Mixology Monday: Cherries

June 17, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Remember the Maine, with Ocho Reposado in place of rye.

Today’s Mixology Monday theme is cherries, a flavor that seems to go wrong more often than it goes right. Says host Andrea at Gin Hound:

Singapore Gin Sling, Blood and Sand, and the Aviation wouldn’t be the same without them… But cherries in cocktails are also horribly abused, few things taste worse than artificial cherry aroma, and the description of how most maraschino cherries are made can make you sick to your stomach. So it’s my pleasure as the host of Mixology Monday… to challenge you to honor the humble cherry. However you choose to do that, is entirely up to you. You could use Maraschino Liqueur, Cherry Heering, Kirchwasser, Belgian Kriek Beer, cherry wine, or any spectacular infusions invented by you in a cocktail. Or make your own maraschino cherries for a spectacular garnish.

A few years ago my go-to cocktail was the Remember the Maine, a classic combining rye whiskey, sweet vermouth, cherry Heering, and absinthe. It fell out of my rotation for a while, then this winter I picked it up again using good reposado tequila in place of the rye. This substitution works. It’s on our current menu as the Anahuac, in keeping with the battleship theme:

2 oz reposado tequila
3/4 oz sweet vermouth
1/4 oz cherry Heering
2 dashes absinthe
cherry, for garnish

Stir with ice, strain into a cocktail glass, and garnish with the cherry.

Filed Under: Alcoholic Beverages, Cocktails, Food and Drink

Don’t be quite like Washington

June 6, 2013 By 1 Comment

Today’s Oregonian editorial urges Oregon to make like Washington and privatize liquor:

It’s possible, even probable, that Oregonians will vote on same-sex marriage and marijuana legalization in November 2014, leaving the state one measure short of a following-Washington’s-footsteps trifecta. That spot may — and should — be filled by an initiative privatizing liquor sales. It’s time to drag booze regulation out of the 1930s.

I’m with them on this, but they oversell the case a bit in using Washington as a model. This paragraph in particular seems disingenuous:

Despite the initial price shock, Washingtonians bought more booze than they did the year before. It’s simply far more convenient to buy liquor at Safeway or Costco, as Washingtonians now can, than to make a separate trip to a state liquor store. And consumer choices have increased thanks to the appearance of popular store brands, says Gilliam.

I think it’s fair to say that the appeal of these “popular store brands” lies more in price than in quality. And that’s fine. I’ve said before that we shouldn’t force mainstream consumers to pay higher prices so that booze nerds can buy esoteric spirits. But let’s not pretend there’s no potential trade-off here. The OLCC, to its credit, has become quite good at placing special orders compared to other control states. (Trust me, I used to live in Virginia.) It’s also acted as an incubator for Oregon distillers. This seems at least partly because the agency is not a pure maximizer of profits. Depending on how retail licenses are structured in a successful privatization plan, the state may end up with a less responsive supply side.

The benefit of watching Washington privatize liquor first is that we can learn from its mistakes. So here are two to keep in mind:

Keep taxes reasonable — Washington gave privatization a bad name by packaging it with extremely high taxes, the highest in the nation. As a result, consumers associate privatization with price hikes instead of the lower costs they anticipated.

Allow small retailers — Washington’s initiative generally limits new retail licenses to stores that are at least 10,000 square feet in area. This is a classic “bootleggers and Baptists” dynamic: Temperance-minded voters didn’t want proliferation of liquor licenses, and large grocers didn’t mind restricting competition. This makes it difficult to open boutique stores appealing to consumers that Costco may ignore.

Both of these concerns will be a factor in Oregon’s eventual privatization, which may be broadly popular but will be driven by particular interests. The state will want to retain its revenue. Retailers and distributors will want to shape the law to their benefit. To get this right, voters and legislators will need to keep in mind that privatization is a means to the end of competition, not an end in itself.

Filed Under: Alcoholic Beverages, Food and Drink, Oregon, Regulation

Defining “craft” distilleries

June 5, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Eastern Washington Wheat Fields

Following up on last week’s post about Oregon’s new craft distillery law that potentially violates the Commerce Clause, it’s worth mentioning that Washington may not be doing any better. But first, a couple articles that have come up recently about definitions of “craft” distilleries.

