My First Mint Julep

I didn't jump on the mint julep bandwagon last year because I thought that mint juleps weren't very good- all sweet and syrupy and you could only drink one before you came down with a cosmopolitan-like sugar headache.

But as I've been experimenting with different forms of muddling (this is what I do for fun), it was time to face the music and see if I could make a mint julep that wasn't god- awful.

I was lazy and decided not to make simple syrup for my mint julep. Simple syrup is just sugar in water, melted into syrup. Many restaurants are making specialty flavored simple syrups to go into specific cocktails, but I'm not at that level of experimentation just yet.

So I just used powdered sugar in water (this is a legitimate recipe; don't make fun of me), muddled with mint leaves and topped with ice and bourbon. On first sip the ingredients are all separate on the tongue, but after sitting for just a minute or two (one mint julep recipe insists you let the flavors blend for "at least three minutes"), this drink becomes amazing.

Now I get it! A mint julep is not a sugary drink, nor is it a mint-and-whiskey drink. The mint juleps I've had in the past had way too much simple syrup in them, making them so sweet as to overwhelm the whiskey. And the combination of mint and bourbon changes both flavors like magic to make the mint taste less minty and the bourbon taste both less harsh and also fresh as a Kentucky breeze. Consider me converted.

Now that I know how wonderful the average old do-it-yourself-at-home mint julep tastes, I had better get out to the bars and try some made by professionals before derby season.

Black Devil

I was all excited to try the drink called the Black Devil cocktail (a.k.a. a rum martini), so I ran out and bought the olives that I was missing. The drink is white rum, a splash of dry vermouth, and a black olive.

I tried it both with light and clear rums, and I must report that I have nothing to report except that you shouldn't bother making this drink. It tastes like rum with stuff that shouldn't get mixed with it mixed with it. It was wrongness in a glass.

Curse you, Black Devil!

Pumpkin Chai Cocktail Recipe

I made more pumpkin pie infused vodka to take to a Thanksgiving dinner yesterday, but after I strained out the pumpkin goop through coffee filters, I found it didn't taste at all like the other two batches I'd made. It didn't taste like cinnamon and baked pie; it tasted like plain old pumpkin. And honestly, that's kind of yucky on its own. I think I know what I did wrong- I didn't stir the pumpkin pie mix before I added it to the vodka in the first place. All the good artificial flavorings must have been in the bottom part of the can.

So with ten minutes to go before I had to leave for Thanksgiving dinner, I started experimenting with all of the mixers in my bar. I tried it with dry vermouth, sweet vermouth, powdered cinnamon, soy milk, tonic, and various bitters. Nothing was working, so in an act of desperation I mixed it with the chai tea-in-a-box I'd bought to try to recreate the spiced chai rum drink from Medjool.

Chai tea and pumpkin vodka was absolutely fantastic. The chai gave the drink enough of the spicy flavors to take the edge off the raw melon of the pumpkin, and the pumpkin mellowed the black tea harshness of the chai. Together it was a great fall cocktail. As a bonus the drink is the color of apple cider, so it even looks the part.

The drink was a surprise hit at Thanksgiving dinner, with people switching from wine to the cocktail once they tried it. I ran out by the end of the night. Not bad for a drink created in ten minutes.

Camper's Pumpkin Chai Cocktail

1 part ice-cold pumpkin pie infused vodka (scoop pumpkin pie mix into a jar of vodka, seal, let sit for one week in the freezer, strain through a coffee filter).
1 1/2 parts chai tea. I used the Tazo chai tea that comes in a box similar to soy milk, found in my local convenience store.
Mix together and serve up in a martini or wine glass.

Cross-Posting

Over at my Rock Star Blog, I list all the recent liquor companies advertising in magazines, as they will likely throw tasting events and give out swag to people on their email lists. If you like booze spam, sign up for it all!

