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  • Cocktail Recipes

    The Blossom

    21 April 2024 - By 

    Elderflower, Rum, Eggwhite Sour

    This origin story is pretty straightforward. I was throwing a small cocktail party for a couple of friends. In a small company I always enjoy when people ask me for a specific flavour pairing and I go and try to whip something up. Sometimes it really works and it’s great to see the delighted surprise in peoples’ faces! 

    This was such a case. I got a request for “an elderflower eggwhite sour”. The lady in question is really into elderflower and I’d been making various eggwhite sours that evening that were well received. For this request I could take my time. Firstly, elderflower liqueur (I’m using St. Germain) is of course really tasty and pretty easy to work with, but it doesn’t stand up well on its own in my experience. However I still want the drink to be predominantly elderflower, as per request! 

    So we’re looking for other flavours that are close to elderflower, which leads us straight to various types of stone fruit. This may be surprising, because elderflower is not a fruit, let alone a stone, but I’ve been successfully using elderflower for a while now whenever I want the stone fruit flavour without too much fruitiness. 

    For the base, gin would have been obvious, so I skipped that and decided to go for rum because I don’t have a lot of eggwhite rum sours yet, and the requestor of this drink does like her rum. And the fun thing with rum is of course you can experiment with different mixes of them. 

    To tie the base and the elderflower and the stone fruit together, the traditional tiki / caribbean spices should do the job I figured (vanilla and falernum), and for a bit of contrast to make it all pop my books told me orange should work (curacao and bitters).

    Here is the recipe:

    • 15 ml Aged Rum
    • 15 ml Black Rum
    • 22.5 ml Elderflower liqueur
    • 7.5 ml Velvet Falernum
    • 7.5 ml Vanilla syrup
    • 1 tsp Blue Curacao
    • 1 tsp Apricot brandy
    • 1 tsp Peach liqueur
    • 15 ml lemon juice
    • 1 ds Orange bitters
    • eggwhite

    Simply combine all ingredients, then dry shake first (because it’s an eggwhite sour), then add ice, shake and double strain into a pretty glass. Garnish with one or two nice flower.

    This was one of those magical times you get it first time right! I tried it later with fewer ingredients (because let’s face it, this is a bit complicated), and it really lost most of its excitingness. 

    My theory for this is that by combining many flavours that were close together, I achieved some sort of “broader base” which helps these gentle flavours seem more intense without becoming overly sweet or boring. 

    For the rums I used Angostura 7 (a lightly aged blended Spanish style) and Gosling Black Seal. But you can definitely play around with this. I’ve also had success with Ango 7, Appleton Signature (Jamaican) and a splash of Plantation OFTD (dark overproof), for a little bit more present rumminess.

    Perhaps best of all, the colour of this cocktail is a lovely light green! This may (and probably should) surprise you, because blue (from the curacao) and red (from the peach) should make purple according to what you learned in kindergarten. However, the red and blue both are still transmitting some middle spectrum yellow and green, and combining them cancels out the outside of the spectrum, leaving only that middle. That is my theory anyway. 

    The colour was a little bit of a surprise for me too, but also a gift, because with the green drink and the white foamy head, it really resembles the elderflower so the name deserves to be The Blossom! Obviously we garnish with some flowers. 

    Dall-E’s impression of this drink is pretty close to the real thing, and much pretties than the photos I can take with my phone at home:

  • Cocktail Recipes

    The King of Italy

    31 March 2024 - By 

    Rosemary, grapefruit, spices, French-Italian style

    Recently, Difford’s Guide ran a Mandarine Napoleon challenge. I’ve never entered a cocktail competition before, but this one was perfect for me. You just submit the recipe from home, and there are separate categories for home enthusiasts like me, and for professionals.

    The challenge parameters consisted of: at least 15 ml of Mandarine Napoleon and only using common ingredients (there was a list, but also you get judged on replicability). The liqueur itself is obviously made from mandarins. I’ve never had it before, and it was low on my list of liqueurs to try. Not many cocktails call for it, and I wasn’t sure how much it would add to all the other orange liqueurs I already have. So if nothing else at least the makers of Napoleon managed to make me buy 2 bottles!