At The Atlantic, Wayne Curtis notes that right now anyone can call themselves a craft distiller, regardless of whether there is much craft to what they do:

It’s a little-known fact, but you don’t actually need a still to call yourself a distiller. The vodka makers I visited had adopted a simple and surprisingly common business model: buy a large quantity of potable alcohol from an industrial supplier (one vendor of neutral spirits offers it “in drum, truckload and railcar quantities”), run it through a tall charcoal filter to remove any trace impurities, cut it with water, decant it into bottles, and then slap on a label touting it as a local craft product worthy of its premium price.

At his excellent whiskey blog, Chuck Cowdery examines the so-called “problem” of non-distiller producers (NDPs), brands that simply repackage spirits under a new label with varying degrees of transparency. His suggested solution is a voluntary certification program:

Hence this modest proposal. The industry has several voluntary trade associations: the Distilled Spirits Council of the U.S. (DISCUS), the Kentucky Distillers’ Association (KDA), the American Distilling Institute (ADI), and the newly formed American Craft Distillers Association (ACDA), to name a few. Several universities, such as Michigan State, have distilling programs. One of those entities, or a new one established for this purpose, could create a certification program. It would establish criteria, and a monitoring and enforcement system, and award certifications to producers who apply and meet the requirements. It would all be voluntary and funded by the participants. Then it is up to the participants to promote and support it, to imbue it with sufficient credibility so that concerned consumers will learn to look for and trust that designation.

I’m glad to see that both articles express some skepticism about using government regulations to address the issue. Washington is one state that has tried, and not surprisingly the state gets it wrong.

Washington law designates a special license for craft distillers. Qualified applicants pay a reduced fee, $100 per year instead of $2000. They’re also allowed to offer on-premise tastings to consumers. But there’s a catch: They cannot produce more than 60,000 gallons of spirits per year, and at least half of the raw materials used in producing their spirits must be grown in Washington. (Details on Washington’s various license types can be downloaded here.)

Like Oregon’s new law, the requirement that craft distillers use locally grown ingredients raises obvious Commerce Clause issues. It’s also an exceedingly narrow definition of craft. It practically* excludes the NDPs and instant vodka brands, which is at least arguably desirable. But it also excludes producers that most people would consider worthy. For makers of gin, aquavit, absinthe, or various liqueurs, the origin of the base spirits is often far less important than the distiller’s skill selecting and incorporating botanicals. And if a distiller wants to specialize in rum, forget about it: The banks of the Puget Sound are not known for their fields of sugar cane. (Washington absinthe distiller Gwydion Stone argues the same case.)

Craft distillers in Washington are making interesting, quality spirits from local ingredients, like Washington wheat whiskey or gins and vodkas distilled from local grains. But I wouldn’t say that they’re more deserving of the craft designation than an Oregon producer making quality gin from neutral grain spirits. How to source one’s base ingredient is a creative decision that should be left to the distiller, not codified into law to promote local agricultural interests.

Fortunately the advantages provided by Washington’s craft distiller license are not overwhelming, allowing distilleries that don’t meet the definition to still go into production. But it demonstrates the perils of letting regulators and legislators define craft instead of leaving it to the rapidly evolving market for spirits.

If the beer market, which has had more time to mature, is any guide in the matter, maintaining a meaningful definition of craft is going to get increasingly difficult anyway. Volume of output can be objectively measured. “Craft” means different things to different people. Beer writer Jeff Alworth offers a different list of brewery classifications that he finds useful, with no place for the c-word: “There’s really no use for the term and I am going on a personal campaign to eliminate it from my own vocabulary.” Legally speaking, at least, that may be the best advice going forward.

*Edit: Added the word “practically” to be more precise. As Gwydion notes, it may be possible to buy NGS or other spirits that comply with the local requirements. I’m not sure how this would be addressed.

[Photo: Field of Washington wheat, by Jimmy Emerson on Flickr, used under Creative Commons license.]

Filed Under: Alcoholic Beverages, Food and Drink, Regulation

Liberating Libations

May 31, 2013 By Leave a Comment

The other podcast I recorded in DC is now up, “Liberating Libations” on the American Enterprise Institute’s “Banter” podcast. Dan Rothschild, Brandon Arnold, Stu James, and I discuss three-tier distribution, beer purity, homebrewing, and other drink related topics. Listen here.

