I had the treat of going to Portland this week and making the Hood River Distilleries fall and winter portfolio of cocktails for all of their regional sales reps. (The recipes follow.) I was also able to meet Ken Wyatt, who is one of the owners of 44 North Vodka – made right next-door in Idaho.

What was really embarrassing after spending the entire evening with everyone (and let’s just say these guys don’t go to bed until there is really no other option) is how little I knew about the Pacific Northwest’s oldest distillery, Hood River Distilleries. Hood River Distilleries opened in the small town of Hood River, which sits at the base of Mount Hood on the Columbia River. If you have never been to Hood River, Oregon – you are missing out on one of the most enchanting locales in the entire nation. It has a charming downtown, rich in Victorian buildings and cute urban shops that house boutique bakeries and outdoor stores. The Columbia River is visible from many places in town and on a warm and windy day you can see kite boarders’ pink, green, and yellow sails glide by on a river so big it has white caps and small waves breaking.

Hood River Distilleries began in 1934. (To give you an idea of what was happening during this time – The U.S. was in the midst of The Great Depression with unemployment at 22% – it’s currently around 9%. Adolf Hitler declared himself the fuehrer of Germany – now google and facebook just knows everything you do and when you do it. And, the U.S. Midwest was experiencing the dustbowls, where 35 million acres of farmland were destroyed – now half of the nation doesn’t even eat food grown in fields, so this might matter less to us today.)

Hood River Distilleries began as a way to use the fruit waste that was being disposed of in the river, as the valleys around Hood River are quilted in apple and pear orchards. In 1968, Hood River Distilleries moved to its current location (you can actually see it as you breeze by on the interstate). They no longer distill old fruit waste, but rather bottle Pendleton Canadian Whisky, Yazi Ginger Vodka, Knickers Irish Cream, Broker’s London Dry Gin, and ULLR (which is a cinnamon peppermint schnapps). I also learned how much Pendleton they sell compared to anything else and how popular Pendleton is on the rodeo circuit – which was fascinating. Pendleton is the official spirit of ProRodeo and does all the big cash prizes for bareback buck riding, saddle bronc riding, and bull riding. Hood River Distilleries has also invested a lot of money to keep the facilities for the Pendleton Round-up in prime condition. If you are like myself and don’t travel much in the rodeo circuit, The Pendleton Round-up is Oregon’s biggest rodeo which started in 1910 and every September attracts the world’s greatest cowboys to ride on the world’s meanest bulls.

Pendleton is an aged and blended Canadian whisky that took many years of trial and error to create what many believe is the best Canadian whisky in the world. (I am not a Canadian whisky fan, but the Pendleton has a rich vanilla undertone that differentiates it from most of the swag available at the same price point.) They don’t do the blending on premise, but rather it is blended in Canada to their specifications and then brought to proof with Mt. Hood glacial water. Before Hood River Distilleries bottles Pendleton Whisky (which is about every six weeks) a sample is sent and a panel of tasters including the owner of the company, Ronald Dodge, and the vice president, Lynda Webber, taste it to ensure that it tastes like every ounce of Pendleton that’s ever been sold. The spirit is shipped by train across the country – which can take many weeks and can affect the product if the train car gets too hot or too cold – which means that the whisky will have to re-blended. So it’s a delicate process, but it ensures quality and consistency.

I also got to meet the original Pendleton Posse Member Mindy Davis, who is absolutely gorgeous, ridiculously charming, and a sicklingly good dancer. I you are not familiar with the Pendleton Posse, it is a group of talented young women who grew up in the rodeo community and travel to help promote Pendleton Whisky and the spirit of the American West. Seems like a pretty good gig, made me wish that I knew how to actually ride a horse and I owned some bigger belt buckles.

Hood River Distilleries also just picked up 44 North Vodka, which is made in Rigby Idaho. They have two types – their flavored vodkas (huckleberry and rainier cherry) that are distilled from potatoes, in honor of Idaho being the home of famous potatoes and a winter wheat vodka (the winter wheat is also grown in Idaho but without the hoopla). I’ve had the huckleberry vodka numerous times over the years and I’ve always loved the flavor – plus too, there just are no other huckleberry vodkas. Unfortunately, I believe that cough syrup has destroyed the cherry flavor for me as cherry lollipops, cherry Popsicles, and cherry vodka tend to remind me of sick days as a child. Not to say that’s not to say there isn’t a positive, as my many of my favorite memories from childhood are sucking on Luden’s cherry cough drops while watching Wheel of Fortune and enjoying the luxury of sleeping on the couch – it’s just not necessarily the feeling I want while I’m in the bar. Nonetheless, I hate to say it but it makes a damn good cherry coke. The winter wheat drinks sweet as most winter wheat vodkas do.