Rum, Interrupted

After last night’s rum revelation, I decided I had better hit that drink category once again. Tonight I busted out the bottle of Bacardi gold from behind the bar. The scent of the gold rum is less sweet than that of the white, but the taste is a little less chocolate and definitely creamier. Good stuff.

It was hard to find a drink recipe that called for gold rum as opposed to dark rum. Doing a little research I learned that gold rum is really light rum, which would explain that.

From Cocktailtimes.com:

Puerto Rican Rum is noted as golden rum, light bodies and aged for a minimum of 3 years.

Though Jamaican Rum is dark, it gets most of its color from added molasses not from the cask.

So now I know. Anyway, one of the two recipes that called specifically for gold rum is the Havana Sidecar. It’s made with rum and half portions each of lemon juice and triple sec.

The drink is not good. It tastes like powdered refreshment and I do not like it. I used lemon juice from the bottle rather than fresh squeezed, and I’m quickly coming to realize that this does not cut it in any drink. Even still, I doubt I would enjoy this one with fresh juice.

Drink and learn, drink and learn.

Rummy

Tonight I decided to experiment with rum drinks. I have both white and gold rum and a zillion mixers, so I figured it wouldn’t be a problem to find some interesting concoctions to try. Naturally, the first 20 or so recipes in my bartender’s book called for egg whites. My bartending books calls for a heck of a lot of egg whites, no matter what the liquor. That’s weird because I can’t recall ever seeing a bartender crack an egg over a drink in public, but maybe they have an egg white button on the mixer gun:)

Anyway, the drink that caught my eye is called the Black Devil. How could it not? I can hear my regular bartender saying it: “Your usual Camper, the Black Devil?”

“Hell, yes!” I’d say. (Get it?)

Anyway the drink called for a black olive, and I always have them in supply- except of course for tonight. Curse you, Black Devil!

I flipped past another 20 or so pages of egg white drinks then finally landed upon the Cuban Manhattan. It calls for white rum, sweet and dry vermouth, Angostura bitters, and a cherry. Can do!

The drink tastes like a Manhattan minus the whiskey. I suppose that’s to be expected. There is the same sweet and dry vermouth combination and cherry topping. To see if I could taste the rum in the drink at all, I had a sip of it straight. I was drinking Bacardi, so I didn’t expect much.

Holy moly! I’ve completely forgotten what rum tastes like. When I recall it, my mouth puckers with sugary sweetness. I guess my taste buds don’t know what they’re talking about. To their defense, even Beverages and More’s website, which usually has a pretty succinct and accurate description of their beverages, lists it as “The number one selling rum in the world; good in any number of tropical drinks from Mai Tai's to Pina Coladas!” That’s like saying “it’s weak and gross, but if you cover it up with enough fruit you won’t even notice!”

I disagree. The Bacardi is rich and interesting on its own. The nose reminds me of sharp, pure alcohol (okay, rubbing alcohol) with a strong natural scent of banana or plantain peels. I had to sniff it about 20 times before I could identify that smell, nearly hyperventilating in the process like when you get lightheaded blowing up an inflatable raft. Anyway, the taste isn’t light and sweet at all; it’s very rich- all coffee and chocolate tastes. Wild!

None of that comes through in this Cuban Manhattan cocktail unless you’re really, really looking for it, and still it’s hard to distinguish it from the bitters. I beefed it up with the addition of a little more rum, and found it to be more interesting, if a little less user friendly.

Long story short: The drink was good, and I have a lot more to learn about rum.

