So this time round, Mixology Monday (hosted at Kaiser Penguin) is about wickedly potent drinks – i.e. drinks you cannot safely drink more than one of. I didn’t have to think too long about what drink to write about. Since picking up a copy of Ted Haigh’s Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails, the Early Fogcutter has been a big favorite of mine, and one too rarely enjoyed. That being the case, Mixology Monday gave me a great excuse to mix one up.

Recipe follows:

½ oz orgeat (Monin)

2 oz gold Cuban rum (Havana Club 3 anos)

1 oz pisco (Machu Pisco)

½ Plymouth Gin

1 oz orange juice

2 oz lemon juice

½ oz float of cream sherry (Canasta Cream – a blend of Oloroso and Pedro Ximenez)

Shake over ice and strain into an ice filled hurricane glass or similar.

I find the sherry float tends to sink. No big deal but if it bothers you a sweeter sherry might help matters.

This recipe strikes me as a bit of an old school drink, with its generous quantities and calls for the use of numerous old-timey and slightly oddball bottles. The recipe is far better than any subsequent Fogcutter I have come across. The Tony Ramos Fogcutter, featured on the facing page in Ted Haigh’s book, does not remotely compare.

Yep, this is yet another great pisco drink. I honestly do not work for a pisco company. I just think pisco is sorely underrated. I like eau de vie generally as a cocktail ingredient. Since pisco has a lot of eau de vie characteristics I like pisco too. The pisco does wonderful things in this drink, complementing the orgeat and the sherry float, and adding some highly spirituous fruitiness that makes the rum merely another layer rather than the whole story.

The gin is another genius addition. Gin is an urbane spirit not normally associated with tropical drinks, yet used judiciously it helps restore the exoticism of the tropics to the jaded 21^st Century palette. No really, it does.

I have read claims that gin featured in the original Cuba Libre, so put on your best lab coat and perform this experiment. Toss a ½ ounce of gin into your next Cuba Libre, not forgetting to squeeze or muddle some lime in there too. Drink the resultant concoction. Regardless of the historical pedigree of the gin-spiked Cuba Libre, after trying one you are more likely to find yourself reaching for a second than worrying about the drinking habits of Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders*. A gin-spiked Cuba Libre is delicious. Small quantities of gin complement rum beautifully, adding complexity without causing the least disturbance. This early Fogcutter recipe is a great example.

Delicious! . . . as the Chinese say. Now do I dare to make a second?

* Just in case anyone does not know, the Rough Riders (a voluntary military unit sent by the United States to assist in the Cuban War of Independence) are alleged to have invented the Cuba Libre during their sojourn on Cuba. I am not convinced this story holds much weight, but there is no doubting it is often repeated. The main problem with the story is that the Rough Riders left Cuba in 1898, but Coca Cola did not become available in Cuba until 1900. Hmm. . .

Recipe for a Kingston Cocktail

1 ½ oz Jamaican Rum (Appletons Estate)

½ oz Kummel (Wolfschmidt)

½ oz orange juice

1 dash pimento dram (I used a little over half a teaspoon of my homemade stuff – just to make sure it didn’t get lost)

Harry Craddock reckons that the mixture of Kummel and Pimento Dram is what makes the drink special. There just may be something in it. I was surprised by how strongly the allspice came through. Obviously the Kummel dominates, but the pimento dram contributes a clear spicy undercurrent that mixes nicely with the rum and caraway.

CockailDB lists several variations of this drink, which also appears as a Lupe Velez, a Mexicano, and a Surprised Cocktail. There are slight differences among them but the principle remains the same. The Lupe Velez and Mexicano use light rum instead of Jamaican rum, with the former increasing the pimento dram to ¼ oz while the latter keeps the pimento dram at just a dash but ups the kummel and orange juice. The Surprised Cocktail is identical to the Kingston. I wouldn’t mind trying the Lupe Velez sometime, just to see what the extra pimento dram does.

The Kingston must have been popular at some stage to pick up some many different names and variations. Good stuff fora drink using such a counter intuitive combination of ingredients.

Incognito

6 parts Lillet

3 parts Cognac

1 part apricot brandy

1 dash Peychauld’s Bitters

Stir over ice and strain into a cocktail glass.

