• Looking Back at the 2013 Advent Calendar: “Missed It By That Much”

    Some of you may get the reference in the post's title. And then some of you may have been born after 1985 (or are Canadian). The phrase comes from Maxwell Smart, agent of the spy organization CONTROL, on the TV show Get Smart. When things went wrong for Smart (code name Agent 86), he often told the "Chief" that he "missed it by that much." His female partner, only ever known as Agent 99, would mostly just roll her eyes and then be super supportive (role filled by Rosemary, wife and sister-in-law).  

    These are the drinks year's calendar that we thought were a bit of a miss.

    Kate's Misses

    Kate-misses

    Jack Frost … I really think there is something to a lemon/peppermint combo, but this version didn't capture what I had in my head. Need to change up the ingredients or something. Back to the drawing board…

    Cold Miser … A coconut rim is just, well, weird

    The Hermey … Personally, it just wasn't my favourite flavour combo.

     

    Drew's Misses

    Drew-misses

    Heat Miser … The first of anything is rarely the best and I just didn't like this.  I even hate the ingredient picture (which I took and poorly Instagrammed!).

    The Cold Miser … The second of anything is rarely the best…*shudder*. Hell, we technically even screwed up the name!

    Yukon Cornelius … It was just ok. It was our first attempt at bacon washing (see my comment about first of things above) and I remember having a hard time getting the amount of lemon right.  It could've been so much better.

    Notice that most of what we consider our misses are at the beginning.  Once we got on a roll, our ways of thinking started jiving and we came up with some very successful cocktails. The new calendar is currently in development.  Stay tuned to more information about it in coming posts and the first drink begins with the first Sunday in Advent (and Kate's Birthday) November 30th.

  • 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 22: Kaspar

    We're down to the final three of our calendar, and we wanted to finish with a flourish. So we're invoking the legend of the Three Wise Men of the East, aka The Magi, as the theme for our remaining cocktails. According to the Bible, wise men visited the Baby Jesus after his birth and presented him with three gifts.

    Kaspar-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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