A Cocktail A Day: 4/29/18

Peach brandy, blood orange amaro, orange bitters, lemon juice & chili-lime hot sauce (as well as rye whiskey, but could be tequila.) Avocado, cilantro & salt to garnish.

Drinks At Brazill’s

Last night I had dinner and drinks at Brazill’s on Main in Westfield, N.Y.

It was my second time at the restaurant, and it was as great an experience as my first visit — if not better.

I had a rye Manhattan to start:

I also had a bourbon & cider drink:

Even though it’s within Chautauqua County, Brazill’s is a bit of a hike from Jamestown — and I don’t get there often enough because the place is open the same hours as when I’m usually working at my restaurant.

Last night was a bit of a surprise night off though, and I tried to make the most of it.

Happy Birthday, Lillian Gish!

STARS AND SPIRITS

Cocktail: The “8 East 83rd” Cocktail
Inspiration: Actress Lillian Gish
Base Ingredient: Rye Whiskey
Why today? Gish was born Oct. 14, 1893.
Origin: Nicholas Horton — Bar Noir, Beverly Hills
Cocktail Groupings: Old Hollywood, Actresses & Calendar Cocktails

Once upon a time the actress Lillian Gish was on par with the likes of Mary Pickford.

Today is the actress’s birthday. She was born Oct . 14, 1893.

She’s far from forgotten today, but in terms of a cocktail legacy there’s no actual drink named after Lillian Gish.

However, a California bartender did create something in 2012 as an homage to the actress — and the drink received a write-up in The LA Times. I’ve copied the recipe below comes from that newspaper article:

The “8 East 83rd” Cocktail
An homage to Lillian Gish

By Nicholas Horton
Bar Noir, Beverly Hills

INGREDIENTS
•1 1/2 ounces rye whiskey
•1 ounce simple syrup
•1/4 ounce fresh lemon juice
•2 1/2 ounces Earl Grey tea

PREPARATION
Mix ingredients in a shaker and serve on the rocks in a tea pot.

Thirsty for more?
There are dozens of cocktails named after actors and actresses, and I’ve written about a few of them here:
•Charlie Chaplain — (Link)
•Clara Bow — Link)
•Fay Wray — (Link)
•Ginger Rogers — (Link)
•Lauren Bacall — (Link)
•Mary Astor — (Link)
•Mary Pickford — (Link)

National Whiskey Sour Day

I read on Good Spirits News that today is National Whiskey Sour Day!

As with all these random-seeming drink holidays, I won’t put up too much fuss or question its origin — as any reason to celebrate a cocktail is reason enough!

Whiskey Sour

About This Cocktail:

For my Whiskey Sour pictured above, I used Woodford Reserve:

Ingredients:

•2 oz rye or bourbon or other whiskey of preference. I actually used 2 oz of Woodford Reserve bourbon, which has a lot of rye in its mash bill.
•.5 oz simple syrup
•.5 oz fresh lemon juice
Preparation:

Shake all ingredients over ice and strain into a rocks glass over fresh ice.

Some recipes for the Whiskey Sour cocktail call for an egg white, as a lot of old sours recipes do… But a lot of recipes these days list egg white as “optional.” I didn’t use egg white in the drink pictured above, but you’ll find it listed in some of the recipes I linked to in this post.

  

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.

Notes From The Farm To Table

Last night I tended bar at the Athenaeum’s Farm-To-Table Dinner.

Although I was tending bar, I was only making three specialty cocktails — all from a limited menu of drinks which used locally-sourced ingredients:

  
The meal was prepared by Chef Travis Bensink of the Athenaeum Hotel’s Heirloom Restaurant and Chef Julie Scheira of Forte in Jamestown.

I feel really lucky today to have been a part of the event yesterday. I learned a lot and met a lot of great people. The chefs helped me throughout the process, from the first brain-storming sessions to the last-minute details of setting up. My wife was super supportive and helped me throughout the several hours of set-up yesterday afternoon.

