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Mixology
I recently discovered the cocktail called the "old fashioned". The recipe calls for a specific kind of orange bitters. I was wondering, for any mixologists out there, could I use something like triple sec instead of orange bitters? The kind that all the recipes call for is hard to find.
Comments
Right, First, you don't really need a specific kind of orange bitters, regular angostura will do. And you can get that pretty much fuckin' anywhere.
Now, this is an old, old motherfucker of a cocktail. I'm talking Abe Vigoda old. The reason it's called an old fashioned cocktail is that it's a cocktail from before cocktails were cocktails, so by the time they started being called cocktails, it was an old fashioned cocktail. THE old fashioned cocktail, in fact, one that EVERYBODY knew.
It's also my favorite method for testing the quality of a bartender, because it's a deceptively hard one to do perfectly, but surprisingly easy to get decent.
Here's how I do it.
First, I grab a half a sugar cube - so that it's about a centimeter square on the side, but only about half a centimeter thick. Chuck that in your Old fashioned glass, also known as a rocks glass. White sugar, preferably, it adds the sweetness without the extra molasses flavor.
Then, it's time to fuck money and get bitters. You want about three dashes, try to get as much on the cube as you can, soak that fucker, but using accuracy, not volume. Dashes is too an exact measurement with an ango bitters bottle, that's just the way the pour is. You'll figure that out.
Then, you want to grab some club soda. Fuck all, really, it's only about a teaspoon and a half or so, just a touch. Chuck that in, it's just to help it all mix together.
Now, take your muddle - it's those things you see bartenders with, it looks like a six-inch or so hunk of wood shaped rather like a tiny baseball bat - and then crush the sugar cube well, make it mix with the bitters and club soda. Make sure it's pretty well dissolved.
Now, the good bit - all good men, take up your Bourbon. But you can also use Rye, whichever you prefer. Make sure it's at least decent. I don't drink nasty shit, and nor should you. Grab that fucker, and grab your measure, and add two ounces of the stuff. No more, no less - remember, it's about taste and flavor, not alcohol content.
Throw in a small amount of ice - three mid-size cubes is enough, you don't want to over-water it. That shit melts, remember?
Now, You gotta grab a lemon. You can also use an orange(never a lime, you philistine), but I prefer lemon, so that's how we're rolling here. Better be good with a knife, or this is where you're gonna fuck yourself up. Take your knife, and take a pair of thin slices from the outer rind - don't get any of the white pith, which is very bitter, just the skin. Take one peel, squeeze it with the outside pointing into the drink, get a bunch of that lemon oil out into the drink. Then, wipe the rind around the inside of the glass, then up on the rim. You may also wipe it on Rym, but only if you really must, I don't think he'd appreciate it. But he would be Lemony Fresh.
Now, take your other thin, wide peel, and give it a bend and a twist over the drink, then drop it in, and you have an old fashioned. Adjust recipe till you have it to your liking.
Also...doesn't it seem a bit much to essentially waste an entire orange (or lemon) just for the skin?
I think I'm going to experiment with a Fernet Old Fashioned. We'll see how that works out.
I also downloaded a fun little app called Mixology that has a bazillion recipes in it.
Additionally, this is now the official mixed-drink/cocktail thread.
I tried to make some mint-infused rum for the sole purpose of the perfect mojito, but I think I'm going to have to toss the batch. It infused too long and picked up all the tannins, so it starts out minty fresh and then has this bitter, metallic aftertaste. Next time I'll do a shorter infusion with pineapple, mint, and chillis, and that should balance it.
Now, Rum, you're well in my wheelhouse as a known Rum Fiend. For me, a constant companion since I had my first sip, it's been a true and faithful friend through Breakups, celebrations, relaxing on the beach, pounding away on a keyboard for work, and a good half of my appearances on FNPL at the least. If there was a flavor to a man's soul, it would be the fragrant caramel spiciness of a good, dark rum.
I'm firmly of the belief that there are five cocktails you MUST know about with rum. The Hurricane, The Daiquiri, Planter's Punch, The Mojito, and the Mai Tai. So, let's pick one - The Daiquiri.
(From now on, I'm hiding recipies behind spoiler tags, to avoid clogging up entire pages with my rambling text.)
She's real simple, but surprisingly refreshing. First, grab yourself a lime, and squeeze out three-quarters of an ounce or so of juice - you can use a little more, if you want.