Filed Under: Alcoholic Beverages, Food and Drink, Regulation

Achievement unlocked: One decade of blogging

May 28, 2013 By 1 Comment

I realized late this afternoon that my blog turns ten today. That’s like retirement age in blog years. Blogging isn’t quite as much fun as it was when I first started, back when bloggers would gather for happy hours based solely on sharing a publication format, subject matter inconsequential. Because we were bloggers! And that was reason enough. Much of what I used to post is now better suited to Twitter and Facebook, and the professionalization of the web makes it more sensible to submit longer content to existing publications than post it here. Nonetheless I’m grateful for those of you who do read this blog and continue to find value in posting, even if SEO has become a bigger consideration than trying to build a daily readership.

I could go on, but in adherence this site’s rules for good blogging…

Rule #1: Be meaningful.

Rule #2: If meaning is elusive, be amusing.

Rule #3: If meaning and amusement are both out of reach, be brief.

… I should probably shut up and post a cocktail recipe.

The Plantain Pisco Sour is exactly what it sounds like, a Pisco Sour sweetened with the spiced plantain syrup I like so much. This is an updated version of a drink I made for competition a few years, minus the foam. Use a good pisco like Campo de Encanto, the kind of pisco that actually tastes like it was distilled from grapes, for best results.

2 oz pisco
3/4 oz spiced plantain syrup
3/4 oz lime juice
1/2 oz Dimmi
1 egg white
bitters, for garnish

Shake everything without ice to aerate the egg white, then shake hard again with ice. Strain into a cocktail glass and garnish with drops of aromatic bitters. Etch them into tiny hearts for that extra special mixologist touch. (I use Novo Fogo Cherribiscus Bitters that my friend Evan Martin made, but any colorful and aromatic bitter will do.)

And if you’re looking for more drinks to try, remember there’s a whole section of the site devoted to cocktails now.

[Photo by Will Ray.]

Filed Under: Alcoholic Beverages, Cocktails, Food and Drink, Personal, Site Changes, Writing Tagged With: ,

Links for 5/10/13

May 10, 2013 By 2 Comments

Cleared for Departure is one of our most popular cocktails at Metrovino, but I’ve been remiss in dedicating a post to it. The recipe is now up at the cocktail section of the site.

Italy meets Texas with Pecaño, a pecan liqueur that appears to be inspired by the bittersweet liqueurs of Italy. As a native Texas, this sounds very interesting to me. They launched a Kickstarter today to bring it into full scale production.

More than thirty years after federal legalization, homebrewing is now legal in all fifty states thanks to Alabama finally coming on board. Now on to home distillation!

Want to be a street performer in St. Louis? You’ll have to audition for the city first.

Filed Under: Alcoholic Beverages, Cocktails, Food and Drink, On the Web

Culture of Competition at AEI

May 8, 2013 By Leave a Comment

I’m excited to head back to Washington, DC this month to be on a a panel discussion hosted by Tim Carney as part of the American Enterprise Institute’s Culture of Competition project. The details:

Free beer: Liberating libations from ‘Bootleggers and Baptists’

For centuries, the manufacture and sale of beer, wine, and spirits has been a highly profitable and highly regulated enterprise. And where profit and regulation meet, cronyism and rent-seeking frequently follow.

From moonshiners buying off politicians during the Prohibition era to liquor stores trying to ban supermarkets from selling beer today, regulation has been used to keep start-up brewers, winemakers, and distillers from manufacturing alcohol; to preserve inefficient distribution systems; and to restrict choices available to consumers. Frequently, this regulation has been used for “noble social goals” — hence the famous public choice example of “Bootleggers and Baptists.”

Can markets and consumers win? Join us for a discussion of the history and future of federal and state alcohol regulation and competition, followed by a reception with beer, wine, and spirits.

The event takes place at 5:00 pm on Tuesday, May 21. Drinks will follow. Check the site for all the necessary information.

And since I know a lot people in the industry read this site, I’d love to get your feedback as well. How do existing regulations help or hinder competition? What laws would you most like to see changed? Feel free to leave a comment or send me an email.

