I have been traveling around too much to be in Mixology Monday mode recently.  Unfortunately I missed the last one on 19th Century cocktails.  How did I manage to miss that?  It sounded great.  Ahh. . .the travails of travel.

Anyway, this time round the theme is Guilty Pleasures, hosted by Two at the Most.  The main idea behind the theme seems to be ‘comfort cocktails’, similar to ‘comfort food’. There is also a suggestion that it could include drinks that appeal a poorly educated palate.  Hmm. . .

Forgive me if I randomly muse rather than picking a single drink.

OK, what I’m really going to do is smack you in the face with a Bunnyhug.  However, I’ll soften the blow by first musing on cream, creme de menthe, and other inoffensive things.

The White Russian immediately came to mind when I thought about ‘comfort cocktails’, but I see Dr. Bamboo has already covered it.  There is nothing too special about a White Russian though.  When you are in the mood for a White Russian just about any sweet and creamy drink might do equally well.  Perhaps the ideal time for these drinks is when watching a DVD at home on a winter evening.  A Brandy Alexander is great, and so is the original Alexander Cocktail (simply substitute gin for the brandy).  Tossing aside any pretense of sophistication, I also have to admit possessing a soft spot for a Grasshopper (creme de cacao, creme de menthe and cream).  My incredibly discerning palate means I find a mixture of two liqueurs and cream slightly sweet.  This is where vodka becomes my friend.  A slosh of vodka cuts the sweetness and boosts the octane.  The ideal proportions for these drinks depend on how you are feeling and how heavy your cream is, but equal parts is a good place to start.

I have a weakness for creme de menthe.  The taste might be sweet and one dimensional, but there is a pleasant simplicity about it, plus a gratifyingly lurid greenness.  Creme de menthe harks back to a simpler age.  Just possibly the whole concept also worked better pre-toothpaste.  Part of the appeal for me is probably that creme de menthe was the first liqueur I was ever properly served (stealing a bottle of Chartreuse as a toddler doesn’t count since I forgot to nick glassware).  I was maybe seven or eight years old or so at the time, and watching Murder on the Orient Express on television.  Hercule Poirot was sitting in the train dining car drinking a glass of green stuff.  Clearly this was something I needed to do myself at some stage.  I asked my father what the famous Belgian detective was drinking and within seconds I had a matching drink, right down to the glass.  I have trouble thinking of a really great cocktail that requires creme de menthe, but how can a bar be complete without a bottle of the green stuff?  It has to be there, even if you just pick it up and admire the color occasionally.

Anyway, before I got sidetracked by creme de menthe I was going to give a shout for the Bunnyhug.  For some reason everybody hates this drink.  I admit the Bunnyhug has a rough edge or two, and perhaps my palate could be more refined, but really, for pure abrasive flavorsomeness the Bunnyhug has few equals.  Another drink that comes close is the Asylum Cocktail.

I no longer drink the Bunnyhug often, but I think both it and the Asylum have a place.  The Bunnyhug is more of a flavorsome pick-me-up, an ill-advised strategy for grappling with a major life crisis, or something to order in a bar that can’t mix drinks.  I am less sure about the Asylum.  Given the visual effect I guess you could consider it an alcoholic’s Tequila Sunrise, save it as  shock therapy for a friend whose addiction to colorful umbrella drinks is annoying you, or treat it as an entry level Bunnyhug.

This month’s Mixology Monday sees me without ready access to a bar to mix a drink.  On well, I’m going to go ahead and post something anyway.  The theme this month is New Orleans cocktails, so I thought I could post a couple of tips related to making drinks containing egg white, with particular reference to that venerable old New Orleans drink – the Ramos Gin Fizz.

I had made it something of a mission to get a decent Ramos Gin Fizz while in New Orleans for Tales of the Cocktail.  What I really wanted was a Ramos Gin Fizz made by Chris McMillan (check out a video of him mixing one here).  Before leaving for New Orleans I rang the bar he now works at (in the Renaissance Pere Marquette Hotel) and was told by that the great man would be behind the bar on the Friday and Saturday during Tales of the Cocktail from 4pm onwards.  I dropped past the hotel late on Friday afternoon.  The bar was deserted.  There was no queue out onto the street for Ramos Gin Fizzes.  The lobby was not filled with a couple of dozen drinks bloggers, passing a shaker or two around as they shook a couple of fizzes up.  I had lucked out!  Then I got a little closer and realized Chris McMillan was nowhere to be seen.  On asking if he was around I found he was not going to be back at work until the 25th.  Alas it was not to be.

Although the Chris McMillan Ramos Gin Fizz never happened, after the session on New Orleans Drinks I got the chance to ask Chris where I would get a Ramos Gin Fizz in New Orleans given that he wasn’t working his own bar that week.  He told me not to even try at his own bar unless he was there – which made me feel better about slinking out on the poor young guy tending bar there.  Chris suggested The Swizzle Stick Bar at Cafe Adelaide.  I graciously thanked Mr. McMillan before thrusting him out of my way and rushing to Cafe Adelaide.

Once again, it was not to be.  On a better day Chris McMillan’s suggestion may have been a good one.  I should have done well given that I believe my drink was mixed up by Lu Brow – the ‘bar chef’ at Cafe Adelaide.  Unfortunately I have little  good to say about the Ramos Gin Fizz I drank at Cafe Adelaide.  OK, I guess the ingredients and proportions were about right.  Unfortunately the execution was abysmal.  I shake a Daiquiri longer than Lu Brow shook this Ramos Gin Fizz.  I wasn’t expecting the bar to lower its shutters for quarter of an hour while everybody in the room took turns shaking my drink.  Indeed I was half expecting to be tossed out into the street for daring to ask for a Ramos Gin Fizz.  However, given that the place was as near empty as I saw it during Tales of the Cocktail, a shake lasting longer than 15 seconds would have been nice.  The drink tasted OK, but it was rather diluted (the crushed ice they seem to favor for all drinks in The Swizzle Stick Bar is not always the way to go), and texturally it was way off.  That said, at least I was able to go into a bar and order a Ramos Gin Fizz without throwing the barstaff into a fit of confusion.  You couldn’t do that in most places.

