one hundred cocktails

Don the Beachcomber's Zombie

Aaron N. Tubbs — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 00:00:00 -0400

This is the last cocktail in the book. My work here is done. The project is finished. This blog is no more. I’ll get to the drink in a bit, but I want to rant a bit before I close things out.

“One Hundred Cocktails?” More like 87, by my count, if we’re being generous. It turns out the only way to get 100 is to make all of the “extra credit” cocktails which aren’t particularly classic or vintage. I didn’t realize this until I finished the book, and the cocktail count was still at … 87. The front cover says “100 rediscovered recipes and the stories behind them.” The extra credit recipes, which would bring the total to 100, include things like the Old Fashioned, Negroni, Manhattan, Martini, … you get the point. Are you kidding me?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad to not be procuring yet another absurdly esoteric and expensive ingredient to finish this book. Ignoring the cost of the base spirits, I’ve spent at least two grand on this project. Base spirits included, we can probably add at least another grand in the process. Wow. It took a bit under two years to get through the book.

The toughest things to procure were:

Creme de Violette. Good news here; in less than two years, this has become trivial to acquire. This isn’t even a specialty ingredient anymore, it’s at any liquor store you can think of. Cool.
Kümmel. It’s German Akvavit, at the end of the day. I’m not going to stress out over it too much, since one can find Akvavit, and it’s good enough for cocktail purposes.
Peach Brandy. There are now at least four fantastic distillers in the country making peach brandy, and it’s no longer impossible to acquire a bottle of the stuff. Sadly, I don’t know that it’s really worth it.
Apricot Brandy. It’s still impossible to get one’s hands on real apricot brandy, and so we’re stuck with Marie Brizard’s Apry. It’s not great, but whatever. This is a point of failure.
Amaro Cora. The only people in the country that might have had a line on this stuff decided to move to Mexico and start a brothel/bed and breakfast/bar. That’s pretty cool, but there’s virtually zero chance of getting this stuff, full stop.
Torani Amer/Amer Picon; while the closest thing to the original is still made in California, it’s not exported from the state, and it’s horrible. I tracked some down and flew with it, but it wasn’t worth it. Oh well.
Kola Tonic. I had to import this crap from Canada from South Africa. It was horrible and not worth it.
Creme de Noyeaux. Ugh. Enough said.

All said and done, in the timeframe of this blog, access to ingredients I’ve needed has gotten markedly easier as the craft cocktail thing has taken off. That’s pretty cool.

Was it all worth it? Not really. Most of the cocktails in this book are outright terrible. On the other hand, I’ve gotten into cocktails pretty hardcore, and have discovered a bunch of fantastic drinks not included in the book. So, the book may be full of a lot of sentimental and seminal junk, but it still pushed me in a pretty interesting direction, so that’s cool.

Anyway, the last drink in the book is another damn rum punch. It calls for three specific rums, but whatever, who the hell cares?

Seriously, Another punch with a lot of rum and not really anything to make it special?

Too much passion fruit. Crazy, right? But it’s sort of an acid-rum bomb, and just … eh. There are better tiki drinks.

And we’re done. It’s been fun, folks. Time for a new project.

The Widow's Kiss

Aaron N. Tubbs — Sun, 19 Aug 2012 00:00:00 -0400

Ugh, terrible photo. Oh well, it’s the penultimate cocktail in the book.

Going to keep this brief, let’s do it:

This … is not great. All I taste is Calvados, with a bit of a Chatreuse finish. I have no idea where the massive quantity of Benedictine went, but it’s hiding.

“The most evocative cocktail ever” is how the author describes it. If there was any doubt that Haigh is completely nuts, here you go. This cocktail is a great example of imbalance and confusion. There might be potential here, but this is not that drink.

Vowel Cocktail

Aaron N. Tubbs — Sat, 18 Aug 2012 00:00:00 -0400

The Vowel Cocktail is a bit of a strange creature. It’s the last Scotch cocktail in the book, and Scotch cocktails are weird to begin with. The book itself describes it as challenging, probably for that reason. I found it challenging because tracking down Kümmel is a bit of a pain in the ass. Still, I managed to find the stuff. Kümmel is a caraway liquor, not unlike Akvavit, beyond that it’s made by the Germans instead of the Norwegians.

On the upside there’s a bad-ass penguin on the 1L bottle, which almost makes up for the nearly $100 it took to get the damn thing, and the consternation at what to do with 970mL of Kümmel.

Strangely, I think there’s some promise here.

The final product is surprisingly decent. Not good enough to keep a bottle of Kümmel around, but if one happens ot have one, then by all means – this is worth a shot.

