Just a quick word before I move on: viruses suck.

Now that I’ve explained my absence from posting for much of the past week, I’ll note that while I was under the weather the San Francisco Chronicle scooped me on a topic I’ve been really excited about: some excellent new small-batch bitters coming out of New York, traveling under the name of Bittermens Bitters.

I say “coming out of ” in a loose sense; you can’t buy this stuff yet. The makers are still working to obtain approval from the feds, and expect their bitters will be on sale in time for Tales of the Cocktail this summer. But their products — a spicy Xocolatl Mole chocolate bitters; a Sweet Chocolate bitters; a hopped-up Grapefruit bitters; and a rotating seasonal bitters (for the fall they had “Squirrel Nut” pecan-vanilla; winter has brought “Elemakule Tiki Cocktail” bitters, flavored with falernum-style spices) — are already popping up in some of the best bars in the country: Death & Company and PDT in New York, Eastern Standard and Green Street in Boston/Cambridge, Alembic in San Francisco and Milk & Honey in London. And now, thanks to a wonderful care package sent my way by the good folks behind Bittermens, their bitters can be found at Zig Zag Cafe and Vessel in Seattle, as well as in my kitchen (and, should you come across him around town, Robert Hess is also packing some samples).*

I’m always excited to see a new artisan cocktail product come out; unfortunately, however, I’ve learned to temper this enthusiasm, primarily because so many small-batch spirits, bitters and other creations have proved themselves interesting and unique, but not necessarily good.

So it was an even greater surprise to discover how delightful these bitters really are. Many small-batch bitters I’ve tried err in one of two directions: the flavor is either too delicate and fades the instant it’s hit with spirits; or the maker has overcompensated and bulked up some aspect of the flavor (usually bitter) in an effort to keep these fades from occurring. Bittermens Bitters manages to walk this fine line: the Xocolatl, especially, has a very complex balance of flavors ranging from the brightness of cinnamon to the spark of chiles to the depth of bitter chocolate, and when you throw it in a mixing glass with full-flavored spirits, it sails through just fine, with no loss to the balance.

Wanting to see how tough these bitters really were, I even tried a couple of the recipes from Bittermens website, that called for mixing one or the other of the chocolate bitters with full-force bittering agents such as Campari or Amer Picon, or with a full-flavored liqueur such as yellow Chartreuse. In each case, the bitters sailed right through, lending their distinctive flavor to the drink without taking over the show or losing their character.

I’m still in the early stages of using these bitters, but I see a lot of busy winter nights ahead. If you’re near one of the bars listed on Bittermens website, go see for yourself what these bitters are about. Or, if you manage to score a bottle, try a little experiment I’m calling the Camerone:

Camerone

• 2 ounces reposado tequila (I used Don Julio)
  
• 3/4 ounce Amer Picon (I used Jamie’s replica)
• 1/4 ounce Licor 43
• 2 good dashes Bittermens Xocolatl Bitters

Stir well with ice; strain into chilled cocktail glass.

The vanilla of the Licor 43 and the chocolate of the bitters work so well together; to keep it from getting too cloying, the Picon puts a nice orangey bitterness in the middle of everything, and it’s all set against the delicate lusciousness of the reposado.

* One more bar in Seattle will have the Xocolatl, once I finish the last of my deliveries.

Tags: Drinks, Special Projects, Tequila by Paul
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It’s the first day of school here in Seattle, the day I dropped off my son for the start of first grade and started looking ahead to the routine that is fall and winter. Back when I was part of the elementary school set, it was customary to start the school year by recapping all the fun you’d had that summer, so you could then put it away and forget all about it while stuck in a classroom for the next nine months.

Old habits die hard, so before autumn totally moves in — it already made a good grab for it here on Monday — I want to take one last, lingering sip of the drink that I fell head-over-heels for during the summer of ‘07.

No, it’s not the Paloma (even the Mi Amante version) — though we had our fun, I found something deeper. No, through a fortunate convergence of events, this summer I wound up mixing a drink I found even more swoon-worthy, and it became my go-to refresher on hot summer nights (what few of them we have here in Seattle): the Picon Punch.

The recipe is from Ted Haigh’s Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails, and the first time I tried it, a couple of summers back, I was pretty unimpressed. The true Picon Punch, of course, was made with Amer Picon — the stuff that used to be everywhere, but then was reformulated in the 1970s and pretty much disappeared from U.S. liquor stores (though it seems some has cropped up recently in Boston and other places). The primary substitute in recent years has been Torani Amer, made in California, which has a mostly similar but not-quite-on-the-nose flavor to that of the original Picon. My first punch was made with the Torani Amer, and as I said, it didn’t go over well.