The Swizzle Stick Bar Ramos Gin Fizz was a sorry contrast to the exceptionally frothy Pisco Sour I enjoyed in The Alembic in San Francisco.  The Alembic pisco sour was probably the stand out drink from my U.S. trip.  The difference between the two drinks was the level of care taken with the execution.

So where am I going with all this?

I thought for this Mixology Monday I would throw a couple of Ramos Gin Fizz making tips out there.  I have not tried the third of these myself, since it is something I learned from a bartender/blogger while attending Tales.  I’ve now forgotten who told me this, so give a shout if you happen to be reading.  I haven’t tried the fourth either, but professional bartenders seem to like it.

Tip number 1 – Dry shake the mixture before adding any ice.  This shouldn’t need to be said, but many people skip this essential step.

Tip number 2 -Add the coil from your Hawthorne Strainer to the shaker while dry shaking (removing it when you add the ice).  The coil will act like a whisk and aerate the egg faster than if you shook without the coil in there.  So far as I know this technique is not traditional.  I have never seen it in a recipe.  However, my experiments have found it to work well.  The pisco sour at The Alembic was made this way.  The Alembic was the first bar where I have seen a dry shake done this way.  Congratulations to the Alembic for taking that extra little bit of trouble.

Tip number 3 – Add the sugar after your dry shake.  The theory behind this is that sugar acts as a stabilizer for existing foam, but actually inhibits foam formation.  I have not experimented with this yet.  However, I was surprised a few weeks back when a batch of pisco sours I made up turned out to have an exceptionally good foam.  Being a batch drink I got a little confused with the proportions and undersweetened to begin with, adjusting the sweetness later.  Perhaps the batch of drinks turned out well because I added about half of the sugar at the end.  While a Ramos Gin Fizz is not a Pisco Sour, I think you want both drinks to be as foamy as possible.  Therefore I suggest trying this technique.

Tip number 4 – You could always cheat and use one of those little battery operated blending sticks, which are small enough to fit into a cocktail shaker.  These seem popular in bars.  The Barsol Pisco brand rep thought they did a good job, as did numerous other people I spoke with.  I don’t have one but will pick one up at some stage.

The Ramos Gin Fizz recipe I use these days is below.  Some recipes leave out the lime, but I think the mix of lemon and lime is essential to the flavor.  I also like the vanilla essence, even if it may not be traditional.

2 oz gin

1/2 oz of lime juice

1/2  oz of lemon juice

1 egg white

2 oz cream

several drops of orange flower water (more if using the weak tasting middle eastern stuff)

a drop or two of vanilla essence

1 tsp sugar (add this after the dry shake)

A spash of soda water

Dry shake everything except the sugar and soda for at least a minute.  Add the sugar and give it another long shake over ice to chill and dilute a little. Strain into a fizz glass (or an undersized Collins glass) and top with soda, stirring as you do so to build a frothy head that rises above the glass and begins to run down the sides.  Watch the video above to see what I mean.  In fact why am I even bothering with a recipe here?  Just watch the video.

I did not attend the session on eggs in drinks at Tales of the Cocktail.  Does anyone who attended have more tips on getting better results out of drinks containing egg white?

To assist my anticipatory salivation ahead of Anistatia Miller and Jared Brown’s Tales of the Cocktail presentation on “The Cafes of Paris”, I have been taking a look at a few lesser known French aperitifs. Several weeks ago I took a look at Pineau des Charentes. Today I focus on a pair of fruit quinquinas.

Quinquina is vermouth’s neglected cousin. Vermouth is well recognized, if widely feared and misunderstood. Martini drinkers fall into two camps: those who really want vermouth in their drink, and those who merely wish to ritualistically conjure up its spirit. However, while vermouth provokes fierce debate and elaborate juju, the mention of quinquina elicits little more than a blank stare. This is a shame because quinquina is an interesting category. To fix those blank stares, perhaps a little explanation is in order.

Both quinquina and vermouth are aromatized wines (i.e. wines flavored with herbs and spices). Quinquinas distinguish themselves from vermouths in using quinine as a key flavoring. As in tonic water, the quinine originally served a medicinal purpose – warding off malaria and all that. Vermouth and quinquina are not mutually exclusive categories. Some vermouth producers sell ‘quinquina’ versions alongside their regular vermouths: for example Martini & Rossi release their sweet vermouth in both ‘quniquina’ and standard versions. However, despite some overlap there are marked differences, with quinquinas tending to emphasize spice while vermouths are more herbal.

Similar to vermouths, which can be broadly classified into sweet and dry styles, quinquinas largely fall into rouge and blanc styles. The rouge style is rich, spicy and based on red wine – Dubonnet Rouge is the classic example. The blanc style is light, citrus accented, and based on white wine – Lillet Blanc is the iconic product.

For some reason neither of these mainstream styles of quinquina ever challenged vermouth to become a ubiquitous cocktail ingredient. Cocktail recipes never casually call for a generic rouge or blanc quinquina. Quinquina is called for only occasionally, and always by brand. Even luminaries like Charles H. Baker considered Dubonnet to be “only needed in the more elaborate establishments”, and I do not recall him mentioning Lillet at all. Considering that Baker saw orgeat, kummel and six types of bitters as more or less essential bar supplies, this adds up to a bit of a slap in the face for the quinquina category.

If mainstream quinquinas like Dubonnet and Lillet are fairly obscure, fruit flavored quinquina are even more so. These fruity quinquina do not fall within either the rouge or blanc styles, with heavy fruit macerations completely masking the base wine. They deserve a look from cocktailians though, offering a great source of fruit flavors and complexity, yet one with minimal sweetness. Two products are introduced below: RinQuinQuin and Orange Colombo.

RinQuinQuin (15% alcohol by volume) is a peach flavored quinquina. It is produced in Provence by the same firm that makes Henri Bardouin pastis. The name means something like an invigorating drink or a pick-me-up in French. The production process involves maceration, distillation, blending and several months of aging. Both distilled alcohol and wine are infused with quinine, other herbs and spices, and peaches. The peaches are what distinguish the product, and are added not as fruit, but rather as leaves, skins and kernels. This makes for a very complex flavor. The product is lightly sweetened. The result is a fruity but refreshingly dry aperitif wine with a distinctly bitter edge.