Vieux Carré Cocktail

Aaron N. Tubbs — Sat, 18 Aug 2012 00:00:00 -0400

The Vieux Carré Cocktail is another creature born of the Rye & Cognac family, but it’s a bit more straightforward if you think about it (I think). The cognac is used to soften the spice of the rye a bit, mixed with an equal collective part sweet vermouth, and then it’s mixed over ice with some bitter stuff.

Sounds like? The Negroni and its friends.

So it’s a bit of fuss, but it should be no great surprise that it works respectably well:

Only problem? I think the Boulevardier and Negroni are better drinks.

Interestingly, the more modern treatment ups the ante and doubles the rye and cognac; in this form I thought the drink was in fact quite nice.

The Vesper

Aaron N. Tubbs — Fri, 17 Aug 2012 00:00:00 -0400

If I wasn’t already having doubts about some of the directions Ted’s gone in this book, that he resorted to cocktails designed by a fictional character in a Flemming novel sure confirmed things!

This is the only cocktail in the book made with Lillet that specifically calls for Kina Lillet. This is interesting because every other such cocktail just ignores the fact that the modern formulation of Lillet Blanc is nothing like Lillet of days past! Kina Lillet, per se, was similar to Lillet Blanc but with an added bitter component (for fighting malaria, naturally). Now that malaria isn’t really a thing in the first world, they decided to make Lillet uninteresting too, and we all suffer in our mixology.

But alas. We need a starting point! For the first version of the drink, we start with a decent gin, one of the smoother milder vodkas, and good old Lillet Blanc.

The only reaction I got was “It’s kind of like a martini, but I’d rather have a martini.” I couldn’t really disagree. The exceptionally smooth vodka just thins out the gin flavor a little bit, and a splash of a slightly sweeter but less herbal “vermouth” just makes it a bit flat and cloying.

Meh.

It was time for shit to get real. Tempus Fugit, whose products are still woefully difficult to acquire either en masse or in completeness, has done what it does again! They have a bit of a tendency to take something, return it to its classic roots, and then turn it up to 11. So, it’s not authenticity per se, but it ends up getting at least to the point of being better, rather than inferior to, the original. This is what happened when they made their “Kina L’Avion D’Or” Vin Apertif au Quinquina. At $30, it’s not your grandparents’ Kina, but it’s probably better. See my article on Gran Classico for some bedtime reading of a similar form.

Add to that Bruichladdich’s The Botanist gin, and things start to get interesting. This is a gin distilled by an Islay Scotch distiller, which makes more sense than you might think. I’ve loved it lately because of its exceptional complexity and balance – this is not a juniper-forward pine-bomb of a gin, but it’s not mild and unobtrusive like, say, Plymouth. What I love about it is that it mixes absurdly well with herbal spirits and vermouths, without trying to over-assert its influence.

Finally, ultra-smooth vodka is pointless, except to dull the flavor and get one drunk. Instead I went for a fantastic potato vodka, which adds a nice richness and oily character to the drink. Boyd & Blair’s potato vodka achieves this effect, providing more than just a dilution of the base spirit! By itself this vodka is pretty impressive, though there’s enough strong flavors in this drink that it’s really adjusting the palate in a positive fashion, more than adding its own influence.

And, thus, the Vesper that was worth drinking:

The Vesper will probably never be a go-to drink for me, especially since few bars in the world would put the effort in to make it properly. It does, however, achieve a certain elegance and grace. As the drink warms the complexity increases. The balance is great, but not quite as harmonious as that of a martini – where the mixing ice makes a martini smooth and perfect, the Vesper is left a little on edge and disheveled. There’s a little more heat on the nose and some spice that hasn’t quite integrated.

This Vesper isn’t as easy to drink as a martini, but that’s not a bad thing.

As much as I like a good martini, a martini at its core is a strong drink that’s just a bit too simple. It’s good for unhooking the brain and getting wasted. This is the thinking drinker’s version of that sort of beverage. It’s still a stiff drink and not for the uninitiated, but it is an up drink for the contemplative and reflective.

The Twentieth Century Cocktail

Aaron N. Tubbs — Fri, 17 Aug 2012 00:00:00 -0400

You know how visions of the future are almost always wrong? Jetpacks, robotic assistants, and so forth? This has nothing to do with that, since it was designed for a train route.

First of all, I have to assume that this didn’t really call for Lillet Blanc as we know it, since that didn’t even exist back then, but we’ll get to that shortly in the Vesper. Be patient. This cocktail doesn’t deserve it. Why? Because it calls for a ton of gin, a bunch of Lillet, some lemon juice and uh, creme de cacao?

Ew?