Anyhow, it is always fun to learn something new – especially about a brand that I see all the time.

As for Hood River Distilleries Fall and Winter Cocktails, please help yourself.

The drinks are tiered as the first drink of each group is the easiest to make.

The second drink might have harder ingredients to find, but you should be able to get everything you need at a regular grocery and liquor store.

The third drink might involve a special grocery or a nicer liquor store.

Cheers!

Brokers Gin Cocktails

Gin and Juice
2 oz Broker’s Gin
3 oz Juice Love

Mix in glass, add ice, and stir.

Juice Love Recipe

Juice Love (this is built to 28 ounces – the size of a storm pourer or a recycled/re-used liquor or wine bottle) I recommend that if being used at a commercial level that the bar premix the juice, as they will find it will add to speed and efficiency.

7 ounces pineapple juice
7 ounces cranberry juice
6 ounces oj
2 ounces grapefruit juice
3 ounces lime juice
3 ounces simple syrup

Gin Gin
2 oz Broker’s Gin
1.5 oz mint syrup
1.5 oz lime juice

Mix in glass, add ice, and stir.

Mint Syrup
4 cups mint (you can use the entire sprig, no need to tear the leaves off)
6 cups water
6 cups sugar
Bring to a boil, take off the heat and let sit overnight. Strain and serve.

Postmodern Pimms Cup
1 oz Broker’s Gin
.5 oz St. Germain
.5 oz Pimms
1/2 oz cucumber puree or 4 slices of muddles cucumber
2 oz of lime sour
.5 oz of soda
2 shakes of Angostura bitters

Mix in glass, stir or shake, add ice, and serve.

Lime Sour
2 cups warm water
1 cup sugar
14 ounces fresh-squeezed lime
2 ounces of oj

Cucumber purée is simply cucumbers that have been ran through a blender

Yazi Cocktails

Hard Bitters and Soda
2 oz Yazi
3 oz of soda
3 shakes of Angostura Bitters (or any flavor bitters you have)

Mix in glass, add ice, and stir.

Yazi Toddy
1.5 oz Yazi
.5 oz brandy
1.5 oz honey syrup
1 squeeze of half of a lemon
splash oj
2 oz hot water

Build this drink in a coffee cup stirring until all the ingredients are mixed.  You most likely will need to steam or microwave this drink to warm it up before serving.

Honey syrup is just 2 parts honey to 1 part warm water – it makes the honey much easier to use for cocktails. I would recommend making a squeezie bottle of honey syrup for speed’s sake.

Ninja Ginja
2 oz Yazi
1 oz Monarch triple sec
1 oz Gimple
1 oz lemon juice

Gimple (Ginger Syrup)
4 cups water
4 cups sugar
Your choice of 2 cups peeled and cut ginger or 8 bags of ginger lemon tea

Bring to a boil and take off the heat. Strain the ginger or tea bags out and let cool. (DO NOT allow the ginger to sit overnight – the syrup will take on a lot of spiciness)

Pendleton Cocktails

Pendleton Smash
(this is a very old pre-prohibition cocktail made with Pendleton)

2 oz Pendleton (that’s been steeped in mint)
2.5 oz water
teaspoon of fine white sugar (Baker’s sugar)

The easiest way to steep the Pendleton with mint is to add two mint teabags to a bottle of Pendleton (especially if this drink is on the cocktail list and you are pouring through a lot of Pendleton). Otherwise, allow 2 oz of Pendleton to steep with fresh mint sprigs for 10 minutes up to overnight (but don’t leave it any longer or it will turn a nasty color).

Pendleton Sidecar
2 oz Pendleton
1 oz Monarch Triple
2 oz Lime Sour

Build drink in a shaker, add ice, shake and strain into a cocktail glass.