Orange Colombo (15% alcohol by volume) is an orange flavored quinquina along the same lines as RinQuinQuin. Based on its complex taste I am guessing it is flavored with more than just orange skins. As in RinQuinQuin, leaves, blossoms or other material may also be used.

These fruit quinquina are traditionally consumed either chilled or over ice, perhaps garnished with a twist of lemon. However, there is no reason they cannot be used in cocktails. Bear in mind that their mild fruitiness makes them poor vermouth substitutes, while their lack of sugar and their herbal complexity prevent them from standing in for fruit liqueurs. A bit of a fresh approach is in order.

Here are a few ideas. . .

Peach Martinez

1 oz Genever (Bols Oude)

1 oz Italian vermouth (Martini Rossi)

1 oz RinQuinQuin

2 dashes Fees Whiskey Barrel Aged Bitters

1 tsp maraschino

Stir over ice and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a lemon twist.

A nice take on the Martinez. Cutting the vermouth with RinQuinQuin makes for a lighter and more interesting drink. The Genever provides a mellow but solid base, neither fading into obscurity nor dominating. The complex peach notes mingle nicely with the cherry. Increase the Genever a little if you find it lacks kick.

When playing around with RinQuinQuin to create variations on existing recipes you will probably find that cutting vermouth half-and-half with RinQuinQuin works better than a straight substitution. RinQuinQuin is more of a one note product than vermouth, albeit a complex note.

RinQuinQuin Vesper

3 oz gin (Tanqueray)

1 oz vodka (Stolichnaya)

¼ oz Lillet Blanc

¼ oz RinQuinQuin

Shake over ice, strain into a chilled cocktail glass, and garnish with a large lemon twist.

This is just brilliant. By upping the bitterness the RinQuinQuin addresses the problem of Lillet having been reformulated and lightened since the Vesper was originally invented. The RinQuinQuin also adds a peach layer to the citrus in the Lillet.

Orange Colombo can be used to create another nice Vesper variation. Both products can also be used in regular Martinis, where they work especially well with delicate gins like Tanqueray 10 that stand up poorly to vermouth. I would be inclined to split the quinquina 50/50 with vermouth.

Orange Colombo Pisco Sour

2 oz pisco

½ oz Orange Columbo (or cut back to 1/4 oz)

¾ oz lime juice

1/3 oz simple syrup

1 egg white (half an egg white per drink is sufficient if making multiple drinks)

Dash or two of Fees Whiskey Barrel Aged Bitters

Put everything except the bitters in a mixing glass. Shake long and hard over ice until the drink becomes foamy. Double strain into a sour glass. Finish the drink by garnishing the foam with a few drops of bitters – you can use a toothpick to draw a pattern on the foam. A sour glass, champagne flute or wine glass is preferable for this drink. The garnish of bitters on egg-white foam is intended to provide aroma. A sour glass concentrates the aromas, while the smaller surface area means that the foam, and the aromas, last longer.

The Orange Columbo adds both a subtle orange note and a light bite, making a pleasant variation that jazzes up the original. Perhaps I am not using the right pisco, but I find pisco sours tend to be a little too plain and smooth. Orange Columbo livens things up without creating an unseemly ruckus. You can also try a splash of Orange Colombo in a Margarita – obviously you will still need the orange liqueur, but possibly it could be scaled back a notch.

There is tons of potential for using these obscure fruit quinquina in cocktails. If you see a bottle you should grab it and have a play around. Currently these products are underutilized, leaving the field wide open to experimentation.

Passion Fruit Pisco Sour

2 oz pisco

¾ oz passion fruit pulp (I used a whole passion fruit, which yielded roughly ¾ oz of pulp – not juice!)

½ oz lime juice

¼ oz simple syrup

1 egg white

Shake long and hard over ice and strain into a cocktail glass.

I deliberately didn’t double stain, hoping the passion fruit seeds would end up as an attractive garnish on the bottom of the glass. This didn’t happen. About three seeds made it to where they were supposed to go. This was not quite the effect I was after. Maybe double strain and forget about trying to achieve this effect, or simply garnish with a teaspoon of passion fruit pulp in the bottom of the glass?

It seems best to leave out the Angostura garnish on the foam. I experimented with a drop of Angostura on one corner of the drink, but it seemed to distract too much from the delicate passion fruit aroma. Of course some may like it.

This drink made a beautiful pisco sour variation. The passion fruit and pisco make nice partners, and there is no doubting the passion fruit adds some extra complexity.

Since passion fruit comes from the Amazon, and since Pisco also comes from South America I am labeling my further experiments (involving pisco and agricole rum) ‘Amazonian cocktails’.

Amazonian Cocktail #1

2 oz pisco

¾-1 oz passion fruit pulp (my passion fruit was especially big so it gave me practically an ounce of pulp)

½ oz lime juice

¾ oz St. Germain

1 egg white

Shake hard over ice and strain into a cocktail glass.

I had envisaged a drink that improved on the above by adding some subtle complexity in the form of St. Germain. I think the St. Germain ended up distracting too much from the passion fruit though. Maybe ½ oz of St. Germain would be better? This is a pleasant drink, but the passion fruit doesn’t jump out like I want it to. Perhaps it just needs tweaking?

Maybe my best drink came last. . .

Amazonian Cocktail #2 (or The Fitzcarraldo) 

1 ½ oz pisco

¾ oz passion fruit pulp

¾ oz dry apricot brandy (i.e. a eau de vie, not a liqueur)

2 tsp Grand Marnier

1 tsp Grenadine

This is just a reworking of the Dulchin, substituting passion fruit for the lime juice. Though I say it myself, this is pretty damn good. The passion fruit makes a much softer and more approachable drink than the Dulchin, yet one that is no less interesting. The combination of pisco, passion fruit and apricot eau de vie provides tons of aromatic complexity. The pisco is easy to pick, but the apricot and passion fruit mesh into a single exotic flavor. While sweeter made with passion fruit than the original Dulchin, it is not too sweet. It could certainly be reworked (playing around with the Grand Marnier and Grenadine?), but this is close to being a pretty good drink. The color is beautiful too.

