rickhouse:

blue and red smash – bourbon, lemon, red and blue berries. excellent.
kentucky buck – bourbon and ginger/ginger beer, other stuff. also excellent.
favela – cachaca, lemon, coffee. not very good.
some kind of sling – gin, cherry heering, other stuff. also not very good

then went to boot and shoe service:

fata morgana – bourbon, amaro nonino, dry vermouth, blood orange, cardamom. really excellent.

…

some experiments:

1 oz bourbon
1 oz rye
1/4 oz lime
3/4 oz grapefruit-honey-maraschino mix
grapefruit bitters
grapefruit ribbon

grapefruit-honey-maraschino mix

6 parts red grapefruit juice
3 parts honey
1 part maraschino liqueur

cross between a manhattan and a hemingway. excellent. but i once again forgot: do not muddle seeds. never, ever.

also:

1 1/4 oz bourbon
3/4 oz vermouth
3/8 oz cherry liqueur
1/4 oz lime

basically a manhattan with citrus. very good.

i lost my bottle of angostura bitters. not sure if it can be replaced any time soon, as there is a shortage.

…i started these experiments using some cheap bourbon and rye, figuring that i didn’t care and couldn’t tell the difference. but i found that i did care, and could tell the difference. i upgraded to bulleit bourbon and old overholt rye (according to the bevmo lady, rittenhouse isn’t making rye anymore). life is better.

they have a facebook fan page, james hetfield is a fan!

and they bring in a taco truck on thurs-sun nights straight from intl blvd. i am in love.

(over the course of three visits:)
mexican velvet – tequila, mezcal, lime, pineapple gum, falernum
chokehold – rum, cynar, elderflower, lemon
muay thai – thai rum, lime, orgeat, triple sec
bitter rivers – gin, aperol, grapefruit, lime, soda, rhubarb bitters
carjack – applejack, cane syrup, lemon
knickerdropper – rum, raspberry gum, triple sec, lime

everything worked. the depaz cane syrup in the carjack is crazy delicious.

no double straining, so there were some ice flecks.

one of the bartenders there (jacque) was ECHS class of 87, turns out he knows my sister pretty well, and is good friends with some people from my class, eg, steve bradley.

one my most recent trip i brought some of my warez to share with jacque and one of the owners. that will be a separate trip report.

cocktail #1 – grapefruit, thyme, lemon balm syrup (?)
cocktail #2 – watermelon, cucumber, spicy-heat

in both cases the flavors were very good. but, cocktail #1, was warm and not strained. wtf people. cocktail #2, wasn’t cold, kind of watery.

2 oz lillet
0.75 oz grapefruit vodka (i put half the peel and flesh of a grapefruit in a pint mason jar, filled with vodka, sat for two days)

this is a good proportion for me. man-drinkers might reverse the proportions (the standard proportion for a martini/manhattan style drink). but would a man-drinker be caught drinking grapefruit vodka in the first place?

variant: a tiny snip of vanilla bean, muddled. the flavor is good, but the beans get thru even the fine mesh strainer and look like cigarette ash. maybe you can get away with that in a cloudy drink.

[edit: will call this drink 'busdriver' as it is a variant of 'greyhound' and also as an homage to the only rapper i like]

1/2 oz gin
1/2 oz lime
1/4 oz maraschino
1/4 oz green chartreuse
1/4 oz syrup

this works. am thinking you can sub lychee or ikea elderflower syrup for the simple syrup. working title “ellipsis, lychee” omg im a dork

…

o-positive (renamed because ‘penta-tonic’ makes it sound like either it contains tonic water, or that its made from five ingredients)

3/4 oz punt e mes
1/8 peach
1/2 oz black rum/rye

so tasty. with a flavorful and/or ripe peach, might be able boost the spirit to proportions equal to the punt e mes.

…

some things i have planned:

experiment #1: infused tequila, pineapple, jalepeno, chardonnay, lemon, agave, black qi mist

experiment #2 (”improved sunrise”): tequila, lillet, triple sec/cointreau/orange shrub. aqua perfecta framboise at the bottom. maybe misted with vodka infused with orange flower water or hangar one mandarin. (am i a whore for st. george now? all it takes is a take-home glass and my pants come off?) maybe a foam of either of those things plus orange juice.

experiment #3: charbay grapefruit (or vodka + grapefruit juice, or maybe i’ll experiment with my own grapefruit infusion), sake (need to visit the tasting room in berkeley), vanilla, pistachio orgeat, lemon

experiment #4: something with mead

experiment #5: rum, kahlua, falernum, triple sec (like picante’s mexican coffee)

tina modotti from pizzaiolo. tequila, grapefruit, lime, aperol. really good. maybe i need to procure some aperol.

muddle fruit with sugar. combine remaining ingredients, shake without ice for 20 seconds, shake with ice for 20 seconds.

pineapple: works pretty well. i should have used the flesh instead of the core.
peach: also works pretty well, better than pineapple
grapefruit: red grapefruit is superior to the other shit i got

i also made the strawberry version again. what do you know, its the best of the lot.

