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Posts Tagged ‘Cocktail’

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Cocktail Hour: The Paloma

Posted by Arctic Wolf on May 11, 2016

Paloma SAM_2517Today’s cocktail is a serving which some claim is the most popular bar drink in Mexico, the Paloma. Because the serving has no ‘official construction’, there seems to be as many variations in the recipe as there are cocktail bloggers who write about it. Most commonly the recipe is stated to be a mixture of Grapefruit Soda (Fresca or Squirt maybe) and Blanco Tequila served in a tall glass with lots of ice. (I sometimes use Koala Brand Cooler (the grapefruit/kiwi/lime combination) and it tastes great as well.)

Nothing, however beats a Paloma made with real grapefruit juice and a dollop of fresh squeezed lime for tartness. Here is my favoured recipe which is perhaps a little heavier on the tequila side than most of the variations I see online (usually 1:3 ration tequila to grapefruit); but my stronger libation tastes great, and on a hot afternoon, it is hard to beat.

Paloma

2 oz Camarena Silver Tequila
2 oz Grapefruit Juice
1/2 oz Lime Juice
3/8 oz Sugar syrup (1:1)
Ice
Sparkling Water or Soda

Fill a tall tumbler with Ice
Mix the first four ingredients in a mixing glass
Add to the ice filled tumbler
Complete with soda
Garnish with fresh grapefruit if desired
(For best results use fresh chilled ingredients on to be honest the use of a straw is probably not recommended)

Enjoy responsibly on a hot sunny day!

If  you are interested in more of my cocktail recipes, please click this link (Cocktails and Recipes) for more of my mixed drink recipes!

Note: My review for Camerena Silver Tequila will publish soon as my descent into Tequila madness begins.

Chimo!

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Cocktail Hour: Red Sky at Night

Posted by Arctic Wolf on May 5, 2016

Today’s serving has its roots in the modern classic, the Cosmopolitan which I introduced in a posting a few months ago (here). The Cosmo (as it is commonly referred to as) is a popular serving which mixes Cranberry and Lime Juices with Vodka and Orange Liqueur. The International Bartender’s Association (IBA) standard formulation calls for Vodka Citron; however most recipes you find in cocktail books and on the internet call for a standard premium vodka rather than the lemon flavoured variety.

Red Sky at Night SAM_2493This recipe omits the vodka altogether and instead substitutes an amber rum. Following my common refrain, the better the spirit, the better the cocktail, I have chosen today to mix the serving with an 8-year-old column distilled rum which has been charcoal filtered to remove most of its colour and to provide a little polish to its flavour profile, the Dictador Claro 100 Month Aged Rum. Because of the lovely reddish hue given to the cocktail by the cranberry juice, I call this libation Red Sky at Night.

Red Sky at Night

2 oz Dictador Claro 100 Month Aged Rum
1 oz Triple Sec
1 oz Lime Juice
1 oz Red Cranberry Juice
1/2 oz Sugar Syrup (1:1)
Ice
Orange Peel

Add all ingredients into a metal shaker with ice
Shake until the outside of the shaker begins to frost
Strain into a chilled cocktail glass
Garnish with a strip of orange peel
Yumm!

Please remember to drink responsibly, the aim of my blog is to help you drink better spirits…not more spirits!

If  you are interested in more of my original cocktail recipes, please click this link (Cocktails and Recipes) for more of my mixed drink recipes!

Note: My review for the Dictador Claro 100 Month Aged Rum publishes tomorrow.

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Cocktail Hour: the Blinker

Posted by Arctic Wolf on April 29, 2016

I happened upon the Blinker Cocktail when I was researching rye whiskey based cocktails to add to my repertoire. A good resource for this research is a website called the Internet Cocktail Database (Cocktaildb) which is run by Ted Haigh (AKA Dr. Cocktail) link here, and that is where I found the Blinker. As a bit of history, the cocktail can be traced back to the 1930s where it is found in Patrick Gavin Duffy’s 1934 bartending guide, The Official Mixer’s Manual (thanks to Imbibe Magazine for that tidbit of information). Whether Pat Duffy created the recipe himself or drew upon other sources is unknown to me, although it should be pointed out that the Blinker is at its heart a ‘sour’ recipe, and thus it is probably one of many such recipes to have evolved from the simple sour recipes of the late 1800s.