So why did I call this the Fitzcarraldo? I have always been fascinated by the city of Manaus, the remote Brazilian Amazon town that was the site of a big rubber boom in the late 19^th and early 20^th century. One of the famous stories of the Manaus boom years concerns the grand opera house that was built there. Legend has it that Enrico Caruso himself was scheduled to perform there but for various reasons never made it. No sooner was the opera house completed than the rubber economy collapsed, and Manaus reverted to a remote jungle backwater marking the furthest boundaries of civilization. Werner Herzog directed a movie, Fitzcarraldo (1982), about the dreamer behind the construction of the Manaus opera house. This last drink seems as good a drink as any to christen the Fitzcarraldo. The drink combines Brazilian passion fruit with Peruvian pisco (this makes sense because Manaus is closer to Peru than to most places in Brazil). Meanwhile, European apricot brandy and Grand Marnier bring some Old World refinement to the remote frontier.

Following up on my earlier experiment infusing Oolong tea in gin, I decided to do another Chinese tea inspired infusion. This time round I wanted to use a tea blend called Jupu (菊普), which is simply a mix of chrysanthemum flowers (菊花) and a black tea called Puer (普洱茶).

You do not buy this tea as a blend. You simply buy a pack each of Puer tea and chrysanthemum flowers and blend them yourself in the pot. The ratio is up to you, but the usual thing is to use enough puer to make a decent brew and then add a teaspoon or so of chrysanthemum. This tea is very popular among Cantonese as an accompaniment to dimsum.

Puer is an interesting tea from Yunnan province in southwest China. Puer is a black tea, meaning it is fully fermented. After fermentation and roasting the tea is pressed into bricks and aged. This aging makes Puer tea unique. The finished tea has an earthy and almost fungal flavor. The top of the range stuff can be decades old and sells for huge sums.

You can buy Puer tea in various forms from any Chinese grocery or tea shop. Traditionally it is sold in bricks of varying sizes, ranging from enough for a single pot up to huge things that could keep a person supplied with tea for years. You simply unwrap the brick and remove what you need using your fingers or a knife. Breaking off exactly what you need is tricky, and things can become messy if the brick crumbles all over the place. These days loose leaf Puer is popular. Although not traditional, loose leaf Puer is easier to deal with and tastes good enough for everyday use.

Chrysanthemum tea should also be available fro any Chinese grocery. It is sold in the form of dried whole flowers and is quite inexpensive.

My first experiment with this infusion involved gin. I infused the gin with the tea for two hours, and then made a gin sour sweetened with honey. I did not particularly enjoy the result. The idea behind the honey was to mimic the honey sweetened chrysanthemum tea which is a popular iced summer drink in Cantonese areas. However, I found it did not work well as a cocktail. The honey dominated too much and the gin seemed to clash with the chrysanthemum.

My second experiment used a different approach. I dispensed with the gin and turned to pisco. I thought Chilean pisco, with its ‘raisiny’ character, would make a nice base for this infusion. Pisco would contribute some similar characteristics to honey but without dominating nearly so much. Moreover, the absence of competing botanicals would leave the delicate chrysanthemum unmolested.

I made my infusion by soaking the following for two hours:

100 ml Bauza pisco

1 tsp puer tea

5 dried chrysanthemum blossoms

Then I simply used that infusion to make a pisco sour, as follows:

1 ½ oz chrysanthemum and puer tea infused pisco

¾ oz lemon juice

½ oz simple syrup (2:1 sugar to water)

1 egg white

Shake over ice and double strain into a cocktail glass. I did not bother with the Angostura Bitters garnish because I wanted to be able to enjoy the flavors without extra distraction.

This really worked. The pisco provides a nice soft background and lets you really appreciate the chrysanthemum. It makes for an interesting drink, albeit a slightly lightweight one. If I was to refine this further I would look to increase the chrysanthemum. I might also do the infusion in two steps, first briefly infusing the tea (say for 2 hours) to get flavor without too much tannin, then giving the chrysanthemum a longer infusion.

I guess vodka could also work, though right now I prefer to use the more light bodied piscos I happen to have lying around. If I were to do this with a more full on pisco, such as Machu Pisco or Demonio, I would definitely look to take the chrysanthemum up a notch. This might also work nicely if sweetened with St. Germain, though again I would look to increase the chrysanthemum if I went down that route.

I will update with a name when I think of one.

Having made some quality grenadine, the next step is to find some drinks to try it in. Three drinks immediately come to mind, the Clover Club, the Pink Lady, and the El Presidente. The Clover Club and Pink Lady are simply grenadine sweetened and flavored gin sours, while the El Presidente is a complex rum, orange Curacao and vermouth affair that gets a gentle lift from a teaspoon of grenadine.

Recipes follow:

Clover Club

1 ½ – 2 oz gin

½ oz lemon or lime juice (juice of about half a lemon)

1 tsp – ½ oz grenadine (some recipes call for up to an ounce!)

1 egg white

Give a long shake over ice and double strain into a cocktail glass.

This one takes its name from a 19^th Century club of which it was the house cocktail. Made with good grenadine it is a simple but very respectable affair. The grenadine should add some pleasant fruit flavors as well as balancing the lemon. The egg white is essential. Be generous with the grenadine in this one since that is what gives the drink its character. The egg white also means you can add a reasonable amount without making things too cloying. Between the grenadine and the egg, the gin will slide down very easily indeed.

Pink Lady

1 ½ oz gin

½ oz calvados (or applejack)

½ oz lemon juice

1 tsp grenadine

1 egg white

Give a long shake over ice and double strain into a cocktail glass.

This drink adds uses apple brandy to lure the conservative Clover Club on a bit of an adventure. Nobody ends up getting hurt, and in fact the new combination works beautifully. The apple brandy now takes the lead, but good quality grenadine still helps add an additional layer of flavor.

El Presidente

1 ½ oz Cuban Rum (Havana Club 3 Anos works well, as does the Anejo Blanco)

¾ oz orange Curacao

¾ oz dry vermouth

1/2 – 1 tsp grenadine

Stir over ice and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a lemon twist.

This is a great Cuban drink dating from the early 20th Century. There seem to be a few variations floating around. Some use triple sec. Some use sweet vermouth. I think the above version is the original. Whatever variation you use, a good quality grenadine should come into its own here. The drink is already fairly sweet and does not particularly need an extra dose of sugar. What the grenadine does is add a little fruitiness to lift the drink (not unlike the lemon twist garnish), and improve the mouth feel.