This is excellent! It is a nice smooth drink that should show off a good apricot brandy very well. It is also a nice drink for showing off Lillet. As a fruity and summery aperitif wine Lillet makes a great partner to a flavor like apricot. Lillet being slightly bitter means you have to pick the apricot flavor out in this drink, but not every apricot brandy drink should taste assertively of apricots. The Cognac adds some backbone and richness, and the Peychaud’s Bitters give complexity without the heavy spicy notes of something like Angostura. Not being an especially strong drink it is also suitable for the oversized cocktail glasses that are favored these days. My only reservation is that since the formula of Lillet changed in the 1980s to become less bitter, this drink must taste a little different to how it was intended.

Culross Cocktail

1 ½ oz gold rum (I used Cruzan Estate)

½ oz Lillet

¼ oz lime juice

¼ oz apricot brandy

Shake over ice and strain into a cocktail glass.

This drink has tons of potential. It was a tad light bodied and watery, but I colder ice and a different rum might improve that. Maybe the proportions should also be reworked a little. There are several versions of this drink. This drink deserves to be looked at further.

Peck

1 ½ oz gin

½ oz dry vermouth

½ oz apricot brandy

Stir over ice and strain into a cocktail glass.

This is a simple but very tasty drink. There is a similar drink that uses Crème de Cassis in place of the apricot brandy. I think it is called a Parisien or something similar. Anyway, this one uses the same principle but with a different liqueur.

Maidens Prayer Variation

¾ oz gin

¾ oz Lillet

½ oz calvados

½ oz apricot brandy

Stir over ice and strain into a cocktail glass.

The addition of calvados makes this one very interesting. However, as it stands I think it comes across as a little confused. Some tweaking around with the proportions might really improve it. It could deserve a second look some time.

Mayfair Cocktail

1 1/2 oz gin

1/2 oz orange juice

1/2 oz apricot brandy

1 dash of pimento dram

optional pinch of cloves (I didn’t bother – but in retrospect I should probably have added a dash of Angostura Bitters since that has a clove taste)

Shake with ice and strain into a glass.

I was excited about this one. It isn’t often I get a chance to break out my homemade pimento dram. Sadly it didn’t do much for me. The apricot brandy and orange juice combination is just not exciting. This might work better with a tarter citrus juice.

Charlie Lindbergh

1 ¼ oz gin

1 oz Lillet

¼ oz apricot brandy

1 dash orange bitters

Stir over ice and strain into a glass.

Tasty but average.

Prohibition

1 oz gin

1 oz Lillet

¼ oz orange juice

¼ oz apricot brandy

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

Given the excellent name and the list of ingredients I had been expecting to enjoy this one. Unfortunately it was a bit of a let down. It looks good on paper but somehow the orange juice-apricot-Lillet combination does not work very well. Orange juice with Lillet tastes slightly insipid.

Barbara East Cocktail

1 oz bourbon

¾ oz grapefruit juice

½ oz apricot brandy

¼ tsp sugar (I left this out)

Shake over ice and strain into a cocktail glass.

This was pleasant enough but not especially exciting.

Shrapnel

1 ¼ oz bourbon

½ oz sweet vermouth

½ oz dry vermouth

¼ oz apricot brandy

Stir over ice, strain into a cocktail glass, and garnish with an orange slice.

This is really just an apricot accented Manhattan. Neither unpleasant nor very exciting.

You might be wondering what calvados has to do with this Mixology Monday’s orange theme, but a closer look at this ‘calvados’ drink reveals the name to be something of a misnomer. Just a third of the drink is calvados, with the remainder comprised entirely of things orangey.

Predictably, there is orange juice. There is also a generous measure of Cointreau adding its own sweetly concentrated orange perfume. No surprises so far. The presence of a whopping three quarters of an ounce of orange bitters is somewhat unexpected though. That’s right. The orange stuff that these days is lucky to be added to cocktails as a drip here or a drop here, the dusty bottle that long ago vanished from everyone’s Martinis, comprises 1/4 of the liquor in this drink. On an orange themed day a drink like this demands a bit of attention.