Then, take a sugar cube and a half - I really like sugar cubes, it makes the measuring relatively easy - and put it in the bottom of your shaker with the lime juice, then crush it down and stir till it's nice and dissolved. Do try and get it all dissolved in, but really, just do the best you can. If there is a little in the bottom, you'll be fine.
Pour in two ounces of white rum on top of that - You can use gold rum, but dark rum is too heavy, and upsets the balance of flavors, and I generally prefer Havana club's white rum over Bacardi, and Inner Circle if I'm going with gold rum, but anything decent will do, remember what we say, I don't drink shit and neither should you.
Now, give that a brief stir, and load your shaker with ice. And so, it comes to this - we have to discuss how the fuck you shake a drink.
Now, what you'll see some bartenders doing this pissy little wiggle down near their belly, for a few seconds, and call that shaking, often up and down, maybe a little bit of diagonal or side to side action going on. No. No, no, fuckin' no. From now on, you shake your drinks like a bartender, not some jackass just trying to get drinks out and tips in till he gets another job.
Now, get yourself a Boston shaker, they're cheap as fuck, just do it. Whatever you have now will do, but pronto, do it. You put a good scoop of ice in it, put the other half on top at a little bit of an angle, then give it a tap with your hand to seat it. Now, take a firm grip on the thing, making sure you're holding the ends with a few fingers - figure out what's comfortable, as long as you're holding the ends - and point it toward you, right above your preferred shoulder - I hold it a little higher, slightly above my head, but wherever around there you find comfortable - and then you want to shake it back and forth, end to end. Really give it a good snap back and forth, as if you're trying to smash the ice on one end, and then the other, because you kinda are. When you get a bit of frost on the outside, you know that sucker is cold.
Opening it? Simple. Always have the glass pointing up, steel pointing down. There are two ways - you can either squeeze it above the seal, near the top of the metal, to break the seal, or you can give it a whack with the heel of your hand there. I recommend the former, less chance of dropping, mess, and worst, spilled booze.
RIGHT. Now shake the drink, and strain into a chilled glass. Drink. Rock on.
As for the infusion, might I make a suggestion - try extracting the mint oils, and blending them into the rum, then leaving it rest a while, rather than infusing directly from the plant - sure, it's not really a proper infusion, but it works quite well, even though with a slightly different texture, and you don't get the tannin-y aftertastes.
I doubt I'm the only one who wants to see Churbs dressed as a classy bartender.
Also, classy drinks involving amaretto.
However, one thing that will require, is New Pants. Flattery, my dear chap, will get you everywhere.
Now, on to business, chaps.
Amaretto is a real interesting liqueur - Tastes like almonds, but it's made from Apricot pits, and it's an Italian staple. Said to be from around the 1500s, with a romantic story about one of Leonardo Da Vinci's pupils, a church asking him to paint the virgin mary, and a love story with his model for the madonna, and while it's propably bullshit, It's rather sweet, Like a bad Amaretto sour. Which is what we'll be talking about.
Now, there is a way to make an amaretto sour, and there is the way to make THE Amaretto sour. The best you'll ever have, in fact.
Amaretto is a very delicate Liqueur - it's got a weak flavor that needs help to stand up and be counted. A Blaster to it's Master, as it were. And that's where our old mate Cask-proof bourbon comes in.
Now, get yourself a decent Amaretto - Lazzaroni or DiSaronno preferred, but it's your drink, but remember, low quality ingredients mean a low quality drink. And we don't want that. You'll need an ounce and a half, put that in your shaker.
Ah, it is time. Take your cask-proof burbon, add to your shaker just 3/4 of an ounce. No more, no less - you don't want to overwhelm the amaretto. I'll warn you, this shit will be expensive, but it's worth it. Bookers, Rare Breed, EH Taylor, take your pick, but I prefer and recommend Bookers. It's aged six to eight years, filtered, and barreled straight from the cask from there. How good is it? One of the most famous and respected distillers of the modern era, Booker Noe, first started bottling it as a gift for only his friends and family. That's how good.
You'll want to juice yourself out an ounce of lemon juice, and naturally, add it to the shaker. Do not add it to the bar-top(messy), your eyes(hurts), or the cat(WTF are you even doing).
Now, You're going to need Simple Syrup. As the name suggests, it's pretty fuckin' simple - It's sugar and water, generally two parts sugar to one part water, but some cocktails demand a thinner mix of one to one. For every cup of water, you want two cups of sugar. Boil the water, dissolve the sugar - white sugar - in it, till it's completely dissolved. Then, just put it aside, let it cool and thicken. Then bottle that sucker up - preferably, you do that well in advance of wanting to make any cocktails that contain it.