With a name like Seamus, I felt obliged to come up with something to mark St. Patrick’s Day. Thus, in a moment of inspiration, I reached for the Crème de Menthe, Chartreuse and Midori, then got busy carving a clover out of a lime shell. The world was about to be introduced to the Leprechaun’s Abortion.

Don’t worry. . . I realize the world does not need another drink whose only distinguishing feature, besides tasting awful, is being green. Instead, I thought again along the lines of tea, specifically Twining’s Irish Breakfast Tea. Incidentally this tea comes in a green cardboard box that could be cut into fine clover leaf garnishes if required. I elected to leave this aspect of the product’s St. Patrick’s Day potential unrealized however, deciding instead to simply infuse Irish Breakfast Tea in Jameson’s Irish Whiskey. Why not?

Then I thought there was not much point infusing whiskey with tea alone, and Irish Breakfast Tea at that. Does an Irish breakfast not demand bacon? Thus into the infusion went some bacon. Wisdom intervened at this point, quietly whispering that I should leave the eggs aside until later. I obeyed.

So there I had my drink. It would be a whiskey sour, that quintessential morning potion of leisured Americans, made Irish for the day with hearty breakfast flavors of tea and bacon, and bolstered with a silken egg. It would be simultaneously Irish and American, a true immigrant success story. Some luck would be required to make it all work, but the Irish are rumored to be blessed in that department.

The above is not a joke. Tea infuses beautifully in gin, so why not in whiskey? Quite a few people have experimented with infusing vodka with bacon, and some have also tried Bourbon, so again why not Irish? Bacon and tea are a popular breakfast combination, and there is even such a thing as tea-smoked bacon, so why not combine them in a drink? Then consider the alternative – a mixture of crème de menthe, Midori and Chartreuse. The bacon breakfast cocktail idea is looking tempting, no? So mutter a Hail Mary and take the plunge. . .

The recipe:

1 ½ oz tea and bacon infused Jameson’s Irish whiskey*

¾ oz lemon juice

½ oz simple syrup

1 egg white

Shake long and hard over ice to froth up the egg. Strain into a cocktail glass. I like to double strain shaken egg drinks (i.e. strain through a sieve as well as with the cocktail strainer) to remove ice shards and possible strands of egg. I find ice shards do not sit well in shaken egg drinks.

The verdict? Not bad at all. The strength of the bacon taste will vary a lot depending on the bacon used, the quantity, the infusion time, etc. I found that the tea dominated, with the bacon occupying the background. The bacon was there as an aroma and some saltiness. This was more or less what I was aiming for, the sense of drinking a cup of tea at breakfast time. Irish Breakfast is quite a tannin heavy tea, being a blend with a high ratio of Assam, so this drink has a little bitterness.

I thought about using maple syrup rather than simple syrup but decided not to, at least initially, because I wanted to see how the flavors worked in isolation before complicating things further. Maple syrup would probably be a nice addition, though perhaps too dominant.

* Make the whiskey infusion as follows. The quantities are small because this was experimental. Put 1 tsp Twining’s Irish Breakfast Tea into 100 ml whiskey to infuse for two hours. After two hours, strain to remove the tea. Now place a rasher of lightly fried bacon in the tea-flavored whiskey (I used a mild and lean Danish bacon). Infuse for at least 24 hours before using. The bacon is slow to infuse compared to the tea. You could probably infuse for several days or longer. You will get some bacon fat on the top of the infusion. Since I used very lean bacon the amount of fat was minimal and I didn’t bother removing it. Small quantities should get either emulsified by the eggs or removed in the strainer. If you have large quantities of fat then simply lift them off the infusion with a spoon. Fat solidifies in the fridge so this is easily done.

I decided to give infusing gin with tea a try. I started by making the Earl Grey Martini as written up by Gary Regan in the San Francisco Chronicle. Earl Grey is possibly my least favorite tea. I don’t hate the stuff exactly. Oil of bergamont is an interesting flavor. Unfortunately, that taste just doesn’t work for me in tea. To me, black tea must have milk added to it, and tea with milk should be a pedestrian and surprise free affair. Oil of bergamont just does not fit into the picture.

So where does a guy like me get his Oil of Bergamont fix? The answer according to Gary Regan is to infuse your Earl Grey tea in gin and drink the gin. What an amazing idea! Where do I sign up for that then?

OK, in reality I exercised a little caution. Rather than following Gary Regan’s instructions exactly and infusing ¼ cup of tea leaves in a liter of gin, I infused a heaped teaspoon of tea leaves in a mere 100 mls of gin (infusion time 2 hours). I didn’t want to risk ending up with a bottle of weird and disgusting Bergamont flavored gin that would only be good for plying old ladies with.

I then made the drink as described by Mr. Regan, 1 ½ oz infused gin, ¾ oz lemon juice, ¾ oz simple syrup (Gary Regan asks for an ounce but that seemed too much to me) and an egg white, shaken over ice. Bloody delicious! The sugar could possibly be taken down another notch, but no faulting the concept. This tea infused gin is great.

On a roll, I began rummaging through the house for things to infuse. There was some method to the madness. I figured I’d try some Chinese style tea infusions. My favorite tea is Oolong so I did an infusion of 1 heaped teaspoon of Oolong in 100 mls of Plymouth Gin (infusion time two hours). Then I did the same using Bokma Genever (infusion time three hours because of the lower alcohol – only 35% versus 42% for Plymouth). I figured rich Oolong tea might really work well with heavy bodied Genever as opposed to standard London Dry gin.

I used good tea for this, namely a very good quality autumn harvest Iron Goddess of Mercy (鐵觀音). Iron Goddess of Mercy is a popular Oolong tea from Southern Fujian and basically my favorite tea. With good quality Iron Goddess of Mercy you cannot go wrong. Good stuff should be in the form of rolled green leaves, will smell fruity and aromatic, and reusing the same leaves will yield three or more brews with evolving rather than diminishing flavor. Iron Goddess of Mercy is the most aromatic of Oolong teas, and the autumn harvest is the most aromatic of the variety (though the more delicate spring tea fetches the highest prices). The generic blackish Oolong you get in most Asian grocery stores is not even close to being a substitute. Search around for good stuff. A specialist Chinese tea shop will sell it.

