A Bitter Spirit

Author: Drew

  • Looking Back at the 2013 Advent Calendar: The Favourites

    Hi there. Remember us? Your favorite sister/brother team of boozehounds. Go ahead. Tell us you missed us. We missed us too. Or rather, we miss experimenting with booze almost daily. But never fear! We are coming back for round two of the Cocktail Advent Calendar (patent not pending). What we thought we'd do is post a bit of our thoughts about last year's cocktails, what we liked and what we'd like a Mulligan on.

    In case you forgot what happened last year, we created a calendar of 24 cocktails inspired by any manner of Christmas characters and divided them into several categories (Naughty, Lovable Lug, Nice, Dickensian & the Magi). We learned so much about cocktail construction and what was needed to make a good drink. It was great fun and scratched a creativity itch that both of us had.

    We thought we'd share the drinks we thought were the best and the drinks that made us say "meh."First up are the Favourites.

    Kate's Top Three…and a Bonus

    Kate-favs

    The Griswold … This was an amazing take on eggnog. Better, I think.

    The Sugar Plum Fairy … We served pitchers of this (with the club soda addition) at our family Solstice celebration. It was the BEST Solstice we'd ever had. A really tasty, party drink.

    The Kaspar … The fig infusion of the gin was my favourite infusion. Overall, this was a very tasty cocktail and a little unexpected.

    Bonus: The Randy … These flavours all worked together really well. The bacon washing worked better here than in the Yukon Cornelius.

    Drew's Top Three…plus One

    Drew-favs

    The Sugar Plum Fairy … This drink tasted exactly as I/we envisioned it. And it was fantastic. And double everything Kate said!

    The Ghost of Christmas Past … Sometimes simple is better. I honestly think this was the best classic version of a martini I ever had. Three quality ingredients make a fantastic drink.

    The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come … A very different type of cocktail and definitely only meant for certain occassions but, man, was this interesting. And I feel like this was our best example of creating a cocktail completely from scratch. No riffing there; this was an original composition.

    Plus One: The Clara…What's not to love about adult cherry limeade? Bubbly, clean and not super sweet.

    Our next post is going to be about what we thought were our less successful creations.  We posted links to our social media pages at the top of the blog. Follow us wherever you like to socialize!

  • Day 24: Melchior

    Well it's our final cocktail today.  Can you flipping believe it?  We can't believe this is the end.  Thanks to all of you for following along with us as we went about this project.  Hopefully, you enjoyed the journey as well as found inspiration and a little mirth.  And with that, it's Christmas Eve, so let's get to it!

    Melchior-cocktail-ingredients

    The final cocktail is based on the final Magi, Melchior.  Tradition holds that Melchior's gift to Jesus and his family was gold.  Given that, we wanted to make a gold colour cocktail with some echoes of Middle Eastern spice.  We decided to infuse some vodka with chai tea and combine that with ginger liquer to heighten the spice profile and some pear liqueur to sweeten it and give it a golden colour.

    Melchior Cocktail:

    • 2 oz chai infused vodka
    • 1 oz ginger liqueur
    • 1/2 oz pear liqueur
    • Bittered Sling Lem-Marrakesh bitters
    • 1 tsp powdered ginger
    • 1 tbsp sugar
    • cocktail glass

    Melchior-cocktail-assembled

    Combine the powdered ginger and sugar in a bowl.  Moisten the rim of the cocktail glass with water and coat it with the ginger and sugar mixture.  Pour the vodka, ginger liqueur and pear liqueur into a cocktail shaker with ice.  Shake until chilled and pour into the rimmed glass.  Top with five drops of the bitters.

    Cocktail Notes:
    To make chai infused vodka,  put one chai tea bag into a cup of vodka and let it steep for 2 hours.  

    Per our usual modus operandi, we tried several different bitters to see what would work with this cocktail (you'll note that we got out our full arsenal of Bittered Sling bitters):

    • Bittered Sling Moondog Bitters – Pretty good.
    • Bittered Sling Lem-Marrakesh Bitters – YES!
    • Bittered Sling Denman Bitters – Again, pretty good, but not realising the full potential of the drink.
    • Bittered Sling Plum & Rootbeer Bitters – No. Flattens out to nuances and emphasizes the sweet.
    • Coster's Blackstrap Ginger Bitters – nice and ginger-y, but not perfect.

