Holiday Party Cocktail List

Swinging '50s Eggnog

In a medium sized mug:

• 4oz Supermarket Eggnog
• 1 oz Dark Rum

Grate a little nutmeg

Hot Christmas Toddy

In a medium sized mug:

• 3 cloves
• 2 barspoons honey
• 4 oz boiling water
• 2 oz bourbon

Garnish with a ginger stick and a lemon slice
Grate a little cinnamon  and nutmeg

Hot Apple Toddy

In a medium sized mug:

• Quarter of a baked apple
• 2 oz Applejack
• 3 oz Hot apple cider
• 1 Barspoon honey
• 3 Cloves
• Lemon slice

Grate a little nutmeg and garnish with a cinnamon stick

Bobby Burns

In a mixing glass:

• 2 oz Scotch
• 1 oz French vermouth
• 1 barspoon Benedictine

Shake with ice and strain into a cocktail glass.

Garnish with a lemon twist

Stone Fence OG

In a large mug:

• 4 oz hot cider
• 2 oz applejack
• 2 oz dark rum

Skip the garnish and storm the fort

The High Speed Train From New York to New Orleans

When you just can't decide which side of the Mason Dixon you want to be drinking on tonight, here's the Manhattan <-> Vieux Carre MASHUP that you need.

1 1/2 oz Old Overholt Rye
1 oz Pierre Ferrand Cognac
1/2 oz Dolin Sweet Vermouth
1 barspoon gomme syrup
1 barspoon Luxardo Maraschino
2 dashes Angosturra bitters
2 dashes Peychaud's bitters

Turkish Temple

This refreshing warm weather drink is an adult twist on the Shirley Temple, featuring our new favorite obscure Turkish pomegranate product! Thanks to John for showing up to cocktail night with the Nar Eksili.

Recipe:

Mix "Turkish Grenadine" by combining Arifoglu NaR Eksili Pomegranate Syrup with an equal part simple syrup, and quarter parts lemon and lime juice.

Build the drink in an ice filled collins glass. Add one third Turkish grenadine mix, and fill with soda. Garnish with an orange wedge and a maraschino cherry.

After The Fall

In a small mixing glass, muddle 325mg of Oxycodone, 5mg Diazepam, and 3 sugar cubes in a generous amount of Peychaud's Bitters. Add 3 oz of Russell's Rye, and pour into a chilled old fashioned glass rinsed with Absinthe.

Mountains

A refreshing botanical blast. Ellen tasted this and immediately exclaimed "it tastes like mountains!" ... thus the name.

Recipe:

3 oz CapRock Gin
1/2 oz Simple Syrup
2 pinches granulated sugar
3 lime wedges (1 half a lime) cut in half
6 nickel-sized slices of fresh ginger
splash of Chartreuse
Soda

Build in a highball glass. Muddle the ginger slices with a pinch of sugar. Add the limes and another pinch of sugar and muddle again. Add the gin, syrup, ice, and soda and stir. Finish with the splash of Chartreuse.

Don't Make Cocktails with Mango Juice

It's kind of a non-recipe, I know. I just think it's important to point out that despite sounding delicious, they never deliver. I'm waiting to be proven wrong.

Saint Ginger (St Germain and fresh ginger)

I stole the name, but the recipe is unique. And it has been killing me. Looks simple, until you hit the syrup.

Ingredients:

• 2 oz Sky Vodka
• 1.5 oz St Germain
• 1 oz lime juice
• 1.5 rich syrup with reduced asian pear and fresh ginger

Prepare the secret syrup hours before. Prepare a simple syrup, add chopped asian pear, and reduce. Add fresh ginger to syrup and let sit and cool at least 1 hour. Strain mixture. Put some ginger aside.
Combine ingredients, shake with ice, and strain into cocktail glass. Coat rim with a piece of the sugar ginger.

Background

I hesitate to post any recipe that requires cooking a secret sauce hours before, but this one is too good to keep under the hat. This recipe was discovered after a sunday brunch featured omelettes with Korean pears, and the sludge remaining was opportunistically used for a cocktail. I tried to make it without the pear but it doesn't come close.

The syrup needs to be well strained, as the pear pulp can add a grittyness to the drink that kind of sucks. Asian (sometimes called Korean) pears are smoother and work better than western pears. Skipping the pear causes the drink to fall apart, and the lime and the St Germain just don't meld. Strangely, the whole mix produces a grapefruit-like flavor, but adding grapefruit doesn't help it.

When made perfectly, and the intensity of all the ingredients balanced, the huge amount of St Germain becomes much less overpowering than you would think.

Ginger Baker (Rye Whiskey and Fresh Ginger)

Ingredients:

• 3 ounces rye whiskey or Makers Mark
• 8-12 very thin, nickel-sized slices of fresh ginger
• 2 thin lemon slices quartered
• agave nectar
• Ginger ale

Preparation: Muddle ginger and lemon in shaker. Sweeten to taste with agave. Shake with ice and serve on rocks in a double old-fashioned. Finish with ginger ale, and lemon rim/garnish.

Background

I've got quite a backlog of drinks to get up here, so let's dive right in. For the past few months, I've been working on many ginger-based cocktails, and there's a few that are awesome. There's not a hell of a lot of really excellent ginger cocktail recipes on the web. There's a lot of "throw a tiny bit in" and "finish with ginger ale" but nothing that will kill the chicken.

This cocktail is of course named for the inimitable drummer Ginger Baker, and nicks his wild-man east-meets-west fusion.  First a side track:

Did you know you can make delicious ginger lemon tea with ... lemons and ginger? Sorry Yogi Tea, your ginger-lemon tea is delicious, but I've haven't buyed you since I discovered you're not as good as muddling lemon and ginger slices fresh in a mug. Not even close.

So the ginger lemon tea is kind of like the foundation for the Ginger Baker. You might want to get good at making this before you try to make this cocktail.

Ginger Lemon Tea

8-12 very thin nickel-sized slices of fresh ginger
2 thin lemon slices, quartered
honey

Boil water. Slice ginger and lemon and add to a heavy ceramic mug. Add a small amount of hot water to half cover the contents of the mug. Muddle (with a blunt wooden muddler) everything well, really crushing ginger bits and getting all the juice out of the lemon. Add honey, and then fill the mug with hot water. Let steep for 5-6 minutes before drinking, since the ginger takes time to develop. I like to leave everything in the mug, but if you're fussy, you can strain.

Making the tea first is important, cause it'll give you a feel for how the ginger proportions work, and get your tongue used to that blast of fresh ginger. Now, you're ready to make cocktails...

We add some whiskey and change a few things and we're on our way to a level of cocktail bliss that will have you making these four at a time to keep up with demand. I can't think of any kind of whiskey (within reason) that this would taste *bad* with, but I recommend a sweet rye or Makers.

Muddle the lemon and ginger in a stainless shaker with a large drum stick (like 3S, marching sticks). Add the whiskey, agave, and ice and shake hard. Serve it rocks and all in an old-fashioned glass, and finish with a *small* amount of ginger ale. Lemon rim and lemon slice garnish. It's meant to be a simple, crude drink.

For a cleaner presentation, and a drink Ginger Baker would probably laugh at you for drinking, strain into a cocktail glass with sugar rim.  (Not recommended.)

  ...  next episode: The Saint Ginger!

After Some Prodding

There are a couple things that I have picked up that I would like to share with you, and it has been suggested that I begin a blog about cocktails, synthesizers, and squirrels.

A Squirrel In A Tree

I found him at Arnold Arboretum.

That is all.