Cocktail #47: The Twenty Seventy Swizzle

I decided to change things up slightly this week by trying out a contemporary cocktail, which I found in the wonderful Smuggler's Cove book by Martin and Rebecca Cate. Cate describes how he and one of the "Masters of the Cove" created this cocktail in the quest to make the ultimate swizzle cocktail. The name of the drink was inspired by numbers contained in the names of two of the rums Cate used to create this drink: Angostura 1919 and Lemon Hart 151. Alas, I didn't have Angostura 1919 rum, nor did I even have any other column still aged rum on hand (this obviously needs to be remedied in short order!), so I did my best with what I had. I used Mount Gay Eclipse, a rum somewhat similar in color, and with some of the same flavor notes that Cate describes the 1919 of having - particularly the vanilla, which is also present in the Mount Gay.

Here's the recipe:

0.50 oz. fresh lime juice

0.50 oz. Demerara syrup

0.50 oz. honey syrup (I used equal parts water and a wonderful macadamia honey a friend got for us)

0.25 oz. St. Elizabeth Allspice Dram

1.00 oz. column still aged rum (I used Mount Gay, which is not the type of rum specified)

1.00 oz. black blended overproof rum (I used Lemon Hart 151)

1 dash Herbstura (equal parts Herbsaint or Pernod and Angostura bitters)

Pinch of freshly grated nutmeg

Add all the ingredients to a Collins or highball glass, then add crushed ice until the glass is 3/4 full. Use a bar spoon or lele to swizzle. Top up with additional crushed ice as needed to fill the glass and garnish. I garnished with mint, a lime wheel, and cocktail cherry.

Cate also recommends using a swizzle napkin wrap, which I used back on cocktail #24, the Chartreuse Swizzle. He learned how to do this when he worked at Trader Vic's and made the Queens Park Swizzle. Basically, you unfold a cocktail napkin, fold it in half diagonally making a right triangle, then fold over in about 1.5" sections. Then, wrap around the glass, and knot. This gives the drinker something to hold other than a very cold, frosty glass. 

This is a really wonderful cocktail. It hits all of my favorite notes - first, the bouquet of mint as you pull the glass up for a sip, then the richness of the black rum, a hint of vanilla from the lighter rum, a savory spiciness from the Herbstura, allspice dram, and nutmeg, all kept in check by the sweetness of the syrups, and citrus of the lime. Absolutely wonderful. This ranks up there in my Top 10 for sure. I found that it got even more enjoyable as the ice diluted a bit, taking away the slight burn of the 151 that was there on the first sip. I can only imagine that using an aged rum would only improve this drink. Give it a try!

This week I leave you with some very interesting footage from 1956 - vacation footage from someone's trip to Bermuda! Ok, so maybe other people's vacation films can be boring, but this is actually worth a skim if, for nothing else, the cars, Bermuda short-wearing sailors, and lots of people who, on a tropical vacation, are dressed better than most people dress to go to work in 2017. I really wish I had a reason to purchase and wear a white dinner jacket ... sigh. Enjoy!

Cocktail #41: Jet Pilot

I've been wanting to try to make a Jet Pilot for a long time. It's one of the more complicated cocktails out of the previous 40 I've made, and it seemed to tick a lot of boxes on my "usually like" list - interesting history, a sort of dark/spicy flavor profile (with the cinnamon syrup, herbstura, etc.), and on top of that, a name inspired by the jet/space age.

The recipe comes from Martin and Rebecca Cate's Smugger's Cove. Cate credits the recipe back to Jeff "Beachbum" Berry's Sippin' Safari book, which I do not own, and from what I understand, the drink was created in 1956 by Mariano Licudine (who worked for Donn Beach at one point), and based the drink on Donn Beach's Test Pilot. The version below, Cate notes, comes from The Luau in Beverly Hills, CA.

Postcard from the Luau, via Critiki. From the personal collection of Tim Haack

Get your shakers ready ...

