Loudtalknliquor

With the new baby and all the work associated with that, I’m a bit behind on putting together a 2012 recap but I figured better late than never. Here are some of my thoughts on the best of what I made or tasted in the past year for the blog.

(Value) Old Weller Antique 107 – I’ve seen this bourbon mentioned a lot the last few weeks, and maybe it is just because I started paying attention after picking up a bottle myself. It’s become one of my go-to bottles for both sipping and bourbon forward cocktails like an old fashioned.

(Local) –Oola Waitsburg Bourbon - I’ve used this bottle over and over again on this blog and I’m sad to see it is already nearly empty. It’s definitely the best local bourbon or rye that I’ve had the opportunity to try.

(Splurge) – Colonel Taylor Tornado Survivor – While I managed to procure 3 bottles from the Buffalo Trace Antique Collection (Sazerac 18, Stagg, Thomas Handy) and 1 experimental collection (Oats), the only one that I’d hungrily buy again is the Handy. The Tornado Survivor bourbon is another special offering from Buffalo Trace and I’ve gone back to it time and time again. Sadly I won’t be able to seek out another bottle of this, but I’m looking forward to trying some of the other Colonel Taylor offerings.

(Homemade) Charred Cedar – this was a hard call for me as there were a lot of bitters that I made this year that I thoroughly enjoyed. Apple was particularly successful, and I’ve also really enjoyed the fig and orange fig versions I made. But the charred cedar was definitely a big hit with friends and the only bitters that I ran so low on that I had to make another batch.

(Retail) Scrappy’s Aromatic – I picked up one of the sampler packs that Scrappy’s offers that contains four different bitters. It was handy to have a small amount of flavors like celery and chocolate which I don’t often need. I didn’t expect to end up using the Aromatic so much, but I’ll definitely buy a full bottle once my small one runs out as I keep reaching for it for both cocktails and mocktails.

Jan 02

New year, new look?

Hello faithful readers or whoever happens upon this page. I made some updates today to change the look of the site. I actually really liked the old look but felt it was hard to find older posts or drinks with ingredients I had used before. So hopefully this at least solves that problem. Now that I have a full year’s worth of material, it had gotten a bit unwieldy.

Feel free to pipe up if you have drink requests for upcoming posts or feedback on the changes. I’m still getting the hang of the new template and will probably continue tweak it.

Dec 31

Judgment day and other new beginning cliches

Over the last year since I started this blog, I wrote most of my posts nestled up on my couch. There is a big bay window in our living room and I’ve often placed whatever drink I am writing about on the sill. A good percentage of the time I’ve had a friendly wrestling match with my cat who likes to occupy a place on my laptop. I keep a copy of the Bitters or PDT nearby for reference depending on the cocktail about which I’m trying to tell a story.

Today the circumstances are different. There is a cold bottle of champagne nearby, but it is unopened and unlikely that we’ll get to it today. I’ve still got a view but today it is of my sleeping baby and wife who are both recovering from a long delayed labor that finally culminated in his birth late December 27. Since then, we’ve been hanging out in the post partum room and trying to get the hang of caring for a newborn.

Obviously that hasn’t involved any cocktails. At some point during the early stages of labor, the doctor permitted us to take a walk outside for a couple hours. Rebecca joked as we headed down towards Capitol Hill that we should stop by Canon or Tavern Law. I thought bowling at the Garage might progress the labor and create some good photo ops. In the end, we stopped by Elliot Bay Book Company for some browsing and I got a couple slices of pizza at Big Mario’s to fuel up.

All our holiday plans assumed the new baby would be here or worst case scenario that we’d be hanging out in the hospital. Instead we got to join in an elaborate multi course meal at John & Cait’s where guests volunteered to bring a course and pair a wine to go with it. We thought at best we’d be able to stop by with Archer, but instead Rebecca made a fabulous French onion soup and I dug up a Betz Grenache from the basement I’d wanted to try. We figured it was safest to volunteer for an early course since we had tried all sorts of means to get the labor going.

Once it looked like we’d be around for the party, I dug up a couple cocktail recipes to offer people while we snacked on appetizers. Christmas Eve also seemed like the perfect time for another figgy manhattan. I intended to infuse figs in bourbon for longer but I didn’t actually get around to it until the afternoon. Verdict on that – still a good cocktail, but with the orange garnish and orange fig bitters, it had as much citrus as fig. The infusion needs to happen for longer than a half day, so I’ll keep experimenting with that.

