Month: February 2012

Autumn Negroni

/ jasonobryan / 10 Comments

When I was back in Chicago over Thanksgiving, Vikki, my sister Kelly and I took occasion to go to the Violet Hour — my favorite thus far of the Chicago cocktail bars, even if it is a faux-speakeasy. I’ve never really been into the whole  fake speakeasy idea, and am relieved that the trend seems to be dying. People sometimes forget that “pretense” is the root of “pretentious,” a fact I’m never more aware of as when I’m at a hidden, exclusive, “password-only” bar that I found by checking their address on yelp.

Regardless — once you find the stupid hidden door and wait at the stupid velvet curtain, actually being there is a very pleasant experience.

The standout drink I had there was called the Autumn Negroni, which on paper looked redundant. Five of the seven ingredients (71%) are bittering agents, and one could reasonably think that once you have Campari, Cynar, Fernet Branca, and Angostura Orange bitters, a dash of Peychaud’s seems like a waste of everyone’s time.

In practice, however, the bitters strip away individually and at different moments, yielding waves of flavors that make each each sip last like 10 seconds. Each ingredient picks up at the tails of the last one and carries the flavor for a while before handing off to another. It’s like a relay race, or cars of a train. This drink is so fucking good.

Autumn Negroni

2oz dry gin (Beefeater)
0.75oz Carpano Antica sweet vermouth
0.5oz Cynar
0.5oz Campari
0.25oz Fernet Branca
1 dash orange bitters (Angostura)
1 dash Peychaud’s bitters
Stir over ice and strain into coupe glass; garnish with orange peel.

I immediately asked them for the recipe, which they immediately gave me. Not to single out Saltbox, but I’ve made this drink for probably two dozen people, all of whom loved it, and all of whom now know where to get it if they ever find themselves in Chicago. I share recipes with anyone who asks. I firmly believe it makes all of us better.

Peychaud’s anise shows faintly on the nose alongside aromas of the sweet vermouth’s wine. But what’s so engaging about this drink is that you get to taste all the ingredients, more or less one after another. When taken, the sweetness of the amari mixes with the gin’s juniper, followed by the bittersweet Campari and the brightness of the orange bitters, but right when the Campari would turn rusty bitter that quarter ounce of Fernet Branca prickles up all peppermint and menthol, only to be batted back down by the long, earthy finish of the cynar.

Before this, I had no idea that bitters could layer in this way. I have since used this as the inspiration for the Mane of Needles, my favorite of the URBN cocktails and about which I’ll write soon.

This is the kind of drink that you keep going back to, keep taking small drinks because you identify something different in each sip, and when you feel like you’ve almost mapped all the flavors, you find there’s nothing left but sweetness on your lips and you have to do the whole thing all over again. Which is all I could ever ask from a cocktail. Four stars. A+.

Bénédictine

/ jasonobryan / 5 Comments

The Facts:

Name: Bénédictine
Category: Liqueur — Herbal
Proof: 80 (40% ABV)
Origin: France, at least since 1863, allegedly since 1510.
Nose: Honey and saffron; low spice notes of nutmeg & mace
Taste: Thick and sweet; cinnamon, honey and saffron instantly; vanilla on the midpalate with cardamom, with slight alcohol burn; faint cooking spices; long, lingering finish

The Story:

Here is what is indisputably true:

Bénédictine is a liqueur built on a neutral grain spirit base made from distilled beetroot (and not brandy or cognac, which is what practically everyone thinks). It is a combination of 27 different plants and spices, the exact composition of which is a fiercely guarded secret, but are known to include angelica, hyssop, aloe, arnica, vanilla, myrrh, nutmeg, mace, cloves, cinnamom, cardamom, citrus peel, saffron, and honey. The ingredients are divided in four different batches, or “esprits,” which are individually aged for 3 months, then combined with the saffron and honey and aged for 12 additional months. It is made at the baroque Le Palais Bénédictine, in Fécamp, Normandy, it is currently owned by Bacardi, and it is delicious.