I had long ago noticed recipe for a drink called a Bluejacket on Ted Haigh’s cocktailDB site. That drink called for two parts gin, one part Curacao, and one part orange bitters. Reading that recipe I assumed it meant the potable orange bitters from Holland, which is said to be more a liqueur than a cocktail bitters. A drink containing one fourth orange bitters just didn’t seem credible otherwise. I ignored it and browsed on until I found something else.

However, on coming across the Calvados Cocktail in Ted’s Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails I realized there was a bit more to this ‘using orange bitters as a significant cocktail ingredient, not just as a flavor’ thing. Besides the fact that Ted’s judgment on these things is pretty good, I recently happened to have made a couple of Angostura Bitters heavy drinks, namely the Alamagoozlum Cocktail and an Angostura Fizz. By ‘bitters heavy’ I means that the bitters is measured in fractions of an ounce rather than the usual drops or dashes. I had heard of Angostura Bitters being drunk during Prohibition owing to the fact that it had a high alcohol content and remained legally available. I guess I’d imagined people choking back vile Angostura Bitters flavored concoctions out of desperation. The thing was, when I made these Angostura heavy cocktails they were good. If Angostura Bitters, why not orange biters?

The Calvados Cocktail is as follows:

1 part calvados

1 part orange juice

½ part Cointreau

½ part orange bitters (I used Fees because I figured its relatively mild flavor would work well in a recipe calling for such a large dose)

Shake over ice and strain into a cocktail glass. Ted Haigh notes you might like to consider reducing the quantity of bitters used depending on brand. I took the plunge and added the full measure. Using Fees I think it tastes fine like this, but Fees is fairly mild and I like bitter tastes. Depending on your brand and tolerance for bitterness you might want to cut back to start with. You can always add more later if you think the drink needs it.

This is a spectacular drink. Surprisingly it retains its calvados character despite all the orange bitters. Of course it goes without saying that the drink is also massively and bitterly orangey. I guess you could compare it with the Negroni, but it is less sweet, less herbal, and perhaps more refreshing. Making it with Fees orange bitters there is a strong background taste of some Indian spice that I can’t seem to name right now. With a different brand of bitters I’m sure the flavor would be radically different – and quite possibly not very pleasant. Using Fees though this is a very unusual and tasty drink.

If you have Fees orange bitters handy you definitely owe it to yourself to give this one a try. If you use some other brand then a little experimentation could yield pleasant results.

I saw some kummel the other week. I had only drunk kummel once before (in the since disappeared Berlin restaurant on Mt Eden Rd. in Auckland) but its herbal caraway taste left a strong impression. Since getting into aquavit, also traditionally flavored with caraway, over Christmas I had been wanting to give kummel another try. So I bought a bottle with vague plans of finding an aquavit and kummel drink to use it in.

Before finding my aquavit and kummel drink though I happened upon a copy of Ted Haigh’s Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails. It’s a great book and I was pleased to see it contains a couple of drinks that I had found in Ted Haigh’s online cocktail database and enjoyed but never seen written up (e.g. the Blackthorn and the Park Avenue). I will try out some more of the other recipes later, but decided to start with this kummel drink.

The Vowel Cocktail

1 oz scotch

1 oz sweet vermouth

½ oz orange juice

1 ½ oz kummel

1-2 dashes Angostura Bitters

Shake over ice and strain into a cocktail glass.

This is an excellent drink with just the kind of taste I was imagining in a kummel cocktail. Unusually for a drink with an ounce each of scotch and vermouth, neither of these powerful tastes comes through particularly strong. Instead the kummel dominates with its heavy caraway scent. I wouldn’t call it one dimensional though. There is still a good balance, with the caraway doing interesting things as it mixes with the smoky scotch and herbal vermouth. It is slightly on the sweet side, but the strong flavors make this not too much of a problem.

Tasting this makes me think kummel would mix interestingly with Genever (though perhaps in smaller quantities). Genever-based Old Fashioneds or Manhattans could be an interesting model for experimentation, perhaps using the anise flavors of Peychaud’s bitters.

A couple of nights ago I dropped into the recently opened Henry’s Brewpub in Shanghai. The beer there is US style. It is nothing like the English beer brewed at Galbraiths in Auckland, but it isn’t too bad. The prices are also reasonable, only 30 RMB a glass, compared to at least twice that for the Bavarian wheat beers at the Shanghai Paulaner.

