Lisa and I recently compared 3 different types of Chartreuse on the podcast and it reminded me how much I love the stuff. I looked through my recipe books for Chartreuse cocktails, and found the simplest one ever. This is a vodka-and-green version of the Alaska, a gin-and-yellow Chartreuse cocktail. Try it out, but sip it slowly – vodka’s 40% alcohol and green Chartreuse is 55%!
Green Dragon
The Kingston is a bit of a clash between styles – it’s both tropical and royal in one sip. Mostly a rum-based drink, the Kingston is jazzed up with a bit of gin, which adds some flavor, which works pretty well. It certainly drys out a drink that would be pretty sweet based on ingredients alone. Try out the Kingston and let me know what you think:
Kingston
I mentioned in a recent podcast episode that a great cocktail would be an Amaro shot and club soda. Amaros are sweet and bitter and if you’ve developed the palate for it, they can be really refreshing.
For this drink, you’re not limited to Campari – substitute any other amaro of your choosing (I bet Aperol or Averna would be really good choices). Obviously, the recipe is very simple: a two-ingredient refresher!
Campari Soda
I can’t believe I haven’t tried Beefeater yet. I had a gin Old Fashioned with it at a bar in Seattle like 2 years ago, but that was the only time I had it until recently. What a shame!
Beefeater is a standard for London Dry gins, with it’s recipe dating back to 1820 (that date is stamped on the bottle). Beefeater 24 is a new premium-braded version of the classic recipe.
Since they’re relatively close in creation and location, I assumed Beefeater would taste like Tanqueray. While it’s certainly a classic London Dry gin, its flavor is pretty distinct. Beefeater has 9 botanicals, standards that you see in most London Drys, but one ingredient in the list really takes the lead: lemon peel. Beefeater is lemony and tart, which works well in lots of popular gin drinks like a Tom Collins or a Gin and Tonic, I can see why it’s often chosen as the well gin at bars.
For the premium Beefeater 24, the distillery adds more citrus and some rare asian teas to the distillate. Because Beefeater already has that lemon tang to it, 24 tends to lean more toward a faint tea and tart orange in it’s taste.
There’s a Martini variant that I occasionally drink, and Beefeater is a great fit for the 50/50:
50/50 Martini
*I used an RSVP Stainless Steel Cocktail Glass in this photo.
Tanqueray’s gotten really good at building on founder Charles Tanqueray’s legendary recipe book, which can only be seen by current distiller Tom Nichol. Last year the company released (well, re-released) Tanqueray Malacca for a 100,000 bottle limited run, and this year, it’s a brand new (but still limited edition) product: Tanqueray Old Tom Gin.
Old Tom is a pretty ancient form of gin, the precursor to the familiar London Dry style. Old Tom is sweeter than London Dry, and I’ve found in the ones I’ve tasted that they are as bitey, but usually less piney than London Drys.
In the case of Tanqueray’s Old Tom, the bite is from the botanicals that usually sit in the background behind juniper, like clove or cinnamon spice, a sweet licorice taste on the tongue. This is a sweeter gin than you’ve probably tried, but I wouldn’t describe it as “sweet” (I realize that’s a bit contradictory). It’s sippable for sure, and a perfect fit in what might be a cocktail that’s named after it, the Tom Collins:
Tom Collins
A couple of weeks ago, my friend Vijay gave me a report from the Fancy Food Show, and told me “there were two interesting cocktail phenomenons there: tea infused everything and lots of unique cocktail syrups.” After some brief investigation, I ended up with 3 bottles of Owl’s Brew on my doorstep.
Owl’s Brew is a natural, slightly sweetened, tea cocktail mixer with simple mixing instructions: “2 parts Brew with 1 part booze.” Packed in cool, matte black apothecary bottles, Owl’s Brew will run you $10 for a 8 oz bottle or $17 for a 32 oz, and it’s available at many retail locations nationally and online.
The three flavors of Owl’s Brew are:
There are lots of good recipes listed at the Owl’s Brew site, but we stuck with their motto recipe of “2 parts Brew and 1 part booze,” and made these two drinks:
Owl’s Pina (pictured top left)
Gin and Tea (pictured top right)
The Owl’s Pina is so good that our 8 oz bottle of Coco-Lada was gone before we could blink (8 oz is enough for 3-4 cocktails). Gin and Tea is a great cocktail, too, and a tea lover will really enjoy having a bottle of the Classic on hand. Classic would also taste great mixed 1-to-2 (reverse the usual ratio) with a wheat beer.
While tea in cocktails isn’t a new concept by any means, Owl’s Brew introduces your cocktails to tea in the simplest way possible. Natural ingredients and a great combination of flavors make their black bottles an excellent addition to the hit-or-miss world of premade cocktail mixers.
This cocktail is old school, with roots back to 1930 in the Savoy Cocktail Book. It’s also potent and a bit sharp tasting, too, probably a result of all those pungent mixture of herbs in both the vermouth and absinthe. Now that I’ve made it and tried it, I think the Duchess would benefit from a more sweet dry vermouth, like Vya Whisper Dry or Contratto Bianco, as regular dry vermouth felt like it contrasted with the absinthe.
Give this 85-year-old cocktail a try and let me know what you think:
Duchess
This cocktail is a simple alternative to “________ and Coke,” and though it only adds one more ingredient, it’s more of a drink because it requires just a tad more effort. The ratios are simple, too, so it’s easy to make quickly. Here’s a grown-up-chocolate-Coke, otherwise known as a Piranha:
Piranha
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I suppose that a couple of centuries ago, cocktail names were pretty easy to get confused. In a world where you couldn’t use the internet to look up ingredients, many recipes traveled by word of mouth, and I imagine that some morphed into different recipes entirely. Take, for instance, the Martinez cocktail, which some believe developed into the Martini (trust me, they’re very different drinks). And in this case, the Club Cocktail, which is almost nothing like the more popular Clover Club.
The Club is very much like the Obituary Cocktail: a gin martini with the addition of an herbal flavor modifier. In the case of the Obituary, it’s Absinthe, and here, it’s Yellow Chartreuse. Let me know how you like the Club Cocktail:
Club Cocktail
I’ve noticed that many of the early 1900s cocktails are comprised of liquor mixed with with varying ratios of vermouths, each one of them with a different flavor profile. Here’s a 2:1:1 ratio drink that follows that classic formula. It’s beautifully classy and it tastes awesome, too.
Affinity Cocktail
