…and that was another exhausting two weeks. Sorry for the online absence, but the day job occasionally gets in the way.

But after the deadlines are met and all the projects are wrapped up, I’m ready for a nice, quiet evening exploring the bottom of a cocktail glass. Problem is, I’ve been so preoccupied that I haven’t had much chance to think about the next drink I’m planning to try–sure, there are the “hmm, maybe” drinks that I pause over while flipping through a cocktail guide, but when a frenzied time comes around, it derails my train of thought. I could always mix something old and familiar–indeed, that’s what I’ve been doing late at night the past couple of weeks–but it’s time for something new, just for a little variety.

Fortunately, for periods of option paralysis, there’s always CocktailDB.com. Probably the most extensive and thorough drinks database ever, anywhere, CocktailDB is the brainchild of Ted “Dr. Cocktail” Haigh and Martin Doudoroff. Drawing on Doc’s extensive library of cocktail manuals and filled with photos and information from his even more extensive liquor cabinet, CocktailDB lists thousands of drinks and their various offshoots, complete with photos and descriptions of each component, including ingredients that haven’t been produced for decades. My goal? To take the whole decision-making process about what cocktail to mix tonight out of my hands, and instead make it the responsibility of a bunch of code and a scarily extensive liquor collection.

My plan is to make the first drink that comes up, for which I have all the ingredients (while I have enough booze on hand to pickle an elephant, I have nowhere near Doc’s 1,000-bottle collection). CocktailDB features a “Random Recipe” generator, which, as the name implies, snags a random recipe from the database. I got lucky with the second try: a Cuban Cocktail variation, calling for equal parts Bacardi light rum and pineapple juice, with some grenadine and maraschino thrown in for excitement. Easy enough–perhaps not something I’d have picked on my own, but nothing I regretted drinking.

Cuban Cocktail Variation

• 1 1/2 ounces Bacardi light rum
• 1 1/2 ounces pineapple juice
• 1/4 ounce grenadine
• 1/4 ounce maraschino

Shake with ice and strain into chilled cocktail glass.

Still, after a near full two weeks of non-cocktail-oriented thinking, I needed something to throw me for a loop, a drink that would knock my tastebuds on their jaded little heads (go with me, here), and jump-start my thinking about drinking. For this, the Random Recipe is a bit too pedestrian. I need the Mixilator: The David Embury Random Cocktail Generator. Taking a further step into the unknown, the Mixilator uses CocktailDB’s awe-inspiring ingredients database and matches it with the complex cocktail-mixing theories of legendary home mixologist and cocktail-guide writer David Embury. A full writeup on how the mixilator works is available for your perusal, but, in a nutshell, you specify a few parameters for the kind of drink you’re looking for–sweet or sour, strong or average, something as an aperitif or something as a nightcap–and the Mixilator does the rest. if you’re looking for a random, blow-out-the-gaskets kind of drink, this is where to start.

Of course, drawing on all sources in the extensive ingredient database means a large number of the recipes generated by Mixilator will be simply impossible for the home mixologist (or professional, for that matter) to make. Fortunately, I get somewhat lucky within the first five tries, with a drink Mixilator dubs the Ballot Cocktail–Rum Pampero, Port and orgeat. Rum Pampero, I learn, is a proprietary dark rich rum from Venezuela; CocktailDB recommends using another dark rum as a substitute. Easily done, if I give myself the leeway of using a substitute rum.

Ballot Cocktail

• 3 ounces Rum Pampero (substitute another dark, rich, sweet rum–I used Lemon Hart Demerara)
• 1/2 ounce Port
• 1 teaspoon orgeat

“Fill shaker with copious quantities of ice and, being careful to not knock anything over, vigorously thrust the shaker up and down to a frenzied synthetic beat. Strain into chilled cocktail glass.”

Hanging on to the Ballot, just in case I can’t find anything else that my liquor cabinet matches perfectly, I start searching again. More than 100 cocktails later I’m still searching, clicking past drinks such as the Aroma Cocktail, the Cowtown Pinner Cocktail and the Madison Externalization Miller Cocktail, that call for ingredients such as advocaat, Barack Palinka, butterscotch schnapps, Boonekamp bitters or–oddly–a surprising number that call for orange or lemon sherbets.

