Cocktails, Early June 2012

Sorry for the hiatus…was tied up with some professional stuff.

Here’s a few cocktails that I’ve made in the last couple of weeks:

El Diablo:

Ingredients for the El Diablo…

  • 1/2 lime
  • 1 oz tequila (I used 1800 Reposado.)
  • 1/2 oz crème de cassis
  • Ginger Beer (I used Fever-Tree, which is excellent.)

Squeeze the lime and drop the shell in the glass, then add the tequila and crème de cassis.  Stir, then top off with ginger beer.

(Based on recipes from The Webtender Wiki)

I tried this a couple weeks ago at The Passenger…thought I’d try making it myself.  Came out pretty well…I’d throw it together again.

El Diablo…

My version of Alex’s Sour from The Passenger:

The ingredients for my version of Alex’s Sour…

The Passenger’s version calls for white whiskey, lemon, and Yellow Chartreuse…I went off this and used the following:

  • 2 oz Johnnie Walker Black
  • 1 oz Yellow Chartreuse
  • 1/4 oz lemon juice (and being out of lemons, I used the type from concentrate…meh.)

Shook the ingredients together with ice, strained over fresh ice in a rocks glass.  Not bad.  I’d say it’s better than a whisk(e)y sour.

Alex’s Sour #2…

Bully Boy:

Ingredients for my take on the Bully Boy…

I was looking for some ideas for my brand new bottle of Fernet-Branca and came across this page.  Naturally I had to try out the award winner for best Fernet cocktail, so I threw together the Bully Boy.  From the site:

  • 1oz bourbon
  • 1/2oz Fernet Branca
  • 1/2oz Canton ginger liqueur
  • 1/2oz lemon juice
  • 2t simple syrup
  • lemon peel, for garnish

Select dodecahedron shaped ice cubes out of your freezer (be very selective, the shape is important), and bash them with a baseball bat. Now shake it all up and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

Of course, I am not yet fancy enough to have dodecahedron-shaped ice cubes (nor a bar baseball bat), so I did not follow some of the directions.  I used Woodford Reserve bourbon, and swapped out the plain simple syrup for my homemade ginger-habanero variety.  Because of the new flavors that my simple syrup lends to this drink (and because I didn’t have any real lemons…) I garnished this with an orange twist.  This came out great…very tasty.  You don’t get much of the medicinal taste associated with Fernet, but you can still tell it’s in there.  This one was definitely a winner.

The Bully Boy. Good cocktail…

Consolation Prize:

The ingredients for Consolation Prize…

I was looking for a good Chartreuse cocktail for this evening, and came across Last Frontier at both cocktail virgin slut and The Passenger.  Using this as a base, I made the following:

  • 2 oz Hendrick’s Gin
  • 1.5 oz Yellow Chartreuse
  • 3 dashes Angostura Bitters

Shake and bruise all ingredients with ice, then strain into a martini glass (keep small ice shards) and garnish with orange peel.

The Passenger’s version called for unknown proportions of Tanqueray, Green Chartreuse, and (unknown) bitters, while cocktail virgin slut called for 3 parts Beefeater, 1 part Green Chartreuse, and lemon oil.

I blew an interview earlier in the day, so I’m naming this one Consolation Prize.  Cheers.

My Consolation Prize…

Yellow Chartreuse Cocktails, 31 May 2012

“Chartreuse, the only liqueur so good they named a color after it.” – Warren the bar owner, Death Proof

Yellow Chartreuse is a 40% liqueur which contains 130 herbal extracts (like a more complex version of Jägermeister?).  The 55% variety, Green Chartreuse, is used in the classic cocktail The Last Word.

I mixed up two cocktail recipes from The Passenger which utilize Chartreuse – “Monk’s Mule” and “Walk of Shame-Rock” – using Yellow Chartreuse.

My ingredients for the Monk’s Mule…

Here’s the Monk’s Mule:

Gin

Green Chartreuse

Lime

Ginger Beer

I changed out the Green Chartreuse in the recipe with the yellow variety.  Since I didn’t know the proportions involved, I went with 1 oz Hendrick’s gin, 1 oz Yellow Chartreuse, and juice from 1/2 a lime.  Shook these ingredients together, strained into a rocks glass over ice, then topped it off with Fever-Tree ginger beer.  This came out as a nice, light cocktail…good with these steamy DC evenings.

The finished Monk’s Mule…

Next up was a variation on the Walk of Shame-Rock.

Ingredients for this variation on the Walk of Shame-Rock…

Here’s the ingredients for this one from The Passenger:

Jim Beam Rye

Green Chartreuse

Lemon

Cream

I changed out Jim Beam for Bulleit, swapped in the Yellow Chartreuse, and used coconut milk instead of cream.  1 oz of the rye, Chartreuse, and coconut milk, and the juice from 1/2 a lemon, all shaken with ice.  Tangy and different.  I’ll try the original at a later point to compare/contrast.

Here’s what this version of the Walk of Shame-Rock looked like…

The switch from Green to Yellow Chartreuse makes these drinks a little more sweet and less spicy than they would otherwise be (yellow has honey added, has citrus notes, and other accents, while the green is more floral/herbal).  I’ll try making these drinks again with the green variety after I pick up a bottle.