Here is what we’re told is true:

At the dawning of the sixteenth century, a young Venetian monk of the Benedictine order named Dom Bernardo Vincelli was transferred from his comfortable lodgings in Monte Cassino to the abbey at Fécamp, Normandy. The erudite Italian was practiced in the alchemical arts and crafted several recipes, among them an initially medicinal “elixir” based on 27 plants and spices. The elixir of Friar Bernardo swiftly became a local favorite, impressing even King François I who, upon tasting the liquid during a visit to the region, exclaimed, “On my word as a gentleman! I have never tasted better!”*

Bolstered by a royal endorsement, the liqueur thrived on for almost three hundred years, until in 1792 the Abbey was partially destroyed during the tumult of the French revolution by whom the New York Times would later refer to as “the implacable republicans of Normandy.”

The recipe gone, the monks scattered, the abbey burned to the ground, the liqueur all spilled or drank by pyrophilic heathens, it seemed as if Friar Bernardo’s elixir was forever lost to time. Until about 70 years later, in 1863, a lucky wine merchant named Alexandre Le Grand discovered an ancient instructional manuscript at a relative’s house, and began making the liqueur, which he named after the monk who invented it. Being delicious, as it is, is rapidly propagated. He housed his distillery in Fécamp, as Vincelli had done, and began large scale production. The building again burned to the ground in 1893 and was rebuilt as something of a gothic castle in 1900, and Bénédictine has been produced there ever since.

Here is what is almost certainly false:

Pretty much everything you just read except for the last half-paragraph or so.

Wikipedia flat out says the story of the seredipideous manuscript is outright false, and common sense agrees. I don’t know why, but the world of liquor is uncommonly flush with these stories, of the toiling monks of the silent order who make the liqueur and only say one word a year, “…delicious,” and so on and so on. There was indeed a Benedictine abbey at Fécamp, and it was indeed partially destroyed, but there are no monks there anymore and haven’t been in centuries (note: Bénédictine never actually claims that monks currently make the liqueur), and no corroborating evidence I’ve been able to find for it. There is, in fact, no evidence of Dom Bernardo Vincelli’s existence at all.

Far more likely is that Alexandre Le Grand created a remarkably good liqueur, and created an ancient origin story based on the history of the city in which he was based. Bullshit though it likely is, it remains a charming story.

The Uses:

In play, it’s a tremendously versatile liqueur. It’s complex and delicious enough to drink straight after dinner, or mixed to great effect. Equal parts  it and cognac is a B&B (also pre-bottled by Bénédictine themselves, for the lazy) and it pairs tremendously with whiskey for drinks like the Fort Point or Bobby Burns and just a little bit of it shines like a diamond out of the Vieux Carré.

See the complete list of Bénédictine cocktails here.

Trivia!: The promonint “DOM” does not refer to the “Dominican Order of Monks,” a wholly imagined backronym. It is “Deo Optimo Maximo,” the latin motto of the Benedictine order, which they translate to “to God, most good, most great.”

(Trivia about the above trivia!: “Deo Optimo Maximo” was a Latin phrase from way back. All the way back to when the Romans were polytheists, actually, as it directly translates to “to the greatest and best God,” referring to Jupiter. When the Roman empire became Christian, they cleverly took advantage of the arbitrary nature of latin phrasing, so “to the greatest and best God [of all the rest]” became “to God, greatest, best.” Which doesn’t have a thing to do with drinks or drinking, but is interesting nonetheless.)

*He would’ve said this in French.

Copper Monkey

/ jasonobryan / 4 Comments

The magnificently named Copper Monkey is a creation of Bek Allen, in-house bartender at Saltbox and the other half of Erin Williams’ Hush Cocktails. On paper, it looks like it has the potential to be the most offensive drink ever made. It features not one but three distinct ingredients that are found revolting by a significant cross-section of Americans. The Bols Genever with its malt & agricole funkiness, the briny smoke of Islay scotch, and of course the Vida mezcal, with all its lovely notes of smoked gasoline.

I’m crazy about scotch and mezcal and I tolerate genever, but even I wouldn’t imagine they would taste very good together. And I was, of course, wrong.