Eventually, after WAY too much time clicking for new drinks (and a short break to refresh myself with a Ballot, which, while not too bad, affirms my need to keep looking), I hit it: the bizarrely named Fish Fag Cocktail (Mixilator also randomly generates the drink names). Anejo rum–thank god for that impulse buy a few months back–sweet vermouth, simple syrup and raspberry liqueur (I’m ignoring, of course, the recommended garnish: “throw Jello into the drink”).

Fish Fag Cocktail

• 3 ounces anejo rum
• 1 teaspoon sweet vermouth
• 1 teaspoon simple syrup
• 2 dashes raspberry liqueur (Chambourd)

“Shake your moneymaker with a generosity of ice. Strain into chilled cocktail glass. Throw Jello into drink.”

The Fish Fag doesn’t even taste too bad–vaguely weird and a little fruity, and the sweet vermouth/rum/raspberry combination makes it taste a little like something out of an old-timey drinks manual by someone like Jerry Thomas–poured over shaved ice and garnished with a bunch of berries (hold the Jello), it’d probably fit right in. Still, I can’t see myself–or anyone, for that matter–ordering this in a bar.

Did the Mixilator shake my brain and tastebuds out of the doldrums? Too soon to tell, though the next time I’m looking for a drink I’m definitely more inclined to start browsing through my bookshelf than take a crack at Quinn’s Blazing Eavesdropper Special.

Tags: Drinks, Rum by Paul
No Comments »

Not quite Antigua, but for late March in Seattle, it could have been much worse.

On days like these–when I can leave the Gore-Tex at home and stroll down the street in a short-sleeve shirt, looking out at the torn-paper edge of the snowcapped Olympic Range beneath a cloudless sky–summer feels so close that I’m almost ready to dig the grill out of storage.

Of course, it’s not to be–it never is. Eight years in the Pacific Northwest has taught me that beautiful springtime days are merely cruel hoaxes on the sun-starved inhabitants, destined to be followed by an unbroken stretch of clouds and drizzle that won’t relent until Fourth of July weekend. Still, we can pretend it’s almost summer, just for one night.

One of the pleasures of owning Jeff “Beachbum” Berry’s Grog Log and Intoxica! is that they have so many recipes that answer the question, “What the hell am I going to do with all that homemade pimento dram I have in the cupboard?” On a faux-summer day, a rum drink like Jasper’s Jamaican–which Berry credits to Jasper LeFranc of the Bay Roc Hotel in Montego Bay, from the 1970s–can make the warm season seem that much closer.

Jasper’s Jamaican

• 1 1/2 ounces gold Jamaican rum (I used Appleton V/X)
• 1/2 ounce fresh lime juice
• 1/2 ounce pimento dram

Shake well with ice, and strain into cocktail glass.

I’ve taken a couple of liberties with Berry’s recipe. First, his version calls for 1 1/4 ounces rum, which really puts the rum’s flavor at a disadvantage; I’ve upped it another 1/4 ounce, which straightens the drink’s backbone a little. And, Berry’s recipe calls for 1/4 teaspoon sugar, which–with the allspice liqueur in there and everything–strikes me as a bit of overkill. Try it, and if you want it sweeter, give it a dash or two of simple syrup.

Tags: Drinks, Pimento Dram, Rum, Tiki by Paul
2 Comments »

Fifty-five years after it earned half of its own chapter in Jack Townsend’s The Bartender’s Book, the Clover Club has been forgotten by all but the most dedicated of students of the mixological arts. Along with its close relative (and topic of the other half of Townsend’s chapter), the Pink Lady, the Clover Club was an emblematic cocktail of a particular type of drinker. As Townsend noted in 1951–

The Clover Club drinker is traditionally a gentleman of the pre-Prohibition school. He may not necessarily be one of the legal, literary, or business figures who were members of the club of that name. He may never have been in the bar of the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel in Philadelphia where the Clover Club members foregathered and the drink originated. But he belongs with that set. And switch from a Clover Club to a Pink Lady? Never! For one thing, someone might classify him along with that Pink Lady drinker down the bar.

