Bar on hold: Argentina and the Casino

Let’s take our brand new bitters for a spin.

Argentina

An orangy tasting cocktail due to the Cointreau and orange bitters. Dry vermouth and Cointreau do not necessarily mix well (in my opinion), but there are always exceptions.

4 parts gin

4 parts dry vermouth

1 part Cointreau

1 part Bénédictine

1 dash orange bitters

1 dash Angostura bitters

glass:  cocktail

Stir with ice and strain into the glass.

Garnish with an orange twist (if available).

The cocktail has an orange tint. Ironically, it’s not the Cointreau or the orange bitters which make this happen.

Casino

Back to The Savoy Cocktail Book: the Casino seems somewhat like a gin-heavy Aviation, but it has an entirely different character.

Although it contains lemon juice, it should be stirred instead of shaken: the amount of lemon is very small. Because your cocktail will stay clear, it is advisable to strain the lemon juice very thoroughly.

The amount of lemon and maraschino depends on the type of gin you’re using. The Casino originally calls for Old Tom gin. If you manage to stock this in your bar, one barspoon of lemon and maraschino will do enough (because the Old Tom already has some sweetness). If you go for dry gin (which is not uncommon), try a ratio of 8 parts of gin to 1 part of lemon and 1 part of maraschino.

gin (preferably Old Tom gin, 8 cl)

1 bar spoon maraschino

1 bar spoon lemon

2 dashes orange bitters

glass:  cocktail

Stir with ice and strain into the glass.

Garnish with a cherry (if available).

I finally managed to get my hands on Old Tom gin, so I’m happy to try this in the original version. In my next post I’ll tackle a venerable classic that also calls for Old Tom.

Orange bitters (Fancy Sour)

This is not the easiest ingredient to come by: you’ll need a top-shelf liquor store to get you this product. Or you’ll have to find your own way to a webshop that delves deep in the cocktail niche.

So yes, this is an ambitious ingredient. It’s a safe bet that anyone that stocks orange bitters is serious about making cocktails.

So do you want to be serious about making cocktails?

This is supposed to be a practical approach to cocktail making, so what is such a specialized ingredient doing in the bar?

Well, mainly because you’re better off stocking one bottle of orange bitters than a dozen different bottles of vague liqueurs that are hard to combine. You can play around with bitters, they are a solid part of cocktail history, they come in beautiful, small bottles and they don’t go bad easily - what could possibly be more practical than putting a small bottle in your bar to be recognized as a true hobby mixologist?

Okay, but why orange bitters instead of Peychaud’s bitters? Well, the Sazerac is my favourite cocktail, so that would be reason to choose for Peychaud’s. But it also contains three other ingredients that we don’t stock in the bar at the moment. Orange bitters open up more options right now. And there’s some real satisfaction in being able to make a Dry Martini like it used to be made, including being able to tell others about cocktail history.

Orange bitters went out of vogue after Prohibition. But since the recent cocktail revival, orange bitters have reappeared. There’s even choice now: there are several different brands of orange bitters, all with their own peculiar taste and wildly different in alcohol percentage.

One bottle is enough of a leap for now, however. Just go with whatever you can find or which bottle you think looks best.

Fancy Sour

This one can be made in the fancy way or in the casual way (as a scaffa, but with ice). I generally go for the casual version, if only as a break from the norm.

If you want to go the fancy way, you should shake instead of build the drink. Use a cocktail glass instead of an Old Fashioned glass. As a garnish, add an orange peel (if available).

A casual Fancy Sour is still a Fancy Sour, however.
Personally, I think this recipe is a real find.

2 parts sweet vermouth

1 part maraschino

1 part lemon juice

1 dash Angostura bitters

1 dash orange bitters

glass:  Old Fashioned glass

Build over ice into the glass. Give it a quick stir.

I picked up a mould for really large ice cubes that I’m quite happy with. That way, the drink will be cooled with limited dilution.