Lime Sour
2 cups warm water
1 cup sugar
14 ounces fresh-squeezed lime
2 ounces of oj

Tim Buck 2 (Let’er Buck)
2 oz Pendleton
1 oz Vanilla Syrup
1 oz Lemon Juice
1 oz Soda

Vanilla Syrup
2 cups water
2 cups sugar
1/8 cup vanilla extract

Bring the sugar and water to a boil, take off the heat. Let cool and add the vanilla extract (if you add the extract when it’s hot the vanilla extract will evaporate)

Knickers Cocktails

The Wired
1.5 oz Knickers
.5 oz Coffee Liqueur
2 oz Espresso
.5 oz Chambord
.5 oz half and half or heavy whipping cream

Build drink in a shaker, add ice, shake and strain into a cocktail glass.

Coco Fizz
1.5 oz Knickers
1 oz Amaretto
1 oz coconut cream or coconut milk
2 oz cola

Build drink in a collins glass adding all ingredients except for the cola.  Stir, add ice, and top with cola.

The Ultimate Chocolate Martini
1 oz Knickers
.5 oz vanilla vodka
1 oz creme de cocoa
1.5 oz Ghirardelli Chocolate Syrup
1 oz half and half or heavy whipping cream

Chocolate Martinis are a great place to play around with some fun rimmers – go down the candy aisle and blend up M&M’s, Heath Bar, or Butterfinger. Use chocolate syrup to make the rim sticky and dip it in your crumbled candy choice.

ULLR Cocktails

Viking Bomb
2 oz of ULLR dropped in a pint glass filled with half Red Bull (or another energy drink) and half lemonade

Caribbean Bulldog
1 oz ULLR
1 oz coconut milk or coconut cream
1 oz vanilla vodka
2 oz soda
grate a bit of fresh nutmeg on top (if you have some lying around)

Mix in glass, add ice, and stir. (Some people are not so keen on the soda in this drink, so if that is you – please enjoy soda free.)

Silky Sin
1 oz ULLR
1 oz Yazi
1 oz half and half or heavy whipping cream
1 oz simple syrup
2 shakes Angostura Bitters
1 squeeze of lemon

Build drink in a shaker, add ice, shake and strain into a cocktail glass.

Foraging through the neighborhood

I was recently interviewed as a foraging bartender, which I was a little embarrassed about as I didn’t really think of myself as a scrounging explorer of a bar chef since 99% of the ingredients I use are ingredients that I order through a nationally known food purveyor. But once I started talking to the interviewer, it occurred to me that I do a lot more foraging that I’ve ever given myself credit for. I am always hunting and seeking new ingredients, rather it be in an Asian grocery store or in the middle of the woods. I once put pine tar in my mouth to see if you could make it into a drink (you could but only if you like a terribly bitter drink with a abhorrent wax that envelopes your teeth, tongue, and tonsils for approximately four hours). My sister once asked if I was afraid of poisoning myself, which I’m not (it’s honestly never occurred to me). But I do worry about poisoning others, and fret not I never put anything in a drink that I am not 100% sure is edible.

Anyhow, I went on a little foraging trip through the neighborhood with my new camera. We’ve had a very mild fall, which springtime temperatures so there are still some flowers and berries! Anyhow, take a trip through your neighborhood and see what you find, because my guess is even in the middle of the city you can find one ingredient that you can make into a tincture or a tonic.

Tonic Water with Juniper Essence
1 cup sugar
2 cups water
1 sliced grapefruit (with rind)
1 tablespoon allspice berries
1 tablespoon juniper berries
1 tablespoon quinine powder (if you don’t have quinine powder make a “tonic” water using lemon peels instead).

Bring your mixture to a boil, stirring the entire time it’s on the heat, and strain out the solids. Let cool. Use one part tonic concentrate to three parts water. Add a little gin and enjoy the healthful benefits of an age-old tradition on a hot summer day.

Sunflower Seed Rum
Toast 1 cup of sunflower seeds
Add to a fifth of aged rum (might I recommend the Old Mill Rum which is a Virgin Island rum that is barreled and aged in the Pacific Northwest which lends the rum a smooth vanilla finish thanks to a cooler climate and less evaporation during aging).

Let sit for three weeks, strain the sunflowers out and mix into your favorite drink.

Rose Petal and Mint Extract
1/4 cup rose petals
1/8 cup mint
4 cups high-proof spirit (it can be vodka, rum, or whiskey)

Let steep for one week refrigerated. Strain and enjoy. Use in cocktails, lemonades, or Middle Eastern cooking.

