Improved Gin Cocktail

The Improved Gin Cocktail is probably the best place to start appreciating the flavor of Genever in cocktails. The basic Gin Cocktail is gin, sugar and bitters. Garnish that with a citrus twist and you have a Fancy Gin Cocktail. Splash some liqueur into that and you have yourself an Improved Gin Cocktail. The Improved Gin Cocktail is the best of the bunch taste-wise, though very intense and heavy genevers (I am thinking Korenwijn style products) might be better appreciated in the more minimalist Fancy Gin Cocktail. Forget about the basic Gin Cocktail unless you find yourself with Genever on hand but no citrus.

Recipe:

2 oz Genever (Bols Oude – use an Oude if at all possible)

1 tsp gomme syrup (try and use real gomme syrup – instructions on making it here)

1-2 tsp liqueur (triple sec, curacao, maraschino or absinthe are all traditional choices)

a couple of dashes of bitters (Fees Whiskey Barrel Aged, Peychaud’s and Angostura are all worthy choices)

Build over ice in a rocks glass, or serve it up if you like. Garnish by squeezing the oils from a citrus twist over the drink, then drop the twist in.

There is huge potential for experimentation with the liqueurs and bitters. While not traditional, Drambuie is an interesting choice that brings out the malt character of the gin. Drambuie probably works best in partnership with another liqueur though, perhaps triple sec. Absinthe also works nicely, as do the anise notes of Peychaud’s. The version pictured above contains Drambuie, Peychaud’s Bitters and a little Absinthe Bitters (a sort of concentrated Absinthe made by the people who make Henri Bardouin pastis).

Martinez

The next drink is not strictly speaking a Genever drink. The Martinez was first mixed with Old Tom (a sort of hybrid gin sitting somewhere between Genever and London Dry). However, in the absence of Old Tom, Genever probably makes a more authentic substitute than London dry. The drink is said to be the ancestor of the modern Martini, and the design is something like a sweetened and reversed Martini – with sweet vermouth rather than dry, and more vermouth than spirit.

Recipe:

2 oz Italian vermouth

1 oz Genever (either Oude or Jonge should do)

1 tsp maraschino

1-2 dashes aromatic bitters (the cinnamon accented Fees Brothers Whiskey Barrel Aged is a good choice)

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

The recipe looks a bit odd, but the result is a meditative drink, suitable for winter evenings. Nineteenth Century drinkers obviously were not afraid of vermouth.

Gin Daisy

These days a Tom Collins is made with London Dry Gin. However, in the 19^th Century the drink was made with Old Tom or Genever. Making a Genever-based Tom Collins is a simple matter that hardly requires any advice – just change the base spirit and you’re done. However, the Nineteenth Century also saw Genever used in other highball type drinks. The Gin Daisy is an interesting example. There is something almost Tiki-esque about the old fashioned flavorings.

Recipe:

2 oz Genever

2 tsp orgeat (Monin)

2 tsp Maraschino (Maraska)

½ oz lemon juice (juice of ½ a lemon)

Shake over ice, strain into a glass (I used a small old fashioned glass), and top up with soda water. For some reason I went very easy on the soda in this one, not wanting to dilute drink too much.

This is vaguely reminiscent of a Singapore Sling. The maraschino obviously supplies the cherry, while the soft and malty Genever boosts the fruity feel, and the orgeat adds a hint of Tiki. Tasty and very different. I like orgeat in cocktails.

Gin Fix

Drinkers in the UK will no doubt know the Bramble. In fact the Bramble is simply an updated Gin Fix. The original Gin Fix was concocted with Genever as described below.

2 oz Genever (Bols Oude)

¼ oz lemon juice (juice of ¼ lemon)

1 tsp simple syrup (or gomme syrup if available)

1 tsp raspberry syrup

Fill a glass with shaved ice – I substituted crushed ice. Build the drink over ice and stir thoroughly. Top up with more ice and garnish with seasonal berries – raspberries being the obvious choice. Raspberries being out of season meant I had to slum it with strawberries.

The raspberry syrup and Genever combination is most pleasant. The malty notes of the Genever add complexity and depth to a simple drink. It is worth a look if you want a summery take on Genever. The use of crushed ice means you should end up with a pleasantly frosted glass, adding to the summery feel. Obviously there is lots of potential for playing with different syrups, or substituting a berry liqueur as is done in the modern Bramble. You could even muddle some fruit into the drink, which would pretty much give you a Genever Bramble.