    It’s actually quite a nice liqueur, and different enough from the ones I already have. It’s almost 40% ABV, the mandarine is a bit brighter than your triple secs and there are some spice notes that are really nice. 

    The cocktail I’m sharing with you now is not the one I submitted in the end, but was a close contender. After a lot of experimentation (and failures, a lot of work went into this!) I actually had 4 reasonably good drinks. This one was my personal favourite, but I didn’t submit it because, firstly, it wasn’t as accessible, and secondly because the drink is really elevated by one ingredient that was off limits!

    So here you’re getting my favourite version (up to now). The main flavour idea here is to go big on the Napoleon, contrast it with woody flavours and play into the spices. We were being judged on the name as well, so always back of my mind was if I can make a thematic name with the ingredient. Specifically, I know orange, rosemary, cassis and grapefruit make a surprisingly nice combination if well balanced. On top of that, any of the existing cocktails with Napoleon have vermouths and amaro’s. So I picked Italian as a theme. 

    Here are the specs:

    • 40 ml Mandarine Napoleon
    • 20 ml Carpano Antica Formula
    • 10 ml Tanqueray No. 10 Gin
    • 10 ml Amaro Nonino
    • 1 tsp Creme de Cassis
    • 3 drp Bittermens Tiki bitters

    Stir and strain into a double rocks glass on ice (one big cube if possible). 

    Express oil of a grapefruit peel, then add that and a rosemary twig as garnish. 

    You can add the grapefruit and rosemary to the mixing glass as well (know as a regal stir, how appropriate!)

    Before you ask, yes the brands are important. I tried it with a few others and it didn’t balance out well, in the sense that it got a little boring because the spice and herbal notes are a little lost. Tanqueray 10 includes rosemary and grapefruit so it’s obvious why that works. Antica Formula and Nonino are characterful but with a broad palate that if not subtle is at least not dominated by any particular flavours. 

    The ratios are also important. In particular if you’d increase the amaro and gin you end up with something that’s “simply” a sort of Negroni variation. Not bad, but also that Negroni character overpowers the stars here, which would be Napoleon, rosemary and grapefruit.

    The creme de Cassis and Tiki bitters are probably surprising. The Cassis I can’t quite explain, it’s a pairing I found in the Foodpairing book. The Tiki is more obvious, because the Napoleon has some tropical spice and cinnamon notes. Don’t overdo it with either of these!

    The garnish for this is also important. The rosemary and grapefruit combination is heavenly, every sip of this drink starts with a huge noseful of it. Express the grapefruit zest over the drink first. I recommend placing the grapefruit in front of the rosemary, for aroma balance.

    The Italy part of the name of this drink is quite obvious now. Italian ingredients. But what does it have to do with Napoleon, and who is the king of Italy anyway? Well, Napoleon Bonaparte is the King of Italy! Or rather, we was in any case. Early in his emperorship he also gave himself the crown of Italy, and later he made his son the King of Italy. So it all fits together, and what makes it even better, you can use the rosemary and grapefruit (take a really big swath) to make a sort of roman crown, like what you often see of paintings of Napoleon himself!

  • Cocktail Recipes

    The Royal Fairy

    11 February 2024 - By 

    An Absinthe-Basil Simple Sour

    This is one of my earlier creations. I went through a phase then where I was amazed by how something as intense as absinthe could actually make a drink smoother – if used in moderation! I was also charmed by the family of gin – absinthe – dry vermouth cocktails, like the Turf. And then I remembered I had once had a basil infused G&T at an event that I really liked – and this was before I got into cocktails at all (it was all craft beers for me then). They had this big glass jug with a tap that contained the drink and was filled with fresh basil leaves too (although I don’t remember if this included the tonic or not, I don’t think so). 

    So the thought that I had was straightforward: a basil-absinthe simple sour. Clearly a full measure of absinthe wasn’t going to make for a pleasant drink, no matter how much sugar and citrus you would stack against it, so the gin is primarily there to dilute the absinthe. 