Want to know more about tinctures and extracts?  Click here.
Want to know more about tonic water?  Click here.

I received an interesting question today, and thought it to be a good blog post.

This came from a woman who belongs to a cookbook reading club and this month they were planning on talking about sugar, in particularly techniques for its use in cooking and mixed drinks. She was also interested in knowing if I ever use anything other than sugar, such as agave nectar or stevia.

Most cocktails these days are composed of a base spirit, some sort of citrus, and some sort of sweetener. Obviously, the cheapest and easiest sweetener to make is simple syrup.

Simple Syrup
1 cup water
1 cup sugar
Bring to a boil and immediately move off the heat

The next easiest sweetener to use is flavored simple syrup. There are numerous ways to add flavor, but some of the easiest are by adding an extract (i.e. vanilla or almond) or by steeping tea bags in the syrup. Using either of these techniques will open up a thousand doors as to what flavors of simple syrup you can make. You can also use brown sugar when making the syrup, which has more of a caramel flavor to it and is darker in color (you have to be a little more careful what you mix it with so you don’t make something a really terrible color).

Flavored Simple Syrup
1 cup water
1 cup sugar
2 teabags
Bring to a boil and immediately move off the heat

I’ve also used spun sugar (or cotton candy) to flavor drinks and although I own a cotton candy machine just for that purpose – I’ve also bought it, which is obviously a lot easier. There is maple cotton candy, which is one of the most delicious sweeteners I’ve ever had.

Where to buy Maple Cotton Candy – click here.

Speaking of maple, maple syrup mixes great in a cocktail – although it tends not to be as sweet as simple syrup.

As for agave nectar, I used to use it a lot. Now, not so much – mostly just because we used to use a lot of it for other things where I worked. Agave nectar isn’t as sweet as simple syrup either but it has a really beautiful silky mouth feel. I’ve always been keen on its flavor.

I have never used stevia for anything – but I know it is a lot sweeter than sugar. I would think you would have to play around with the ratios at first as it sounds like you would need very little stevia in order to make a stevia simple syrup.

Sugar is a really amazing food to work with because it can take on a hard form, which makes it a lot more interesting than other sweeteners. Making a hard candy is rather simple and can be an amazing cocktail garnish. It is also simple to flavor the candy with flavored extracts and to color with bright vibrant food dyes.

Hard candy recipe
(make sure you have a good thermometer)

3 3/4 cups white sugar
1 1/2 cups light corn syrup
1 cup water
1 tablespoon orange, or other flavored extract
1/2 teaspoon food coloring (optional)
1/4 cup confectioners’ sugar for dusting

Method:

In a medium saucepan, stir together the white sugar, corn syrup, and water. Cook, stirring, over medium heat until sugar dissolves, then bring to a boil. Without stirring, heat to 300 to 310 degrees F (149 to 154 degrees C), or until a small amount of syrup dropped into cold water forms hard, brittle threads.

Remove from heat and stir in flavored extract and food coloring, if desired. Pour onto a greased cookie sheet, mold, or wax paper, and dust the top with confectioners’ sugar. Let cool, and break into pieces. Store in an airtight container.

As for quantities for mixing a balanced cocktail
- a good rule of thumb is one ounce of simple syrup to one ounce of fresh squeezed lemon or lime. Pasteurized citrus juice tends to be a tad sourer – so you might need a bit more simple if you are using store bought citrus juice. When using maple, I like to add just a tad of ginger flavored simple syrup to sweeten it up as it flatters the maple and sweetens it enough that it is easier to work with. Whenever I use cotton candy, I always mix the drink a tad too sour and place the cotton candy on the rim, as it is super water-soluble and the second it touches the drink it will melt. People also get a kick out of seeing it on the rim. Hard candy is a beautiful touch to any drink as you can shape it into almost any shape – either by using a candy mold or pouring it by hand.

I hope that answered your question about sugar.

I have many people ask me how to make lime sour, and it is quite easy.  You can also use this for margarita mix and sweet and sour.  Here is the recipe.

Lime Sour

1 cup warm water
1/2 cup sugar
7 ounces of fresh-squeezed lime juice
1 ounce of oj

Gin and tonic is simply the quintessential summer drink. But this simple sounding summer cocktail is beguiled with history and its distinctive ingredient quinine is more than a simple mixer; it has saved thousands of lives, changed the course of wars, and is recognized world wide as a cocktail staple.

