The Mack

7x7 Magazine printed the recipe for the Apple Mack, the whiskey cocktail at Nihon in San Francisco. (It's a place you should check out if you haven't yet.) I've had this drink and can vouch for its wonderfulness. One of these days I'll try it at home:

Nihon's Apple Mack

2 oz Johnnie Walker Red
2 oz apple juice
3/4 oz ginger syrup
sprinkle of cinnamon

To make the ginger syrup, simmer 1/4 pound peeled, fresh ginger and 1/4 cup sugar in 2 1/2 cups water for 30 minutes. Strain and let cool.

Combine everything in an ice-filled shaker. Shake mixture and strain into a martini glass.

Or you could just go there and have one.

Mixing Whiskey

Whiskey is notoriously hard to mix into cocktails. You've got your Mint Julep, your Manhattan, your Old Fashioned, then everything else is a crapshoot.

I found the Whiskey Experience website, was looking at the recipes, and decided to make one. Most of these recipes call for ingredients I don't have sitting around the house, like Orange Curacao and ginger beer, so I went with a simple one:

HOURGLASS - The great thing about Jameson Irish whiskey is the mixability of the spirit. A refreshing blend of orange and cranberry juices, the Hourglass is one of those drinks that are easy to make at home or in the bar and excellent on any hour of the day.

Ingredients:

30ml Jameson
60ml cranberry juice
60ml orange juice
Dash of lime

Build ingredients over ice in long glass
Garnish with lime wheel

I tried one with Johnnie Walker Red (blended Scotch), having no Irish Whiskey in the house. Well, the best I can say is that it was pretty good, for a whiskey drink.

Last Night's Lesson

If you suspect your mint is going bad, do not put it in your drink.

Mocktails

Part of the fun in trying new cocktails out is trying them back at home later. Medjool's Chai Rum Elixir proved easy to recreate. So does the Smoking Gun from Range. (Note: they just put their cocktail menu online.)

Pour an ounce and a half of gin over ice, add about a half ounce of Lillet Blanc, and fill with tonic. Add a wedge of lemon or lime if you choose, but I prefer the drink without it.

I had several of these last night, for purely work-related purposes of course. "Now let's try it with Tanqueray! Now let's try it with Junipero Gin!" The drink gets better the better gin you use, but it's pretty damn good any way I tried it. Instead of experimenting with a new drink tonight like I should, I'm going to make sure I got this one right. With a drink this good, it's important to double check my work.

Holiday Chai Cocktail

In my first piece for CHOW magazine (another one comes in a spring print edition), I got the recipe for Medjool's Chai Rum Elixir to share with you.

Teanies

Also from That's the Spirit, here is a list of cocktails made with tea. I didn't realize there were so many, but I guess this explains why someone would make green tea infused vodka.

Holiday Cocktails

That's the Spirit has a list of holiday cocktail recipes. Most of them look pretty gross, but one or two might work.

Pomegranate, Pomegranate, Pomegranate!

Some drink trends feel natural, like it's the right combination of flavors at the right time- the mojito and the cosmo are good examples. Then there are others that don't make any sense to me at all- sour apple and now pomegranate.

It's so much the hip fruit that I'm already sick of it yet I've only tried it once- and wasn't terribly impressed. I was fascinated to learn about why it's trendy though. In this article in The Observer, they trace the marketing of POM's juice product. It was founded by a millionaire marketing couple who originally got rich making the Guardian of Destiny Gargoyle. Anyway, they discovered that pomegranate juice was supposed to be good for you, then funded scientific studies in excess of 10 million dollars to prove it. The stuff costs something like four bucks a bottle at the grocery store, and people in Hollywood are drinking it like it's the new Scientology.

Naturally, people decided to put it into cocktails, which is what brings us here today. Pomegranate cocktails are showing up on drink menus everywhere, including this warm pomegranate cocktail, and there is already an infused pomegranate vodka from Pearl. It's the runaway fruit!

Aperitifs

The SF Chronicle's SFGate.com has a great article on traditional aperitifs, including Lillet, Campari, vermouth, and pastis. I have almost all of them in stock and will have to give them a try soon. (Vermouth on the rocks is going to be terrible.)

I haven't been able to experiment with too many new drinks lately because it's holiday party season and I have to go where I'm told. I have nine events to attend in the upcoming two weeks, and most of them are not in fancy ultralounges with drink menus for me to review. That's probably for the best though. I can't afford nine days of ten-dollars cocktails.