Breaking the rules: Hour before the Battle

There’s no harm in stressing again that bitters are a serious step forward in your cocktail repertoire. They also offer an easy way to personalize your cocktails: by adding an extra dash of this or that, you can easily give a drink a unique touch.

So go ahead. See if you can get a hold of some bitters somewhere. I ordered mine from internet, but you might be blessed with a very helpful liquor store in your neighbourhood which can order them for you.

At the moment I’m reading in the Joy of Mixology by Gary Regan. That´s where I stumbled upon a simple combination of sherry and bitters. The Hour before the Battle was published as early as 1869 in Cooling Cups and Dainty Drinks (marvellous title) by William Terrington.

The recipe doesn’t even specify which kind of sherry (or madeira) and which kind of bitters to use. That leaves a lot of room to experiment.

Hour before the Battle

Not much use for quantities here. The original recipe speaks of one dash of bitters, but of course you can add a bit more to your taste.

The cocktail police won’t arrest you if you build the cocktail (bitters first) instead of stirring it properly.

sherry or madeira

bitters

glass:  sherry

Stir in a mixing glass and serve in the glass.

No surprise that I turned to the Spanish Bitters here.

For the sherry, I stuck to very sweet: a PX (Pedro Ximénez). Since sugar and bitters are classic cocktail ingredients, making sure the sherry itself was sweet made sense for me. And since the PX is very sweet, this allowed me to add a good deal of bitters as well.

When using sherry in cocktails, Oloroso sherry would usually be the classic choice. In this case the sherry itself is showcased, so anything goes really. It’s just a matter of finding the right bitters.

Breaking the rules: French 75

You might have noticed by now that I try to make at least three blog posts per month. It’s my way of making sure that the blog continues to have momentum and doesn’t suffer to much from the demands of a busy life. However, this month is a bit different. That’s because tomorrow is my wedding day.

So instead of opening the year with an exciting new ingredient (as I promised), I’ll break my rules for once. I’ll do just one blog post this month. And I’ll present a cocktail that cannot be made with the current bar. Oh, the horror.

It’s even kind of fitting in this precise case: the cocktail I’m going to present made a short appearance in the film Casablanca. Just as Rick eventually breaks some of his personal rules (not drinking with customers and sticking his head out for nobody) I have good reasons to deviate from the standard for once.

Incidentally, tomorrow afternoon at the reception there will be three cocktails available at the start:

·        White Lady, a favorite of my soon-to-be wife

·        White Russian, as a tribute to the Big Lebowski and bowling

·        French 75, because our wedding is in 40s/Casablanca style

I’m going to introduce to last one. So let’s get out the big guns.

French 75

Named after a cannon, and not just any cannon. The 1897 model 75 mm field gun was very successful in World War I. Usually just named the French 75 or the Soixante-Quinze, it was the first modern artillery piece. It had a smooth operation and a high firing rate.

The French 75 uses champagne (or another dry sparkling wine), but packs a lot more punch because of gin. Indeed, a well-chosen name: French, smooth, powerful. In my opinion, it’s one of the most pleasant fast routes to intoxication.

Harry MacElhone was the first to publish a cocktail named the 75 in the ABC of Mixing Cocktails. This would later become the French 75, after it had evolved towards a kind of gin sour with champagne. Harry Craddock put down the new name and new recipe in The Savoy Cocktail Book. According to Craddock it ‘hits with remarkable precision’.

Some recipes use cognac instead of gin for the French 75, specifically the New Orleans version. But we’ll stick to the original here.

Not everyone has sparkly stuff hanging around in the bar permanently. And since there aren’t a lot of great champagne cocktails, I won’t be adding it to the bar for a long time. But this cocktail is certainly worth trying out, so I don’t mind breaking the rules here and letting this recipe slip through. Even though it has two illegal ingredients.

6 parts gin

3 part lemon juice

1 part simple syrup (or sugar)

champagne (or other dry sparkling wine)

glass:  tall glass or champagne flute

Shake the gin, lemon juice and syrup/sugar with ice and strain into the glass.

Top off with champagne and stir gently.

Garnish with a long, thin lemon spiral and possibly a cocktail cherry.