0.50 oz. fresh lime juice
0.50 oz. fresh grapefruit juice
0.50 oz. cinnamon syrup
0.50 oz. John D. Taylor's Velvet Falernum
1.00 oz. black blended rum (I used Gosling's Black Seal)
0.75 oz. blended aged rum (I haven't sprung for an aged rum yet, so I used my old standby, Plantation Original Dark)
0.75 oz. black blended overproof rum (I used Lemon Hart 151)
1 dash Herbstura (equal parts Pernod/Herbsaint [a licorice liqueur] and Angostura bitters mixed together)

Add all the ingredients to a drink mixer tin, or a shaker. Fill with crushed ice (and some "agitator cubes" if using a mixer), flash blend or shake, and open pour with a gated finish into a double old fashioned glass. No garnish*.

* Given the name of this blog, and the fact that my lovely wife Jen can create nearly anything in miniature form out of sculpy clay, I asked and she kindly agreed to sculpt a mini 1960s style fighter jet to be used as a garnish. I also couldn't resist using a blinking ice cube!

Astro ponders the limits of outer space

Verdict: Fabulous. As I suspected I would, I really loved this cocktail. It's pretty strong, but it has a wonderful spicy flavor profile, with a hint of sweetness. This may not be everyone's cup of tea (Jen made quite a face when she tasted it) but I found this to be really a lovely drink. Granted, there's a ton of ingredients, some difficult to make or find, but if you've already got a lot of this stuff in your bar, this one is a winner in my book, and worth trying out.

Cheers!

Enjoying a Jet Pilot on the patio on one of Chicago's first warm afternoons

Now, enjoy some Jazz for the Jet Age from Dave Pike:

Cocktail #40: Siboney

I just realized the other day that about one year has passed since I embarked on this little project. And here I am, only 40 cocktails in after 52 weeks. So it goes. I guess I need to pick up the pace!

The Siboney. Fresh Passion Fruit Syrup Makes this Drink

This week we have a very simple cocktail that's easy to make and very accessible -- and is now one of my new favorites. I found it in Jeff Berry's Potions of the Caribbean and he credits it back to Trader Vic, circa 1950s, but found in The Trader's 1974 book, Rum Cookery & Drinkery. Berry notes that the Siboney "is a good example of how Trader Vic took the Daiquiri template in interesting directions--and how he kept the inventory down at his bar. Double to Siboney, add a dash of Angostura bitters, and serve over crushed ice in a pilsner glass; now you have the Trader Vic Grog."

This cocktail contains passion fruit syrup, and readers of this blog will be familiar with my bad luck/incorrect use of Monin Passion Fruit Syrup. Well, this week I decided to bite the bullet on some expensive passion fruits at the shop and make my own. There's tons of recipes out there for this stuff, and Berry and Cate have their own variations that use passion fruit puree (which, for me has been harder to find than passion fruit), so I landed on this one from Episurious.com, which I halved:

1 cup water

1 cup sugar

1/2 cup passion fruit pulp (from about 7 ripe passion fruits)

Combine all ingredients in heavy small saucepan. Bring to boil over medium-high heat, stirring until sugar dissolves. Reduce heat to low; simmer until syrup is reduced to 1 1/2 cups, about 15 minutes. Transfer to bowl, cover, and chill. (Can be made 2 days ahead. Keep chilled.)

I added about an ounce of vodka to what I had leftover hoping to make this keep for a couple weeks.

Anyway, WHAT A DIFFERENCE THIS MADE! Instead of being totally overpowering, the fresh passion fruit syrup gave this just a hint of what the Monin stuff would have done with a similar amount. It was subtle and delicious, and didn't hit you over the head at all. I'm tempted to dump the Monin stuff down the drain after tasting a cocktail with the real McCoy.

To make a Siboney:

1.00 oz. dark Jamaican rum (I used Plantation)
0.50 oz. fresh lemon juice
0.50 oz. unsweetened pineapple juice
0.50 oz. passion fruit syrup

Shake well with ice cubes. Strain into a tiki-stemmed (or regular old coupe) cocktail glass. I garnished with a slice of lime.

As I said, the verdict for this cocktail for me was fabulous - a new favorite! The most present flavor is pineapple when you first sip, followed by the rum and passion fruit. The lemon juice takes the edge off of the sweetless of the passion fruit syrup, and balances it all very nicely.