My timing was excellent, for two reasons. First, I arrived to meet a friend at exactly 7 pm, and found that they were offering free beer for the next hour. Naturally I took advantage of this unexpected opportunity. Second, there was the most stunning looking Sri Lankan girl working behind the bar, on her first night in the place, and as it turned out probably her last.

The beer was very good. US style micro-brews aren’t exactly my thing, but there is no denying that the beer at Henrys is good. I had a pale ale, a honey brown ale, and then more of the pale ale. Me and my friend had a couple of plates of ribs, and he chatted about his messy personal life. I spent most of the conversation talking about the virtues of monogamy, something he needed a dose of. I was the very voice of temperance and self-control, a lone voice raging in defense of true love and straight dealing. While not deliberate there was something vaguely fortuitous about all this. Since the bar was virtually empty (Henry’s has only just opened and even free beer doesn’t seem to be pulling the crowds in just yet) the Sri Lankan barmaid was listening to most of our conversation. We must have sounded something like a good cop bad cop routine, but I was not just any good cop, I was the cop who was going to single handedly right every wrong in the world.

Eventually the barmaid joined in the conversation. We stopped talking about my friend’s situation and moved on to other things. It turned out that the barmaid was from Sweden. She had been born in Sri Lanka but adopted by a Swedish family. Naturally I asked her where I could find aquavit or Swedish punsch in Shanghai. To my surprise she said I would definitely find aquavit in Ikea. She didn’t know anything about Swedish punsch, which perhaps isn’t common even in Sweden. I had been to the little deli in Ikea looking for interesting things before and never seen any aquavit, but she sounded very certain. I thought about asking her about Sri Lankan arrack, but figured I would sound a bit weird if I asked too many questions about hard to find drinks, and in any case she had only been back to Sri Lanka once since leaving as a child so what would she know about arrack? The barmaid was having second thoughts about working in Henrys and probably wouldn’t be there again, so I was lucky to make her acquaintance and find a source of aquavit.

The next day I headed down to Ikea. She was quite right, they had aquavit. I picked up a 500ml bottle of OP Anderson Fine Old Aquavit, plus a box containing a dozen miniatures of different brands.

The barmaid had mentioned that Aquavit was a Christmas drink in Sweden. In fact the reason she was so certain Ikea had the stuff was because her father had been there recently to buy some for Christmas. I decided to get to work and make a Christmas cocktail with the stuff.

Aquavit is more or less a herbal flavored vodka. That makes Aquavit not unlike gin, though caraway rather than juniper is the traditional focus of the botanicals. Also, Aquavit is sometimes aged, something rare for vodka and gin. The brand I bought had a slightly golden hue, whether from caramel or cask storage I’m not sure. OP Anderson tastes of caraway and anise, but other brands include other ingredients – for example one of my miniatures is flavored with dill. The dill makes sense since the Swedes sometimes drink aquavit with smoked salmon and other fish.

After drinking a glass of the stuff straight I decided the caraway flavors would work well with Galliano and orange juice. Therefore I decided to simply make a Harvey Wallbanger, but substituting Aquavit for the vodka. It isn’t the most creative idea in the world but I thought it would work. Since the Harvey Wallbanger was named after a surfer who used to sling his surfboard up against the wall before walking into a beachside bar at the end of a day’s surfing, this drink is called Frozen Surf – imagine a despondent surfer, wearing colorful Hawaiian shorts, standing on a desolate Swedish beach around Christmas.

Frozen Surf

1.5 oz Aquavit

3 oz orange juice

1/4 oz Galliano

Build in a rocks glass, floating the Galliano on top.

You can adjust the quantity of Galliano to taste. Personally I like to keep the ratio of Galliano down so the Aquavit has a chance to shine.

This drink is crisper and more interesting than the Harvey Wallbanger. The caraway adds an extra dimension, the herbal notes in the aquavit blend with the Galliano, and the orange juice makes it all rather refreshing. Mixing the drink strong (only two parts orange to one part Aquiavit) and going easy on the Galliano stops the drink from being too sweet.

Merry Christmas!