    Our Melchior got its start with this cocktail published in Marie Claire – the Winter Wonderland. The chai-infused vodka and pear liqueur combo really spoke to us, but we had some deep reservations about the creme de menthe. So we swapped that for ginger (which is a little more "Far Eastern") and made a few other tweaks (including bitters) to arrive at our Melchior.

    Inspiration:
    You knew it was coming … we have one more version of "We Three Kings" that we wanted to share. This time, the incomparable Ella Fitzgerald.

    Happy Christmas to you and yours.

  • Day 23: Balthazar

    Tradition holds that Balthazar was the name of one of the Biblical wise men.  Thought to be a Arabian scholar, Balthazar presented Jesus and his family with a gift of myrrh, a tree resin traditionally used in the embalming of the dead.   But enough of that depressing crap…let's make a drink!

    Myrrh has a very complex scent, described by some as smelling of earth and anise.  This informed our creation of Balthazar's cocktail. One liquor that has a prominent anise flavour as well as a strong tie to the earth (wormwood) is absinthe. And, of course, absinthe factors prominently into the classic Sazerac cocktail.  We decided to do a variation of the Sazerac by introducing a little chocolate flavour. 

    Balthazar-cocktail-ingredients

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  • Day 21: Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come

    The final spirit to visit Scrooge is the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come.  Hooded and mute, the ghost arrives in a phantasmal mist and shows Scrooge a number of individuals rejoicing and pilfering belongings from a recently deceased individual.  The revelation that the man who died and of whom the others spoke so unkindly was, in fact, Scrooge himself causes his change in character.

    Ghost-xmas-yet-to-come-cocktail-ingredients

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  • Day 20: Ghost of Christmas Present

    The second of the Christmas spirits to visit Scrooge is the Ghost of Christmas Present.  Dickens describes him as "jolly giant" with dark brown curls.  Oddly enough, his TV depictions always reminded us of one of our uncles.  Anyhow…the burly ghost shows Scrooge around London taking him first to his nephew's Christmas celebration where those assembled are making merry.  He also shows Scrooge multiple scenes of those who are deprived during Christmas, using Scrooge's own words against him.

    Ghost-xmas-present-cocktail-ingredients

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  • Day 19: Ghost of Christmas Past

    For the next three days, we’re focusing on the three main spirits (no pun intended!) of A Christmas Carol, those being the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Christmas Present and Christmas Yet to Come. We thought it would be fun to take one type of cocktail and make three versions of it, one from the past (or a classic form of it), one from the present (or how it has been morphed into a contemporary cocktail) and one as it might be envisioned in the future. The base cocktail we decided to go with is a martini. It’s classic and yet extremely versatile. The past decade has seen an explosion of variations on a martini with some incredibly imaginative and delicious cocktails have come out of it.

    Ghost-xmas-past-cocktail-ingredients

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  • Day 18: Bob Cratchit

    Bob Cratchit doesn’t have the easiest life. He’s poor, his kid is sick and his boss is a jerk. Like the jerkiest jerk in Jerktown. But somehow, he pushes through. And if anyone needs a drink after work, it’s him!

    Cratchit-cocktail-ingredients

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  • Day 17: Hermey

    How do you solve a problem like Hermey? You know, Hermey. The misfit elf from Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer? Anyway…here’s a man, er, elf who doesn’t like his job and clearly cares more about his hair than his fellow elves do. And haven’t we all been in his shoes? That’s probably why we can relate to Hermey so well. We’ve all been that guy at some point in our lives.

    Hermey-cocktail-ingredients

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  • Day 16: Clarice

    Elizabeth has Mr. Darcy.  Ron has Hermoine.  Katniss has both Peeta and Gale.  And Rudolph has Clarice (and we're not talking about Jody Foster in Silence of the Lambs either!). Clarice is the fetching doe who doesn’t care that Rudolph’s honker is bright red beacon. She even defies her parents' orders and joins the search party for her crimson-beaked beau. For that,  she definitely earns a place on Santa’s Nice List and a spot on our advent calendar.

    Clarice-cocktail-ingredients

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  • Day 15: Virginia

    Meet Virginia. A young girl with a question. A question for a newspaper. (Remember newspapers?) Virginia O'Hanlon asked her father if Santa Claus really existed. He famously replied, “if you see it in the [New York] Sun, it's so.” Taking her father at his word, she wrote a letter to the editor of The Sun. And a few days laters, one of the most famous editorials, assuring the young girl that there was a Santa, appeared in the paper. And a Christmas classic was born.

    Virginia-cocktail-ingredients

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