    I get the basil in there by way of a syrup, which is simple to make: prepare your simple syrup by stirring your sugar and water over heat, then add a good hand of fresh basil (say 15g of basil to 300-400 ml of syrup). I keep a low heat under it for a little while, then turn it off and let it steep for a couple hours to a night, then strain. It will have a recognizable but gentle basil taste. Most of my batches do tend to form a mould after not too long, so make sure to clean your container well, filter very carefully, and either increase the sugar, add some neutral alcohol and/or keep cool. 

    This simple sour will get eggwhite, because I just really enjoy that smoothness. I also add a dash of hopped grapefruit bitters (by Bittermens) which works well in my opinion to add that additional depth, but honestly I had just gotten that bottle and was looking for more ways to use it!

    The recipe then is the following:

    • 30 ml Gin
    • 10 ml Absinthe
    • 15 ml basil syrup
    • 20 ml lemon juice
    • 1 ds Hopped Grapefruit bitters (optional)
    • 1 eggwhite (about 30ml)

    Almost all the amounts can be tweaked depending on your taste and the basilness (basility?) of your syrup. Dry shake (because of the eggwhite), then add ice and Shake & Strain into a nice sour glass. Garnish with a basil leaf if you have it.

    This drink is a pleasing drink. It has a fun flavour combination and it is smooth in the face of the reasonable expectation for most of these ingredients to be otherwise. It remains a favourite of mine to drink and to serve because it’s simple but striking. 

    I may be even more pleased, though, with the name. Clearly, most people will recognize the “fairy” part as a reference to absinthe, its nickname having been “the green fairy” supposedly for its hallucinogenic properties once upon a time, although that was likely exaggerated and most effects probably attributable to getting absolutely hammered (citation needed). 

    Of course basil is also green, just like absinthe, so “fairy” has a sort of implicit green association, but other than that any reference to the colour in the name of this drink was off limits. Luckily, etymology comes to the rescue, as it so often does. “Basil” has its roots in the Greek “basileus” meaning king. Alexander the Great and the Byzantine emperors used the title, and the proper noun Basil and the word basilica (the church building) derive from it. As does the leafy herb, because and/or due to which it is also known as the ‘royal herb’.

  • Cocktail Recipes

    The Intergalactic

    5 December 2023 - By 

    A gin old-fashioned. Juniper | Cardamom | Lemongrass | Almond

    This is it. This is the one. The reason I really started this cocktail blog. As I write this, I have recorded about 50 cocktail recipes of my own devising on my home menu. That is something I do when I’m happy to serve a cocktail to my friends. But if there was ever a drink that deserves to go on a menu in an actual bar, it would be this one. 

    What can I say besides that I’m extraordinarily pleased with this one? That part of its beauty is that it is a simple recipe? That it’s one of the very few gin old-fashioned I know of? That after designing it on paper, I only had to make 1 small adjustment? That cardamom is my current favourite spice to experiment with?

    This was not my first cardamom-focussed cocktail, I confess, and it won’t be the last one. I had already done my homework regarding cardamom flavour pairings, and I’d made my first cardamom-lemongrass bitters. But now it was time to create something with these bitters! 

    As I mention in this accompanying post about those cardamom-lemongrass bitters, I’d made 2 lists of flavour pairings based on the book Foodpairing. After that it actually came together rather quickly, as my eye fell immediately on the “juniper” entry from the lemongrass list. A gin-based old-fashioned template, and although I couldn’t resist orgeat for the sweet component (which ties to the cardamom), I reckoned it needed something a little fruity as well. No place for juice in this template, but I did have a strong plum liqueur around (tying to the lemongrass). 

    Immediately I was amazed. I might have muttered a “wow!” to myself. I had started with a small splash of the plum, but found it could be increased because it missed a bit of sweetness while there was already plenty of almond. Almost belatedly I realised what the finishing touch ought to be. I was so focussed on not adding grapefruit this time (I’d already overused the grapefruit-cardamom combination), that this slipped my mind. Express the oils from a grapefruit peel over the drink and discard. Damn. So smooth. 

    So here is the recipe of The Intergalactic, I won’t keep you waiting any longer:

    • 45 ml Gin
    • 15 ml Plum Liqueur (40% ABV)
    • 1 barspoon Orgeat
    • 1 dash Cardamom-Lemongrass bitters
    • Grapefruit peel for the oil

    Stir well and strain into a double rocks glass. Colder is better. 