Who dat? Why, surely you know her. She’s that nice little girl who works in files, who’s always so courteous but always seems so timid. She’s the one who sort of reminds you of your aunt, the quiet one. Naturally, you never expected to see her at a bar. She gets into one about twice a year, at Christmas time or some other high old time. Just why she picks the Pink Lady for these occasions–since the Lady packs quite a wallop–remains a mystery, even to her perhaps. It’s quite possible she has seen the decorative and innocuous-appearing pink-and-white amalgamation passing on a waiter’s tray and decided, “Hmmm, that couldn’t do me any harm.”

Townsend–who at the time of writing the above was the president of the Bartender’s Union of New York, Local 15, AFL–knew a thing or two about cocktails and the types of customers likely to be attached to them, and referred to the drinker of the Clover Club as “the distinguished patron of the oak-paneled lounge.”

But while these captains of industry may have disdained the file clerks ordering their Pink Ladies, by the time Townsend penned The Bartender’s Book, the writing was on the wall–the Clover Club was becoming a woman’s drink. According to a survey of bartenders in the U.S. and Canada, conducted by the New York Bartender’s Union from approximately 1946-1951, the Clover Club had slipped out of its leather-and-oak gentleman’s club habitat and made itself a preferred drink among the post-War Carrie Bradshaws. Yet even with this gender switch, the Clover Club’s fortunes were sinking. Rated the 34th most popular cocktail in the survey–tied with the Tom and Jerry, below the Jack Rose, Rock-and-Rye and Milk Punch, and just barely ahead of other forgotten drinks such as the Paradise, the Horse’s Neck and the Gin Daisy–the Clover Club was reported as decreasing in popularity in the six years covered by the survey.

Even with today’s growing interest in classic cocktails, it’s unlikely that the Clover Club will recover. For one thing, it contains raw egg white, which would seem to be the kiss of death for classic cocktails trying to make a comeback, with the possible exception of the Pisco Sour and, perhaps–and not without a heavy note of irony–the Pink Lady (disguised as “The Secret Cocktail” in Ted Haigh’s Vintage Spirits & Forgotten Cocktails).

Furthermore, while it’s an interesting drink from a historical perspective, for culinary adventurers it’s a bit lackluster, especially as compared with more complex drinks such as–cue the irony again–the Pink Lady. Gin, lemon juice and grenadine, shaken with the white of an egg–bracing, fortifying, reliable, and ultimately unexciting; a Studebaker in a cocktail glass. But take the example of the timid file clerk at the end of the bar, and tip in a little applejack, and the Clover Club morphs into a free-spirited firecracker. Townsend writes,

Aside from the young ladies at their infrequent soirees, the Pink Lady is drunk to some extent by the seekers of the gay life along the Great White Way. Somehow, to the boys who were brought up looking at the flamboyant circus posters on the side of country barns, a Pink Lady connotes something halfway between their early dreams of a lady acrobat in white tights and a scarlet woman.

Fifty-odd years later, the Clover Club is little more than a footnote in cocktail history, appearing as an afterthought (or a prelude, as the case may be) when discussing its once-insolent, yet ultimately tastier and much more fun relative. Any more irony left in that shaker?

Clover Club

• 1 1/2 ounces gin
• juice of 1/2 lemon
• 4 dashes real grenadine (to taste)
• 1 egg white (1 egg white will suffice for two drinks)
  

Add ice and shake with studied firmness for at least 10 seconds. Strain into chilled cocktail glass and garnish with a stern glower.

Pink Lady

• 1 1/2 ounces gin
• 1/2 ounce applejack
• juice of 1/2 lemon
• 4 dashes grenadine (to taste)
• 1 egg white (1 egg white will suffice for two drinks)

Add ice and shake with carefree exuberance for at least 10 seconds. Strain into chilled cocktail glass and garnish, of course, with a cherry.

Tags: Applejack, Drinks, Gin by Paul
25 Comments »

Every March, around the middle of the month, I feel the need to apologize to Ireland. On the day reserved for honoring the land’s patron saint, it’s become an American tradition to pay an outlandish cover charge to stand in an overcrowded bar, holding plastic cups of green-tinted lager and being jostled all night until a Miller Lite-swilling fratboy vomits on your shoes.

