It's February...and it's time for another cocktail night! We're scaling back a wee bit and mixing up two drinks, rather than our usual three, to give more attention to our chosen cocktails and allow everybody to sample the ingredients, not to mention some homemade limoncello. Well, OK, it's also to give the bartender (me) a... Continue Reading →
Arrrr, it be time for more rum drinks, me hearties! This time, we're covering a broader spectrum of this sugarcane spirit and delving into dark and spiced rum. The cocktail club is nowhere near covering the full range of rum -- a nearly impossible feat -- but we're getting there! Tiki Drinks will wait 'til summer, methinks.... Continue Reading →
Right now, applejack is quite possibly my favorite spirit. Sure, I love sipping whiskey and trying out new gins, and cognac is great and I'm gradually warming to tequila, but I'll always love applejack. For those of you familiar with this quintessential American spirit, skip ahead a few paragraphs and get to the drinks. For... Continue Reading →
What's that? A cocktail contest, you say? Hmm... If you haven't run across it yet, About.com has a fairly extensive cocktail cocktail site set up. Helmed by Colleen Graham, the site includes a drink database, weekly articles, reviews, tips -- just about everything you'd find in a paper-and-print cocktail guide. They've also started a monthly... Continue Reading →
You know, most of the time a cocktail gets its name after it's been mixed and tasted -- hopefully nobody else has come up with the same thing and named it already. But what if you already have the name and you know that it would be perfect for a drink? This was the dilemma... Continue Reading →
Almost time for the second meeting of the Heron Social Club! This time our crew of cocktailians will be focusing on drinks made with bourbon and rye whiskey. Neighbor Dave G. and I spent an evening testing out a few drinks, narrowing down the choices to the following (in the order that they'll be mixed):... Continue Reading →
Somehow, cocktails that are simple, elegant, and timeless get overlooked. More often than not, these drinks involve simple mixological maneuvers that, once performed, seem obvious under the scrutiny of 20-20 hindsight, but had simply never been done before, and never recorded. Somewhere, sometime, somebody must have thought, "You know what? I'm going to add some... Continue Reading →
Huzzah! Huzzah! The soda siphon has arrived! Time for a round of Fizzes and Collinses! First up, one of two quintessential New Orleans cocktails, the Ramos Gin Fizz, also known as the New Orleans Fizz, depending on whom you ask. According to David Wondrich, New Orleans was experiencing an enormous boost in tourism in the... Continue Reading →
Yes, I'm about to fly off in another plane to go to another place to go on another vacation (Madison, Wisconsin to be exact). It's summer, so I'd like a light drink, but one that's new and interesting, and preferably something that uses Aperol, since we're having Italian tonight. The solution? A cocktail from Zane... Continue Reading →
Tempered Spirits 