The book specifically describes this as a drink that is “an amazing experience you won’t want to miss.” … “It goes down like light, zingy lemonade, but in the aftertaste there is an ethereal sense of chocolate.”

It’s definitely zingy. There’s definitely a chocolate note on the finish. I just don’t get it, however. Kina Lillet (more soon, honest, we’re almost there) would have added some bitterness, but the author shies away from this direction (as much as he embraces it in the next cocktail).

Really, it’s a corspe reviver with some chocolate on the finish. Who cares?

Twelve Mile Limit

Aaron N. Tubbs — Thu, 16 Aug 2012 00:00:00 -0400

With this, we begin the last 20 cocktails in the book. The end is in sight! I’m realizing more and more that I’ve come to love cocktail craft and cocktail ingredients, but increasingly the recipes in this book have filled me with despair.

The Twelve Mile Limit combines rum, whiskey, and brandy – as with The Soother I’m made anxious by the preponderance of base ingredients here. I’ll give the rye/cognac thing a positive nod because cognac mixes with virtually anything, but as soon as we start tossing rum into the mix, things get weird.

If we look at the history of the cocktail (and indeed its name), it’s entirely possible this formulation comes from a desire to confuse the palate when confronted with a mess of awful ingredients.

It’s worth taking a moment for a quick sidebar: The Employee’s Only Grenadine is substantially better than any other I’ve had off the shelf. It’s got great pomegranate flavor and tons of spice and bitterness added in. Worth it if you’re going to bother with Grenadine for anything other than sweetness and color (and if it’s being used for sweetness and color, might as well skip the color and add simple syrup or agave).

The end result isn’t bad, it just isn’t that interesting, either. It’s probably my favorite dead horse, but if a cocktail has a bunch of ingredients, I expect the final result to be superior to drinking the constituents, and that just didn’t happen here. There’s too much going on in the base spirits and the end result is just muted and pleasant – easy enough to get wasted on one, I suppose, but it’s nothing memorable.

Three to One Cocktail

Aaron N. Tubbs — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 00:00:00 -0400

Really? Apry, gin, and a bit of lime juice?

Putrid. That’s all there is to it.

On the upside, this is the 80th cocktail. There are only twenty to go.

The Straits Sling

Aaron N. Tubbs — Sun, 05 Aug 2012 00:00:00 -0400

According to the book, the only reason I can see for this cocktail existing is its seminality. Even the accompanying text more or less suggests this is the best of a bunch of mediocre cocktails that ultimately developed into a drink with staying power.

What’s weird is I expect a lot more flavor out of this one. It was relatively mild in the final preparation wtihout the richness or complexity I expected, given all of the ingredients (and alcohol). Bummer, but I guess there’s a reason that this evolved into something, rather than sticking around?

Soyer au Champagne

Aaron N. Tubbs — Sat, 04 Aug 2012 00:00:00 -0400

Fuck me, there’s no way to get around this. Champagne and ice cream.

There’s other stuff involved, but it doesn’t really matter. Champagne and ice cream.

Lest it be said I did not take this cocktail seriously, I’m using Grand Cru grower champagne here. It doesn’t matter. This is vile, horrible, and insulting.

Let’s forget this ever happened.

The Soother

Aaron N. Tubbs — Fri, 03 Aug 2012 00:00:00 -0400

Maybe I’m just getting conservative in my cocktail mixing, but I get rather nervous when there’s more than one “base spirit” in a given cocktail.

The Soother has both Rum and Cognac. Cognac, especially good cognac, is incredibly friendly with other ingredients in mixed drinks. Rum is … rather sweet and mixes with most things, without adding much itself. Then we tossed in the kitchen sink.

Despite that, this is not a terrible cocktail. It’s not a good cocktail, but it’s not terrible, and that’s something, right?

Seventh Heaven

Aaron N. Tubbs — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 00:00:00 -0400

Seventh Heaven was a case where I was a bit dubious going in just based on the ingredients. Grapefruit juice, gin, and some Luxardo? Doesn’t really seem like the most winning mixture.

Somehow, though, the sum is better than the parts. This develops a wonderfully smooth and rich mouthfeel with a hint of sweetness that doesn’t seem present in any of the individual components. The Luxardo adds a great spice to the finish and the gin’s characteristics blend marvelously. Worth it.

The Seelbach Cocktail

Aaron N. Tubbs — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 00:00:00 -0400

I wanted to love this cocktail. Bourbon, gobs of bitters. It’s like a Sawyer highball, but more insane. Should be great!

Just didn’t work, though. It really tasted like a seriously bittered-up brown liquor with … Champagne in it. The drink would have been unquestionably better without the bubbly, but if one had to top it up I think straight soda would have been the answer. This was a giant flop.