…

not sure (at all) but–i think there is a huge rangpur lime tree a block from my house! i might call four winds to confirm or deny. the leaves smell great, similar to the kaffir lime. do all fruit free leaves smell and taste good? are any of them toxic? the fruit is as sour as a lemon or lime. the peel is aromatic, maybe like a bergamot.

…

shared some of my punt e mes with stuntman b, he loved it as i suspected he might. i also shared some vya which i don’t like nearly as well, though couldn’t tell you why. b could, though: “bread-n-butter pickles.”

yes. spot on. it is true, this top-shelf vermouth that the cocktail world is going nutzo over–is basically the brine from a jar of vlassic bread-n-butter pickles.

2 oz rum
1 1/2 oz grapefruit juice
1/2 oz lime juice
mango, approx 1″ square
1 tsp sugar
short drizzle of maraschino liqueur

was this any good? not really, but input, not formula or mixer, was the likely culprit:
1) turned out the grapefruit was weak. no bitterness, no tartness, mostly tasted of water
2) i used mango which i’d frozen last month as an experiment. verdict: mango loses a little life in the freezer. end result: the drink had a distinct mango flavor, but there was no perfume, no pop.
3) i had been drinking a gateway negroni prior. not really a palate cleanser. in fact, it is a really terrible drink to pair with anything.

though i can’t say the drink was tasty…it did hide the rum really well. it mostly just tasted like mango-water.

well, it might have less to do with an ethical epiphany and more to do with the discovery that ac transit runs more frequently than they did in my youth. it also turns out the 18 goes nearly door-to-door from my house to pizzaiolo.

drinks:

chinato speaker. barolo chinato, lime, benedictine, agricole rhum. i wasn’t familiar with barolo chinato, a delicious dessert wine/apertif/digestif. the drink was also delicious, a solid red wine base with lots of herbal notes. the lime more of a background, providing more clarity and lightness than tartness.

lavender willy. bourbon, lemon, lavender honey. as in the urb saint, bourbon and honey are perfect together. in injudicious hands, lavender makes desserts and candy taste like soap or shampoo. but cate (we are on first name basis now) infused the honey with just a hint of the stuff, enough to add flavor and aroma but not enough to be identifiable as lavender.

old haitian. can’t find a recipe of this online. it is basically a mojito but with dark rum and champagne. i love a good mojito but this is better. [note: its an 'old cuban']

monk’s garden. an invention of cate’s predecessor; a combination of gin, chartreuse, grapefruit, and not sure what else. really excellent. i’m starting to think that the combination of grapefruit and lemon or lime is the perfect cocktail acid.

…

i’m seriously one of the least judgmental people i know. but i believe it is wrong to order a pie at (a place like) pizzaiolo, then not eat the crust. when good crust goes uneaten, god smothers a puppy.

so i thought i’d plunge straight into the gaping, glucose-glazed maw of the beast: attempting to make a palatable version of the strawberry daiquiri. i simply started with a hemingway daiquiri (aka papa doble), and swapped out some of the sugar with muddled strawberries. [note: i should give mad props where mad props are due... i was turned on to the hemingway daiquiri because i'd had a superb one at eccolo. i would say that most drinks ive had there have been unimpressive (and small, and expensive). but that one was a home run.]

4 oz vodka
4 oz cachaca
4.5 oz grapefruit juice
1.5 oz lime
2 T (1 oz) sugar
2 small, very ripe strawberries (blue moon farms)
1/2 tsp maraschino liqueur
8 drops grapefruit bitters

[note: my version of the h.d. uses a higher grapefruit:lime ratio and a lot less maraschino than the interweb's version. but my version is great. so suck it, interweb.]

muddle strawberries with sugar. combine with all other ingredients and shake without ice until sugar is dissolved. then shake with ice, double strain, garnish with grapefruit peel.

i made a quadruple because that’s how much juice my one grapefruit produced.

i miscalculated how much sugar i needed in part because a) cachaca b) red grapefruit. still, definitely drinkable and delicious. next time 1 T sugar should be fine. obv strawberry ripeness plays a role.

…all this time i’ve been spelling it ‘dacquiri’ because i was thinking of ‘dacquoise‘.

i’m seriously considering looking for a job behind a bar somewhere. don’t care doing what. toweling glasses, serving water, being a eunuch.