With all the talk of the Mayan End of the World a few days before, it seemed apropos to make a Pisco based drink from PDT called Judgment Day. I knew the St. Germain it contained would be an easy selling point for at least Meredith and Cait seemed to love the Pisco sour I made her a couple months ago. My suspicions were correct as this was the best concoction of the night –a frothy and refreshing crowd pleaser.

In my last post, I made a mocktail that was inspired by the New England Buck recipe from Imbibe magazine. This time I had some cider around so I thought I’d try it out in its original condition. My opinion was that the sage & juniper syrup is a weaker component. I could barely taste a difference after the recommended 10 minute seeping time, so I kept it in until it was time to serve. Even still, Rebecca and I barely could taste the difference. It’s still a nice sipper of a drink but I’m not sure that going through the trouble of making the syrup (it’s not hard so if you have to make syrup and you have the ingredients you could certainly do it) is worth the time. I’d recommend seeping it for at least an hour though.

The drinks were a great start to what was an evening of funny stories and dishes made by friends and family that would be at home in many of Seattle’s better restaurants. We finished the night with a big slice of Chocolate potato bundt cake made by Meredith from our Tom Douglass Dahlia Bakery cookbook. It was an ideal way to toast the holiday and what would soon be Rebecca and my end of one world and into a new and hopefully wonderful one.

Combine all ingredients with ice except the ginger beer and shake briefly. Strain into an ice-filled highball glass and top with ginger beer. Stir and serve.

Heat ingredients in a saucepan until sugar dissolves. Remove from heat and let sit at least 60 minutes, then strain into a clean glass container.

Dry Shake, then shake with ice and strain into a chilled coupe. (Original recipe calls for the cup to be rinsed in absinthe and to be garnished with 2 spritzes of all spice dram, but I omitted due to lack of ingredients)

Dec 18

Waiting game

So much for my announcement last week that Canon would be the last bar that I visited before baby. Turns out “the Conrad” is in no hurry to leave his friendly confines. Not that we’re overly eager, but it is funny to be in a state of limbo. We haven’t exactly just stood still. We fit in visits to both the old favorites like Sun Liquor and Delancey, as well as their respective neighbors Terra Platta and Essex.

We also hosted friends and family over for dinner and drinks on consecutive nights. Everyone says you have to take advantage of these times and it was fun to do more cooking and trying out drink experiments. Here were some of the highlights:

Stir ingredients over ice and pour over a large ice cube in a chilled old fashioned glass.

Sun Liquor’s drink of the week originally calls for applejack, angostura and a blended scotch along with the Cynar and honey syrup. It was the perfect drink for the hard cold rainy night we visited, and I liked it so much that I recreated it at home the following night with the ingredients that I had on hand that were the most suitable substitutions. I would certainly make (or order) this drink again.

I was looking for a recipe to make use of the Peach Bitters I received as a birthday present and Erik from Sun Liquor answered my call for help with this drink. Grant and I enjoyed this slow sipper last night while waiting for Rebecca to serve up a homemade mac & cheese that filled the house with its glorious scent. I think I’ll try a champagne cocktail next for the peach bitters, or a gin based drink recipe that Erik also shared. He’s a great teacher if you get a chance to attend one of his classes.

St. Germaine foam (1 egg white, 2 oz St. Germaine, 1 oz lemon juice, .75 oz water) – makes enough for at least 3 cocktails

Mix the foam ingredients on high in a kitchen aid or similar style mixer with the wire whip attached for several minutes until the foam takes on the consistency of whipped cream. Pour into the bottom of a chilled coupe.

Stir the rest of the ingredients over ice and strain into the foam filled coupe.

I found this drink when attempting to make the Canon for last week’s post. I thought it might be perfect for my sister Meredith’s tastes as she likes just about anything with St. Germaine. It was also a great excuse to use my rhubarb bitters again. The foam worked, but I learned that my previous advice to make the foam right before your guest shows up and then chill in the refrigerator was not so sage. I’d skip cooling altogether since in a few minutes it had started to collapse and I ended up remixing it. This is a tasty drink but I’m not sure I’ll be making it again unless our baby likes sleeping through a pounding mixer.

Muddle the sage with the grenadine in the bottom of a chilled old fashioned glass. Add smoked lemon juice, ice cubes, and add roughly equal parts of ginger ale and club soda. Give a quick stir and garnish with a lemon twist.

I originally made some grenadine because I was interested in making a rye cocktail called the Scofflaw that calls for it, but I ended up using some instead for this mocktail for Rebecca and Betsy. The name refers to Betsy’s pregnancy progress. I think they both enjoyed it quite a bit, although I know they were both eyeing the glasses of Owen Roe wine that Grant and I had with our mac & cheese last night. At least Rebecca will get a taste of that again soon; depending on when our little bun decides he’s had enough cooking.