Filed Under: Alcoholic Beverages, DC, Food and Drink, Regulation

Mixology Monday: East Indies Bloody Mary

April 22, 2013 By 2 Comments

East Indies Bloody Mary

April’s Mixology Monday theme is the deceptively healthy sounding “Drink Your Vegetables.” From Rowen at Fogged in Lounge:

Want to get more vegetables but you’re always eating on the run?… Well then, how about a vegetable cocktail? No, not that nice little glass of red stuff Grandma put at each place setting—we’re talking something with a kick in it. You can definitely start with the little glass of red stuff and expand it to a Red Snapper-style drink like a Bloody Mary. Or how about a cucumber-scented cooler like a Pimm’s Cup, or maybe a cocktail featuring a vegetable-based ingredient like Cardamaro or celery bitters? Maybe you’ve been wondering if you can get more mileage out of that juice extractor before consigning it to the garage sale. However you get them in that glass, be prepared for the most fun with vegetables ever.

A while back I was tasked with coming up with a creative take on the Bloody Mary. In a town with as many brunches and savvy bartenders as Portland, coming up with something unique and tasty was a challenge; here even the Aquavit Bloody Mary can seem routine. After quite a bit of experimentation with different spirits and spices, I eventually settled on one made with Batavia arrack — a funky, assertive spirit distilled from sugar cane and red rice — and accented with a spice paste inspired by Indonesian cuisine. To top it all off, the cocktail is garnished with house made pickles and a spicy grilled prawn.

I’ve been meaning to post this recipe for a while, so I’m glad to finally have the opportunity. To make it you’ll need a basic Bloody Mary mix, the spice paste, and Batavia arrack.

For the spice paste:

4 tablespoons sambal oelek
2 tablespoons fish sauce
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin

Combine all ingredients and mix well.

For the East Indies Bloody Mary:

1 1/2 oz Batavia arrack
4 oz Bloody Mary mix
2 teaspoons Indonesian spice paste
cumin salt rim, for garnish
pickles, for garnish
grilled prawn, for garnish

Combine all ingredients, shake with ice, and strain (but don’t fine strain) into an ice-filled pint glass rimmed with a mixture of salt and ground cumin. Go crazy with the garnishes. A grilled prawn flavored with turmeric and other spices is a good touch. When we served this we pickled various vegetables such as long beans, green beans, lotus root, daikon, and cucumber in the brine from the Indian-style pickled cauliflower recipe in The Joy of Pickling.

Coming up on my to-do list: Trying this spice paste on grilled meat. In the meantime, drink up.

[Photo courtesy of Lush Angeles.]

Filed Under: Alcoholic Beverages, Cocktails, Food and Drink Tagged With: ,

An appreciation of pipe tobacco

April 17, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Writer Wil S. Hylton has a fantastic appreciation of pipe tobacco published last week in, of all places, The New York Times Magazine. Wil tells the story of coming across an obscure variety called Semois and tracking it to its source in Belgium, adding one more item to the long list of reasons I need to visit the country. Unlike so many food and drink writers, Wil gets that tobacco deserves a spot at the culinary table. I love this passage:

I was struck by how unfamiliar the scene would have been to my American friends who have, in a fashion typical of our generation, embraced the current culinary boom with maniacal fervor, boiling obscure reductions to drip onto bits of fruit exploded by bicycle pumps in homage to Ferran Adrià, and yet, despite this globe-trotting gustatory zeal, haven’t the slightest comprehension of the exquisite flavor that haunts tobacco. If the modern mythos of the kitchen had arrived a decade earlier, before the vilification of tobacco was complete, the pipe might occupy a place on the palate alongside argan oil and hijiki and yuzu. Somewhere in the multiverse, there is an alternate New York City where the Union Square farmers’ market brims not just with heirloom melons and leeks and squash but also with local tobaccos as vibrant as the Cherokee purple tomato. There is a literature still waiting to be written on fine tobacco; tobacco awaits its Julia Child — who, it should be said, loved to smoke, as so many other chefs have and do. It is axiomatic these days that smoking ruins the palate, but this would come as news to Thomas Keller, Anthony Bourdain and all the other celebrated chefs who enjoy a good smoke.

Read the whole thing.

Filed Under: Food and Drink

What I’ve been drinking

April 9, 2013 By 1 Comment

Unexpected travel has made me a bit delayed reviewing spirits. Here are some recent arrivals to the home bar:

South Sea Rum — This is an “agricole” style rum distilled in Australia from first-pressed sugar cane. It goes through pot and column stills before resting for two years in old and new American oak. How to review it? Taken as an agricole rum, it doesn’t have nearly as much hogo, or distinctive funk, as counterparts from, say, Martinique. It is a very tasty rum though, with nice vanilla notes from the barrel and a long finish. I’ve gone through about half a bottle already, mostly drinking it neat. At $30-35 the price is right too.