This is a cocktail I will undoubtedly come back to again and again this summer. Next time I might reduce the pineapple juice by a hair to let a bit more of the rum shine through, but all in all, this one's a keeper.

Cheers, and happy spring!

Cocktail #39: Demerara Dry Float

This cocktail has been on my "to make eventually" list for a while, and it wasn't until recently that I was finally able to do so - with the gift of a bottle of Lemon Hart 151 Demerara rum from the Meek Tiki and his lovely wife Amber - thank you again!

This drink appears in both Jeff Berry's Intoxica! and in Martin and Rebecca Cate's Smuggler's Cove and I've borrowed variations on both recipes to make this drink. Here's Berry's recipe, to which he credits Donn the Beachcomber, circa 1941 (my modifications noted):

2.50 oz. fresh lime juice
1 tsp fresh lemon juice
1.50 oz. passion fruit syrup¹
0.25 oz. sugar syrup²
1.00 oz. Demerara rum³
0.25 oz. Demerara rum⁴
0.50 oz. maraschino liqueur

Method: shake everything - except the 151 rum - with ice cubes. Strain into a double old fashioned glass filled with crushed ice. Carefully float the 151 rum. Do not stir.

¹ Given my experience with the Monin passion fruit syrup of it being way too overpowering if used in recommended quantities, I decided to halve the amount for this drink to 0.75 oz. If you have made your own passion fruit syrup or perhaps use a different, less powerful brand, your mileage may vary. For the Monin, 0.75 oz. was just about right.
² I used Demerara sugar syrup instead
³  I upped this slightly to 1.25 ounces
⁴ I went with Martin Cate's version and used 0.75 oz. of the Lemon Hart 151

I also went with Cate's version of serving this drink - with a "side of danger!" - and poured the 151 rum into a separate shot glass. Cate recommends "encourag[ing] guests to pour as much or as little of the overproof rum into their drink as they like, and experience how the drink flavor changes."

A side of danger! Lemon Hart 151

When I realized that a full 2.5 ounces of lime juice went into this sucker, my expectations dropped slightly since I assumed that the citrus would be overpowering. While indeed tart, it actually was nicely balanced by the Demerara syrup and passion fruit syrup. The Demerara rums played really well with the tartness of the lime, and the sweetness of the syrups. I ended up really enjoying this drink from the get-go. I drank several sips before floating any of the Lemon Hart 151 onto the top of it. After the float of about half of the shot glass, the flavor did indeed change, and not just strength-wise in terms of the alcohol. The drink became a bit smokier from the 151, with a bit more caramel flavor. Really very nice!

If you're a person who likes tart and sour things, you'll be into this. As my better half said, after tasting it and making an unpleasant pucker face, "of course you like this. If you could, you'd probably rim the glass with Sour Patch Kids coating!" Hmmmm ...!

Floating the 151 rum

Post 151 float

Jeff Berry ends the recipe page for the Demerara Dry Float with the "Beachcomber's Creed" composed in the early 1940s by Donn's first wife, Cora "Sunny" Sund:

"Our number one pre-requisite / Never stand when you can sit / And if you can - lie down a bit / Relax - no matter what you do / Enjoying life is up to you / The world is just a point of view / When day is done - and comes the night / No pastime makes the stars so bright / As greeting dusk with rum's delight / of all life's pleasures, deeplly drink / At every worry give a wink / It's much later than you think"

Cheers to that.

A slightly different take on the same sentiment, about 40 years later:

Cocktail #37: Zombie

Yikes! It's been over a month since my last post. The last few weeks have been hectic with travel for work, visiting family, and an uptick in my day job. I'm hoping to get back on a weekly schedule going forward!

This week, due to the kindness and generosity of a couple new friends, I was able to tackle the venerable cocktail, the Zombie.