    Besides checking out the post regarding the bitters, here are some more notes. 

    The plum liqueur doesn’t really have a brand, I got it from a lovely local shop that sells liqueurs from big glass amphorae with a little tap. It means you can pick the size bottle you want to fill and even taste everything before you buy! I believe they get their stock from Germany, and I’ve seen these kinds of shop both there and here in the Netherlands. This liqueur is very nice on its own, it’s called Old Mirabelle (mirabelle are a type of plum), has an ABV of 40% and is a little sweet. So it’s drier than your typical fruit liqueur (say apricot ‘brandy’), but it’s definitely not an eau de vie. I am planning to do some experimental research and tell you how it compares to other ingredients like maybe eau de vie de mirabelle, palinka, or Japanese Umeshu? 

    What I can tell you already is what the plum does in this drink. It mellows it. You don’t taste the plums themselves. At least I can’t. Even after doubling the amount from my very first try, the primary function is to smoothen and to expand the taste. And by smooth I don’t mean that it loses its bite, after all it’s still 40% ABV! It forms a bridge that connects the sweetness (almond and cardamom) and the herbaceous (botanicals and lemongrass), giving more breathing room for both. 

    As for the Gin, I used trusty Tanqueray and am plenty happy with that, delighted even. I’m also planning more experimentation here. I reckon juniper-heavy gins ought to work best, probably ‘woody’ ones too. Tanq No. 10 would be worth trying too, since rosemary and grapefruit pair perfectly with cardamom. You will taste the gin very clearly in this drink, so pick one you like and that has character. Gins that are citrus- and coriander forward should work according to the theory, but my feeling is they will be less interesting. I don’t have high hopes for something like Hendrick’s because I don’t see its cucumber working here.

    The grapefruit oil from the peel does really help to smoothen it even more. I really recommend this. Although without it it’s still a good cocktail, you do need it for that weak-in-the-knees effect. You can use it as a garnish on the rim, but don’t put it in the glass, that will be too much. 

    One later experiment involved upgrading to a Sazerac template. I say upgrading, because the Sazerac is one of my all-time favourites, and an absinthe rinse seemed like a sure-fire thing. Star anise, fennel, and peppermint are in the list of flavour pairings for lemongrass and cardamom, and gin and absinthe tend to be inseparable, so there was only one way this experiment was going. I thought. You can imagine my surprise, when it turned out that this made the cocktail more bland. What?! Somehow, the absinthe neutralises, cancels out, the majority of the interesting interactions between the botanicals and the spices. Like a particle and anti-particle annihilating, except much more disappointing. An interesting finding for future reference nonetheless. 

    The Intergalactic took less time to create than to name, as per tradition. With its milky appearance (due entirely to the orgeat), some connection to clouds or the Milky Way (for my usual astrophysical theme) would be apt. But I also felt it deserved a really memorable name. The Milky Way? Too trivial. Morning Haze? Meh. Fog of War? Pretentious. White Hole? Requires a much more in-your-face cocktail. 

    I even went looking for various myths around the milky way. There were some really good candidates involving Zeus’ typical shenanigans or dragons. However, this just seemed a bit too obscure for a drink that I hope could travel more widely than my living room. And what is the best kind of travel? Intergalactic travel. Behold, The Intergalactic!

  • Ingredient Recipes

    Cardamom-Lemongrass Bitters

    5 December 2023 - By 

    I didn’t really have a reason to make this, I just knew I wanted to. The inspiration however came from messing around with some curry recipes. While doing that, I realised at some point lemongrass and cardamom are amazing together. To confirm I chewed on a cardamom pod and took a pinch of some pre-chopped lemongrass puree kinda thing (from a little jar). Damn good right there. So besides incorporating it in a curry, I figured there ought to be a good chance to make a nice cocktail-food pairing. 

    That particular cocktail is a story for another time (it remains my most complex cocktail to date, in terms of ingredients, and it probably needs some work to simplify), but it cemented the idea for this bitter. 