Copper Monkey

Bols Genever
Del Maguey Vida mezcal
Highland Park scotch
Bénédictine
“Ginger” (Canton ginger liqueur)
Highland bitters
Orange bitters

I asked for the proportions, and was rebuffed. Rebuffed! Apparently they don’t do that, which is kind of lame. It’s against my professional philosophy to keep recipes secret, but I do more or less understand. Also, Bek herself wasn’t there, so perhaps I can grab it from her personally next time I see her, seeing as she invented it and all.

For all of its bizarre and intimidating ingredients, the cocktail was surprisingly approachable. Faint genever and Bénédictine on the nose, and the first impression is strangely one of sweetness. It’s not a trivial amount of Bénédictine – probably 0.75 to 1oz – and the sweetness serves to make it complex instead of abrasive with a sweet, long finish.

The scotch shows up on the finish, along with a hint of the mezcal. Honestly I expected to taste the mezcal a lot more, making me wonder if it’s just a rinse. The agricole from the Bols Genever forms the backbone of the drink, with some fresh orange notes from the bitters along with a whisper of cinnamon here and there (I assume from the “highland bitters,” which are new to me). The only sensation that really steps out from the crowd of ingredients is one of sweetness. Aside from that, it’s a terrifically balanced and inventive cocktail.

Heering Flip

/ jasonobryan / Leave a comment

There are, believe me, no shortage of cocktail recipe books. And even someone with no experience with a single one of them could likely guess that most of them are complete garbage.

There are two easy ways to tell. The first is the easiest: generally speaking, the more recipes a book has, the worse those recipes will be. If the cover boasts more than, say, 750 of them, it’s probably an admittedly enormous collection of completely terrible drinks.  The second is almost as easy: flip to the recipe for a Margarita. If it calls for sweet and sour there (or really anywhere in the book), throw it away because it is worthless.

What we have left are the histories, the celebrated single-bar books, and the books with no recipe for a margarita (which is a promising sign). Beta Cocktails (formerly Rogue Cocktails) is an example of the latter. Written by Kirk Estopinal and Maksym Pazuniak, Beta Cocktails is a thin little number with about 40 recipes that range from imaginative to bizarre. It’s a fantastic and innovative mini-collection, great to jog the imagination, or just to try something totally new on a Sunday night.

Heering Flip

2oz Cherry Heering
0.5oz Bittermans Xocolatl Mole bitters
1 whole egg
1 pinch salt
Add all ingredients, shake with no ice to emulsify, add ice and shake the jesus out of it. Strain over fresh ice. Garnish the egg-foam head with three drops Mole bitters.

Yes, two ounces of Cherry Heering. Yes, a half ounce of bitters. See? Bizarre.

This isn’t so much a dessert drink as it is a dessert course. The nose was a predictable cherry and chocolate, but the first sip evoked chocolate milk and, strangely enough, pie. The egg serves to thicken the already very thick Heering base, and the salt only makes it more savory while offering a bit of sourness on the back end.

The overal impression was that the drink is cooler than it is delicious, but still very drinkable. And strangely balanced – while definitely a sweet drink, it’s not too sweet as the ingredients might suggest. It is, however, exceptionally thick and rich. This is for someone who’s done with their food but still hungry. I will definitely make this again.

Barrel-Aged Vieux Carré (a.k.a. Ancien Carré)

/ jasonobryan / 2 Comments

Barrel-aging entire batches of cocktails is a relatively recent phenomenon. The idea, they say, is that the cocktail softens and sweetens in the used whiskey-barrel, picking up picking up flavors and tannins and adding a really cool complexity. The New York Times Magazine did a nice little piece on it about 18 months ago, and has since been written about extensively, including by Jeffrey Morganthaler, who more or less invented the process.

To cities a little more serious about cocktails – Portland, Seattle, New York, etc. – Barrel Aging has come, peaked, and all but left. In the rest of the country, as will happen with trends, barrel   aging   is   fucking  everywhere. But apparently, everywhere still doesn’t include San Diego, so here we are. There’s a bit at Small Bar in North Park and a bit at Vin de Syrah and The US Grant Hotel Downtown, but for the most part the trend has avoided our fair city.

This is problematic for those of us who want to put them in our mouths. So we have to do it ourselves. Enter barrel:

I’ve wanted to try to barrel age cocktails ever since I heard about it. I started the hobo way, with oak chips I picked up from the local homebrew store and a bottle of Buffalo Trace White Dog, and it went…. okay.