A few weeks back fellow appreciator of all things tiki, the Meek Tiki (aka Lucas), his wife, and a friend visited Chicago for a long weekend from Minneapolis, and we met up at Three Dots and a Dash, naturally. They mentioned halfway through drinks that they had forgotten to bring a bottle they intended to give to me as a gift - a bottle of Lemon Hart 151. A while back, I had commented on a photo of his with that rum in it and mentioned that I had never seen this available - even at my go to beverage super-store, Binny's. I must have looked crestfallen, because a few weeks after their visit, an odd-shaped package arrived at my door - packed like a champ, they had sent me that bottle of Lemon Hart (and a handmade tiki cocktail pick from artist Michael Grider)! I'd seen so many drink recipes that had called for it and never been able to find it, and hadn't gotten around to sourcing an alternative Demerara 151 proof rum (check out the Five Minutes of Rum podcast episode that covers the history of the Lemon Hart brand and other 151 rum). So Lucas and Amber - thank you! I've put it to good use this week.

Ok, onto the drink. I sourced this Zombie recipe from Jeff "Beachbum" Berry's Potions of the Caribbean. It seems to be the definitive Zombie recipe. The Zombie was created by Donn the Beachcomber, circa 1934. Donn was notoriously secretive with his cocktail recipes, and he never published this one. So up until Berry unearthed it in Donn's headwaiter Dick Santiago's notebook, and published it for the first time in 2007 in Sippin' Safari, all attempts at recreating it were just best guesses.

Berry notes that the Zombie was likely a cocktail of its time - "after the privations of Prohibition, here was a poke in the eye of the Anti-Saloon League: an instant bender, with so much booze in it that Donn would serve 'only two to a customer.'"

So, here it is:

1.50 oz. gold Puerto Rican rum (I used Bacardi gold)
1.50 oz. aged Jamaican rum (I used Plantation Original Dark)
1.00 oz. Lemon Hart 151-proof Demerara rum
0.75 oz. fresh lime juice
0.50 oz. Don's mix*
0.50 oz. falernum
6 drops (1/8 tsp) Pernod
1 teaspoon of grenadine
Dash Angostura bitters
6.00 oz. crushed ice

* 2 parts white grapefruit juice (I was lucky to find white grapefruit again at the market) to 1 part Don's Spices #4 (cinnamon syrup)

Put everything in a blender. Blend at high speed for no more than 5 seconds. Pour into a chimney glass (I used a tiki mug). Add ice cubes to fill. Garnish with a sprig of mint.

This drink knocked my socks off.

I'd ordered a Zombie a handful of times over the years at various bars, and I can't say any of them were all that memorable, other than being strong and probably a bit fruity. This sucker was a whole different animal. Next to the Mai Tai, this cocktail is definitely a favorite. It's both spicy and citrusy, and has the faintest note of anise from the few drops of Pernod. The Lemon Hart provides some heat for sure, but it's not unpleasantly burning like you might expect a higher proof rum to be. Dilution of the ice works in the drink's favor as it mellows it out a bit after a few minutes.

The Zombie is a wonderfully complex and enjoyable exotic cocktail - unlike any of the previous 36 that I have made in the past year. Find a bottle of Lemon Hart 151 and make one yourself! Thanks again Lucas!

Cocktail #36: Captain's Grog

And now back to our regularly scheduled programming!

As Lloyd Bridges' character in Airplane! may have said, I picked a hell of a month to temporarily quit drinking. A fake president, talking about fake news when he doesn't like it, who tried to ban a whole group of people from our country ... well, it's been stressful, and rage-inducing. I lasted until about the 25th when we went out with a couple of our best friends to one of my favorite bars in Chicago, the Orbit Room. Anyway ... on to this week's fully loaded cocktail!

Hula Girl by my talented, Sculpy-crazy wife - www.jenlimarzi.com!

Ever since my attempt at making a Navy Grog months ago, with the failure of my ice cone, I've wanted to try again. Especially since my better half bought me Jeff Berry's ice cone kit for my birthday a couple months back. Turns out the Navy Grog isn't the only grog in the log ... The Captain's Grog also traditionally used an ice cone. So, last week I made a couple ice cones, which is itself a process. Even with the ice cone kit, I was having trouble getting them to work. I couldn't get them out of the mold without crumbling, or the straw hole was too small. After a little Googling, I read that if your snow ice -- ice you've made in your blender for example -- is too "dry" or too cold, it can make it difficult. So after some adjustments (pack the cone, wait a couple of minutes for the ice to melt very slightly, and then try to extract carefully), I was able to make two usable ice cones.