I took my Plymouth gin Oolong infusion and threw together a gin sour as follows:

1 ½ oz Oolong infused Plymouth Gin

¾ oz lemon juice

¾ oz Kuei Fei Lychee Liqueur

Shake over ice and strain into a glass.

This experiment turned out strangely delicious. The gin ended up quite bitter but with fantastic tea fragrance. Some people dislike bitterness and may find it too much, but for me it was more or less what I was looking for. It may be possible to reduce the bitterness by refining the infusion process. I was not sure how well the lychee liqueur would fit. It seems such a cliché to whip out the ‘Chinese’ liqueur to match the Chinese tea. I was getting sick of always reaching for the St. Germain though and wanted to give something else a try. The lychee works well. Some people describe the fruity tastes in Oolongs as resembling lychee. Drinking the two together in a cocktail like this really does produce an effect like drinking a fruity, alcoholic, Oolong tea. Although the lychee is very much a one note liqueur, there is enough complexity in the rest of the drink that this is not an issue.

On reflecting, the odd thing is that the original tea brewed in water may have a more intense flavor than the cocktail. Iron Goddess of Mercy is traditionally brewed extremely strong. Instead of adding a few teaspoons of tea to a large pot you take a tiny pot and pack it so full of leaves that the leaves swell to fill the pot once water is added. A single pot of leaves will yield multiple brews, which drinkers enjoy from from tiny liqueur glass sized cups. Just maybe I should increase the quantity of tea in the infusion. However, it may then become too much to handle. Oolong is also high caffeine and even drinking it at the above strength I almost thought I was getting some caffeine effect before the alcohol.

I will do something with the genever infusion soon, most likely the same recipe.

Update 1:

The next day I tried exactly the above drink using the genever infusion, again with very pleasant results. This version somehow seems less bitter and more fruity. I wasn’t exactly scientific with my tea measurements so I may have unintentionally put slightly less tea in the genever compared to the Plymouth. Or maybe the lower alcohol of the genever meant it extracted less of the bitter components despite my infusing it for an extra hour. Also, the sweetness in the genever may have somehow offset the bitterness. Finally, the bitter tastes might have somehow reduced by the strained infusion spending 24 hours in the fridge.

Update 2:

The genever version of this drink has been quite well received and I think it deserves its own name. I am going to go for The Fort Zeelandia Cocktail. Fort Zeelandia was the base of Dutch power during their colonization of Taiwan. The rationale for the name is that the drink combines Dutch-style gin with Taiwanese-style tea.

The theme for this month’s Mixology Monday is Repeal Day, and Pre-prohibition drinks are thus in order. Pisco is flavor of the month at my place since I managed to pick up three different brands of the stuff. That makes the Pisco Punch the obvious choice for this month’s drink.

I mentioned Pisco Punch the last time I wrote here. The problem with Pisco Punch, and it is quite a problem, is that the original recipe seems to have been lost. Certain things about the drink are known with certainty though.

Pisco Punch was invented at the Bank Exchange on the corner of Montgomery and Washington streets in San Francisco. The Bank Exchange was a meeting place for the San Francisco business community and one of the city’s preeminent watering holes for much of the period between its opening in 1854 and its closure on the arrival of Prohibition in 1919. The drink appears to have been invented by the original owners of the Bank Exchange and the recipe was passed on to Duncan Nicol who ran the establishment from the late 1870s until its closure.

For some reason Pisco Punch attracted exaggerated praise among imbibers. Rudyard Kipling wrote in 1889 that the famous punch was: “compounded of the shavings of cherubs’ wings, the glory of a tropical dawn, the red clouds of sunset, and the fragments of lost epics by dead masters”. Another commentator stated more ominously that it would “make a gnat fight an elephant”. The drink was clearly tasty, potent, well-marketed or some combination thereof.

The recipe was a closely guarded secret and seems to have been lost following the death of Nicol. The result is that various different recipes now claim to be the original. All of these recipes share in common the use of pisco and fresh pineapple chunks marinated in syrup. Almost all also call for lemon or lime juice, though at least one uses grape juice in place of citrus and cuts the pineapple juice down to a mere teaspoon. One or two recipes include a dash of absinthe. Some variations call for a spicy element, either from marinating cloves together with the pineapple or though a dash of Angostura Bitters – this last being a variation that probably results from confusion with the Pisco Sour. The controversy surrounding the recipe suggests that there may have been some ‘secret ingredient’ that foiled attempts replicate the taste of the original. However, given that Nicol guarded the recipe so closely he might easily have fed rumors of a ‘secret ingredient’, even if none existed, simply to throw imitators off the scent. It seems difficult to know the truth of the matter, but the idea of a ‘secret ingredient’ is certainly attractive.

An article on a blog by Knox Bronson claims that the ‘secret ingredient’ was gum syrup (see The Secrets of Pisco Punch Revealed). I am not sure about this theory. Gum syrup (sugar syrup with the addition of Gum Arabic to prevent crystallization and give a silky texture) was a standard 19^th century sweetener. Modern drinkers might be struck by a unique texture when the punch is prepared with gum syrup rather than standard syrup, but for drinkers in 19th Century San Francisco gum syrup would have been nothing unusual. Having said that though, punch recipes in Jerry Thomas’ 19^th Century bar guide exclusively call for loaf sugar as a sweetener, with gum syrup mostly restricted to use in cocktails. Jerry Thomas does give one punch recipe that uses gelatin to provide a silky texture, an effect that could also have been achieved with gum syrup. A gum syrup sweetened punch therefore might have been an unusual punch variation, but it seems less plausible that it was a ‘secret’ innovation. After all, owing to its easy mixability compared to sugar, gum syrup would likely have been a common substitution for sugar among bartenders mixing single serving punches in a hurry. Concluding that gum syrup was the ‘secret ingredient’ in the pisco punch therefore seems premature.