There are a lot of great local businesses which specialize in certain food items, and it was nice to see the spotlight on them. For myself, I was just really happy to have a chance to challenge myself and work within a different set of parameters doing stuff that’s a little atypical of traditional bar service.

But enough blathering. Here are a few more photos from the event:

  
One of the courses came paired with a beer from Five and 20 Spirits & Brewery:

  

In addition to the theee cocktails I was making before the dinner, I did create a cocktail to pair with the chicken & waffles course.

I’ve got to give a big thanks to the Southern Tier Brewing Company for giving us a firkin of their one-off kettle sour beer, which used all local ingredients.

The beer was so tart and funky that I wanted to use it in a rum sour, which I made with blackstrap rum, lemon juice, lime juice, falernum syrup, simple syrup and, of course, a hefty pour of the kettle sour beer from Southern Tier Brewing Company.

Prepping Special Cocktails

Prepping cocktail garnishes for the Farm-To-Table dinner tonight at Chautauqua Institution: 

The pre-dinner menu:

• The Chautauqua Sparkler — Strawberry & jalapeno infused tequila with strawberry simple syrup, soda water and fresh lemonade.
• Rhubarb Sonic — Rhubarb infused locally-made vodka topped with soda & tonic and finished with The Bitter Truth’s Grapefruit Bitters.
• The Duck Hunter — A mint julep made with smoked simple syrup and a duck fat infused locally-made rye whiskey.

And paired with the third course:

• Kettle Sour Cocktail — A beer cocktail with blackstrap rum, lemon juice, lime juice, falernum syrup, simple syrup and a kettle sour beer from Southern Tier Brewing Company.

Antique Shopping In Salamanca

Another weekend come-and-gone, and another Sunday out at antique shops.

Today my wife and I were at the Antiques Mall in Salamanca, N.Y.

I always find something to buy at this location, like this bitters bottle from a few years back.

And while I did score a couple of cocktail books today, this photo post is more about what I didn’t buy:

  
Pictured above is a nice-looking “traveling bartender” set I saw today in Salamanca. It’s a neat set, but I’ve got a really good one that’s a little older than this — which I’ll have to feature in a post some day.

 

This rye whiskey jug was selling for $79 at the Antiques Mall.

And lastly, a zodiac-themed ice bowl with a strainer and bar spoon:

  

Five & 20 Spirits

Today my wife and I were back out at antique shops and wineries.

Seeing a pattern in these posts?

While our day trip didn’t net me another vintage cocktail book, I did get a tour of Mazza Winery’s Five & 20 Spirits:

  

Five & 20 Spirits is located at Mazza’s Chautauqua Cellars location on Route 20 in Westfield. The site houses the company’s Christian Carl brand still (and will soon be the site of a new, larger still, we learned).

My wife’s parents met us in the tasting room where there was not only wine and liquor to sample, but also Five & 20’s brand-new beer offerings.

I’ve tasted the company’s bourbon before, so today I headed straight for their rye whiskey — followed by their bier schnapps and two of their new beers.

One of the Five & 20 guys was working in the tasting room and offered to take my father-in-law and I on a tour of their still room and storage warehouse.

Notes From The Tour:

The Christian Carl still was impressive, and is capable of both pot still distillation and column distillation. The still wasn’t in use and was being prepared for a cleaning, so our guide disassembled a “porthole” for us and let us take a look inside.

The tour was nice because we got to hear a lot about both the kinks in starting up a distillery as well as the successes. From making mash to distillation to storage and bottling, there are a ton of elements involved with producing the several spirits that Five & 20 is making — and they’re coming out ahead it seems, doing good work and building on their accomplishments.

Back to the still…. The thing’s powered by steam, and we got to see the engine room, so to speak. The temperature that thing has to reach in order to fire the still is just insane.

The secondary structure next to Chautauqua Cellars is more than just a warehouse, it’s Five & 20’s rick house — or rick room, I guess. The filled barrels are stacked in the corner of the warehouse next to the window facing the road, and our guide said the room will soon be filling up with more stacks of barrels, which is an exciting prospect.

