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.

i thought i might first try to make a good bloody mary. i started with a recipe in food and wine cocktails 2009.

1 1/2 oz vodka
1/2 oz hendricks gin
4 cherry tomatoes
tiny blob of horseradish
1/8 of a lime
1/8 of a lemon
1 inch green onion
pinch salt
pinch pepper

this was ok. i’m not really a bloody mary guy so i’m not a great judge. next time i would use maybe a couple more tomatoes, and less onion, or maybe red onion. the original recipe calls for a jalepeno, i would normally like that but maybe not for this application. i might try adding tarragon. the salt level was good. might need more pepper.

my plan is to top it with a honey paprika foam (egg white, honey, paprika. foamed with ikea foamer). i will try that soon.

…

this is a pretty good manhattan variant.

2 oz rye/bourbon combination
3/4 oz sweet vermouth
1/4 oz ikea blackcurrant syrup
1 dash/4 drops angostura bitters

favorites:

green and orange (jackie patterson) – green chartreuse, lime, carrot, honey, cantaloupe, cilantro garnish. (if there was liquor other than the chartreuse she didn’t say.) [edit: recipe here] this was my favorite because not only was it delicious but it incorporated green chartreuse and carrot, two things that i think are difficult to use well in a cocktail, much less together.

tuscan smash (josh harris (?)) – fresh strawberries, roasted strawberries, balsamic vinegar, lemon, mint, sugar, galliano, rooibos bourbon tincture. whew! (here again, if there was a base spirit, it was not mentioned and i neglected to ask) the flavor was extremely complex, combining raw and cooked strawberries was genius. my main criticism is that it was too sweet and too viscous.

mountain peach (h. joseph erhmann) – square one botanical vodka, peach, lemon, lemon verbena. simple, and similar to another drink at the event, but this was perfectly balanced. [edit: recipe here]

howling mad (someone from bourbon and branch, forgot his name) – thai chili infused gin, thai basil, lemon, honey, ground coffee garnish. believe it or not, this all worked perfectly. the flavors were phenomenal. but a little too hot.

so, lots of fun, and lots to think about….

…

i’m really frustrated at my inability to ’stray from the script’. tonight, for example. i was giddy about the cocktails and intent on trying everything as expediently as possible, so i could revisit my favorites (not easy to move fluidly in that throng), and grab some of the passed-apps before depletion (which always happens, usually around 645). i was so focused on this that i basically blew off a couple people who tried to chat with me (both cuesa volunteers) and failed to seize the opportunity to chat with brooke arthur. this is sub-optimal on a couple levels, (a) sometimes chatting is fun, even for me (b), brooke would be a good person to know/impress. i wasn’t disrespectful, just taciturn. but that might seem impolite. or lame.