Blackberry Lavender Shrub

My home bar is the best bar because of gifts like this from people like my sister-in-law who has always supported and continues to encourage my research and experiments as a bartender.

It must be in the DNA. My wife and her parents are similarly some of my all time best test subjects.

A Cocktail A Day: 4/27/18

Muddled pear, poteen from Enchanted Mountain Spirits Distillery, blood orange shrub, Aperol and Hellfire Shrub!

Apple Cider Maple Syrup

Photos from a batch of flavored simple syrup I made this week:

 

 
 

Labor Day Beach Drink

I had rum and fruit juice today at a bar overlooking the beach:

  

The Crab’s Claw is an oceanfront Caribbean restaurant in Atlantic Beach, North Carolina.

The drink was their Hurricane Isabella:

Myers Dark Rum, Malibu Coconut and Banana, Triple Sec with a Splash of Grenadine and Pineapple Juice. Always Shaken (things) up. Served on the Rocks.

Last year at this same place I had a cucumber-basil mojito, but today I was in the mood for a sweet and stereotypically touristy drink.

And I had to get a pic of their tiki fountain:

  

Cold-Brew Iced Tea

We have several loose-leaf teas at the restaurant where I work.

A few weeks back I tested a tea simple syrup and yesterday I moved on to making cold-brew and using it as a mixer:

 

Thirsty for more?
— A nice rundown on the basics of cold brew tea.
— Info about which teas to use, how much tea to use, steeping times and more.
— A taste-test of cold vs hot-brewed teas.
— This one’s a quick read about cold brew tea.
— A “how to” about cold brew coffee.
— And lastly, the “Definitive Guide To Cold Brew Tea.” It’s a pdf document.

In A Cocktail:

The tea in the picture above is a cold-brew peach tea I made. The only things I added to it were lemon juice and simple syrup, though bourbon would’ve made a nice addition to it as well. The possibilities are as endless as however you might use iced tea out of a bottle or even flavored tea vodkas — make an alcoholic Arnold Palmer with limoncello or swap in some other flavored liqueur to suit your tastes.

Pistachios, Popcorn, Booze & Batgirl

It’s Monday night and my work week starts tomorrow, but I’m busy thinking of all the stuff I did this past week. And it just occurred to me that I never really blogged about this past week at all… So, here’s my week of cocktails in quick recap!

On Wednesday I served pistachio shell-infused vodka as a Moscow Mule:

 

On Thursday I made a special daiquiri with buttered popcorn-infused rum and a coca-cola simple syrup:  
On Friday I used the Coca-Cola syrup in an Old Fashioned, a Mojito and this Kraken Daiquiri:  

And on Saturday, a customer took this great pic of a drink I made — the Borden Chase:

And on a sad note, also this week, actress Yvonne Craig died.Yvonne Craig played Batgirl in the 1962 Adam West Batman series. And for those who don’t know, I’m as serious a comic book fan as I am devoted to cocktails. I write a monthly column and co-host a weekly podcast.

I wish I would’ve gotten this creative and created something, but thankfully The Way Station in Brooklyn is remembering Yvonne Craig with this cocktail:

The above photo comes from The Way Station’s blog and isn’t something I shot a pic of, though I’d like to stop and try this drink in honor of Yvonne Craig.

July 4th, 2015 — Recap

Having the Fourth of July on a Saturday this year felt pretty great (as Saturdays are like Fridays for some of us in the service industry).

All-in-all, it was a great few days.

I drank beer.

I drank wine.

And I camped out:

  

In terms of liquor, I drank something pretty basic on Saturday that I’ve never had before— gin and ginger ale.

Sure, it’s summer and blah blah blah gin and tonic. But I surveyed what we had on hand and the gin and ginger ale is what I ended up with. I almost went with whiskey & ginger ale (and there was actually a lot on hand to choose from), but I really wanted gin for some reason — which is a spirit I like, sure. but never really reach for. And I think this summer is going to be a turningpoint for me in that regards.

After the basic gin and ginger ale, I cracked open a bottle of Sipp Ginger Blossom and made two cocktails — one with gin for me, and one with Captain Morgan for my mother-in-law:

  
This flavor of Sipp had the bite of ginger beer, but also had vanilla and lime notes which softened and sweetened the drink. I’m sure it would make a great Dark ‘n’ Stormy. And I was afraid that mixing it with Captain Morgan would be overkill on the vanilla, but I didn’t hear any complaints.

And, finally, I love this photo I took Sunday night:
  

I was drinking a Great Lakes Burning River and tried to get a group shot without getting out of my chair. What ended up happening was a photo burst of several pics that created a weird vortex around my father-in-law. I didn’t digitally enhance it to look that way or blur it on purpose at all. 

Customer Appreciation Post — The Blinker Cocktail

Here’s a photo of a cocktail I made for LochNessie last night:

 A classic Blinker cocktail:

This drink is one I have saved in my Highball app.

Highball is a really great app for saving cocktail recipes. It’s easy to use, it’s pretty minimalist and it allows you to save and share your recipe cards.

Here’s my recipe card for The Blinker:

 

When I made the Blinker last night, I didn’t stick exactly to the recipe.

I didn’t use grenadine for the drink, as the only grenadine on hand was the typical pre-packaged grenadine full of sugar and preservatives and whatnot.

Instead, I used a grenadine-style simple syrup comprised of Pom Pomegranate juice and my restaurant’s housemade simple syrup.

It’s not a full-blown grenadine, as it’s missing a few ingredients and flavor components, but it’s a start — and it’s a nice flavored simple syrup to have on hand.

Here’s a link with more info about Jeffrey Morgenthaler’s method.

Visualizing The Moscow Mule

A quick chalkboard drawing dedicated to The Moscow Mule:

  
 

And here are some links:
—Liquor.com’s “how to” video for The Moscow Mule
—Here’s the David Wondrich take: (Link)
—And Imbibe Magazine always has the prettiest pictures.

Coconut Drinks From Friday Night

By Friday afternoon I had finally finished experimenting with a homemade coconut mixer for cocktails — and these are a few of the drinks I made with it:

Blue Hawaiian:

This Blue Hawaiian came out a little more sea foam green than I hoped it would, but maybe that was because of the milky-white color of the coconut mixer.
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White Hawaiian:  This White Hawaiian was a mix of Myers Dark Rum, Kahlua, Stoli Choklat Kokonut, a little heavy cream and my homemade coconut mixer.
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Kraken Painkiller:  
I didn’t have the right rum for an appropriate Painkiller cocktail, so I substituted in Kraken.
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MAKING COCONUT MIXER
The mix I settled on was a simple syrup of sorts, but less than the usual 1:1 recipe. I made the syrup with four parts coconut water and one part coconut milk — and half the amount of sugar it usually takes to make a simple syrup. 

Then, once the syrup had cooled, I blended it with shredded coconut flakes and strained out the solids.

I did use sweetened coconut flakes, though I’m sure that using non-sweetened flakes would make a perfectly fine mixer too. I don’t have any set ratios as to what made the perfect final product. It was just more of a guessing game as I alternately sweetened and diluted the mix.