Put just one tablespoon of Simple Syrup in the shaker.\
Now, here's the scary part - You're going to need an egg white. Beaten a little, but not too much. Just enough to make the point so it'll do what you want it to do, not enough to teach it a lesson not to cross you. Now, pour it into - you guessed it, your ear. NO. The fucking shaker, of course.
STOP. Don't go adding any ice to your shaker just yet - grab it and seal it. There is a reason behind this - Part of the reason you shake a drink is to chill it right down very quickly - but thanks to the egg white, if we do that, it won't combine properly, and we end up with a shitty drink. And we don't drink shit, I've told you this. What we are doing, is we're going to dry-shake everything to make sure it's well-combined, only for about fifteen or so seconds. Dry shake? Yep - shake it without ice. Same technique as I told you before, Firm and unrelenting, like James Deen.
Once you're done, a nice reasonable scoop of ice into your shaker, seal it again, and this time, we're wet-shaking it. You know what to do here, so shukka shukka shukka motherfucker.
Now, once you've impressed upon it a strong general impression of your feelings on the issue of all this shaking, and the world at large, then you strain it into an old fashioned glass, over ice. FRESH ICE FOR FUCK'S SAKE. You're not using the shaker ice, it is chipped, cracked and filthy. It is verboten.
Also, we need to have a talk about strainers. If you're using a boston shaker, you'll need one. You COULD use a seive, sure, but you SHOULD be using a Hawthorne Strainer. It's named after a guy named Hawthorne, who presumably liked to strain things. A good one looks like this -
Though admittedly I prefer four side-prongs, rather than two.
You use it like this:
It takes a little practice, but it's efficient, gives good control, and it looks pretty cool, too.
Speaking of looking cool, a brief word about Flair "Bartending":
Don't.
I dont mind having bitters in my drink, although I regularly only prefer a hint of it within the flavor. Also what is the difference between Digestive bitters and Cocktail bitters? Or are they the same thing?
The problem is, when I go looking for them, I get a lot of flavor substitutes, and a lot of nutritional substitutes, but nothing that gives me a good substitute for the physical properties of the egg, the texture and so on.
THOUGH - I am told you can get stuff that's simply called "Egg replacer", by some brand with a name like "Energy" or something like that. It's a powder, you mix it with water - I've not tried it, but apparently, it fills the function of eggs, rather than the flavor, so it might work. Let's go backwards, for once. The main difference between Digestive bitters and cocktail bitters is twofold - alcohol content, and flavor.
Digestive bitters, that's stuff like Pimms, Fernet Branca, or Zucca. They're made to be taken either by themselves, or as a mixer, like a liquor. Much as Pimms is usually taken at Pimms o'clock, with english lemonade or ginger ale.
Cocktail bitters, however, has no such niceties. It's much higher in alcohol content - often up to 45% - and the flavors are much, much more concentrated, allowing a few drops to do the work of half a cup of digestive bitters. If you took a shot of cocktail bitters, you'd find it a most unpleasant experience.
As for recipes, I'm a tad soft, since I don't work often with cider. There is always the classic snakebite, but I feel you'd be ill-served by such a concoction. I'll have to have a flip through my recipe books - a collection of old address books, in fact - and get back to you with something good.
@lifecircle - If you like white wines, try Barefoot brand Muscato. Kate and I tried it recently and it's quite nice. Sweet, and a bit thicker than most whites, but not syrupy like an ice-wine.
The skinny is thus - It's all about how damned good of a binding agent in food that eggs are. It provides a wonderful, creamy texture without altering the flavor much, and it produces a wonderful foam on top. It's a wonderful, silky frothiness, a lightness on the tongue, but with all the flavor of a cocktail that's all liquid. You can even make drinks like the Ramos Gin Fizz, which contains egg whites, and is shaken in a shaker for five to seven minutes, to produce a cocktail you can damned near eat with a spoon.
See, Making a drink isn't just about the liquor you put in it, or about the technique you use - Both are important, sure. But they're not the whole thing. It's also about texture, about mouthfeel, and presentation. In part, it's even about the mood of the patron, and drinks best suited to one's situation at that time.
Flax seed powdered in a spice/coffee grinder, soaked with water, whisked, refrigerated, and strained after some time, is apparently a vegan egg-white substitute, due to the fiber content of the flax. I have no idea whether it would work in a drink.