More notes about the spirits I tasted are below, but first another photo:  

What I Sampled Today:

• Rye Whiskey (SB)2RW:

Batch #2 was crafted to be smoother and more approachable than many rye whiskeys. The spirit was pot-distilled and was aged for 18 months in smaller barrels, all of which were new charred American Oak.

Five & 20’s website describes it as having “the spicy grain character of rye and the sweet caramel & vanilla flavors of high quality oak barrels.”

The mash bill is 80% New York-grown rye and 20% distiller’s malt.

On a side note, it’s nice to see that their tech sheet for the spirit not only has a recommended cocktail recipe, but that it’s more than just something basic — specifically, the Westfield Wallop requires both Galliano and strawberry purée. 

45% ABV

• Afterburner Bierschnapps AB2S:

Five & 20’s Afterburner Bierschnapps are a grain-based spirit created by distilling a finished barley wine. 

On their website, FIve & 20 suggest using the bierschnapps as a stand-in for gin — and now I wish I would’ve had a flask of genever  for side-by-side sipping and comparison, because that spirit is so malty and intersting as well.

50.5% ABV

• Pale Ale:

Medium-bodied pale ale  with hops for light, fruity, citrus flavors. —  5.4% ABV

• Rye Pale Ale:

Light-bodied pale ale with spicy grain flavor from its rye malt. — 6.2% ABV

As of this visit, Five & 20’s three beers were only available from the tap. The good news though is that they refill growlers and are selling blank growlers right now, with branded growlers expected to arrive soon. Our guide told us that there isn’t any immediate plan to do 12 oz bottles, but plans for cans and 22 oz bottles are in the works.

What I Didn’t Taste Today:

There’s always next time:

• Bourbon (SB)2BW — Even though I’ve tasted their bourbon before, that bottle wasn’t mine and so I don’t know whether it’s the same stuff they’re sampling there in the tasting room now.

• Unaged Corn Whiskey
• Unaged White Rye Whiskey
• Limoncello
• Manhattan Moonshine
• Sugarwash Moonshine
• Three Hunters Vodka
• Apple Eau de Vie
• Plum Eau de Vie
• Cherry Eau de Vie
• Pear Eau de Vie
• Pear in the Bottle (sale only)
• Grappa of Steuben

Much of the info in this post came straight from the Five & 20 website, which is online at Five & 20.com.

Fat-Wash Duck Whiskey

My chef at the restaurant where I work is pretty damn awesome.

She’s a constant supporter of us bartenders furthering our craft, and is always quick to help out in any way she can.

Her encouragement fuels my excitement for stepping up our cocktail game and vice-versa. The two of us can geek out pretty hard over obscure drink recipes, new techniques and vintage barware… So when I started telling her about how some bartenders have fat-washed whiskey with flavors like bacon and duck fat, it was only a matter of time before we had to try it ourselves.

From all that I’ve read about it so far, fat-washing just seems like a fancy name for infusing liquor in a certain way — a process where we add the fat and then later put the booze in the freezer to solidify the fat for removal.

This recipe for a Duck Sazerac was what we followed when making our own bottle of fat-washed rye whiskey, which is pictured below:

  

So, first and foremost I should say that this was an experiment for ourselves — and not anything we’re serving.

But in terms of the end result, I think we were both pretty impressed with the way the duck fat softened the rye whiskey — sweetening it and smoothing it out.

I’ve seen recipes online using bourbon, but I’m glad we went with rye. So much of the heat and pepper was softened, but the spirit still comes through. 

The rye recipes I’ve seen online for this fat-washed duck rye were basic drinks like the Sazerac and the Manhattan. My intent is to do a Smoked Duck Julep (and just in time for the Kentucky Derby no less). I’ve still got to test out making a smoked simple syrup and weigh it against a scotch rinse and other smoke options.

And I hope Jim Beam doesn’t mind my modification of its label in the picture above!

Further Reading:

— Here’s an article entitled The Science Of Fat-Washing.

— Another How To” post, but this one has a video.

— A recipe for a Smoked Duck Manhattan.