Cocktail of the Century

In basically a publicity-generating effort, bar glassware company Anchor Hocking conducted a survey of the most popular/defining drinks over the last century, divided into decades. (Also, the appropriate cocktail barware in which to serve them.) The martini was crowned Drink of the Century. Here they are by decade:

1900-1910
Drink: Old Fashioned

1910-1920
Drink: Singapore Sling

1920-1930
Drink: Bloody Mary

1930-1940
Drink: Manhattan

1940-1950
Drink: Mai Tai

1950-1960
Drink: Vodka Martini

1960-1970
Drink: Whiskey Sour

1970-1980
Drink: Long Island Iced Tea

1980-1990
Drink: Sex on the Beach

1990-2000
Drink: Cosmopolitan

I would agree with most of the drinks up until the 1960's, then it goes a little haywire. That said, I don't have very good recommendations for their replacements. When I think of the 60's I think of I'm feeling Scotch on the rocks- something Steve McQueen would drink, or what everyone was enjoying during disaster movies. For the 70's, I'm stuck. But not a Long Island Iced Tea. Maybe a rum and Coke.(and snortable coke to help with digestion.)For the 80's the drink should be the wine cooler, but since we're talking cocktails here I'll say the Fuzzy Navel: a drink that luckily went away with the decade. (Second runner up: the Cape Cod. Third place: The Madras.) I can't argue that the Cosmopolitan was the drink of the 90's, even though it was of the last 2-3 years of the decade only, but boy is the name an inaccurate description of the era. It was all about dressing up garishly and getting sloppy. Good times, good times.

I have a bad feeling though that the drink of the decade 2000 - 2010 will be a Red Bull and vodka. Ack.

R/T Drinking

Right now I'm killing an hour before going out to review a club, so I decided it would be the perfect time for me to experiment with a drink. As I now have enough liquor to drown a cat thanks to my recent run to BevMo, I let fate be my bartender. I picked up my recipe book, flipped through it, and stopped at random.

Every time I paused to look at a recipe, it called for something I didn't buy or don't have, most notably the Campari that I couldn't find at the liquor store or the cream that I couldn't find at the convenience store. So I flipped around a bit and came to the page with the Gimlet.

"How perfect!" I thought, as I'd recently tried the cilantro gimlet at Medjool and its powdery (and notably cilantro-absent) freshness is still fresh in my mind. This recipe, though, called for gin. I made it according to the directions, with close to a 50-50 ratio of gin to Rose's Lime Juice, stirred with ice and poured into a chilled martini glass. It tasted like a headache- way too sweet, with the lime juice obliterating the gin. Ack.

Online snooping for a gin gimlet recipe turned up variants calling for from a 4-to-1 to the more specific 7/10-to-3/10 ratio of gin to juice. (And they don't say "Rose's Lime Juice", just "lime juice.") It seems that my recipe book always disagrees with the internet.

I double-checked the book to find a footnote: Original version Marlowe's Gin Gimlet. Back to the internet, where I am now, I found the following reference:

"We sat in a corner of the bar at Victor's and drank gimlets. "They don't know how to make them here,' he said. 'What they call a gimlet is just some lime or lemon juice and gin with a dash of sugar and bitters. A real gimlet is half gin and half Rose's Lime Juice and nothing else. It beats martinis hollow.'" -- From The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler (1953)

Aren't detectives supposed to consume manly-man drinks? Right now I'm thinking Phillip Marlowe is sugary girly-girl with an addiction to Sweet-Tart flavors.

I remade the drink by adding more gin to the mix, diluting the juice down to 3-to-1 and now 4-to-1. The drink is far more tolerable- I can sort of taste the gin now- but still. I have to go out to a club with a too-much-sugar-on-Halloween-style headache.

Limes are ten for a dollar at the corner store (can you tell I live in the Mission?), so I think next time while I'm out shopping for Campari and cream, I'll pick up a handful of fresh fruit to squeeze into juice while I'm there.

Magnetized

I stopped into the Magnet Lounge in North Beach several months ago while researching an article about new venues in the neighborhood. The review of this place was edited out of the final piece, but I've wanted to write about it because the staff were great.