Blinker SAM_2558This particular serving (the Blinker) mixes Rye Whiskey with Grapefruit Juice and uses Grenadine rather than Sugar Syrup as its sweetener. On his website Ted Haigh has a variation he created which substitutes Raspberry Syrup for grenadine, and after trying it, I can vouch for the fact that Ted’s variation is much tastier than the original. 

I would however, like to offer a slightly different tweak, a variation upon the variation if you will. My initial idea was to use Cranberry Syrup rather than Raspberry Syrup. I am not sure why I thought of cranberry syrup, I think that it was a vague notion that cranberry syrup would give the serving a tart earthiness which might be quite appealing. It turned out that cranberry syrup didn’t give me quite the flavour I wanted, so modified my idea and decided to use Cran/Raspberry Syrup instead. This was much better, and thought I would share this idea for the Blinker Cocktail with my readers.

Blinker Cocktail

2 oz Bulleit 95 Rye Whiskey
1 oz Grapefruit Juice (fresh squeezed)
1/3 oz Cran-Raspberry Syrup (see recipe here)
Ice
Lemon Peel

Add the first four ingredients into a cocktail shaker with ice
Shake until the outside of the shaker begins to frost
Strain into a chilled cocktail glass
Garnish with a twist of lemon peel (optional)

Please Enjoy Responsibly!

If  you are interested in more of my original cocktail recipes, please click this link (Cocktails and Recipes) for more of my mixed drink recipes!

Note: My review of Bulleit 95 Rye Frontier Whiskey publishes tomorrow.

Chimo!

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Cocktail Hour: The Secretary General

Posted by Arctic Wolf on April 26, 2016

Celebration

Celebration

Today’s featured cocktail is based upon the well known Celebration Cocktail which was created by J. W. Fish, (its first appearance in print is in the W. J. Tarling’s, 1937 Cafe Royal Cocktail Book). The Celebration is a wonderful bar drink which combines rum and gin with grapefruit juice in a daiquiri style serving.

Here is the original recipe form:

1/3 daiquiri rum
1/3 grapefruit juice
1/6 groseille syrup (red currant syrup)
1/6 Gin

Shake

Groseille (Red Currant) Syrup which is called for in the recipe is not something many people keep in their bar, and most online recipes I have found for the Celebration suggest replacing the groseille syrup with grenadine. It works quite well, although I would further suggest that if you do use grenadine that you should also use only half the suggested amount otherwise the cocktail becomes too sweet.

____________________________________________________________________________________

Secretary General

The Secretary General

My Secretary General builds upon the Celebration, but incorporates two tweaks which happen to work very well when I mix the cocktail with Appleton Jamaican White Rum. First, I replace the groseille syrup not with grenadine, but with a smaller amount plain Sugar Syrup. Then I add also a dollop of Lime Juice to balance the serving with an added bite of tartness. When selecting an appropriate gin for the serving, I noted that the Appleton White Rum has a firm flavour profile and so I selected a firm piny London Dry Gin (Gilpin’s Westmorland Extra Dry) for the libation such that not only the rum, but also the gin shines through the cocktail.

Here is the final recipe:

The Secretary General

1 1/2 oz Appleton White Rum
3/4 oz  Gilpin’s Westmorland Extra Dry Gin (see review here)
1 oz Fresh Grapefruit Juice
1/2 oz Fresh Lime Juice
1/4 oz Sugar Syrup (1:1 ratio)

Combine ingredients into a metal shaker with ice.
Shake until the metal shaker chills.
Strain into a chilled cocktail glass.
Garnish with lime slice

Please remember the aim is not to drink more it is to drink better!

And if  you are interested in more cocktail recipes, please click this link (Cocktails and Recipes) for more of my mixed drink recipes!