You’re supposed to use about 2oz of oak chips per 5 gallons of liquid. I used 0.75 oz for about 12 oz of liquid, exceeding the recommended dose by about 2000%. “I’ll super-age it,” I thought, because I’m an idiot. It tasted like a puréed oak tree. I am not a patient man.

I had fully intended to try again, but my friends Dan and Sam bought me a 3L barrel from these wonderful people for my birthday. The first thing I could think of was a Vieux Carré. It’s one of my favorite cocktails, with a delicacy and sweetness that evokes barrel aging anyway, and I’m terribly curious to see what happens to it.

The only (possible) problem is that barrel aging yields the most dramatic changes to things that haven’t already been barrel aged. So gin over whiskey, white rum over aged rum, etc. But Jeffrey Morganthaler’s first experiment was with Manhattans which he says changed considerably over two months, so fuck it. I’m having daydreams about selling this for $15 each at the bar and making my money back, but odds are good that this will be just for my friends and I.

Ancien Carré
25oz Hine V.S.O.P cognac
25oz Rittenhouse 100 rye
25oz Carpano Antica sweet vermouth
6oz Bénédictine
25 dashes angostaura bitters
25 dashes Peychauds bitters

First, prep the barrel with water and let sit. Casks are made without glue, so we need the oak to soak up the water and swell, sealing the barrel. The water will leak out at first, so we do it in the sink.

Empty water. Then, we mix all the ingredients together. Then pour. Carefully.

Then, demonstrate monkish patience and try not to see the little guy poking out at you from the bottom of your barware shelves.

It went into the barrel Tuesday, February 7th. I anticipate about two months, but will start tasting it in a week or so to see how its coming along. I’ll keep you posted.

Cynar

/ jasonobryan / Leave a comment

The Facts:

Name: Cynar (Chuh-nar)
Catagory: Potable bitters – the “amari” (plural) or “amaro” (singular) in Italian
Proof: 37 (16.5% ABV)
Origin: Italy, made since 1952.
Nose: Molasses; orange sweetness
Taste: sweet front palate; warm earth and orange; vegetal flavors; firm, robust bitter finish

The Story:

I had Cynar for the first time in 2008 at a place called La Groceria, an Italian restaurant in Cambridge, Massachusetts that had been around for 37 years. The restaurant was closing down and we were taking stock, and from the depths of the lowest shelf was pulled an fading bottle of Cynar, encased in so much dust we could barely tell there was liquid left in it. No one could remember where it came from. Charlie, the owner, swore it had been there since the late 80s. Of course, the inevitable — “What does it taste like?” his son Matt asked — and we were soon betting each other to try.

At 16.5% alcohol it wasn’t immune to the ravaging of time, and the decades had left it with the viscosity and color of used motor oil. I knew nothing whatsoever about it, just that the label featured an artichoke busting into the foreground like a cartoon superhero, and everyone seemed to agree that a small sip would be worth five dollars.

It was then, and remains now, the worst thing I’ve ever had.

Fortunately, bottles that haven’t long ago given way to decay are significantly more palatable. Which is not to say that it is not challenging. Those with no exposure to potable bitters will dislike it the first time they have it, and look at you with a face of wounded betrayal, like a dog when you take it to the vet. A face that says, “I thought we were friends… why are you doing this to me?” While it comes sweet at first, the finish is a distinct and robust bitter mixture of earth and copper, like a mouthful of pennies mixed with topsoil. But in a good way.

Cynar is one of the crucibles of the craft cocktail world, one of those things that cocktail people use to tell other cocktail people because of the inherent hurdles involved with (1) finding a bottle behind a bar, (2) finding a bartender who has the slightest inclination to use it, and (3) overcoming the obvious mental difficulties in purposefully ordering a cocktail featuring an artichoke.

But like most all the Amari, once embraced it can be a delightful liqueur, and one that can give incomparable depth of flavor to cocktails. Its bitterness isn’t quite as sharp as Campari’s but is much fuller and rounder and more reminiscent of earth than Campari’s rust. It also features a nice sweetness that leads the palate to the pronounced bitter finish. Like Campari and Aperol, it’s artificially but appropriately colored, with dark orange hues in dark brown base that give a hint of what’s to come.

