tempest, Shirley Temptress, Dirty Shirley, Shirley Temple of Doom - they're all taken, and most of the recipes are for vodka, Sprite, and grenadine. Thanks, but no.

Well, I have a different recipe. The typical Shirley Temple is ginger ale and grenadine, but I wanted to use PAMA pomegranate liqueur and booze is up a little more.

Instead of typical non-alcoholic ginger beer, I wanted to use real ginger beer. Everything on the US market that I know about is non-alcoholic except the newish Crabbie's, which is imported from Scotland. I'm not sure it's what we'd really call ginger beer, as it is a "malt beverage with natural flavors and caramel color added." But I've got more research to do on that.

Later on, I tried Jeffrey Mortgenthaler's recipe for home-brewed ginger beer. I kind of messed it up so it wasn't the best ginger beer I've ever had, but it was good enough to drink.

And then I added bourbon.

Shirley Tipsy

4 ounces or so of Alcoholic Ginger Beer
1 ounce PAMA Pomegranate Liqueur
.75 ounces Larceny Bourbon
2 dashes Orange Bitters

Build over ice in a Collins glass.

And you know what's also pretty good? a Roy Rogers with PAMA and Q Kola.

For the month of December I'll be looking at the pomegranate and its use in cocktails, including in grenadine and in PAMA pomegranate liqueur, the sponsor of the project. Check out the information developed just for bartenders at PamaPros.com.