Gin and Milk

I posted on this one earlier – link here.  However, back in those days I did not have Genever.  Gin and Milk is MUCH better with an Oude Genever than with London Dry.  The character changes completely.  Rather than an oddball combination it becomes an intuitive one, with the maltiness of the Genever giving something of a ‘malted milk’ effect. There is no doubt that Gin and Milk was first made with Genever, so make the effort and try it the way it was intended to be.

In my original post on this drink I suggested a dash of orgeat.   When using Genever (especially an Oude) I am not so sure this is a good idea.  There is plenty of flavor happening already and little need to round things out with extras.  Of course if you like the orgeat then go ahead.  The bitters are still a nice touch.

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. . .

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.

I dropped into Trader Vic’s recently opened Shanghai restaurant last night for a Shanghai Expat (www.shanghaiexpat.com) hosted cocktail party. The service at Trader Vics is five star, the Polynesian décor takes you a world away from the grime and grind of Shanghai, and the food and drinks are not half bad. However, you can’t help thinking the cocktails could be better. The drinks are by no means bad, but when patronizing the joint that invented the Mai Tai it is depressing to drink a Mai Tai that is merely a shadow of what it could be.

Unlike most places, Trader Vic’s make Mai Tais more or less to the original Victor Bergaron recipe. That is, they don’t add any fruit juices other than lime, they use freshly squeezed juices, they use orgeat rather than almond liqueur, they don’t add strange liqueurs like apricot brandy, and their drink is a rum-focused sweet-and-sour drink rather than a confused tropical punch with no rum taste. In short, they make a pretty good Mai Tai. Sadly they don’t use good rum.

The other disappointing thing is that Trader Vics do not use what I would consider a good quality mint. The mint they use is the mild and herbaceous mint with soft leaves common around Shanghai. This mint doesn’t do a lot to the taste of a drink, or anything else for that matter. More intense mint with stiffer leaves is sometimes available in Shanghai, just a littler harder to find. I think the stuff with stiffer leaves is peppermint, and maybe that is not the ideal mint to use. In any case it seems better to me than mint with no real flavor.

The Mai Tai was originally concocted with Wray Nephew 17 year old Jamaican rum. As his chain of restaurants expanded and stocks of the Wray Nephew 17 year old became depleted and increasingly expensive, Victor Bergaron began using lesser rums. In particular he began mixing lesser Jamaican rums with the very dry Martinique rums to obtain a similar complexity to the original Wray Nephew product. Unfortunately in Trader Vic’s these days they use standard Meyer’s rum plus a house Mai Tai mix. I guess there is some aged rum in the Mai Tai mix, but in any case the result is underwhelming.

Anyway, after the Trader Vic’s experience last night I thought I’d make my own Mai Tai today. Since aged Jamaican is unavailable in Shanghai I used a mixture of aged Cuban rum and Martinique rum. I found Marie Brizard Orange Triple Sec the other day, so that was another reason for trying the drink again. Previously I’ve only been able to find cheap Bols triple sec or Cointreau. Cointreau is nice, but the taste and alcohol content may be a little too intense to make it a perfect triple sec substitute.

My Mai Tai

1 oz Havana Club 7 Anos

1 oz St. James Amber

1 oz fresh squeezed lime juice

1/2 oz Marie Brizard Orange Curacao

1/4 oz Monin Orgeat (Monin is quite intense so I reduced slightly from the 1/2 oz recommended in a lot of recipes)

1/4 oz simple sugar syrup

Shake over crushed ice and serve in a double rocks glass, putting one of the spent lime shells in the drink. Garnish with some nice quality mint if you have it. I didn’t have mint handy so used a pineapple spear with maraschino cherry.

The version makes a nice drink. The rum taste could be stronger, but the complexity is there. The nutty flavors of the Martinique rum go well with the orgeat. In the absence of a decent Jamaican rum Havana Club works OK. The citrus flavors seem far more of a background note using the Marie Brizard Curacao compared to Cointreau. I could be wrong though since it has been at least six months since I made this with Cointreau. If the drink has any weakness it could be that the Orgeat comes through a bit strong. Perhaps some more adjusting is in order.