I've never liked North Beach. I know that there are tons of cool little alleys and weird steep streets and funky buildings spread throughout the neighborhood, but the historical and architectural charm is buried beneath the swarm of ill-behaved tourists clogging the sidewalks for Italian food during the day and for the strip bars and mostly-mediocre clubs at night. It feels like Tijuana, a place where the goal is to get the patrons incredibly drunk and take as much of their money as possible.

What sets Magnet apart is not that they don't want you to get drunk and spend all your money, it's that the approach is refreshingly different. The owner Mike and his fellow bartenders do their best to make the venue feel like a friendly neighborhood bar, with his dog wandering around greeting customers and big smiles on all their faces. They welcome you and thank you for your business; something that doesn't often happen elsewhere in North Beach. And with every barstool filled with a young lady making goo-goo eyes towards the bar, you know that Mike and the staff still take the time to flirt.

My guilty pleasure in this bar is watching all the ways they sell soju. Magnet doesn't have a liquor license, so it's all beer, wine, and especially soju. They have three kinds of infused soju behind the bar, and all of the specialty cocktails are made with it. This is not immediately apparent (it's not decorated like a Japanese restaurant), so when customers come in from outside ordering something else, the staff are wonderfully sly about steering them toward soju instead.

Patron: I'll have a Grey Goose martini.
Bartender: We don't have Grey Goose. Do you want a soju martini? It's better!
Patron: Okay!

Patron: I'll have a gin and tonic.
Bartender: We're out of gin. Would you like a soju somethingorother instead?
Patron: Okay!

I don't think that soju, also known as "Korean vodka," tastes much like vodka. I think of it as the Sweet-n-Low of vodka- a slightly less tasty, low-alcohol vodka substitute. This is not to say that the drinks made with it are not good. They do a great job with them at Magnet to be sure. But given the choice between vodka or soju, there's no chance I would say no to the vodka.

And given that there are dozens and dozens of other bars in North Beach that do serve vodka, it means a lot that this is the bar I'd come back to before any of the rest.

Drink Menu Review: Medjool

Last night I went to Medjool for some drinks. Now that I think of it, the only reason I ever go anywhere is for drinks. They're a real motivator.

Medjool's drink menu isn't really all that exciting, nor is it very challenging. They only had about 11 specialty drinks listed and most of them were very close derivations of "safe" drinks like cosmopolitans.

I started with a Medjool Mistress ($9), otherwise known as a margarita made with Heradura Silver tequila. It was good and not excessively sweet. They didn't use a margarita mix but Cointreau and fresh lime juice. That makes all the difference.

I next tried the Chai Rum Elixir ($9), and it is fantastic. It's made with chai tea, Captain Morgan's Spiced Rum, and a little bit of cream. (I bought some chai tea on my way home to try to replicate this drink, but couldn't find any cream. It's all half and half these days.) The drink tastes like light eggnog, or as someone who tried mine said, a spiked horchata.

When I lived on the east coast, I was a fan of heavy winter cocktails. My favorite was the butterball- Bailey's Irish Cream and Butterskotch Schnapps. I think here in California they call it a Cocksucker. (With that word, this blog will be blocked by porn filters all across America.) This chai drink is much lighter, so I think it's more of a fall cocktail. I insist you try it. (Medjool has an awesome roofdeck, so that's two reasons to check out the place.)

For my last drink I had a Cilantro Gimlet ($11). I figured this drink would be interesting because I hate cilantro. I found that the cilantro didn't add any flavor to the drink, so it just tasted like a good vodka gimlet. (Also, I learned that there is such a thing as a good vodka gimlet.) This one was prepared with Hangar One Lime Vodka, lime juice, and the flavorless cilantro. I think it worked out best that way.

Overall, Medjool's specialty cocktails aren't all that special. This isn't to say that they're not good, but they're not good enough to warrant the extra 2-3 dollars that cocktails on a specialty menu cost. That said, I'd go there again in a heartbeat for that Chai Rum Elixir- at least until I figure out how to make it at home.