The Secret Cocktail

Aaron N. Tubbs — Sun, 22 Jul 2012 00:00:00 -0400

Actually, it’s called “The Pink Lady.” It’s got eggs in it, it’s pink, and ostensibly no man would actually order this drink. Whatever, grow up, Ted Haigh.

So yeah, gin, applejack, eggs, lemon, and grenadine? Weird.

The end result isn’t that bad, but isn’t that memorable either. I think there’s probably more interesting things to do with eggs than this cocktail. Worth a go for the sake of trying it, but probably not going to bother again.

The Scofflaw Cocktail

Aaron N. Tubbs — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 00:00:00 -0400

Named after clandestine cocktail sippers during Prohibition, the Scofflaw features rye, dry vermouth, lemon juice, and grenadine.

I lost my homemade grenadine in a refrigerator accident, but I still had this Stirrings grenadine around. It turns out the stirrings grenadine actually isn’t that bad – it has some actual pomegranate flavor. The only downside (if one can really call it that) is that it lacks the intense redness that comes from commercial food dyes. Thus the finished product is another ugly brown cocktail instead of something vibrant on the pink-red spectrum.

The spice of the rye plus the sweet of the grenadine, sourness of the lemon, and smoothness and herbal notes of the vermouth make this a decent sipper. Worth a tipple, and as a bonus all of the ingredients are easy to find!

Satan's Whiskers Cocktail

Aaron N. Tubbs — Sun, 15 Jul 2012 00:00:00 -0400

I was so excited about this cocktail! Just look at the ingredients:

I know, right? Two vermouths, a bunch of orange stuff, what can possibly go wrong?

A teaspoon of bitters per drink, that’s what.

I can’t be more succinct than: “This tastes like Goo Gone smells.” This is a cocktail that should be interesting, and yet the proportions just destroy the thing. I can’t imagine anybody enjoying this; a teaspoon of orange bitters just seems outright absurd, and I say that as somebody who enjoys drinks such as the Sawyer (28 dashes of bitters per serving, in total). Something’s just not right here.

Poking around a bit, the Internet agrees with me; Imbibe’s version calls only for a dash of orange bitters, not a teaspoon.

Saint Croix Rum Fix

Aaron N. Tubbs — Sun, 15 Jul 2012 00:00:00 -0400

In the interest of full disclosure, the bottle of tequila in the middle is actually homemade pineapple syrup, bottled in a tequila bottle. If you’re wondering what a fix is, it’s basically crushed/shaved ice plus a spirit plus an acid plus some sugar in some sort of proportion.

In this case, we’re using pineapple syrup, rum, lemon juice, and simple syrup. It’s rather punch-like but not particularly satisfying. I think there are far more interesting things to be done with something like pineapple syrup, to be honest.

The Royal Bermuda Yacht Club Cocktail

Aaron N. Tubbs — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 00:00:00 -0400

What a name. Another signature cocktail from a defunct club, right? Except there’s actually still a Royal Bermuda Yacht Club, and it’s one of the oldest Royal Clubs in the world. Whatever that means.

And there you go.

The cocktail is surprisingly good. It’s got a nice balance of spice, acid, sweetness, and richness. They might be onto something here.

The Rose

Aaron N. Tubbs — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 00:00:00 -0400

Listen, I like vermouth cocktails as much as the next guy, but kirsch, dry vermouth, and some raspberry syrup? We’re not even trying here.

It’s a little cloying, with just a hair too much sweetness to make the vermouth pleasant. Perhaps with a more austere version we’d be in better shape. The kirsch rounds it out with fruit flavors and a creamy mouthfeel, but this just seems a poor imitation of a Kir Imperial.

Ritz Sidecar

Aaron N. Tubbs — Sun, 24 Jun 2012 00:00:00 -0400

The book calls for pre-Phylloxera Cognac that runs about two hundred dollars an ounce give or take.

So that wasn’t going to happen, sorry.

Germain-Robin makes some pretty damn good artisan brandy in the style of Cognac, predominantly from Pinot Noir. It sounds crazy, but making Cognac from good grapes in good growing conditions is surprisingly effective, if not at all traditional. Thus, I made my Ritz Sidecar with Germain-Robin’s XO, instead of something absurd.

Another fun fact is that I ran out of Cointreau while making this, so I substituted a bit of Pierre Ferrand’s Dry Curacao to bring the mix up to volume properly, and I’m glad I did.

Say what you will, this is a delicious cocktail with impeccable balance, aroma, and finish. Spicy, rich, and complex, this is a delight to consume and will surely please all but the most frustratingly arbitrary critics. The ingredient cost is somewhat stupid for what it is, but this is not one to pass up. Highly recommended.