“Again Kumuhana looked carefully about him, and up into the monkey- pod boughs as if to apprehend a lurking listener. His lips were very dry. With his tongue he moistened them repeatedly. Twice he essayed to speak, but was inarticulately husky. And finally, with bowed head, he whispered, so low and solemnly that Hardman Pool bent his own head to hear: “No.”

Pool clapped his hands, and the little maid ran out of the house to him in tremulous, fluttery haste.

“Bring a milk and gin for old Kumuhana, here,” Pool commanded; and, to Kumuhana: “Now tell me the whole story.”

“Wait,” was the answer. “Wait till the little wahine has come and gone.”

And when the maid was gone, and the gin and milk had travelled the way predestined of gin and milk when mixed together, Hardman Pool waited without further urge for the story. Kumuhana pressed his hand to his chest and coughed hollowly at intervals, bidding for encouragement; but in the end, of himself, spoke out. . .”

Milk is not the first thing you associate with gin, and gin and milk is not the first thing you associate with Waikiki. Gin and milk was a popular concoction in the 19^th Century though, and Jack London made it Hardman Pool’s drink of choice in his Hawaiian short story The Bones of Kahekili (1919). I think I also remember hearing somewhere that the Queen Mother used to drink gin and milk. To say that gin and milk is no longer popular as it was would be an understatement, but with endorsements from Jack London and the Queen Mum I think everybody owes it to themselves to give it a try.

I made a passing mention of warm gin in last month’s post on the Sleigh Flip (a flip involving hot beer, rum and egg). In that post I suggested that warm gin sounded like a very bad idea. After writing that though I started thinking that warm gin might be worth a try. Gin and milk seemed a good combination for a warm gin drink, and also had the interest factor being something I had heard about but never tried.

I am sure that gin and milk would taste fine on the rocks, and the drink probably was often drunk that way. However, I doubt Hardman Pool’s gin and milk included ice. The Bones of Kahekili is set on a Hawaiian cattle ranch in the year 1880, a place and time when ice may not necessarily have been available. I am guessing that Hardman Pool’s gin and milk was simply mixed at room temperature. Here in Shanghai though it is freezing right now, and moreover this month’s Mixology Monday is looking at winter warmers, so warm gin and milk seems just the thing. Back when gin and milk was popular I expect it was sometimes served warm. Before the introduction of electric refrigeration it would have been much easier to warm drinks in winter than to cool them in summer.

To make a basic gin and milk is very simple. Pour a measure of gin into a glass and top up with three or four measures of milk. Full fat milk is best for this drink. Sweeten with sugar if you want. You can adjust the proportions according to taste, but if you go too light on the milk the mixture may curdle.

I decided to adjust the recipe a little, as follows:

1 oz gin (ideally use an Oude style Genever – read more here and here)

4 oz hot milk (ideally full fat)

1 teaspoon orgeat

1-2 dashes Angostura Bitters

Mix ingredients together in a glass. For a truly hot drink microwave for a few seconds after mixing. Send the way predestined of gin and milk when mixed together.

Hot gin and milk tastes much better than it sounds. Hot gin is sharper, less warming, and less rich tasting than rum, whiskey or brandy – the popular spirits used in toddies and other warm drinks. Less cloying than more traditional hot drink ingredients, gin makes an interesting change. Mixing hot gin with milk makes the sharpness manageable and results in a pleasantly approachable concoction. The orgeat adds a type of sweetness that complements both the milk and the gin. Leaving the bitters out would not hurt too much, but I think they give a little extra depth.

Hot gin and milk makes a pleasant winter drink. It is warming, nourishing, totally unfashionable, and even comes with a story attached!

““I have talked long, O Kanaka Oolea. There is not the enduring moistness in my mouth that was when I was young. It seems that afresh upon me is the thirst that was mine when tormented by the visioned tongue of the harpooner. The gin and milk is very good, O Kanaka Oolea, for a tongue that is like the harpooner’s.”

A shadow of a smile flickered across Pool’s face. He clapped his hands, and the little maid came running.

“Bring one glass of gin and milk for old Kumuhana,” commanded Hardman Pool.”