The Captain's Grog, according to our good friend Berry, originates from the Captain's Inn, Long Beach, Calif., circa 1962. The Captain's Inn contained the Hukilau Polynesian Room, which I assumed served many of these fine cocktails in its heydey.

Here's the recipe:

• 0.50 oz. fresh lime juice
• 0.50 oz. fresh grapefruit juice (strangely I found white grapefruit at my market, which I NEVER see - many old school tiki cocktails call for white grapefruit, which isn't as sweet as the ruby reds we mostly see today)
• 0.50 oz. maple syrup
• 0.50 oz. Falernum
• 0.50 oz. orange Curacao
• 1.00 oz soda water
• 3 drops vanilla extract
• 3 drops almond extract
• 0.75 oz. Myers's rum
• 0.50 oz. light Puerto Rican rum
• 0.50 oz. dark Puerto Rican rum

(As you can see, I ran out of Myers's and instead substituted Mt. Gay, which was probably lighter than the original recipe intended. I'm also currently without any Puerto Rican or Virgin Islands rum, so I used a light Havana Club along with Plantation Dark. I probably should have swapped the Plantation for the Mt. Gay, but what can you do.)

Add all the ingredients* to a cocktail shaker and fill with ice cubes. Shake vigorously. Strain into a double old fashioned glass either filled with crushed ice or with an ice cone. Garnish with mint and cocktail cherry - and whatever the hell else you want!

* Berry doesn't specify adding the soda water after shaking, but one would assume you would just top the cocktail with soda water to avoid too much fizz while shaking. I took a couple of sips before I remembered to add the soda water and it was delightful either way - obviously a little stronger all around before the soda.

That's a long list of ingredients. I admit this is not the most approachable cocktail - the sheer number of ingredients, some hard to find, along with the whole ice cone thing ... but readers, I tell you this: it's worth the trouble.

For me, the Captain's Grog rates up there near the mighty Mai-Tai, my all time favorite cocktail. I found it was a little sweeter than a Mai-Tai - perhaps the maple syrup gave it a little extra sweet kick, but it wasn't overpowering at all. Really nicely balanced drink, with all the rums settling in nicely and playing well together with the rest of the ingredients. The ice cone is a novel addition, and if you can manage to make a few for when you have people over, your guests will undoubtedly enjoy them.

For this week's entertainment, I present to you the lovely Annette Funicello, doing "Pineapple Princess" set to some clips of her Hawaiian films. Enjoy, and cheers!

Cocktail #23: the "Martin-Eric" a.k.a. Eric's Martinique

As I mentioned a few posts ago, a few weeks ago we went to the amazing tiki bar in Milwaukee, Foundation. My last drink of the night there, which ended up being my favorite, was their "Martinique." A quick Google search for more on this drink turned up dry, so I can only assume this is a Foundation creation. It is listed on their menu as follows:

"Martinique - rhum agricole, lemon, grapefruit, falernum, Chartreuse, & anise, dry yet full flavored."

I've been wanting to take a shot at recreating it ever since. Today I got my hands on a small bottle of green Chartreuse (I actually am unsure if Foundation uses green or yellow Chartreuse, so I took a gamble; confirmed via Facebook that they use green) and thought I would try mixing one up. Now, I do not have any rhum agricole, which is a rum specific to the island of Martinique (hence the name of the drink). Rhum agricole is produced on Martinique and is made from pure sugar cane juice. I do have a bottle of Rhum Barbancourt, a Haitian rum (perhaps I should call the version that follows the Port-au-Prince?) which is also made from pure sugar cane juice, but due to differences in production methods, terroir, etc. it apparently has a different flavor. I also have a bottle of cachaca, a spirit produced in Brazil, very similar to rum, and also distilled from pure sugar cane juice. If you're interested in more details on the differences of agricole, Barbancourt, and cachaca, head on over here for a full report. (The difference that all of these three spirits have compared to other rum, is that other rums are produced from fermented molasses rather than sugar cane juice.)