Bronson also argues that, despite rumors at the time that the recipe included absinthe, this could not have been the case because the absinthe would have dominated the flavor and been easily discernable. This claim seems weak. The use of very small quantities of absinthe (i.e. dashes) was fairly common in other drinks of the time and hence the use of absinthe would not necessarily have implied an absinthe dominated drink. A punch containing absinthe may have been unusual though. Jerry Thomas describes various absinthe drinks, but not a single example of absinthe in a punch. The apparent lack of other absinthe punches, combined with the absinthe rumors associated with the Pisco Punch, thus could be interpreted as evidence that absinthe was the ‘secret ingredient’.

Regarding the possibility of the secret ingredient being some spicy element, Jerry Thomas gives an interesting recipe for a California Milk Punch that contains pineapple, lemons, sugar, cloves, coriander, cinnamon, brandy (unspecified but possibly in California this meant Pisco?), rum, Batavia Arrack, green tea and milk. Jerry Thomas contains several punch recipes that call for pineapple, but oddly only the Californian version combines the pineapple with spices. This could simply be coincidence, but possibly there is a connection between this Californian spiced pineapple punch recipe and the Pisco Punch?

Personally I suspect that much of the novelty of the Pisco Punch may have lain in the use of pineapple. Pineapple is an interesting fruit from a social history perspective. Originally from Brazil, Europeans first encountered pineapple in the Caribbean at the close of the 15th century. The extraordinary natural sweetness of the pineapple (sugar was a luxury item at the time), its exotic appearance, and the difficulty of transporting the ripe fruit (which do not ripen but only deteriorate after harvesting) initially cemented the position of the pineapple as the fruit of the elite. European ships would load pineapples in the Americas, then make the long return voyage to Europe and present what few fruit remained unspoiled to the local monarch. From such lofty beginnings the pineapple could only really see its status decline, but it still managed to retain its exotic and aristocratic associations into the 20th century.

In the 18th and early 19th centuries European aristocrats invested huge sums in hot houses and expert gardeners solely for the purpose of growing pineapples with which to impress dinner guests. Such a luxury were the pineapples thus cultivated that oftentimes they were not even consumed, instead being presented as ornamental centerpieces during desert. Guests would recount both the number of pineapples presented and the number actually eaten, perhaps saying that a particular banquet had included “six pineapples, two cut”. The American gentry in the early years of the United States followed this English fashion for growing pineapples in hot houses.

The arrival of steam ships and rail in the 19th century reduced transportation times sufficiently that the hothouse cultivated variety became uneconomical compared to imports. The middle classes and even the poor suddenly found they could afford pineapples occasionally. It ceased being de riguer to serve pineapple only by ceremonially cutting a whole fruit, and pineapple ices, pies, fritters, punches, and other recipes began to appear. Pineapple remained an exotic statement of luxury though, and in big cities greengrocers would rent out particularly handsome pineapples as decorative centerpieces for dinner parties. One London socialite joked that no dinner party was complete unless the table was graced by Lady Curzon and a pineapple. Pineapple had become a commodity rather than a true rarity.

Pineapple lost its aristocratic exclusivity by the late 19th century, but nevertheless would have remained a novel luxury item in most areas of the United States. Pineapple only became truly ubiquitous after commercial farming and canning operations got underway in Hawaii in the early 20^th Century. Thus the use of pineapple, plus the pisco (unfamiliar to most drinkers outside of California), would already have made the Pisco Punch unusual and worthy of comment among drinkers. Just possibly a dash of absinthe, spice, or even Batavia Arrack added the finishing touch.

Maybe though the original recipe really has been found again? A certain Peruvian San Franciscoite named Guillermo Torro-Lira has recently released a book on the subject entitled “Wings of Cherubs: The Saga of the Rediscovery of Pisco Punch, Old San Francisco’s Mystery Drink”. I have not read this book since I only just saw it online while Googling around for different Pisco Punch recipes. Still, the book may shed some light on what mystery ingredients, if any, were contained in the original Pisco Punch. Has anyone in the US had a chance to check it out?

I made my picso punch as follows (recipe scaled down to single serving size):

2 oz pisco

¾ oz lemon juice (or experiment with lime?)

½ oz pineapple flavored gum syrup* (perhaps with spices?)

Perhaps add a dash of absinthe or absinthe substitute?

Place a chunk or two of marinated pineapple* in a glass. Very gently muddling it might make sense here. Stir pisco, lemon juice, gum syrup and (if desired) absinthe over ice and strain into the prepared glass. Recipes for the scaled up punch generally include an ounce or so of water per serving so give it a good long stir over the ice to allow plenty of dilution.

I have also tried adding various other herbal flavorings, such as Chartreuse (green and yellow) and Peychauds Bitters. Chartreuse has an affinity with pineapple, and Peychauds Bitters has anise notes not unlike pastis. It might not be very authentic but there is room to experiment with something along these lines. Still, absinthe/pastis probably works as well as anything.

* Make pineapple marinade by chopping up a fresh pineapple into chunks, covering in gum syrup (sugar syrup with the addition of gum Arabic), and leaving overnight. Both the fruit and syrup are later used in the punch. You could try adding spices to the marinade, perhaps cloves, cinnamon and coriander as in the California Milk Punch. If you added spices it would make sense to gently warm them in the syrup before adding the pineapple to help infuse the flavors better.

I’ve haven’t posted anything for the last couple of Mixology Mondays. My excuse in April was being on holiday and having no access to Champagne. It seems it isn’t a popular drink in the remoter parts of Western China. I didn’t have a very good excuse in May since I was already back in New Zealand by that stage. All I can say is that I still hadn’t got around to setting up a bar in my apartment and the idea of tequila drinks didn’t inspire me enough to make me rush out and go shopping.

This month my bar is more or less functional and the theme is cream, a theme which seems very doable. Most of the drinks that spring to mind immediately are sweet affairs involving actual cream plus ‘Crème de XXX’ type liqueurs. I’m thinking things like Brandy Alexanders, Grasshoppers, and so on. Don’t laugh about the Grasshopper. A Grasshopper can be quite nice, and it is one of the few drinks I can think of where I find a touch of vodka improves things – reducing the sweetness, smoothing out the texture, and adding a little punch. My bar is still a bit short on the ‘Crème de XXX’ family though.