Dec 12

The 4 experiments - updated!

My sister Meredith and I both love living in Seattle and I’m happy she’s out here these days. But we both have some favorite foods we miss from our days in the Chicago suburbs, and we usually hit those places on our trips back there. For her birthday in October, some of her friends sent her the mother lode of Chicago gifts: frozen deep dish pizzas from Lou Malnati’s. Somehow she managed restraint to not consume them all and shared several at family dinner with us this weekend. Especially with this year not getting to travel back there over the holidays, it was a taste of our old home right here in Seattle.

Rick Bayless is another Chicago institution, but back when I lived there in high school I didn’t know anything about him. I think one of my mom’s biggest fears when Rebecca and I were planning our wedding was that we were going to choose to have a Mexican buffet, so needless to say Meredith and I didn’t grow up with weekly taco night. I still don’t know why my mom had that fear – at the time my tastes were still quite bland. Somewhere along the road I got introduced to Rick’s cookbook and made his pork shoulder recipe, and have been pretty infatuated ever since then. So when I saw that on twitter he was having a tequila cocktail recipe contest to win a copy of his new cookbook, I figured our Chicago pizza night was as good as any to try out some ideas and get some feedback.

The contest was simply to send in your favorite tequila cocktail. The idea that immediately came to mind was the Kentucky Cartel drink that I blogged about earlier, but figured Barrio wouldn’t be all that pleased if my guesstimated version of their drink ended up on a website that actually gets a lot of traffic. So I took one element of that that I liked and decided to try a few different versions – an old fashioned, a manhattan style, and a ginger drink. I also made a margarita variation with some of the smoked lemon juice to see if that might stand out.

Everyone got to try all four drinks, except for Rebecca who was stuck with another peach shrub ginger ale mocktail with a bit of honey syrup to help her fight a cold. I think they are all pretty tasty in their own way, so I’m including the recipes for them all even though the margarita didn’t taste all that different from a regular margarita. Chris was a fan of the old fashioned, and Liz even liked the manhattan version even though she doesn’t normally like them. No real surprise, that was my favorite. In the end though, we settled on the 4^thexperiment – the ginger drink – to submit to the contest. Fingers crossed! Here’s the link to the contest in case you’d like to submit something yourself:http://www.rickbayless.com/news/view?articleID=243

Also, if any more knowledgeable folks happen upon this blog and realize that I’ve used some recipe that is already known under another name (which is probably likely given how many recipes are out there), let me know and I’m happy to give credit where credit is due.

UPDATE: I found out today that Rick chose my recipe so I’m reposting this! I’m looking forward to trying out some more Tequila drinks from Frontera: Margaritas, Guacomoles, and Snacks

The rest of the chosen drinks are on Rick’s website: https://www.rickbayless.com/news/view?articleID=254

Combine all the ingredients over ice and shake until chilled. Pour into a chilled coupe.

Lightly muddle the bitters, honey syrup and pinkie size piece of lemon rind in a chilled old fashioned glass. Add a large ice cube and pour canella tequila and calvados over it. Give a quick couple stirs and serve.

Combine the ingredients over ice in a mixing glass and stir until well chilled. Strain into a chilled coupe.

Stir canella tequila, apple brandy, and bitters over ice in a mixing glass. Strain into an old fashioned glass halfway filled with crushed ice. Top with ginger ale, more crushed ice and a lemon twist.

Place 8 oz of tequila in a glass jar with 3 sticks of cinnamon. Cover. After 3-4 hours, strain and remove the sticks. It is now ready to use.

Dec 09

Seattle’s bourbon bank

This could be my last post before our baby arrives. It better be good since I assume any writing in future months will be sleep deprived at best and downright delirious at worst. It’s hard to say what effect having a newborn around is going to have on this hobby of mine of mixing drinks and telling little stories about them. Quite a few friends have soldiered on hosting dinner parties and taking their squawker out to restaurants, and we’re hoping to be those sorts of parents at least some of the time. I don’t know what our life will be like and it seems kind of foolish to predict what the priorities will be.

So the last few weeks we’ve been stocking up. We’ve filled our freezer with things we can reheat or at least not have to go to the store as often to make dinner. I’ve been acquiring a silly amount of bourbon but some of that has to do with having some luck finding bottles that I didn’t expect to come upon (like the Buffalo Trace Antique Collection). More perhaps on a later post on whether those acquisitions were actually worth the time and money.

