I love this one! A while back I noticed that a ton of my favorites at Midnight Cowboy used Licor 43. I also just recently picked up the botanist gin, and it’s AMAZING. I highly recommend it.
I wanted to start a new feature, so welcome to whiskey Wednesday! Unfortunately we are starting off with one that I did not quite get right. It’s another recipe from Garage, and one that I haven’t tried making yet. This try was definitely too heavy on the gin. I think next time I’ll add more rye and decrease everything else, except for maybe the brandy.
Here’s another doozy of a tiki drink. Four whole ounces of booze, and so easy to drink! Falernum is a syrup that I’ve heard of before but never used myself, and I’m pretty much in love.
The Suffering Bastard is one of Dane’s favorite drinks. I always forget that it’s in the tiki family! Lots of variations abound for this one, and the recipe I was looking at used 1/2 oz of ginger ale and then topped with club soda. That seemed unnecessarily complicated, so I just used ginger beer for more bite. Normally I don’t like ginger beer (too spicy) but even I had a sip or two of this. It’s also got a fantastic name for a cocktail.
William and I were running some errands to pick up supplies for Freezerburn this evening when I realized that I hadn’t done my drink for the day yet. Since he’s being a good sport and helping me out I wanted to make him something. He asked for a gin drink, so I flipped through the Death & Co book (yeah, you’ll be seeing a lot of recipes from there for a while) and found one where I had all the ingredients.
Their recipe calls for Old Tom gin, which I didn’t have, so I substituted Citadel. Presumably that makes for a bit of a drier drink than specified. I also initially balked at the amount of simple used here, but after trying it I am sold. This was so good I almost stole it from William! I love Aviations but haven’t had many lately, and this was a damn good variation on that theme. I really think the large amount of simple toned down the bitter/tart of the grapefruit, and the lime calms the floral of the Violette. I can see this becoming a standby for me.
I’ve only made this drink once before, and have been guessing the ratios by using a cocktail menu from Midnight Cowboy (a glorious speakeasy in Austin). Turns out that it was originally a cocktail from the 30’s and that my ratios are WAY OFF. I honestly think that I would prefer mine, since the creme de cacao is so powerful. Maybe using Lillet rather than Cocchi would change my mind. This version of the drink is fairly bright with a hint of chocolate.
Shake the gin, juice, and syrup in a cocktail shaker filled with ice. Strain into a champagne glass and top with champagne.
One more champagne drink for the new year! Blood oranges are basically the most badass of all oranges. Make your French 75 look awesome with this blood-red citrus.
I usually use Hendrick’s gin in my French 75s, but when I went to make this I discovered I was out. Waterloo is a Texas gin made by Treaty Oak and it’s pretty light on the juniper, which means it’s a very versatile gin.