Absent the "correct" rum, I decided to combine cachaca and the Rhum Barbancourt. And since I have no anise liqueur, I'm going with a dash of Angostura bitters instead.

My version of Foundation's Martinique cocktail:

0.50 oz. Brazilian cachaca
1.00 oz. Rhum Barbancourt (or use 1.5 oz. rhum agricole if you have it, instead of the cachaca and Barbancourt)
0.75 oz. green Chartreuse*
0.25 oz. Falernum
0.25 oz. fresh lemon juice
1.00 oz. fresh grapefruit juice
1 dash Angostura bitters

Combine all the ingredients in a cocktail shaker filled with crushed ice and shake with vigor. Pour unstrained into a double old fashioned glass (I used the one I bought at Foundation, of course!), and garnish with plenty of mint and flowers if you have them.

The result was lovely, and damn close to how I remember the Foundation version of this cocktail. Chartreuse is produced by monks in France using over 130 herbs, plants, and flowers and it's on the verge of dominating the drink a bit in the quantity I used above. *If I made this again, I would knock it down to 0.25 or 0.50 oz. Chartreuse and use an extra quarter-ounce of the Barbancourt instead. I might also try a version omitting the bitters. This cocktail is spicy and dry, with a hint of sourness, and creates an incredible sensation on your tongue with each sip. I can't recommend it enough! Chartreuse is expensive (about $30 for a 375 ml bottle) but a little goes a long way, so it will last a while. This is a pretty easy drink to make if you have the ingredients, and would be a great drink to add to your tiki cocktail party!

In honor of the cachaca used in this cocktail, which hails from Brazil, here's a great compilation of vintage Brazilian samba/bossa nova and other music. Get shaking (hips and shakers) - cheers!

Cocktail #22: Voodoo Grog

This week's cocktail was a fun (and delicious) one.

I've been wanting to try a flaming cocktail for a few weeks and this week's Voodoo Grog seemed like the perfect opportunity. I found it by looking up cocktails in Jeff Berry's Potions of the Caribbean that use allspice or pimento dram (which I made myself recently and have been wanting to use more often). Following last week's Suffering Bastard, which I found to be a wonderfully spicy and dry cocktail, I was looking for a drink that might have a similar profile and figured that almost anything that used allspice dram would be a good candidate. I wasn't disappointed.

According to Berry, the Voodoo Grog was invented by Trader Vic in the mid-1950s. Berry slightly adapted a version he found in Trader Vic's 1972 Bartender's Guide as such:

1.00 oz. gold Puerto Rican rum (I used good old Bacardi)
1.00 oz. gold rhum agricole vieux (I used the closest rum I had - a rhum Barbancourt)
0.75 oz. fresh lime juice
0.75 oz. fresh white grapefruit juice
0.75 oz. allspice or pimento dram (I cut this back to 0.50 oz. - use what works for you)
0.25 oz. honey
0.50 oz. passion fruit syrup (given my past experience with drinks being overwhelmed with passion fruit syrup, I decided to cut this back to 0.25 oz. and I'm glad I did).
1 egg white
Nutmeg
1 cup crushed ice

Dissolve the honey in the lime juice. Place this mixture, and all other ingredients -- except nutmeg -- into a blender. Blend for 20 seconds. Pour un-strained into a Voodoo tumbler, large snifter, or, as I did, into a hollowed out pineapple with the core still intact. Dust with freshly grated nutmeg. Garnish with a mint sprig and pineapple stick (I used three pineapple leaves and a swizzle stick).

I'd heard that nutmeg can sometimes be used on flaming drinks to create sparks with the flame, so figured I would try a small flame with this cocktail. I kept the core of the pineapple intact after using my handy tool to hollow the rest of it out. I then used a plain toothpick to attach a spent half of a lime to the pineapple core. I soaked a sugar cube in lemon extract (which has a higher proof than 151 rum, and thus provides a better flame) and lit the sucker on fire! My first attempt was slightly less flame than expected, so I used more lemon extract - probably about a tablespoon - and tried again, with excellent effect!