Note: My review of Appleton White Rum will be published tomorrow, Chimo!

 

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Cocktail Hour: Scotch Whisky Old Fashioned

Posted by Arctic Wolf on April 17, 2016

In the beginning (actually sometime immediately after distilled spirits began to be produced and consumed for enjoyment) someone, somewhere decided that their Brandy just didn’t taste all that good. (Maybe it was actually Whiskey or Rum, but most of my research indicates that Brandy was the original cocktail spirit so we will go with that for now.) Anyways, someone, somewhere decided that drinking these distilled spirits ought to be just a little easier and a little more enjoyable than it was so that person added a bit water and sugar to the spirit in an attempt to make it just little more affable. In fact, this type of experimentation with distilled spirits probably went on for many years (and in many different places) as there was certainly many more persons who wanted to better enjoy their spirits (and to stop grimacing after every swallow).

At some point, (soon after the turn of the nineteenth century) this idea had coalesced into a recipe of sorts and the first ‘cocktail’ was born. And that is exactly what the serving was called, a cocktail. This early form of the recipe was quite generic; it was basically a mixture of distilled spirit, sugar, water and bitters.

As time went forward, the idea evolved, and if you research the recipes from the mid-nineteenth century you will find that new constructions had come forward which built upon this original. If a bit of fruit and a sweet liqueur was added the cocktail became a ‘Fancy Cocktail’. If a sugar rimmed glass was introduced the serving became a ‘Crusta’, and if mint was muddled into the rest of the ingredients the results were a ‘Smash’.

These new forms of mixed drinks were popular; but at some point, patrons began to yearn for that ‘Old Fashioned’ Cocktail which started it all. All that fancy stuff, the sugar rimmed glass, the slice of fruit, and the muddled mint seemed to some to be too complicated and pretentious. I can imagine frustrated patrons gazing at the complicated mixed drink menu proclaiming, “All I want is an old fashioned Cocktail!”

That original ‘old fashioned’ cocktail never did fully reappear in its original form. By this time ice had replaced water, and the fruit garnish never went completely away. What evolved as the Old Fashioned Cocktail was mixed drink which sat somewhere in between a Fancy Cocktail and the original Cocktail. A strip of citrus zest replaced the fancy slice of fruit, and as indicated, ice was added instead of water (and in some cases a touch of Orange liqueur was added in place or in conjunction with the sugar).

Today the Old Fashioned Cocktail has become the standard-bearer of mixolgy, and it is widely regarded as the first truly Classic Cocktail.

W&M Old Fashioned SAM_2491Today I am mixing an Old Fashioned Cocktail with a special 30 Year Old Single Grain Whisky from independent bottlers, Wilson and Morgan. The point I am making by using such a special whisky is that the Old Fashioned Cocktail in its present form is a libation that is easily elevated by great ingredients. The better the spirit, the better the cocktail; or in this case, the better the Scotch Whisky, the better the Old Fashioned Cocktail.

This is a stunning serving which reaches an entire new level of greatness because of the wonderful whisky which is used in its construction, the 30 Year Old Cameronbridge Single Grain Whisky from Morgan and Wilson.

Scotch Whisky Old Fashioned

1 1/2 oz 30 Year Old Cameronbridge Single Grain Whisky
1/2 tsp Sugar syrup
1 dash Dry Orange Curacao
1 dash bitters (Angostura Orange Bitters)
3 large Ice Cubes
Twist of Orange Peel

Add the first four ingredients to a rocks glass over the ice cubes
Rub the cut edge of the orange peel over the rim of the glass and twist it over the drink. (This will release the oil from the orange zest into the drink)
Drop the peel into the cocktail if desired.

Please Enjoy Responsibly!

If  you are interested in more of my original cocktail recipes, please click this link (Cocktails and Recipes) for more of my mixed drink recipes!

Note my review of the fantastic Morgan and Wilson 30 Year Old Cameronbridge Single Grain Whisky publishes tomorrow, Chimo!

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