But last spring, two things happened, both related to research I was doing for the Vintage Ingredients story that appeared in the July/August issue of Imbibe. First, I interviewed Ted Haigh, and listened to him wax rhapsodic about the pleasures of a good Picon Punch — “That’s the drink for me on a summer day,” he said. His enthusiasm for the drink was infectious, and I made a mental note to try it again in the near future.

Then, that very afternoon, I interviewed Jamie Boudreau at Vessel, fully intending to talk only about creme de violette and falernum, but during our talk Jamie told me something electrifying: he’d come up with a facsimile of the original Amer Picon. I tasted it then and there, side by side with the current Picon, and the difference was startling: the basic flavor profile was near-identical, yet the replica was much more robust — higher proof, too — and had a much more satisfying oranginess about it, a taste that is sorely lacking in the more vegetal Torani Amer. Jamie passed along the recipe, and that ran in Imbibe, too. (And if you look around, you’ll find the results of a side-by-side tasting of the replica with vintage Picon somewhere around here.)

With the recipe, however, I wasted little time, and put together a batch — which, unfortunately, takes about two months to make. The replica was finally ready in early July, and the very first drink I made was the Picon Punch. Anticipating the weird celery quality of the Torani Amer, I sipped the drink with some apprehension, but that was unnecessary — this is a fantastic drink. Rich, bitter but not overwhelmingly so, pleasantly orangey and with a nice fruitiness from the grenadine and the cognac, the Picon Punch is quite possibly the ultimate summer cooler. It was my favorite for the summer of ‘07, anyway, and whatever happens in the fall, we’ll always have memories of the summer.

Picon Punch

Fill a collins or highball glass with ice. Add

• 1 teaspoon grenadine (my homemade stuff isn’t as sweet as commercial, so I used a little more)
  
• 2 1/2 ounces Amer Picon or replica

Fill almost to the top with club soda and give a gentle stir. Float:

• 1 ounce brandy or cognac

Sweet Jesus, that’s good.

Tags: Brandy, Drinks, Special Projects by Paul
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Earlier this summer, I mentioned that I was playing with an old recipe from Charles H. Baker’s The Gentleman’s Companion, for an intriguing home-infused concoction called Tequila por Mi Amante — or, Tequila for my beloved. What I haven’t mentioned is how it turned out.

Short answer: YAAAAAHHHH! MORE! MORE! MORE!

I’d been told by reliable sources that this was an excellent recipe; they understated the case. That fresh, summery brightness of the ripe strawberries marries perfectly with the sharp, peppery angles of a reposado tequila, and the result is especially toothsome.

Even better, as I’ve discovered: substitute the TPMA for regular reposado in what’s become my favorite drink of summer 2007, the Paloma.

Strawberry tequila; lime juice; salt; grapefruit soda. I feel like I’m in one of those old Warner Brothers cartoons, in which I take a sip and then my eyes should start spinning like the dials on a slot machine until they come up “JACKPOT!” as bells start to ring, my hat flies off — not that I wear a hat, but stay with me for a moment — and steam blows out of my ears accompanied by a loud, “A-OOOH-GAH! A-OOOH-GAH!”

Yes, it’s that good.

Paloma, regular style

• 2 ounces reposado tequila
• juice of 1/2 a lime
• pinch coarse salt

Add ingredients to an ice-filled Collins glass; top with grapefruit soda (Jarritos is my house brand; Squirt also has a good reputation here; if you just can’t find any, try Sprite with a healthy squeeze of fresh grapefruit).

Paloma, Mi Amante

As above, substituting Tequila por Mi Amante for the reposado. A-OOOH-GAH!

Tags: Drinks, Special Projects, Tequila by Paul
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A new month, and a new issue of Imbibe magazine is out.

Along with features about the drinks of Jamaica and 15 beverage innovators (and a nice quote by Darcy in the Distilled section, and a drink by Jamie Boudreau in the Uncorked section), and a piece about vermouth in the Elements department (there’s the self-serving reference for the day), this issue includes a new regular column, “What the Doctor Orders,” by Ted “Dr. Cocktail” Haigh.

Doc doesn’t mess around with this debut column, and heads right for the 19th century with a full-bore effort to revive the Fix. As he writes, “In its short 38-year lifespan, even bartenders pondered what made a fix a fix.” Starting with a mix of booze, lemon juice, water, sugar and ice, the fix evolved into a concoction made with pineapple or raspberry syrups, and occasionally liqueurs, before disappearing as the new century dawned. Haigh takes his fixes from this later stage of development, and prescribes two fixes that include a homemade pineapple syrup.