(Not all pictured are new purchases but I am clearly trying to build a Canon like bourbon bunker in my basement)

We’ve also been trying to get out to restaurants and see friends that might be a bit harder to meet up with post baby. I’ve had on my to-do list a trip back to the bourbon palace Canon for a while now but it didn’t work out until this week when I met my old friend Cristal. We caught up on her bridge tournament success and her kids. I probably should have asked for more words of wisdom.

Speaking of wisdom, the folks at Canon certainly know what they are doing. It’s a remarkable set up with shelf upon shelf of every imaginable whiskey – probably the Smithsonian would be jealous of the collection. The Captain’s list is worth perusing even though a lot of what is in there is beyond the means of all but the uber rich. There are actually quite a few well priced selections in there too.

They’ve got some far from ordinary cocktails too. I’d been intrigued by the bar’s namesake cocktail but hadn’t actually tried it until this most recent visit. I was glad I did and the next morning woke up wondering if I could recreate it at home. It would certainly go with theme of creating a bourbon bunker – now I could also have the cocktail to match the Canon experience. The only thing that seemed a barrier was that this rye drink is topped with a Cointreau foam and I didn’t have any experience with molecular gastronomy.

I ended up watching a video created by Canon’s owner Jamie Boudreau called “How to Make Cocktail Foam” (http://www.smallscreennetwork.com/video/476/raising_the_bar_how_to_make_foam_for_a_cocktail) which was insightful. In the video, he makes an elderflower liquor foam using egg whites, lemon juice, water and St. Germaine and combines them using a professional grade whipper. I looked at the one that is recommended but couldn’t justify the cost to just make the occasional foam at home.

I figured I wasn’t stuck though since I realized that it is pretty much the same as making whipped cream which I’ve done many times using my Kitchen Aid mixer. I thought it wouldn’t be hard to achieve the same frothy substance using similar ratios with the Cointreau, egg whites, lemon juice and water in my mixer if I was patient enough. So I combined everything and put the thing to work. It definitely took a while to get the soft peaks I was looking for but after a solid 5 – 10 minutes of mixing it came together. Turns out this is a pretty simple thing to do that anyone with any baking experience would have no problem doing.

There are two things I’d do differently. This makes a fair amount of foam so it is good if you’ve got at least one other person you’re making the drink for or you could try halving the recipe. The other thing is that in the video, Jamie chills the foam which didn’t work as well at home using the mixer at least for me. By the time I went to use it several hours later about half of it had returned to liquid form. So I’d suggest making it shortly before you expect your guests to arrive or to order, although the mixer makes quite a racket. Which come to think of it - is probably not a great plan for a drink to make with a sleeping baby in the house. It’s a good thing I got to try this now.

Also, I’m celebrating hitting 100 followers on twitter with a bitters giveaway. The first 5 comments on here get to have their choice of my homemade bitters - I’ve got root beer, lime, orange fig, fig, coffee pecan, rhubarb and apple available. Offer may be void after the baby comes if you live out of Seattle since not sure I’ll have much time for post office excursions.

Combine the rye, ramazotti, and sweet vermouth in a mixing glass over ice and stir until chilled. Place the foam into the bottom of a chilled small old fashioned glass. Pour the rye mixture on top of the foam, it should rise to the top of the glass. You can add more foam to fill the hole where the liquid was poured. Add a couple dots of bitters as Jamie calls a “stencil.”

Combine all of the ingredients in a mixing bowl. Whip using a mixer until the foam has the consistency of whipped cream or soft peaks cling to the mixer. Store in a refrigerator until use, best within an hour or so.

Dec 03

The 4 experiments

Everyone got to try all four drinks, except for Rebecca who was stuck with another peach shrub ginger ale mocktail with a bit of honey syrup to help her fight a cold. I think they are all pretty tasty in their own way, so I’m including the recipes for them all even though the margarita didn’t taste all that different from a regular margarita. Chris was a fan of the old fashioned, and Liz even liked the manhattan version even though she doesn’t normally like them. No real surprise, that was my favorite. In the end though, we settled on the 4^th experiment – the ginger drink – to submit to the contest. Fingers crossed! Here’s the link to the contest in case you’d like to submit something yourself: http://www.rickbayless.com/news/view?articleID=243

Combine all the ingredients over ice and shake until chilled. Pour into a chilled coupe.

Combine the ingredients over ice in a mixing glass and stir until well chilled. Strain into a chilled coupe.

Place 8 oz of tequila in a glass jar with 3 sticks of cinnamon. Cover. After 3-4 hours, strain and remove the sticks. It is now ready to use.