What makes tonic water so special is quinine, which really is a wonder drug. It is known to cure malaria, assist with digestion, treat nocturnal leg cramps, and remedy intestinal parasites and protozoa. Quinine comes from the cinchona tree, which is native to South America. There are about forty species of cinchona that range from small evergreen shrubs to 15-foot high trees. Legend has it that the name cinchona comes from the Countess of Chinchon, who was the wife of a Peruvian viceroy in the 17th century. She was sick with an awful fever and was medicated with the bark from the cinchona tree in 1638. Two years later, she brought it to attention to Spanish explorers, who took the bark back to Europe. Even though the tree had no name at this time, it quickly flooded the European market as a cure all for malaria, fever, indigestion, mouth and throat diseases, and cancer. For close to 100 years quinine was being used as a pharmaceutical but it wasn’t until 1737 that botanists identified the tree and named it cinchona after the Countess of Chinchon.

In 1825, the British East India Company stationed in India started mixing their bitter quinine tonic with gin to make it more palatable. The gin and tonic was born! Soon a British company patented their tonic water recipe and around 100 years later, Schweppes started selling tonic water in the U.S.

Until 1820, the only way anyone knew how to utilize the quinine was to dry and pulverize the entire bark into a fine powder and steep it in water. But in 1820, two scientists, Pelletier and Caventou, isolated the chemical quinine from the bark and figured out how to extract quinine alkaloid from the wood without any byproduct. Demand for the refined quinine grew and South American rainforests prospered from the harvesting of the cinchona bark. But in the mid-19th century, British and Dutch explorers smuggled seeds out of Latin America and planted cinchona trees in Java, India, and Ceylon in hopes of taking a hold in the market. None of these trees fared well and they didn’t produce a high-grade quinine alkaloid in their bark. But the Dutch wouldn’t give up and they tried again by smuggling thousands of seeds out of Bolivia which they planted in Java. These trees fared much better and provided exactly what the Dutch were hoping for, cinchona trees with a high-grade potent quinine. The Dutch quickly monopolized the production of quinine and by 1918 they had total control of the entire world’s supply. As Bolivia and Peru were no longer players in the international quinine market, they both saw a serious collapse in their economies.

World War II stopped the Dutch in their tracks as the Japanese occupied Java in the 1940’s and the Dutch, being with the Allied Forces, couldn’t get to their crops. South America’s cinchona trees were once again in demand, but the Dutch wanted to maintain total control and didn’t want to share what they believed was their wealth with Peru and Bolivia so they planted new plantations in their African colonies. During this time, there was a dire shortage of quinine as the world’s largest plantations were in Java and the plantations in Africa needed time to mature and produce. Under severe pressure to produce enough quinine for a very demanding market, American and European pharmaceutical companies figured out how to make a synthetic version of quinine, which proved to be highly lucrative. However, synthetic quinine had its faults, as it did not contain quinidine, which is used for heart arrhythmia and it wasn’t as effective in fighting malaria.

The good thing is, in our climate you don’t have to drink tonic water to stave off a tropical disease. Which is fantastic as Schweppes has very little quinine in it, just enough to make it glow under a black light. If you were trying to fight malaria symptoms with modern day tonic water, you would have to drink the equivalent of ten gin and tonics a day. A lot of people think that tonic water doesn’t have any calories or sugar, but tonic water is just like any other soda and has a heap of sugar in it just like a Coke or a Sprite.

If you want to try your hand at making your own tonic water, it is quite simple as long as you have some quinine lying around (if not, you can purchase it online from Rain Tree Nutrition.

Handcrafted Tonic Water

1 cup sugar

2 cups water

1 sliced grapefruit (with rind)

1 tablespoon allspice berries

1 tablespoon juniper berries

1 tablespoon quinine powder

Bring your mixture to a boil, stirring the entire time it’s on the heat, and strain out the solids. Let cool.  Use one part tonic concentrate to three parts water.  Add a little gin  and enjoy the healthful benefits of an age-old tradition on a hot summer day.