***Please note: Always use extreme caution when creating flaming drinks! Always be sober when using flames, warn any guests, be sure you have a fire extinguisher handy, and be sure to extinguish the flames safely before drinking the cocktail. ***

To my delight, not only was this cocktail fun to make and look at, but it was also delicious. The egg white gave it a beautiful, light froth, and the combination of the sweet passion fruit and honey with the spicy allspice dram and nutmeg made for a surprisingly fantastic meld of flavors. The passion fruit did not overwhelm the drink at all - just be careful to not use too much. The two types of rum almost took a backseat - the drink tasted like it barely had any alcohol in it at all.

In honor of the name of this week's cocktail, I give you "Voodoo Dreams" by Les Baxter. Cheers!

Cocktail #21: Suffering Bastard

As my core readers (all 10 of you!) will know by now, this blog and its drinks are heavily influenced by the books and classic recipes relayed by Jeff "Beachbum" Berry and Martin Cate, authors of the Grog Log (JB), Potions of the Caribbean (JB), and Smugger's Cove (MC). The recipe for this week's drink, the Suffering Bastard, appears in all three books above, and each time it's a little different. It wasn't until today, after I had gone shopping, that I absorbed Jeff Berry's recipe in Potions that I realized a) it is the definitive version of the recipe and b) I bought some of the wrong stuff.

In Potions Berry has published the recipe from the private papers of globetrotting bartender extraordinaire, Joe Scialom, most famously of the Shepherd's Long Bar, Shepherd's Hotel, Cairo, 1940s (which makes an appearance in one of my favorite films, the English Patient). Apparently devised as a hangover cure for the 11th Hussars - British troops stationed in Egypt during the Second World War, there are many versions of this drink floating around, and Berry himself published a different version in his Grog Log. What seems to be the definitive version, from Potions:

1.00 oz. gin
1.00 oz. cognac
4.00 oz. ginger beer, chilled
0.50 oz. Rose's Lime Juice Cordial
2 dashes Angustura bitters

Shake everything - except ginger beer - with ice cubes. Stir in ginger beer. Pour unstrained into a double old fashioned glass (I used my double old fashioned mai tai glass I bought at the fabulous Foundation Bar in Milwaukee). Garnish with an orange slice and mint sprig.

My version, cobbled together from the three above books:

1.00 oz. London dry gin (I used Bombay Sapphire)
1.00 oz. brandy (I used Pierre Duchene Napoleon V.S.O.P. which I got for cheap at Trader Joe's)
4.00 oz. fancy ginger ale
0.50 oz. fresh lime juice
0.25 oz. Demerara sugar syrup
2 dashes Angustura bitters

Same method as above. I garnished with an orange wheel, three pineapple leaves, speared with a home made maraschino cherry. My one misstep that keeps my version from being the same as Cate's in Smugger's is I used ginger ale instead of ginger beer. So it goes. Nevertheless, the result was fabulous.

Refreshing, yet with a small kick from the brandy, this cocktail goes down easily. The bitters and the nose from my homemade maraschino cherry lend a hint of spiciness to the cocktail which is amplified by the ginger.

Surely, had I used ginger beer, the result would have been even better. This is without a doubt one of my favorites out of 21 cocktails I've made over the last 21 weeks. Perhaps it's because fall is just on the horizon, but I find myself being drawn more towards this type of tiki drink lately - more dry, more spicy, less sweet. At Foundation in Milwaukee - easily one of the best tiki bars I've ever been to - I had their "Martinique" cocktail - rhum agricole, lemon, grapefruit juice, falernum, Chartreuse, and anise - and it was my favorite drink of the night. I need to cobble together some dough to buy a bottle of Chartreuse to try to recreate it. Anyway - the Martinique's flavor profile was more on the spicy, dry side, than sweet. And it was wonderful!

As I mixed up this drink, I put on an LP I recently bought used at Vintage Vinyl in Evanston, IL - Ellis In Wonderland by Ray Ellis and his Orchestra. I admit without embarrassment that I bought this solely on the merit of it's cover. As it turned out, it's a really pleasant 1950s instrumental - some would derisively call it "elevator music" - but I love it. You can check it out, of course, on YouTube:


Cheers and thanks for reading!