Zumwohl Kirsch — It’s a dry, German style schnapps. It’s from New Zealand. And, oh yeah, it’s 132 proof. Sipping this neat is not for everyone, but if you try it you will taste cherries along with dark chocolate and a bit of a medicinal note. A more user friendly way to pour it is in a Straits Sling, where it fits perfectly. It’s not available in the US, so bug your Kiwi friends to send you a bottle.

Elixer Combier — According to the Combier website, this is a revival of one of their 19th century recipes, an herbal liqueur that includes “aloe, nutmeg, myrrh, cardamom, cinnamon and saffron” among its ingredients. At 76 proof it has enough heat to be enjoyed on its own without being too sweet. It’s very complex and I’m sure it could do great things in the right cocktail. But which cocktail? I haven’t figured that out yet, but I will be sure to experiment.

Concannon Irish Whiskey — For a spirits writer, March is the month when samples of Irish whiskey arrive. One year Lance Mayhew and I tasted nearly thirty versions of the spirit, a feat of endurance from which I’m still recovering. This year I tried just one new bottling, Concannon. Distilled by Cooley, it spends time in a mix of bourbon barrels and wine barrels from the Concannon Winery in Livermore, California. I picked up a slightly fruity note when tasting, which it turns out is also what the press release says the wine barrel finish provides. Like most Irish whiskeys it’s light bodied and easy drinking.

Filed Under: Alcoholic Beverages, Food and Drink

Using a jigger? You’re doing it wrong.

April 1, 2013 By 10 Comments

IMG_20130401_084915

“Making cocktails is a lot more like baking than it is like cooking.” I hear this all the time from bartenders, the point being that precise measurement is vital to making balanced drinks. A bit too much citrus, too little vermouth, and your finely crafted, expensive cocktail isn’t is as good as it should be. This is why we encourage bartenders and home mixologists to use a jigger. It’s more consistent and delivers better results than “free-pouring” as the bartending academies instruct.

But at the heart of this adage is a lie. We pat ourselves on the back saying we’re as precise as pastry chefs, without acknowledging the obvious fact: Pastry chefs know better than to measure by volume. Volume is inconsistent. Is your jigger held perfectly level? Do you pour to the meniscus every time? Have you taken into account the effects of humidity and elevation on the local atmospheric pressure? Is the Manhattan you make in New Orleans identical to the one you make in Denver? No, it is not, and it’s time for us to catch up with our flour-dusted friends in the kitchen. It’s time to start weighing our cocktails.

This requires some adjustment, but it can be done. I’ve already seen it accomplished in some coffee houses, where baristas measure their water in grams. I’ve seen wine poured this way. Mixology is lagging behind. As hard as we’ve worked to get people to use jiggers, it’s time to throw them away and replace them with digital scales.

It’s a simple set-up, really, using no more space on the bar than a set of jiggers. Place the shaker or mixing glass on the scale and tare it to zero. Pour in the first ingredient to the desired weight, then tare again. Proceed until all the ingredients have been added.

Measuring by weight entails rewriting our recipes. Take the Last Word, for example, a cocktail in which the right balance of flavors is crucial. Here’s the recipe in the out-dated, traditional form:

3/4 oz gin
3/4 oz Chartreuse
3/4 oz maraschino liqueur
3/4 oz lime juice

Since each of these ingredients has a different density, converting the Last Word into a weight-based recipe looks like this:

17 g gin
19 g Chartreuse liqueur
22 g maraschino
21 g lime juice

Yes, this is harder to remember than the volume-based recipe with its convenient equal parts, but keeping an encyclopedia of obscure data in one’s memory is part of the bartender’s art. With a little practice the adjustment comes easily.

Another benefit of weight-based bartending is that it allows for objective quality control. The finished cocktail can be weighed after being poured into the glass to make sure that it has been diluted by the proper amount, eliminating the inconsistency of testing by taste. The finished Last Word, for example, should weigh between 105-115 grams. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t get served.

Weight-based bartending also allows us to eliminate that embarrassment to the craft, “the dash.” Dashes of bitters are terribly inconsistent, varying with the amount of bitters left in the bottle, the size of the hole in the cap, and the hand of the individual bartender. Mixologists, save your sprezzatura for your wardrobe! By setting a standard — I suggest .33 grams — we can finally get this right. Thus the previously mentioned Manhattan can now be made like this:

53 g rye whiskey
29 g sweet vermouth
.66 g Angostura bitters

See, it’s easy once you get the hang of it.