EXTRAVAGANZA

Thanks to a kind industry sponsor, I was able to attend the Scotch Malt Whisky Society's Single Malt and Scotch Whisky Extravaganza at the Fairmont Hotel after all.

The event was to have food but they didn't really specify if it would be hors d'oeuvres or a real meal. With 60 different Scotches to taste at the event I wasn't going to take any chances on having an empty stomach, so I ate a meal in advance at home. My companion for the evening, Amy, did not.

I found they did have a lovely buffet at the event, and there were a good number of vegetarian options as well. (That's the other problem with hors d'oeuvres events- they're mostly meaty.) So I ate again along with Amy. With the amount of liquor we were about to consume, there was no such thing as being too full.

With tasting tables spread about the edges of the room, the event looked manageable. I thought I'd be able to try everything. I was wrong, but I got pretty close. But that doesn't matter so much, because the notes I took in the program become cryptic to indecipherable at some point and won't be of much use to me to help me remember the taste.

Here are the notes that I can still read:

• Aberlour 15 year old- I only have scrawled "It burns!" I remember I tried this one was near the end of the evening, which would explain that.
  
• Aberlour a'bunadh- This was also overwhelming to me. I kept adding water to it and enjoyed the sherry component of the whisky, but it was too tough for me. It almost tastes like a whisky you'd brag about drinking rather than one you enjoy drinking.
  
• The Balvenie- The Balvenie whiskies were the highlight of my evening. Not surprisingly, they got better with the age of the whisky. (Note: this isn't always the case. Age is by no means the sole determinant of quality.) I tried the 15 year single barrel and enjoyed it greatly, but not even close to how much as I enjoyed the 25 year old single cask. Unlike whiskies that wow you with their subtlety, this one presents itself to your mouth for inspection. I felt like I could almost taste the grain in the wood of the barrel in which it was stored. Amazing. I then had the 30 year old, which was also phenomenal. It differed from the 25 in that the aftertaste lasts forever, flickering on your tongue like a flip-book of flavor. I'm going to have to savor the memory of this whisky, because at about $550 a bottle, I'm probably never going to have it again.
  
• Castle Brands- I didn't love any of these Irish whiskies, which included Clontarf Irish Whiskey (Note: it's "whiskey" in Ireland and "whisky" in Scotland.) Clontarf Reserve, Clontarf Single Malt, and Knappogue Castle. My companion Amy really liked them, so there's that.
  
• Talisker 175th Anniversary- there was so much smoke my mouth said, "Where's the fire?"
  
• The Dalmore 21 year old- my notes say "really good but obscure," which I take to mean the flavor was different to the point of being inaccessible. (And "inaccessible" to me means I don't really get it. Like cilantro- I don't get it!)
• The Glenlivet- I liked the bottles I tried in reverse age order. I tried a 21 year old, an 18 year old, and a 15 year old, and liked the youngest the best. (That sentence will pretty much guarantee that pedophiles will stumble across this website.) The 15 year old French Oak was not only my favorite, but at $40 a bottle, I could actually afford it!
• Highland Park- The 18 year was terrific, and so was the 25. Highland Park is always a winner.
  
• Laphroaig- Quarter Cask- this is supposed to be more woody and sherry flavored, as more whisky is in contact with the wood. It was fine. I really liked the 15 year though- creamy goodness.
  
• The Macallan- I finally had a chance to sample their Fine Oak line. This line is designed to introduce new drinkers and women to whisky, with a lighter flavor profile due to aging in different casks. It did taste like oak. Unfortunately I learned that I don't like the flavor of oak (in this and other brands as well), so I'm not a fan of this line. I also tried the Cask Strength bottle. I thought it was too sharp on its own, but much better with added water. Still, I think I'll stick to the regular Macallan line, which is so very good just as it is.
  
• Yamazaki- I tried this Japanese whisky before on my visit to Nihon, the new whisky bar in San Francisco. Japanese whiskies are basically copies of Scotch ones, so the strong smoky peatiness of the 18 year old was no big surprise. The Sherry Wood 1986 was interesting though, with most of the sherry flavor in the finish rather than on the palette.

