one hundred cocktails

drinking with a purpose

Fairbank Cocktail

29 Jan 2012

Thank god, I finally tracked down some of the damn stuff.

So we’ve got Death’s Door gin. It’s from Wisconsin, of all places. It’s not bad, but the industrial design on the bottle is crap – the cork delaminates from the wooden handle, which is pretty shoddy.

We’ve got Regan’s #6, which are pretty good commercial orange bitters. Working on making my own, but it’s going to be another month before those are ready.

Vya’s dry vermouth isn’t bad, but it’s really expensive for what it is. It doesn’t have amazing complexity. If anything, it’s just relatively well done and straightforward. I’ll stick with Noilly Prat for dry vermouth, and use the savings to invest in the occasional bottle of Carpano Antica Formula (which is worth every penny, for sweet vermouth).

So that leads us to Creme de Noyaux, which is an almond-flavored liqueur made from peach pits or apricot pits or something like that. Except I’m pretty sure this one is just made from chemicals and food coloring. Still, I’m trying to actually make these drinks, so I found a place in California that had some of the junk in stock, and brought it back on a flight to make sure I could make this cocktail. What a pain in the ass for something that just tastes like syrupy junk.

Yarai mixer and strainer.

That’s my new mixing pitcher and julep strainer. I’m going pro, folks.

Not really, but we saw these at B&B in Vegas, and they’re way nicer than using a hawthorn and a Boston shaker. If only the little bitches didn’t run $50 a pop. For some reason, Japan is producing some of the nicest cocktail gear on earth right now, but it’s absurdly expensive for what it is.

Additionally, I’ve discovered that all of the good bar spoons and julep strainers are stamped pieces that are welded/riveted/soldered together. I wish that somebody was making tools that were forged/cast/stamped out of a single piece of metal. Seams and joins are weak points and places where stuff gets dirty. Despite the frustration, in the grand scheme of things I suppose it’s not a big deal.

Oh well, on to the cocktail!

Finished product.

Aren’t they lovely?

Sadly, this just wasn’t that exciting. It’s pretty much a martini with orange bitters (not a bad thing, to be fair) and a bit of sugar syrup coloring piss. Would rather a martini.