Nov 27

37 weeks

Rebecca and I obviously like to host dinner parties. Thanksgiving is the dinner holiday of the year and one of my favorite events. That said, with us being in the homestretch with “the Conrad” it seemed this year was a good one not to be the place that many people relied on for their plans. After all, we’ve reached the point where he could arrive any day even though he isn’t expected to show up for almost three weeks.

Our friends Cait and John were very much willing hosts. They throw amazing parties. Cait is a cooking machine, even with two young adorable children that would slow down many a less determined host. But we definitely wouldn’t feel like suitable guests without taking on some dishes, so before I knew it we had signed up for quite a few items. I was comforted by the fact that I’ve never been to any event at their house where we lacked for food so I figured if things went awry no one would go hungry. Chances are good that they’d still have ample leftovers.

I decided to fire up my smoker and make a few turkey legs to add to the menu since they already had planned a fried and roasted version. Since we had plenty of apple cider available for a butternut squash dish, I thought I’d make the bourbon cider syrup cocktail that I had in mind a few weeks back when I over reduced the cider and turned it into caramel. The original recipe called for about 2 hours of reduction time over gentle boil with a gallon of cider.

Even though I was in the kitchen most of the morning, that reduction time proved overly optimistic even with considerably less liquid. I finished smoking the turkey before my cider reduced enough (not that I started them at the same time, but still). In fact, I was looking into alternative options when I came upon a recipe in the Bitters book called the Tipsy Nissley that called for smoked lemonade. Since I already had the smoker up and running, I was intrigued. Ultimately I decided I didn’t have everything I needed to make the drink, but decided to go ahead and smoke some lemons while waiting for the reduction magic to happen so that I could make it in the future.

Let’s just say that it is fortunate that the guests weren’t depending on my “Ciderhouse” cocktail. It never quite got to the consistency that I was hoping by the time we had to leave. I bottled some up anyway and decided to give it a shot later in the evening, after many bottles of wine had been consumed and someone else had served a cranberry vodka cocktail. It wasn’t a resounding hit and we quickly returned to open more wine. John’s cellar is spectacular and worth exploiting.

Over the weekend, we had our friends Betsy and Grant over pre-dinner drinks. Grant and I just wanted simple manhattans, but now both women are publically pregnant so I needed something suitable for them. I decided to try a mocktail with the smoked lemon juice since if nothing else it would be a novelty. I added some crushed ice and ginger beer which I figured would be reliable enough pleasing bases. Both women seemed happy enough and it is certainly something I would have been happy to have myself. I think it could be further tweaked depending on your level of interest in smoked flavors.

As for that cider syrup? If nothing else, I’m pretty persistent. I brought it home and reduced it further. I must have been on the edge of the right consistency since it took on appropriate qualities after a few more minutes of boiling. After two other failed attempts at the “Ciderhouse” – I decided to just use some in an old fashioned and see what the results were like.

I kept it as simple as an old fashioned should be – a bit of the syrup, a bit of lemon peel, Scrappy’s old fashioned bitters, Rittenhouse rye. The verdict – it’s totally drinkable but not worth a couple hours effort of boiling. If you have some around, give it a try in drinks that call for maple syrup. Otherwise save yourself the trouble.

Mix smoked lemon juice, ginger beer and crushed ice in a chilled highball glass. Garnish with a lemon twist and more crushed ice.

Nov 18

Turkey Day Negroni

Port cocktails have a long history but I don’t have much experience with them. Before I developed a taste for whiskey, I occasionally had a splash of port post dinner. It is a classic colder weather drink, and with November in full form it seemed like a good opportunity to try to make use of the nearly full bottle I had sitting on my shelf.

The obvious choice for me would have been to do a manhattan with port substituting the vermouth. I’d still like to try that, but for the blog I decided to try out a drink called the Malena that is apparently originally from a NYC bar called Employees Only.

It’s essentially a Negroni variation with port again taking on the role of the vermouth and rye taking the place of gin, but with a couple additions like orange blossom water and orange bitters. In some ways it reminds me of sangria with its ruby color, ice cubes and orange wheel garnish. I’ve always enjoyed sangria but this drink wasn’t love at first sip. It did grow on me over the course of consuming it and it wasn’t a bad way to start my Friday night. I’d definitely offer it to someone that is a big fan of Negronis and whisky, especially as a winter time option. Folks that aren’t especially keen on Campari should steer clear, as that really was the most dominant flavor for me.

Combine all the ingredients in a mixing glass with ice. Stir and strain into a rocks glass with a large ice cube. Garnish with an orange wheel and a bit of cinnamon.

Nov 12

Bourbon stars again, with an accompaniment that I didn’t expect to pair so well.