• Day 6: Yukon Cornelius

    The first few days of our calendar highlighted some holiday characters who, in our opinion, made Santa's Naughty List. To varying degrees, their actions had negative consequences in each of their stories. But, it being Christmas, each character was eventually redeemed.

    Now we move into our next group: the Loveable Lugs. These are guys who just can't seem to catch a break but are ultimately endearing for the way they keep plodding through life. Whether they're buffoonish, bumbling or not all together bright, we usually see some part of ourselves in them and really want them to win.

    The holiday special Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer was rife with memorable supporting characters who, like Rudolph himself, felt like misfits. One such character was the boisterous prospector, Yukon Cornelius, who rescues Rudolph and his merry band. This peppermint-loving galoot helps to save the day (and the Abominable Snowman) while delivering some memorable lines (“Now I'm off to get my life-sustaining supplies: cornmeal and gun powder and hamhocks and guitar strings.”) How could you not help but love this lug of a guy?

    Yukon-cornelius-cocktail-ingredients

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  • Day 5: Jack Skellington

    Halloween at Christmas? An odd enough combo, but it seems to work when Tim Burton gets involved. In his movie, A Nightmare before Christmas, we’re introduced to Jack Skellington, the leader of Halloween Town, who is suffering from a bad case of ennui.  Jack accidentally makes his way to Christmas Town where he discovers the joy and festive spirit that his life is missing.  He then attempts to bring it to his Halloween brethren but not before Santa gets kidnapped.  If only for his general arrogance and selfishness, Jack hits our Advent Calendar's NAUGHTY list.

    Jack-skellington-cocktail-ingredients

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  • The Bishop .. She Smokes!

    We had some of The Ebenezer Scrooge left, so yesterday we took a mug of it outside and tried to snap a picture while it was smoking. Yup, that's steam – not a lens flare or anything 🙂 Also – festive!

    Scrooge-cocktail-smoking

  • Day 4: The Jack Frost

    Winter holidays mean winter weather – whether we're talking about Buffalo or Vancouver. It only seems right to pay homage to one of winter's naughty boys, Jack Frost. All that nipping of noses and whatnot. As you would expect, there are several versions of Jack and his story (including a modern movie where he is a serial killer turned snowman!), but one of our favourites is the modern rendition of Jack in Rise of the Guardians. In this movie he's a sullen teen (kids, only drink this cocktail if you're of age), but a fun-loving and ultimately redeemed sullen teen. For girls (and guys) who like a bad boy, this Frost is for you.

    Jack-frost-cocktail-ingredients

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  • Day 3: Ebenezer Scrooge

    What character in literature personifies the lack of Christmas spirit more than Ebenezer Scrooge? Seriously, the spirit world ultimately had to send four (FOUR!) ghosts to get him to see the error of his ways and to turn him into a decent human being. Yet for most of A Christmas Carol, Ebenezer looks down on the less fortunate, abuses his poor assistant, Bob Cratchett and mutters “Bah, humbug” whenever another character so much as cracks a smile. For that, Mr. Scrooge, you get a well deserved chair at the NAUGHTY table.

    Scrooge-cocktail-ingredients

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  • Day 2: The Cold Miser

    The Cold Miser is usually one cool cucumber. While generally an affable chap, his archnemesis and brother, Heat Miser, definitely knows how to push his buttons and bring out his icy side. For centuries, according to The Year without Santa, the two brothers have been at war. Eventually, the two reconcile at the insistence of their mom, Mother Nature. But for their years of neverending hostilities (not to mention shooting at a pair of Santa’s elves!), both siblings get a well deserved timeout in the NAUGHTY category.

    Cold-miser-cocktail-ingredients

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  • Day 1: The Heat Miser

    The Christmas season in the sixties and seventies (at least in the United States) was dominated by stop-motion TV specials such as Frosty the Snowman and the quintessential Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. One of our favorite movies, A Year without Christmas, features the ultimate in sibling rivalry, pitting the Heat Miser against the Cold Miser. Whether it was his stocky build, his love of ragtime-esque songs or his unruly hair, you couldn't help but love the guy and we chose him for our first character-themed cocktail. Because of his intense rivalry with his brother and his unwillingness to compromise, he definitely fits in the NAUGHTY category.

    Heat-miser-cocktail-ingredients2

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  • About the Calendar

    When we were planning our initial 2013 Cocktail Advent Calendar (we’re now in year three, with a 2014 version and a 2015 version), we came up with a few rules or ideals that we would try to stick to:

    • no food colouring
    • if we can make it easily (like vanilla vodka) we should try to make our own; however, no one is going to go crazy if we need to use a commercial product (like lemon drop schnaps)
    • we believe that all our recipes are original, but we would often use other cocktails as a starting point to riff on (like jazz) – we’ll acknowledge those starting points in the notes

    For all the recipes, we used an ounce measure OR we use the relative “part” measure. That’s important primarily because you’ll then know the relative amount of non-booze ingredients (bitters, syrups, etc) to the booze measurements we used. However, you should be able to scale up and/or modify the recipes to suit your needs and/or measuring device.

  • About Us

    Since our earliest days, we (Kate and Drew) have been fans of booze and cocktails. We grew up in the era when rubbing whiskey on your teething child’s gums to soothe them was expert parenting (actually … that should still be considered expert parenting!).

    This blog, A Bitter Spirit, is a chronicle of our exploration of making, drinking and enjoying cocktails. It could be a new drink we’ve tried, a new infusion we attempted to make, or a crazy cocktail-themed project we thought would be fun – we hope to document it all here.

    Thank you for reading. Cheers!

    Kate-and-drew-2

  • Welcome to our cocktail advent calendar

    Since we started this blog at a festive time, we thought our first project should be a holiday-themed one. Of course, we can't start small. So we're doing an advent calendar of cocktails. That's right – 24 days, 24 cocktails.

    This advent calendar has been a month in the making. Spreadsheets have been involved. Multiple spreadsheets and many late-night video chats. But it's December 1st and we're ready to launch and share our first cocktail.

    But before we get to that – a bit about how the calendar is organized. Every good advent calendar needs a theme. And we didn't want to just do "Christmas-related" – so we came up with the idea of choosing our favourite holiday characters from film, TV and literature and creating a cocktail that would suit each of their personality or back story.

    Within our theme of Holiday Characters, we have six sub-themes (are you keeping up?). We won't reveal them ALL now .. but the first group are folks you would find on Santa's naughty list. And who's at the top of the list? The Heat Miser.

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