The Uses:

In my experience, it is most successfully mixed with gin as a base, or with some of its Italian brothers. Its role in cocktails is definitely to deepen or enrich. Things that are too sweet or light could do with a small dose of Cynar, or really anything that wants some robust earthy fullness. Sweet vermouth and Cynar (with a pinch of salt) makes a Bitter Giuseppe, and it can be layered with about 5 other bitters to make an Autumn Negroni.

View the full list of cocktails here.

Trivia!: Unlike what I’ve heard at least one uninformed douche tell someone, “artichoke” in Italian is not Cynar but “carciofo.” The name Cynar comes from the Latin genus of the artichoke, Cynara cardunculus.

The label on the left translates to, “Herbal and artichoke leaves – The Original Recipe – Cynar is a product obtained from the mixture of artichoke leaves and other herbs infused according to a unique recipe.”

Bitter Giuseppe

/ jasonobryan / 3 Comments

After the Milano Swizzle, I wanted more salt in cocktails, and thought back to a drink my friend Addison had made me some six months ago, the Bitter Giuseppe.

There are a few different versions of this drink floating around. According to this blog, the drink was created by Stephen Cole of Chicago’s wonderful The Violet Hour, and then made salty by Kirk Estopinal of Cure in New Orleans. Estopinal’s recipe calls for Punt e Mes with salt, Cole’s original with Carpano Antica without, but both share Cynar’s artichoke heart. At Craft and Commerce, they (predictably) do it their own way.

Bitter Giuseppe
2oz Cynar
1oz Carpano Antica sweet vermouth
2 small dashes of salt
Combine ingredients in Old Fashioned Glass over ice.
Cut a lemon peel with enough meat to extract about 10-15 drops of juice
Squeeze juice into the drink, express peel oils on top, stir, and serve.

As detailed in a marvelous post on beta cocktails, the extra salt reins in the Cynar — this cocktail has twice the Cynar but only half the bitterness of the Milano Swizzle. Apparently while reading French scientist Hervé This’s dense & detailed volume, Molecular Gastronomy, Estopinal found that salt curiously tempers bitterness in liquids even more than sugar.

In this case, the salt blunted the bitter effect, allowing the liqueur’s component ingredients to showcase their otherwise overpowered flavors. The nose is a bit unengaging, but the taste offers a complex and pleasing barrage of herbal notes (orange and artichoke, to name two of several) and deep salted umami that fades into soft and lingering bitterness at the finish.

Milano Swizzle

/ jasonobryan / 1 Comment

Every great once in a while, a happy accident aligns our schedules and all my best friends have the same afternoon off. Tuesday was such an afternoon, and never one to beat a dead gift horse, we all immediately descended upon Craft and Commerce for some sunshine cocktails.

It was gorgeous outside – we’ve had more summer this winter than we had all of last summer – so I plucked the Milano Swizzle off the menu for something bitter and refreshing before my embarrassingly bourgeois meal of bacon-wrapped corn dogs.

Milano Swizzle
0.25oz lemon juice
1oz Cynar
1oz Beefeater London Dry Gin
1oz Carpano Antica
pinch of cracked salt
Fill with crushed ice, swizzle or stir until glass frosts;
garnish with lemon peel.

I’m fairly confident that this is unrelated to Tony Abou Ganim’s Milano, and shares the Italian city only as a source for the lovely potable bitters – in this case, the earth and artichoke of the Cynar. This is essentially a Negroni with a different bitter and a bit of lemon juice. What really excited me about this drink was the salt, still a stone relatively unturned in my cocktail experience and used deliciously here.

The drink started tart and led to a complex orange and earth herbaceous that the salt made almost savory, with the alchemy of the ingredients intensifying the Cynar for a sharply bitter finish. The salt was mostly undetectable but for the savory effect, and definitely makes me want to play with it more.

Our bartender Ryan commented that salt and Cynar enjoy each other’s company. Drinking it, you can clearly see how it can be taken too far, but you can also get a glimpse of its potential.