Jeff’s babysitting payment. Small bottles. Lisa writing on the walls. We taste Boodles Mulberry Gin. Out light-up Absolut bottle. Jeff thinks he’s Thor? Sarah’s come a long way from Camelback Screwdrivers. We drink a Deanne cocktail. Greg’s lemon. “You talk wrong.”
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It’s Jeff and Sarah! ⬆
Jeff is the source of Greg’s cocktail stories. “Make me something interesting.” Drive through Daiquiris. We taste Novo Fogo Single Barrel Cachaça. We talk Louisiana and break out the Bayou Rum. Greg mentioned his Rio Grande Cocktail. We brag on New Mexico IPAs…shout outs to La Cumbre and Bosque Brewing. We make a Palmetto Cocktail. Edible flowers?
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Simple Cocktails has entered the snap fray and we’re actively snapping on Snapchat, especially behind-the-scenes fun and info. To see what we’re up to: add us on Snapchat!
We mock Tirzah’s condition, Natasha loves whiskey. Christina Hendricks. About Italy. we drink Grappa del Piemonte. “I’d rather give a pint of blood.” Cigar knowledge? Santa Fe Spirits Silver Coyote. “She’s got a hard life.” Corporate speak. We make a Deep Dive cocktail. Babysitting payment in liquor and donuts.
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It’s rare that I wax philosophical at Simple Cocktails, but occasionally I see something that so aligns with our mission here, I have to share it. A few years ago, I established our mission with a post called Why We Need Each Other, discussing the lost art of home bartending and the ways we can personally help to revive it.
Today, I read an interview with Jim Meehan that stirred my desire to see the resurgence of home bartending. In the interview, Meehan, who is one of this century’s most influential bartenders and the founder of PDT in New York, discusses the direction that bartending is headed in the next decade.
According to Meehan (emphasis added), “If history is inclined to repeat itself, I predict the cocktail will be domesticated by enthusiasts who can’t get a seat and congenial face time with the busy bartender at their local.” He says that quality bartending tools that are readily-available now help to supply us with what’s needed to outfit our home bars well, and in turn, better home bartenders will create a better craft cocktail scene overall.
From my perspective, we are on the right track. Our target audience at Simple Cocktails is amateur home bartenders, and it’s you (our readers) who Meehan suggests will help to “buoy the craft of the cocktail.”
4 years ago, we issued a call to you to start bartending at home. Now the revolution has begun, and the tools and resources are in place to help you here at the blog (see our buyer’s guides and free recipe book) and from many other great cocktail enthusiasts as well.
It’s easier than ever to enjoy a drink at home, so cheers to the next decade and the rise of the home cocktail enthusiast!
Update: 2 months after I wrote this post, I had the opportunity to speak with Jim about his comments. You can hear what he had to say in our Tales of the Cocktail podcast # 4.
Tirzah give us the low-down on gluten free drinking whilst Greg tries not to kill her. Drinking pastors? Greg’s gluten quiz! New Mexico IPAs are the best. We taste Bailoni Apricot liqueur and eau de vie. Is yeast bad? “I have an app that can help us with that.” We make a Hola Harvey for Cinco de Mayo, a “real drinking holiday.” Natasha was wearing cowboy boots…dancing on the bar? Oralé Harvey.
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The Kentucky Derby is coming up Saturday – a celebratory event which usually marks the arrival of Spring and “spring time” bourbon drinks like the Mint Julep. I have 2 pots of mint in the backyard and they are full and ready to be julep-ized. As a refresher on how to make your own Juleps, you can see my Julep walkthrough here.
According to the Derby, “120,000 Mint Juleps are served over the two-day period of Kentucky Oaks and Kentucky Derby weekend at Churchill Downs Racetrack. That’s a feat that requires more than 10,000 bottles of bourbon, 1,000 pounds of mint and 60,000 pounds of ice.”
So in light of the coming Derby this weekend, I was excited to receive a care package from Four Roses, one of my personal favorite cinnamon-forward Kentucky bourbons, then a copy of Michael Dietsch’s brand new book Whiskey: A Spirited Story with 75 Classic & Original Cocktails, which releases May 17, 2016 [Amazon link].
Much more than just a simple listing of recipes, Deitch devotes several pages to each cocktail and goes into the history and story behind each. It’s a beautiful hardcover book with excellent photography, designed cleanly and well-organized, with a good deal of cocktail pointers (whiskey or not). He says of the Mint Julep:
“With an origin in the 18th century, the boozy julep came along before American whiskey was widely available. And even when American whiskey was more available, the julep had become a drink of the genteel South, and in that time, gentlemen drank brandy and rum, not brash American whiskey.” (pp 103)
Enjoy a Mint Julep and enjoy Derby Day on Saturday! Cheers!
I’m a little embarrassed to say that until recently, I had not tried cachaça (kuh-CHA-suh), the Brazilian sugar cane juice liquor. Similar to rum, cachaça is Brazil’s most popular distilled spirit, and the base for the caipirinha (KAI-pir-een-yuh) cocktail.
Well, Novo Fogo Cachaça helped us to correct that when they sent us their caipirinha kit to try out on our podcast (which we did here). The kit includes a bottle of Novo Fogo Silver, 2 small branded mason jars, and a wood muddler, all of which we use in the recipe below.
A caipirinha is like a South American take on a Daiquiri: lime, sugar and rum, though in this case the rum is swapped for cachaça. I find Novo Fogo’s cachaça to be a earthier, grassier and much more flavorful variety of rum, which is technically is, because it’s distilled from sugar cane juice. Their caipirinha kit makes for some tasty cocktails, too, and all you need to add is lime and sugar. Here’s how you make it:
Caipirinha
NOTE: The podcast is now available on Google Play! Click the grey button below to listen through Play.
“Very New Mexico.” Greg’s hot and spicy liquor reviews. Red or green? We taste Crater Lake Hatch Green Chile Vodka. Redeeming the “shot” liqueur that’s Jägermeister. Eric is too cool. Hide the strawberries. We make the Leaving the Quarter cocktail. “You don’t really need good flavor…..”
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You know, I’ve always found cocktails that memorialize an occasion, or person, to be a bit cheesy and so I rarely partake in “theme” drinking. I found myself in a situation last week when Prince died, that folks who were coming to our already-planned cocktail party that night began asking if I was going to be making any Prince-themed drinks to remember him by.
Drinking and partying in memory of someone who’s passed away is a thing, and people have done it for thousands of years (at least), so I softened to the idea of some themed cocktails, both for the sake of our party guests and because of fun in creating new cocktails! After 3 recipe revisions for each, we got them just right. The first drink we made is the Purple Rain (pictured above).
Purple Rain (by Greg Mays)
Next up, we made a riff on a Gin Sour by including some muddled raspberries:
Raspberry Beret (by Greg Mays)
So there you are: 2 simple cocktails you can drink in memory of The Purple One. Cheers!
