So - you know me. A cocktail is made out of high quality ingredients, the right technique and details, details, details. Quite some time ago, I intended to make a popcorn whiskey sour. I thought, that bourbon is made out of corn - so popcorn is great thing to infuse the bourbon with. Unfortunately there was only a very mediocre effect. Popcorn doesn’t have apparently a strong taste. And it messes up the bourbon (or if you make a syrup it makes the water cloudy). So I ambandoned the concept. However - in my time in Newton, I Thought about a similar concept - I read, that Koreans have roasted corn tea (besides of roasted barley tea). So - using corn tea as base for a syrup- that could work!? As I didn’t wanted to waste time in looking for Korean roasted corn tea I tried to make it myself with popcorn- spoilers: popcorn pops if you heat it up. However if you are careful, only few kernels will pop (tried it first under the salamander and ended up to use a pan - without oil! I added th...
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The year 2021 is still quite young... and 2020 wasn't really fruitful. However even though the title says, 2020 and 2021, this drink took me by surprise and it is easily one of the best drink I have had in a far longer time. Look - to rating drinks (and compare them with classics like a good Old Fashioned) are problematic to say the least, but this drink is surprisingly simple and incredible good. Introducing: the Bourbon Horseneck. I know, you expected more. And let's face it, we are not talking about a normal Horseneck here! First, we are looking at Knob Creek - one of my favorite "every day bourbons". It is very rich, has some caramel, maple syrup and nutty notes. But what really makes a difference is the ginger ale... my new recipe just remarkable rich and indulgent and there is just no ginger ale on the market which can come remotely close to it. So- if you want to experience the drink, I am talking about, there is only one way: some hands-on approach. Black S...
It has been some time... my computer broke down in the pandemic and I went into a dormant hibernation- then bars opened up again and understaffed and overworked we had quite busy couple of months until the festive season - then again- COVID-19 stroke again - bars are again closed - and I am exercising the cruel king duty update my blog on my iPad. Let’s get to the topic: what do I mean with mixed drinks classes? Well- it is not a reasonably technical classification, but a lose grouping of drinks - and how I am looking at them. Is it a personal rating? Yes! But does it has some merits? For sure - I try not only to be reasonable, but also explain my grading. Why this topic now? Because here is a growing interest into simplistic and adolescent drinks - I have acknowledged it online as well as in the bar. Drinks like “P*rnstar Martinis”, Lychee’tinis and Apple’tinis and so on are coming back in focus... Is this bad - well, let’s judge the trend after my little top to bottom lis...
I have introduced a vacuum pump in the bar. No - not for pleasure... just for vacuum canning jars, which are then a) not floating when I put them into the immersion circulated water bath and b) keep ingredients far longer fresh. In my absence from the bar - and my weird quarantine thoughts (let's face it - weird bar thoughts aren't really deriving from the social distancing, I just have naturally weird thoughts) I had suddenly the question, what happens if you shake without air in the shaker. Now, very few bartender could now say, that as soon as you shake, the air pressure anyway goes very much down (due to the retraction of air at lower temperature) - but a close vacuum is far different than a reduced air pressure. And I remembered how weird (word of the day??) it is, to shake a jar when the air is removed. It should have an impact. So I extremely exactly measured all ingredients: I used Rye, fresh lemon juice and fermented water kefir rich syrup - I used two...
The older I become, the more I see opportunities to do some really significant (and new stuff) without using arsenic in cocktails and poison people (or like a trend a couple of years ago, make tobacco infusions , which are basically more poisonous than arsenic - as nicotine is quite a bit more poisonou s...). Off course I am kidding - however you don't need to mix Bourbon with Mountain Dew to do something really exciting... In the place I have worked before we did a barrel aged Last Word. This was actually a great idea - the cocktail was pretty awesome. But as we used a very small oak vessel, the oak was quickly exhausted and we tried to age Glenmorangie in it (Last Word finished Glenmorangie 10 years old). It was a success - not for everyone (especially the Chartreuse gave the whisky a hint of funk, which isn't often experienced) - but it was subtle enough and I loved how different yet recognizable (Glenmorangie) it has been Now we are aging Negroni (thanks to the ...
It seems that there is for the moment a big Old Fashioned promotion going on. Angostura, which is one ingredient, which is in essentially every bar, tried to push their popularity even further - well they know, that 99% of all bartenders and bars are using their product. But what is an Old Fashioned? And what makes an Old Fashioned an Old Fashioned? I have been annoyed, when one of my favorite YouTube channels "How to Drink" really screwed up with this cocktail. So first the video below... Why did Greg screwed up? Let's start first with the origins. We can safely presume, that the Old Fashioned was the original cocktail: The first definition of cocktail known to be an alcoholic beverage appeared in The Balance and Columbian Repository ( Hudson, New York ) May 13, 1806; editor Harry Croswell answered the question, "What is a cocktail?": Cock-tail is a stimulating liquor, composed of spirits of any kind, sugar, water, and bitter...
It seems, that the Mai Tai got quite a revival these days. I seen it on quite a lot of menus - unfortunately in the most despicable recipes and ingredients lists. Let’s first of all state, what the Mai Tai isn’t: the Mai Tai isn’t your typical tiki drink. For sure - it started in a Tiki restaurant - and it has been the creation of one of the two most iconic Tiki fathers - it was either way Don the Beachcomber or Vic “Trader Vic’s” Bergeron. And while nobody seems to know, who really have been the first who named their cocktail “Mai Tai” - only Trader Vic provided the iconic recipe, which has been copied, simplified and abused. Look, the Beachcomber recipe is the typical Tiki drink - which is far too strong, uses far too many ingredients - you get the point. No - this isn’t a rant about Tiki drinks... Trader Vic’s Mai Tai is a combination of great aged funky rum, quality orange liqueur, orgeat and fresh lime - and maybe a hint of hyper concentrated sugar syrup. That’s it. It is...