Obscure cocktail … exacting preparation … ingredients that require special shopping trips and at least 24 hours of preparation time … sounds like my kind of drink!

To make one of these fixes, you need to have pineapple syrup on hand. While I suppose you can buy it, the idea of processed pineapple-flavored syrups kind of gives me the shudders, so I elected to follow the home-brew method.

Pineapple Syrup

• 4 cups sugar
• 2 cups water
• 1 small pineapple
• smidgen of vodka or other neutral-flavored spirits

Mix the sugar and water until fully dissolved. Add the pineapple (skinned and cubed), and let sit for 24 hours. Remove the pineapple, pressing with a hand juicer to get some juice into the mix. Strain through cheesecloth or a fine strainer, and add the spirits for preservative. Refrigerate.

Brandy Fix (Haigh credits this to Harry Johnson’s Bartender’s Manual, 1888)

• 2 ounces brandy
• 1/2 ounce fresh lime juice
• 1/2 ounce pineapple syrup
• dash of green Chartreuse
• 1/4 ounce simple syrup

Shake with ice and strain into a wine glass or tumbler filled with crushed ice. Add a splash of seltzer, adorn with lots of fruit and go to it.

I think the Chartreuse was what prompted me to make this — combined with the pineapple syrup and the always kind of haughty taste of brandy, the Chartreuse made the Fix taste like a true 19th century creature.

Pick up a copy of Imbibe (or, of course, subscribe) to find the full details, along with other recipes. And if you’re curious about vermouth….

Tags: Brandy, Drinks, Special Projects by Paul
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Mixed among the other special projects — between the falernum and the pimento dram, the grenadine and the gomme – I’ve been playing with recipes for homemade ginger beer, one that can hold its own against the formidable Gosling’s Black Seal in a Dark ‘n Stormy, and that can neatly balance with the gin and mint in a Gin Gin Mule. Unlike ingredients such as falernum and pimento dram, there are commercial versions of ginger beer on the market that are pretty easy to find; the problem is, many of them are nothing but an insipid ginger ale with a different-colored label and a modest — very modest — change in flavor, even among the brands that boast they’re muscular and spicy. If you’re fortunate, you can find a decent Jamaican ginger beer that has some backbone to it in a well-stocked specialty food store; Blenheim’s, from North Carolina, also enjoys a reputation for making an assertive ginger beer, but finding this brand can be almost as difficult as tracking down a bottle of Torani Amer.

Fortunately, the homemade version is easy to make. There are many recipes out there, some of them calling for an arsenal of ingredients and a short fermentation period, but the best two I’ve tried are pleasantly minimal, and can be made in less than a day. One of these recipes is from the ever-dependable Audrey Saunders; the other appeared in the New York Times a little more than a year ago. I’ve tried both, and they’re excellent; the version printed here is a hybrid of the two, based solely on my personal taste.

Ginger Beer

• 10 cups water
• 12 ounces fresh ginger, finely chopped (for a lighter colored ginger beer, peel the ginger before weighing it)
• 1/4 cup light brown sugar
• juice of 1 lime
• one bay leaf

Bring the water to a boil; turn off heat and add the ginger and the bay leaf. Cover the pot and let steep for no less than four hours, or overnight. Strain the mixture through cheesecloth, squeezing and pressing to express the last, very flavorful drops of liquid from the ginger. Add the sugar and the lime juice, stir, bottle and refrigerate.

Try to use the ginger beer within two weeks; the ginger’s flavor degrades rapidly, so it’s best to make smaller batches, if you don’t plan to use that much of it.

Note that in this version, the ginger flavor is much stronger than you’re likely to encounter in any ginger beer on the market. You probably won’t want to drink this straight, unless you’re accustomed to sipping on bottles of Tabasco sauce. Instead, try mixing equal parts ginger beer and club soda to create a spicy carbonated ginger beer for drinks such as the Dark ‘n Stormy, or other cocktails that call for ginger beer (notable exception: the Gin Gin Mule, which was developed with this industrial-strength ginger beer in mind). For recipes calling for ginger ale, aim for more of a 4:1 club soda-to-ginger beer ratio. This ginger beer is also pretty dry, so depending on the recipe, you may want to add a dash or two of simple syrup to the mix.

Tags: Special Projects by Paul
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