Instead of doing the obvious then I decided to make a cream-including drink that I’ve been meaning to make for a long time but have never been able to because of the lack of a vital ingredient. That ingredient is orange flower water (I could never find it in Shanghai), and the drink of course is the Ramos Gin Fizz. Think of a Ramos Gin Fizz as a refreshing palette cleanser after some of the sweeter offerings this Mixology Monday.

Orange flower water is easy to find in Auckland and should not be a problem in most big cities. Try trawling the specialist food stores. I only managed to find Middle Eastern stuff while out looking on Saturday. I hear the French stuff is better, but the Middle Eastern stuff will do for now.

The Ramos Gin Fizz is an invention of 19^th Century New Orleans. It isn’t the type of drink you can just expect to roll on into a bar these days and order, and I guess that makes it just my type of thing. For a little history of the drink just check out the Gumbo Pages link below. There seem to be a bunch of different recipes floating around. I slightly modified recipes from a couple of sources, as follows:

http://www.theartofdrink.com/blog/2006/07/ramos-gin-fizz-cocktail.php

http://www.gumbopages.com/food/beverages/ramos-gin-fizz.html

Both recipes had features I liked so I ended up combining the two. My recipe was:

2 oz gin (Tanqueray)

1/2 oz lemon juice

½ oz lime juice

1 teaspoon sugar

1 egg white

2 oz cream

1 dash orange flower water

soda

Technique is everything when you are building a fluffy, creamy fizz so pay attention to the next bit.

I put the egg white, orange flower water, cream and syrup in an empty shaker and shook for a half a minute or so to get the egg frothy. Now I have seen people suggest you throw a fork or miniature whisk into the shaker while doing this to help it froth up. That sounds like it would be noisy and scratch your shaker and stuff so I didn’t bother. A better suggestion would probably be to do like Darcy at the Art of Drink and froth the mix with an immersion blender. If I had had a blender handy I’d have tried that. Although more traditional recipes doesn’t call for an initial frothing, getting the froth going before you start adding ice and generally diluting things makes sense to me. In my ‘experiments’ (OK, so I accidentally left the cream out of one drink) I found the egg frothed much better without cream. So frothing the egg, flower water and syrup, then adding cream, gin and juices, could be another possibility.

In any case, after getting some froth going I added the juices and gin, gave a quick stir to stop curdling, packed the shaker with ice, and began a long shake. I remember hearing somewhere that when making a Ramos Fizz you should shake for 20 seconds or so, tap the shaker on the counter, twist the shaker 90 degrees, shake, tap, and twist again, and so on until you have completed a full circle. Something like that anyway. I think this is supposed to help build a nice fluffy drink that pours easily out of the shaker. Who knows how well this really works? This whole routine could simply be a way to encourage people to shake the drink long enough to build a good head. I don’t see it can do much harm though, so I’m going to do it this way until I can be bothered making two drinks, one with and one without the ‘turn’, and seeing if there is any difference between them. After shaking I poured a little soda (1-2 oz) into a Collins glass (an undersized one is best since this drink has no ice), strained the drink in, and gave a gentle stir. Darcy at the Art of Drink suggests adding the drink to a soda filled glass rather than vice versa, and I think this make sense if you want a nice head. The final step is to drink the thing.

I found the drink unusual and very refreshing. It poured with a nice foamy texture and tasted almost too innocent to be a cocktail. Give this one to the neighborhood children and observe the fun! The texture is probably something I could improve on with practice, but I was still pleased with my first attempt. I don’t think there is too much to it provided you take a little care. The taste was perhaps a little too sour and with only the faintest hint of orange. Comparing the Gumbo Pages and The Art of Drink recipes, the Gumbo pages is much the sourer of the two, with less sugar and an extra ½ oz of citrus juice. I might try increasing the sugar and reducing the juice a little in future. When making this drink you will also need to play around with the quantity of orange flower water depending on its potency. With my brand (Al-Rabih from Lebanon) I figure a generous half teaspoon is called for. Finally, although the drink is called a ‘fizz’ I can’t see it turning out especially fizzy unless you dilute it with lot of soda water – surely a bad idea. I am thinking the fizz in the name indicates just enough gentle carbonation to cut the heaviness of the cream and egg white. The only way I can see of achieving more fizz than this would be if you used some kind of super carbonated soda water. Does such a thing even exist? It would be interesting to know though just how carbonated this drink it supposed to be. I have seen recipes that suggest shaking with soda water, but I would have thought you lose carbonation this way.

A friend in LA was chatting with me online as I was making the drink, waxing lyrical about Hendricks, and he distracted me enough that I finished my drink without photographing it. Never mind, his talk of Hendricks gave me the idea of making a rose flower water flavored variation of the Ramos Gin Fizz, so I decided I’d photograph that instead.

Incidentally my friend told me that he learned bartending at a school run by a guy who used to be Frank Sinatra’s bartender. The story goes that Frank Sinatra would drink Ramos Gin Fizzes on Sundays instead of his usual Jack Daniels. I guess that made the Ramos Gin Fizz an appropriate choice for my Sunday evening drink.

For the rose water flavored variation I repeated the above recipe but using Hendricks as the gin (as everyone must know Hendricks is flavored subtly with rose petals) and substituting rose water for the orange flower water. I guess this variation can be called a Rose Fizz – at least until someone comes up with a witty double entendre involving roses, dairy products, fizzy gin and cucumbers.

The rose water was from a company called English Provender and seemed stronger than the orange flower water I had just used. I only added a scant 1/4 teaspoon.

The Rose Fizz worked out well. I figure this would make a nice substitution if you like the Ramos Gin Fizz but fancy a change. I decided substituting grenadine for all or some of the sugar syrup would give the drink an attractive rosy hue so I tried making it this way on Monday morning. Hey, I had no work to do and I figured I needed to rush and make the thing before Mixology Monday began in the US. Of course after going online to post this thing I realized I was a week early. Never mind. The grenadine version tasted and looked good. I used 1 ½ teaspoons of grenadine plus 1 ½ teaspoons of simple syrup. Everything else was the same as in the recipe above.

Right now I’m also considering an almondy gin fizz with orgeat as the sweetener and a big splash of orange flower water – to stand up to the almond taste. Hmm. . . I’m not going to make this one straight away but will try it sometime.