I inherited some Kirschwasser from William and Kim when they cleaned out the bar, so of course I wanted to figure out what the hell I could make with it. This also used another unusual and often ignored liquor, Pisco. I LOVED it! It was refreshing and fruity without being obnoxious. Dane said that he could imagine drinking a pitcher of this stuff by the pool in summer.
I was toying with the idea of adding another feature around here, and while I couldn’t come up with an alliterative title we’ve now got Classic Fridays. This gives me a chance to focus on revivals of classic and prohibition era cocktails.
Tonight I really wanted to make a Gimlet, but found I have no lime cordial in the house. That’s not particularly surprising, since I’ve almost completely moved to fresh juices when possible. Problem is that a gimlet requires cordial. So, instead I found this recipe. The name for this (like the Old Fashioned) strikes me as extremely funny. “Improved” from what? Just gin in a glass?
I was surprised that I liked this. Genever is kind of a strange gin to me, very malty and woody, but the maraschino brightened it up significantly.
William was in San Francisco this week for work and brought back a bevy of new menus for me. I found this one on the Hard Water menu and got about halfway through making it before I realized I didn’t have any crème de menthe, so I just used some of a minty amaro I had. It turned out much nicer than I expected, very refreshing and boozy.
I saw my bottle of St Germain in my cupboard when I went to grab another bottle and thought “oh, I haven’t made a drink with St Germain in a while”. So I found this recipe. It was a nice balance of sweet with a slightly bitter aftertaste.
I had this drink the first time at the bar where I had the conversation that started this blog. This version was much sweeter than that one. I might go to 1/2 an ounce of simple in the future.
Another day, another tiki drink. Tonight we’re hosting a dinner party that is themed around citrus, so I decided to pick something that used as many citrus fruits as I could get. This is a pretty nice Mai Tai variant that I would recommend if you have a ton of juice you need to use up.
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.
I’m back home after the burn and I’m exhausted, a little sick, and sunburnt, so the last thing I wanted to do was make a complicated cocktail. I have about a dozen limes at the house so I immediately thought of a daiquiri. The white rum I used is kind of astringent. I might try a nice dark rum next time for a bit of a sweeter finish.
