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: (more…)

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. (more…)

So today marks a leap year meaning we get that rarest of experiences – February the 29^th. This may not seem hugely exciting. However, back in the 1920s, when Harry Craddock was mixing cocktails at the Savoy, leap year celebrations were quite the thing. Harry Craddock even created the Leap Year Cocktail to mark the 1928 celebrations at the Savoy. The Leap Year Cocktail isn’t a bad drink either, being sort of a lightweight cousin to the Burnt Fuselage. (more…)

Continuing with kummel, this drink is featured on the side of the Fees Peach Bitters. Kummel with peach bitters. . . How is that for obscure? But that’s not all. Just when things are threatening to get a bit high brow, in goes a big dose of crème de menthe. I have nothing against crème de menthe, but it isn’t the most subtle or complex taste, and it tends to make rather one dimensional drinks. Still, I’ve said similar things about kummel being a very assertive flavor. So lets see how kummel goes pitted against crème de menthe. . .

There are a few different recipes around for this one. (more…)

In my quest for more Kummel drinks I came across this one. I picked it out because the recipe looked interesting and unpredictable. What was a caraway, vermouth, whiskey and bitters flavored sour going to taste like?

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I never got around to experimenting with the Kummel I bought a few months back. I think I got a couple of decent drinks out of my recent exploration of apricot brandy so I figure I will try and do the same with Kummel over the next few days. To kick things off here is a slightly unusual Kummel drink from the Savoy. This one drags Kummel away from Northern Europe to holiday in sunny Jamaica, where it meets fun ingredients like Pimento Dram liqueur and Jamaican rum.

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I decided to whip up a quick something using blackberry brandy and settled on the Allegheny. It was the first recipe to come up on CocktailDB when I searched for blackberry brandy and lemon juice. Bourbon and dry vermouth looked like they would do nicely to fill out the drink, and a dash of bitters promised to spice things up a little.

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I tried out a range of apricot brandy drinks while selecting my entry for the recent Raiders of the Lost Cocktail. The following gives a summary of what I tried, ranked not very scientifically from best to worst. (more…)

I considered writing the Charlie Chaplin up for Raiders of the Lost Cocktail. I decided not to in the end though. Partly I wanted to write up a drink that combined Lillet with apricot brandy, and partly I was not sure if the Charlie Chaplin qualifies as being ‘lost’. I have occasionally seen the Charlie Chaplin on bar menus. Still, the name of the drink is rather old worldly, as is the use of sloe gin, so I won’t argue with anyone who wants to label it a lost drink.

The one bar where I have drunk a Charlie Chaplin was a little Japanese place in Shanghai. This time the bar in question was not Constellation, but rather the little bar inside the Garcon Chinois restaurant on Hengshan Rd. That bar is much smaller than Constellation, and does not have nearly the same range of spirits, but the cocktails used to be very carefully and expertly made by a Japanese woman who knew exactly what she was doing. (more…)

The theme for this Mixology Monday, hosted at Jimmy’s Cocktail Hour is ‘variations’. For once I haven’t had to think about what to throw together. This month’s theme perfectly fits something I’ve been meaning to write about for a while now, namely a very straightforward and versatile variation of a Gin and Tonic. (more…)