Even drinkers who celebrate in more upscale bars sully the holiday with bad, bad drinks. For proof, look no further than the drinks in this week’s Seattle Times “Cocktailing” section: the “Irish for the Day” (vodka & green creme de menthe, with a clover carved out of lime peel as garnish), and the “Leprechaun Mor-jito,” again with the dreaded green liqueur (“We serve it straight up with green crème de menthe, and for a garnish it’s got a mint leaf. It’s kind of like a martini/mojito/leprechaun,” says the bar manager).

I’m sorry, sons of Erin–it never should have come to this.

Fortunately, though, there are options for holiday-appropriate cocktails that don’t require stooping to the mixologically morbid. All of these examples employ Irish whiskey; two are simple variations on an Irish Manhattan, and one is a newer entity which is worth getting to know.

Emerald

2 ounces Irish whiskey
1 ounce sweet vermouth (or less, to taste)
2 dashes orange bitters

Stir with ice & strain into chilled cocktail glass.

There are plenty of drinks called the Emerald, but this one is the most agreeable. From the recipe, it may sound simple and unexceptional, but don’t just write this one off– the orange bitters join in an unusually simpatico relationship with the Irish whiskey, making the Emerald much more than just an alternate Manhattan.

A similar drink, with a much different flavor, is the Tipperary (Gary Regan’s thorough write-up of this drink appears in today’s “Cocktailian” column in the San Francisco Chronicle). Dating back nearly a century, the Tipperary is also related to the Manhattan, but uses green Chartreuse instead of bitters to throw the taste in a more brooding, complex direction. The original recipe used equal parts Irish whiskey, sweet vermouth and Chartreuse; Gary dries it out a bit with this recipe. (And if you feel like you just have to drink something green because it’s St. Patrick’s Day, the touch of Chartreuse adds an emerald sheen to the glass, without making it appear as though you’re imbibing a glassful of Scope.)

Tipperary

2 ounces Irish whiskey
1 ounce sweet vermouth

rinse chilled cocktail glass with green Chartreuse and discard excess; stir whiskey & vermouth with ice and strain into Chartreuse-coated glass.

A final Irish whiskey cocktail worth discovering is of a more recent vintage: the Weeski, an original drink from David Wondrich’s Killer Cocktails. Wondrich matches the tempermental flavor of Irish whiskey with the equally difficult-to-mix-with blonde Lillet. Using a bit of Cointreau to bind the flavors together, and a little orange bitters to give it greater depth, Wondrich has created a cocktail that’s worth the price of the book.

Weeski

2 ounces Irish whiskey
1 ounce blonde Lillet
1 teaspoon Cointreau
2 dashes orange bitters

Stir with ice; strain into chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with a lemon twist.

Tags: Drinks, Irish Whiskey, Vermouth by Paul
No Comments »

Thanks to Robert Hess for reminding me of this drink in a post over at The Spirit World.

As Robert points out, the Japanese Cocktail is one of only ten “cocktails” listed in Jerry Thomas’ 1862 The Bartender’s Guide. It’s unfortunate that this drink has fallen by the wayside–its flavor is deep and evocative, yet it’s not so complex to scare off less-seasoned cocktail drinkers.

The crucial ingredient here is orgeat syrup. A key component in a few other drinks–the mai tai is an example that readily springs to mind–orgeat is simply almond syrup with a faint touch of orange flower water. Monin makes an agreeable version, though, for do-it-yourselfers, Darcy lists a recipe over at The Art of Drink.

The composition of the Japanese Cocktail evinces the nineteenth-century sweet tooth; if you’re into sweet drinks, try the recipe as listed, but I’d suggest toning down on the orgeat until you reach an agreeable point.

Oh, and the name? The story goes that Thomas created this cocktail in honor of a visit to New York by the Japanese delegation. In a globalized world, the Japanese Cocktail is a reminder of a time when such things seemed so rare and exotic.

Japanese Cocktail

• 2 ounces brandy
• 1/2 ounce orgeat (or to taste)
• 2 dashes Angostura bitters
  

Stir with ice, strain into cocktail glass. Garnish with lemon twist.

Tags: Brandy, Drinks, Gettin' Jerry With It by Paul
6 Comments »