    Now, there were 2 things keeping me from attempting this. Thing 1: Boker’s style bitters already exist and have a big cardamom component. Thing 2: according to Dave Arnold’s Liquid Intelligence, a fresh lemongrass infused vodka will only last a couple of weeks in the fridge until it turns soapy. 

    So I got myself some Boker’s style bitters from Fee Brothers first. Have to confess, didn’t like it much. Fine in a Improved Brandy Cocktail (cognac, maraschino, Boker’s, Absinthe), but it does have a distinct medicinal-ness, maybe even soapy-ness to me. In fact, the mysterious cocktail I alluded to above contains fresh cardamom pods because it didn’t work with Boker’s. 

    Next, a happy accident. I found some dried lemongrass while browsing the herbal tea section. Had no idea this was a thing, so I brought a pack home immediately, figuring that since it was already dried, maybe it wouldn’t suffer from the “soapy onset problem”. I did brew a cuppa with it, not particularly interesting, but yes it does taste of lemongrass albeit much less citrus-forward.

    Now I was ready to try and bring this figment of my imagination into reality. I haven’t made many bitters myself yet. A couple of non-alcoholic ones: one aromatic and one pimento, based mostly on Kevin Kos’ and Dave Arnold’s recipes. They turned out medium-fine. So I’d better start practising more!

    First, getting my copy of Foodpairing out to help me make some lists. What pairs well with Lemongrass, and what pairs well with Cardamom? Here’s the shortlists I came up with:

    • Lemongrass: cumin, coriander, plum, juniper, bay leaf, thyme
    • Cardamom: rosemary, almond, pomelo and basically all the chai spices (cinnamon, star anise, nutmeg, close, fennel, black pepper)

    Next I peruse some existing bitter recipes, cross-matching with the above list, trying to rein myself in not to get too crazy. 

    I settled on trying the following recipe, which yielded about 280 ml:

    • Quassia Bark – 5g
    • Gentian root – 2.5g
    • Dried orange peel – 5g
    • Cardamon seeds – 20g
    • Dried lemongrass – 25g
    • Caraway seeds – 2g
    • Bay leaf – 3 leaves (although they were a bit old)
    • Cloves – 3 whole
    • Juniper – 5 berries
    • Rosemary – 1 small fresh twig

    I went for quassia as the main bittering agent, because I was already using cinchona and gentian in a bunch of other drinks. Okay, a little gentian for support because it’s so nice and I figured it would match the tone. Orange peel also to support the bitterness, bring some warmth and some bitterness, but I refrained from lemon peel and the fresh variant because I want to control the citrus separately in the drinks I will make with it. 

    The main ingredients are pretty clear. 25 grams of dried lemongrass is a lot of dried lemongrass in volume. My initial guess was 60 grams but that would’ve been plain silly. I also cut back on my first guess of 40 grams of cardamom, to a mere 20 grams of seeds. I was vacillating on whether to use whole pods or go to the trouble of removing the seeds. I think Dave Arnold mentioned explicitly seeds removed from the pods in one of his recipes, but there is no reasoning given. It was a slow day so what the heck. It probably took me about an hour to get the seeds out and separated from the husks using a mortar and pestle and a coarse sieve. The 20 grams of seeds are the yield from 30 grams of whole pods. My guess is you can probably use the whole pods, just make sure to crack them open first. Probably 20-25 grams of whole pods in that case. Your final liquid yield might be lower though as the husks absorb more liquid. 

    All the other ingredients are to add some depth and warmth, and you’ll notice they were all on the short list, and most are common bitters ingredients anyway. Lightly crush the cloves and juniper berries first. 

    I’m using a rapid infusion technique here, which many of you will have heard of, it’s described in Dave Arnold’s Liquid Intelligence. If you haven’t tried this yet, please look it up in the book or on youtube first. Again taking a cue from his recipes, here is the procedure I followed:

    • Fill a half-liter ISI whipper with all the solids
    • Add 350 ml of 60% neutral alcohol
    • Prepare a pan of simmering water
    • Add 1 NO2 charger to the whipper, shake vigorously for 30 seconds, then place in the water for 25 minutes (I turned of the heat when I placed the whipper in it)
    • Take out the whipper, let it cool for 15 minutes to room temperature (in cold water as necessary)
    • Release the pressure rapidly as usual, then leave it sitting until most of the bubbling has subsided
    • Filter and strain

    I’m pretty happy with how this turned out. Tasting a couple drops of it pure, it is plenty bitter, with plenty of taste of our main ingredients, but it’s a bit ‘thin’ compared to what I’m used to from commercial bitters. This does not stop it from being good in a drink though! Have a look at the first cocktail I created with these bitters, The Intergalactic. One dash in a drink definitely provides the intended effect. 

