Favorite cocktail recipes and unnatural drink experiments?
It's time for another round of "name your favorite mixed drink, and how to make it". Or describe an outlandish, ill-considered, or random mixture and how it turned out.
Right now, I'm drinking an unnatural experiment made with odd drams to get rid of a couple of near-empties prior to moving.
2 oz. jack pine gin (freezer cold, local product, could use any botanical gin)
1 oz. peony baijiu (gift from a friend's visit to China)
Shake with ice, serve in a coupe glass with a very small amount of ice. It's good enough that I'll try making peony-infused vodka next spring.
[I don't usually enjoy mixed drinks because so many are too sweet - that's the spouse's domain. But some combinations of herbal, floral, spicy, bitter, or sour flavors work for my taste.]
Feel free to share what's working for you.
I present to you, the COVID Mary:
That drink was made about 2 weeks into heavy quarantine, when I wanted a Bloody Mary and had no tomatoe juice or fresh tomatoes.
If you're ever stuck with just vodka and a pre-sugared generic kool-aid mix. Don't go for it. It starts out weird, then kind of grows on you, but ends in a lot of hurt. It's better to just bite the bullet, get in the car, and buy your mixer/s of choice.
I really enjoy the Painkiller, and I use the recipe from the YouTube channel called How To Drink:
1oz orange juice
1oz cream of coconut
2 oz tequila
4 oz pineapple juice
This is shaken with ice and I usually double strain it.
The Trinidad Sour
This is my all time favorite cocktail. I don’t like sweet drinks, and this certainly is not, so if you can’t take some bitterness, pass on this one. The most interesting feature of this cocktail is that the primary ingredient is not a liquor, but is a bitter, Angostura to be exact. If you can find a store that sells larger bottles of angostura, it isn’t even particularly expensive to make.
1.5 oz Angostura or other aromatic bitter
.5 oz Rye whiskey (can work with any whisk(e)y, but rye works best)
1 oz Amaretto
.75 oz lemon juice
Shake with ice and strain into a chilled coupe glass.
This cocktail is so interesting. It is packed with flavors and has a delightfully heavy and ‘chewy’ consistency. If you like bitter and complex drinks, give it a try.
Also, I highly recommend the app Mixel for organizing drink recipes and bar ingredients. It includes a Trinidad sour recipe, but mine is better, so here is a link to it:
https://links.mixelcocktails.com/NwvU
That sounds fascinating, thanks! Even with the bitters and lemon juice sourness, the Amaretto might make it a bit sweet for my tastes. As an example, a Negroni is way too sweet for me, but I like Amaros (e.g. Cynar) and bitters.
So I'll give this a try, maybe with the rye and Amaretto proportions swapped.
Spouse is a total cocktail douche 🤓, and he loves La Vieux Carrés. Too darn sweet for me - I'm more of a Vesper, Bloody Mary, Hemingway Daiquiri but-with-gin-not-rum, or Sazerac (no sugar) kind of gal.
Oh, certainly - I occasionally get a taste for good scotch or whiskey. Even in unadulterated spirits
though, there are compounds that enhance the perception of sweetness - things like oaky vanillins or caramel notes from toasted barrels.
But when spouse puts the Bartender Supreme hat on, I'll go along for the ride. The truth is, I'm mainly a snooty dry wine drinker - for my taste, there's just more intricate chemistry in a drink that hasn't been distilled.
I also understand that bartenders aren't happy with "hold the sugar" orders - the sweetener is supposed to balance the taste of raw alcohol and emphasize other flavors. I kind of burned out on sugar after years as a pastry cook, though; it doesn't do much for me in any beverage.