This cocktail doesn’t need much champagne, so if you have a decent-sized glass you can work with 6 cl of gin. Champagne flutes can be quite small, so in that case you’ll have to adjust accordingly.

A narrow glass might make it hard to use a cocktail pin, but dropping the cherry to the bottom like a stray cannonball works fine as well (the French 75 didn’t fire balls, of course, but there’s still some cannon association there).

Periodic cocktail check

All cocktails used to be accessible via the ‘periodic bar check’, but since I put the bar on hold for some time, that isn’t the case anymore. Time to do a cocktail overview, so you can easily link to the different recipes. I’ll be doing this periodically as well, although not every month.

Gin-based

Aviation

Cabaret

Devil’s Own

Dry Martini

Gin Ho

Gin Scaffa

Imperial

Lord Suffolk

Monk

Orange Bloom

Pink Gin

Poet’s Dream

Rolls Royce

White Lady

No base

D.O.M.

Humpty Dumpty Cocktail

Wailuc  (does contain gin)

Non-alcoholic

Eskimo Flip

Thanks for joining my expanding bar tour in 2013. May the next year bring some nice new additions (including a new base spirit) and more tasty cocktails to experience.

It’s not in the bar yet, but I hope you have some bubbly stuff to have a toast to the new year.

Salud!

Periodic bar check

Well, absolutely no new ingredients to report. I thought it was better to take a pause and explore the other possibilities we now have with the bar.
But in the new year we'll kick off with an ambitious new addition to the bar.

The bar now holds:

Bases

gin

Aperitif Wines

dry vermouth
sweet vermouth

Liqueurs
maraschino
Cointreau
Bénédictine

Bitters
Angostura bitters

Juices
lemon

General Ingredients

ice

Glasses

Old Fashioned glass

cocktail glass

Barware

jigger

bar spoon
cocktail shaker
juicer
bar knife
channel knife

Bar on hold: Lord Suffolk and the Gin Scaffa

Yes, there’s still more to do with the current bar: two extra cocktails (or one, if you want to be fundamental about it) for the recipe book.

Lord Suffolk

Who’s Lord Suffolk? I really wouldn’t know. Is it important? I guess not. Not for making this cocktail, at least.

It can be found in both the The Savoy Cocktail Book and the Café Royal Cocktail Book. They both give exactly the same recipe and I didn’t see any reason to tinker with what I found.

5 parts gin

1 part sweet vermouth

1 part Cointreau

1 part maraschino

glass:  cocktail

Stir with ice and strain into the glass.

A combination with two liqueurs, the first drink we encounter to do so. And it works. All ingredients are still quite discernable, but seem to work together just fine.

Gin Scaffa

This is actually opens up a whole new family of mixed drinks. The scaffa is different from the traditional cocktail, although we got used to the term ‘cocktail’ for all mixed drinks. While the original cocktail concept has spirit, sugar, bitters and water, the scaffa lacks the water (or more specifically ice) component. That’s right: a scaffa isn’t chilled, it’s supposed to be consumed at room temperature.

The word ‘scaffa’ seems to mean ‘cupboard’ in some obscure language. I’m not sure whether that’s really the origin of this type of drink, but it very aptly conveys the idea of the drink. You look what’s left in your drinking inventory and whip some of it together in a glass. It’s not fancy, but it’s pragmatic. It’s simple out of necessity or because you just can’t be bothered for once (we all have those moments).

I wouldn’t add juice to a scaffa, but it will normally contain a spirit, liqueur(s) and very possibly bitters. Just stirring it in the glass will do. That’s all there is to it.

There are scaffa recipes, like this one here. But it should be obvious that any iceless concoction you pull from your cupboard fits the bill, so don’t feel limited.

2 parts gin

1 part Bénédictine

1 dash Angostura bitters

glass:  any

Build in the glass and stir.

Adding a garnish or prescribing a specific kind of glass just doesn’t seem to fit the concept, in my opinion. So you can actually slack off and give it a fancy name. Brilliant.