Pecan Extract

How to make pecan extract

You will need:

1 cups of shelled pecans

2 cups of 151 rum

Take a cup of pecans and place them in boiling water for about 90 seconds.  The reason you are doing this to boil out the tannins (which are bitter) without boiling out the flavor.  Take the boiled pecans and place them in two cups 151 rum.  Let them sit for three weeks tightly covered.  Best to put it in a bottle with a lid that screws on tight – as the alcohol is going to want to evaporate.  After three weeks,  strain the pecans and you will have a gorgeous pecan extract.  This extract has a very long shelf life and needn’t be refrigerated – however I tend to keep such things in the ice chest as it always helps to keep the flavor from fading.

You can use pecan extract in a myriad of cocktails – but I use it to make the syrup for The Help Cocktail.

Most recently I was asked by the Library to be a part of A Novel Idea which is one of the coolest literary programs I’ve ever been privy to (saying a lot since my mother and father are both writers, my mother is also a librarian, and my sister has spent her entire career in either a bookstore or a library).  Every year Deschutes Public Library chooses one book and then spends a month bringing that book to life in every dimension imaginable.  They will hold discussion groups about the book, show movies and documentaries that pertain to the genre or era of the book, encourage reading of similar books, have storytellers tell their tales related to themes in the book, invite the author to speak about his/her book, and lastly have a food and cocktail demonstration pertaining to the book’s genre.

This year’s book is The Help by Kathryn Stockett, which I highly recommend reading.  The story takes place in Jackson, Mississippi and is the tale of the affection shared between black nannies and the white children they raise.  The intrigue of this story is that the love they share is a dirty secret that no one will own up to as they all are afraid of what it means to cross these strict racial lines that are commonplace in 1960′s Mississippi.  The story is smartly written through three different characters, which brings about a dynamic that couldn’t be achieved with one narrator.

So this is my challenge: to create two cocktails that bring together the issues of the book – racism and love; are typical to the South and the 60s, and can be made easily by the modern day home mixologist.  I am also trying to only use gin and vodka as Bendistillery has been kind enough to donate the spirits for the presentation.

The first drink will be a gin julep.  It’s a spin off the mint julep which is a staple to Southern cuisine and is traditionally made with bourbon, sugar, and mint.  I am going to steal the smash idea from my favorite cocktail guru Jerry Thomas which involves steeping the mint in the spirit rather than muddling.  This way I can do the cocktail in bulk without much effort.  A little sugar, some fresh lime, and a dash of soda water will finish this drink off gorgeously.

Gin Julep

2 ounces of Cascade Mountain Gin

8 mint leaves

2 tablespoons sugar

1.5 ounces of fresh lime

1-ounce soda water

Tear the mint leaves in half and place them in the gin along with the sugar.  Allow to steep for at least 15 minutes.  After steeping, stir the sugar into the gin.  Add fresh lime.  Stir and add ice.  Top with soda water.

As for the next drink – I am excited to use vodka because the 50′s and 60′s is when vodka came to popularity in the States.  We can thank James Bond for his vapid expression, “Shaken not stirred,” which helped bring the martini to popularity and thus send vodka on its trajectory of becoming America’s favorite spirit.

When I think of Mississippi, I think of cotton and pecans.  The pecans are easy – I make a lot of orgeat (almond) syrup for the bar which is a traditional cocktail staple.  So instead of using almonds, I’m going to use pecans.  As for cotton – I am going to use a maple cotton candy, which I love this idea of as there is a lot of discussion in the book about North vs. South and I think that the maple brings that dichotomy into the drink.  Furthermore, pecan and maple taste delicious together.  To add some depth and complexity to the drink, I’m going to steep ginger tea bags in the vodka to create ginger vodka and then to balance the cocktail I’ll be using fresh lemon juice.  The cotton candy will be a used as a garnish meant to dip into the cocktail so the drink will be mixed a bit tart with the cotton candy bringing perfect attunement to the drink.

As this cocktail is created exclusively for the book – so should be its name.

The Help

2 ounces of ginger vodka

1 ounces of fresh lemon juice

1.5 ounces of maple pecan syrup

small ball of maple cotton candy

Put the ginger vodka, fresh lemon juice, and maple pecan syrup in a shaker with ice.  Shake vigorously until ice chips form.  Strain and place a small ball of cotton candy of the rim of the glass.

To make ginger vodka take a fifth of Crater Lake vodka and let six ginger or lemon ginger herbal tea bags soak in it overnight.

To make maple pecan syrup – one-cup maple syrup, one quarter cup white sugar, one-cup water, and one-cup pecans.  Bring to a boil and immediately take off the heat.  Allow to cool and sit overnight.  Strain the pecans the following day.  If you have pecan extract – you can add a couple of drops to enhance the flavor of the syrup even more.