A final reason to adopt this system is that it will ease communication between those of us accustomed to measuring in fluid ounces and those who use the metric system. Sharing recipes between the U.S. and Europe requires conversion, which is rarely done with any precision. Measuring by weight solves the problem by creating a universal standard. Just remember: “Dram for dram, a gram’s a gram.”

I don’t doubt that measuring drinks with gram scales will initially be met with resistance, but eventually it will prevail on the merits. Within five years, we will look at bartenders using jiggers the way we now look at bartenders free-pouring, and think maybe we should just have a beer instead of taking our chances on a cocktail. That is why starting today, April 1, all recipes on this site will henceforth be given in grams instead of ounces. I hope that the rest of the industry will follow suit and finally give our craft the precision it deserves.

Filed Under: Alcoholic Beverages, Food and Drink

Ritual Drinking at Tales of the Cocktail 2013

March 29, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Bone Luge. Pickleback. Menu Backing. Mixologists do some weird things. Come try them with us — me, Jason Littrell, and Daniel de Oliveira — at our Spirited Dinner sponsored by Altos Tequila at this year’s Tales of the Cocktail:

The rebirth of the cocktail has given us exquisitely balanced, complex drinks. It has also given us some very strange drinking rituals. From the Pickleback to Menu Backing to the Bone Luge, odd drinking trends have a way of spreading virally and bringing friends together. Popularizers of these trends — Jason Littrell from New York, Daniel de Oliveira from Chicago, and Jacob Grier from Portland — bring them to the Spirited Dinner table along with some of their favorite craft cocktails, featuring the blanco and reposado expressions of Altos Tequila and food pairings from Sylvain.

Attendees at this dinner will not only enjoy multiple courses of food and cocktails, they’ll also have fun taking part in unusual drinking trends and gaining an understanding of why they spread.

Sylvain is one of my favorite restaurants in New Orleans, so I know the food is going to be great and I’m thrilled that we’re able to work with them. The dinner menu is at the link, with cocktail and drinking ritual menu coming soon. There are only 30 seats and reservations are $100. I hope to see you there on July 18th.

[Pictured: Original Bone Luger Danny Ronen.]

Filed Under: Alcoholic Beverages, Food and Drink Tagged With: ,

Year of Aquavit: Dill Collins

March 5, 2013 By 1 Comment

When we hosted Aquavit Week at Metrovino back in December, there was one American version that we weren’t able to bring into state stores in time to feature. Distilled in Wisconsin and based in Minnesota, Gamle Ode dill aquavit has been a standout for everyone I’ve introduced to it. It’s excellent chilled straight from the freezer, but my favorite way to drink it is in a simple twist on the classic Collins. I first wrote about this drink for Culinate, and now that the spirit has finally made it to Oregon, it’s on our regular menu at Metrovino.

1 1/2 oz Gamle Ode dill aquavit
3/4 oz lemon juice
1/2 oz simple syrup (1:1)
soda
dill or lemon peel for garnish

Build in a rocks or collins glass with ice, stir gently, and garnish.

Filed Under: Alcoholic Beverages, Cocktails, Food and Drink Tagged With: ,

Mixology Monday: Inversion

February 18, 2013 By 5 Comments

Hopped Up Nui Nui -- traditional recipe + 1 oz IPA.

It’s a good thing Mixology Monday has been revived or I might not have posted a new cocktail at all this month. The theme for February is “Inverted.” Host Putney Farm explains:

A while ago, while researching Julia Child’s recipes, we noticed that she was well-known for enjoying “upside-down” or “inverted” Martini’s (God bless her). This is a version of the classic cocktail that swaps the ratios of gin and vermouth, turning the Martini into something of a “long drink”. And if you are cooking for hours at a time (or gardening with a cocktail- something we highly recommend), the Inverted Martini is a very tasty drink.