And that's just the notes I can read. Amy quit sampling with a little less than half an hour left in the evening, but I charged onward trying to sample as many as I could. Needless to say, I was incredibly wasted at the end of the night. I came home and ate yet another meal to try to absorb the alcohol and keep it from hurting the next day.

It hurt anyway.

Only 43 Drinking Days Left Until Christmas!!

At my local drug store on the day after Halloween, they took down all the costumes and candy from the seasonal isle and replaced them with Christmas decorations. For some people this time of year means it's time to start making lists and shopping, but it's my signal to look for winter seasonal beer.

I bought a six-pack of Anchorsteam's Christmas Ale last night. Every year the flavor is slightly different. Some years I can't stand it, but this year is a real winner. The first sip is overwhelming, like somebody shoved blended tree bark, potting soil, and cranberries into your mouth. (It's very dark.) But by the third sip you get a rich dark chocolatey flavor with what I would call a holly and almost-ripe berry aftertaste. Fantasty!

Anchorsteam isn't the only brewery that makes a seasonal ale- hundreds of others do as well. RealBeer.com has a list of them. You'd have to drink 3-4 of them every day until Christmas to try them all. A noble project if ever there was one.

Tequini

This weekend I rented a car and went to the warehouse liquor store and then I was $3o0 poorer. But on the plus side, I have a lot more drink ingredients with which to experiment.

Tired from all the heavy lifting, I decided to try a cocktail with only ingredients found in the box on the top of the pile. I ended up choosing the Tequini, also known as the tequila martini.

It's made with tequila, a half-ounce of dry vermouth, and a dash of Angostura bitters. On its own, it's not so great. The finish is interesting due to the bitters (I'm changing my mind about the not liking bitters thing), but the initial taste is all ice-cooled tequila. Ack.

My recipe suggested either an olive or a lemon peel as a garnish, and it turned out the garnish makes all the difference. The lemon peel (okay, drop of lemon juice. It works in a pinch) made the drink much better. The tequila start was cut significantly and it added the tiniest burst of citrus in the drink. The olive was even better. The initial tequila taste was gone and the rest of the drink was interesting- but maybe a little too salty.

When I'm mixing drinks at home I'm trying to appreciate different aspects and combinations of liquors, so every drink that teaches me something is a successful one. But the real meter of a great drink is whether I would order it out at a bar. The tequini I would not.

My drink recipe book said garnish with either an olive Or a lemon twist, and I just noticed that several online recipes call for an olive And a lemon twist. So maybe I'll have to give it another chance later. But I have so very, very many other drinks to try first.

Just a Taste

Last week I went to a Chivas Regal tasting party at the Merchant's Exchange building. It was fun and more classy than expected and gave a good introduction to the whiskey (even if I'm not a big fan of the 12-year blend).

It wasn't a VIP event by any means. There are free tasting events all the time in San Francisco. You just need to get on the email lists for all the liquor companies with big promotional budgets. For more tips on how to do that, see the entry in my Rock Star Blog here. Then I'll see you at the next one...

How to taste rum

There is a good, short article on Cocktail Times about how to taste rum, written by a guy who does it for a living. I don't know much about rum yet, but I intend to learn. Like tasting other spirits, the three parts to study are the nose, the body, and the tail (aka aroma, tasting, finish).

In San Francisco, the bar everyone associates with rum is Hobson's Choice, which is a semi-divey place they call a Victorian Punch House with many nooks and crannies for sitting and sipping. I really like the layout of the place, though the weekend crowds can be obnoxious. I've heard they offer a rum flight where you can taste a few small samples off a list (they serve 60 in all) for a set price.

Don't you think someone should open a pirate-themed rum bar? That would be hot. And why not? In New York there is a ninja-themed restaurant.