To buy maple cotton candy – please use this link.

My intention today was to make Jerry Thomas’ series of cobbler drinks – but once again I hit a wall as I don’t have any catawba wine, which one of the cobblers calls for. Every time I’ve tried to procure this varietal, there’s been none for sale on-line and not one of the restaurant’s wine reps had any clue what I was talking about. But I decided to google it for the hell of it and for the first time, an option popped up to buy a bottle on line.  Which is very exciting and as soon as I get the bottle, I am going to make all of the cocktails that call for catawba before the wine oxidizes.

For the meantime, I made the Knickerbocker – which is the most in style of Thomas’ drinks to what most people expect from a cocktail today.  It is pretty much a raspberry lemondrop with a little curacoa but made with rum.  The recipe calls for Santa Cruz rum which refers to rum from the Virgin Islands, so I used Cruzan light because I felt that the delicate flavors from the lemon and raspberry syrup would be lost with a darker rum.

I thought this was delicious.

Knickerbocker

in modern day measurements

2 ounces Cruzan light rum

1/2 ounce Citronage

2 ounces raspberry syrup

2 ounces fresh squeezed lemon

Raspberry syrup recipe

1 cup sugar

1 cup water

1 cups frozen raspberries

Bring ingredients to a boil and immediately pull off.  Let cool and then puree in a food processor.

Orgeat is a simple syrup made from sugar and almonds.  It can also contain almond extract, rose water, or orange-flower water.  It is the basis of a Mai Tai and once you’ve had a Mai Tai with orgeat syrup you will never go to TGIF’s again for theirs.

Originally orgeat syrup was made with barley but today the barley is typically left out.

Q’s Orgeat Syrup

2 cups blanched almonds
2 cups water
2 cups sugar
1 orange
1 teaspoon almond extract

Bring the almonds, water, sugar and one cut orange to a boil – take off the heat and let sit overnight.
Squeeze the orange of any fruit juice it might still have and add one teaspoon almond extract after the syrup has cooled. Strain the almonds and orange remnants out of the syrup.
How do you say orgeat?   OR Szhaaht

So today I made the coffee cocktail. A quick note on Thomas’s cocktail names – he may have been a real showman with diamond buttons and flame-throwing antics, however his ability to name his creations has much to be desired. Thomas even says, “The name of this drink is a misnomer, as coffee and bitters are not to be found among its ingredients, but it looks like coffee when it has been properly concocted, and hence probably its name.”
Well if it supposed to look like coffee when it is properly concocted, I can tell you right now that I didn’t make it right. The drink gets powdered white sugar, 1 fresh egg, 1 large wine-glass or port wine, 1 pony of brandy, and 3 lumps of ice. I really wasn’t that keen to put the entire egg in the drink and I thought maybe just to put the white in, but I wanted to follow Thomas’s recipes so in spite of my uneasiness about dropping what is baby chick embryo food, I decided to just close my eyes and just dump it in without further ado. I didn’t have powdered sugar, so I put some sugar in the robot coupe to make a very fine powdered sugar. After shaking I topped with some grated nutmeg.
My drink came out a very pleasant dulled violet color, a color I don’t see often when mixing drinks. Most likely because I don’t use port wine for anything, although a couple of years ago I did a Manhattan with port – but there wasn’t enough in the drink to turn it Spartan purple.
The egg made the drink extremely frothy and gave the libation a viscous quality. I think if I made it again, I would just stick with the white and omit the yolk. Otherwise, the drink was quite tasty with nice dark currant and toffee notes (I used Taylor Fladgate 20 year). I couldn’t taste the nutmeg that well, I would be tempted to make a nutmeg syrup and omit the sugar and nutmeg and impart the flavors that way. I think the nutmeg might shine a little more and add some depth to the cocktail.
Anyhow, one worth trying.
Here is my updated recipe of the Coffee Cocktail to which I am also renaming

The Thomas Tawny
1 teaspoon nutmeg syrup
4 ounces tawny port
1 ounce brandy
1 egg white

Shake vigorously to incorporate the ingredients together and strain into a cocktail glass. Preferably one that has some character.

Nutmeg Syrup
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup water
3 teaspoons ground nutmeg
Bring to a boil while stirring, take off the heat and let cool