We wondered if we could apply the same “inverted” approach to Mixology Monday and, at first, didn’t think it would work. But then we asked ourselves, what does “inverted” really mean? Well, here is the definition:
-
To turn inside out or upside down
To reverse the position, order, or condition of
-

Hmm…it appears that the definition is pretty broad. It seems that “inverted” really just means something “flipped on its head”. And that can mean almost anything, and leaves plenty of room for creativity. So we are going with the “inverted” theme. You can invert the ratios of spirits, liqueurs or bitters in a cocktail, but we suggest you go beyond that and “invert” whatever you want. Spirits, name, ingredients, proof, color, geography, garnish and glassware are all fair game. An apéritif made with Navy-Strength booze? Give it a try. A beer-based cocktail that tastes like champagne? Sure. A clear Manhattan? Worth a shot (and good luck with that). The only thing we expect is the unexpected. Have fun.

No ideas were springing to mind for this one, so I mentioned the prompt to my fellow bartender at Metrovino, Kj DeBoer. He came up with the solution in no time. Deschutes Brewery, he noted, makes a beer called Inversion IPA. Brilliant! I could “invert” a drink by adding Inversion IPA to it.

But which drink to choose? I thought immediately of tiki cocktails, which I view as prime candidates for the addition of beer. Tiki drinks are characterized by their use of rum, fruit, and big, spicy flavors. I like them, but I can usually only do about one per night before I’m ready to move on to drinks with more bitter elements. Hoppy beers are a great way to add bitterness to tiki drinks: They give the drinks backbone, hops play well with citrus, and shaking beer with the other ingredients makes for a frothy head, creating a velvety mouthfeel.

For this Mixology Monday, I decided to try adding Inversion IPA to the Nui Nui cocktail. This is one of the tiki drinks I gravitate to when it’s on the menu, offering bold, spicy flavors. Beachbum Berry credits it to Donn the Beachcomber’s Mandalay Bar at the Colonel’s Plantation Beefsteak House in Hawaii, circa 1958. My only addition is the beer, and I shake it rather than blend it.

2 oz amber rum
1 oz IPA
1/2 oz lime juice
1/2 oz orange juice
1/4 oz cinnamon syrup
1/4 oz Donn’s Spices #2
1 dash Angostura bitters

Shake with ice and strain into a glass filled with crushed ice. Garnish with an orange peel or cherries.

You can make your own syrups, but I’m lazy and live in Portland so I use those commercially available from B. G. Reynolds. For the rum I used El Dorado eight year, which may be overkill and isn’t traditional, but it sure is good. Feel free to substitute other IPAs if not constrained by a Mixology Monday theme.

Filed Under: Alcoholic Beverages, Cocktails, Food and Drink Tagged With: , ,

Playing catch up

February 12, 2013 By Leave a Comment

It’s been a while since I’ve posted. A few things that have come up in the past few weeks:

For Drink Portland, I took a look at three new rye whiskeys that have entered the market.

Year of Aquavit: EcoSalon is on board.

Department of Unlikely Coverage: Gizmodo discovers the Bone Luge. A very in-depth article!

The Oregonian gave Metrovino our first major review since Chef Dustin See took over in the kitchen and gave us high marks.

Filed Under: Alcoholic Beverages, Food and Drink, Writing

Updating the Ethan Allen

January 10, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Way back in 2009, I came up with a drink for the Great American Distillers Festival that used smoke apple puree and apple cider gastrique. We served it at Carlyle and Metrovino (then-Carlyle chef Jake Martin had the idea for the smoked apples), but the ingredients were always improvised and we never had a definitive recipe.

This weekend I was cooking with my friend Paul Willenberg and he mentioned that he was borrowing a smoker. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to revisit the drink and simplify the recipe, omitting ingredients like smoked butter that we’d used to smooth out the puree in the past. What we came up with is direct and works very nicely. Check it out here.

Filed Under: Alcoholic Beverages, Cocktails, Food and Drink Tagged With:

Mexican Turnover

January 4, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Mexican Turnover.

I’d completely forgotten about this drink until today, when Frederic from Cocktail Virgin Slut mentioned it in one of his year-in-review posts. I came up with this to round out the tequila chapter in the out of print Cocktail Collective, and making one tonight I’m happy to say that I still like it. It’s yet another cocktail inspired by the Alto Cucina, albeit with very different proportions.

1 1/2 oz anejo tequila
3/4 oz dry vermouth
1/2 oz Cynar
1/4 oz St. Germain
orange peel, for garnish

Stir with ice and serve up, garnished with a twist of orange peel.

Filed Under: Alcoholic Beverages, Cocktails, Food and Drink
« Older Posts