    I will certainly experiment a little more with this recipe. I’m curious if I can increase the amount of the supporting ingredients to broaden the base and make it a bit richer. I’ll also try adding a little demerara syrup to make it feel a little thicker. 

  • About Cocktailin'

    Naming Cocktails

    5 December 2023 - By 

    Naming your creation is probably the hardest thing about creating a new cocktail. Not only is this attested to in the Death & Co book (“It’s not as easy as, say, naming a baby or a car. You can’t call a new cocktail Austin and move on.)”, but the problem extends to other fields as well! There’s a famous quip among programmers: 

    There are only two hard things in Computer Science:

    1. Cache invalidation
    2. Naming things
    3. Off-by-one errors

    Looking for the source, I think the original is off-by-one, and that bit got added later. I have to admit, back when I was still writing code I too was definitely banging my head on the desk occasionally regarding cache invalidation, but off-by-one errors not so much!

    Anyway, since this is the beginning of my blog, let me introduce how I usually go about this intimidating challenge. Naming cocktails I mean (don’t expect any coding wisdom here). Sometimes something clever presents itself, a name that is both somewhat descriptive (or at least allusive) and witty or with an appropriately obscure reference – if so I always go for that.

    But this is by far the minority of cases. My solution is to fall back on my theme, which is “astrophysics”. You see, I used to be an astrophysicist and my field was cosmology – something about the fundamental nature of our universe. And lucky for me that field is full of awesome names. So I keep a little list of (astro)physical phenomena, principles, objects, laws and things that sound cool, and whenever I am lost for a name I will pick something from this list! In some cases I can even find something about the actual cocktail that makes it make a little sense – although that is hardly a requirement. 

    If you want some examples, just read my blog! At the end of each recipe I will say something about the naming of the drink and the meaning of the name!

  • Cocktail Recipes

    Arrow of Time

    4 December 2023 - By 

    When I was at a party, someone had heard about my cocktail hobby and was curious if I could make something there. Always happy to oblige a challenge, I went to the kitchen and fridge to see if there was anything to work with. As expected, not much, but there was a polish hazelnut wodka and some apple juice. Well that’s a classic flavour combination if there ever was one. Add some bourbon (they had some Bulleit on hand, bless them) to bring it into cocktail territory and we’re done. 

    I had kind of forgotten about this one until recently, then decided to recreate it. I didn’t have the hazelnut vodka, so I used Frangelico. It’s a lovely liqueur and I’m charmed by the bottle, but it does make it slightly sweeter. Equal parts of Bourbon, Frangelico and apple juice, you want it cold, but not too much dilution, so I usually build it on a large ice cube. If you want to shake briefly or stir and strain that will work too, but maybe add a little extra bourbon. 

    If you do have the hazelnut wodka, keep it in the freezer and with apple juice from the fridge you don’t need any ice at all – just combine for a nice thick mouthfeel.

    Now about the name – the arrow of time is a concept or metaphor in physics about whether or not time is the same going backwards or forwards. We used to think that all physical processes are time-invariant, basically saying that if you play something backwards, the physics are the same. However in a few quantum mechanical interactions this seems to be violated! The interaction is different in the opposite time direction – although this can only be measured indirectly of course, we have no knob to turn the Arrow of Time with. 

    As this apple-hazelnut cocktail gives me a warm cozy feeling and an old-timey grandparents vibe this seemed an appropriate and cool sounding name!

    Quite coincidentally this recent SMBC comic had the same association!

    There we have it, my first cocktail blog. I’m thinking this will be more or less the format going forward – how and why I came up with it, the actual cocktail, and then a little casual semi-educational meanderings about the name. Hope you enjoy it!