Having sat out of the last two Mixology Mondays, I didn’t want to let another pass without at least a nod and a tip of the hat, even though it’s been difficult to find the time because I’ve been traveling like Marco Polo for the last few weeks. All work, unfortunately.

Anyway, gin, you say? Well, even though there are many drinks with gin, this one will need to meet three criteria. It should be tasty or in some way interesting, it has to be new to this blog (I’m going on 50 posts and I’ve written about most of the easy ones), and I’d prefer it to be something relatively unblogged in general.

Digging around in Dr. Cocktail’s excellent Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails, I came across the Barnum (Was Right). P.T. Barnum, famous circus entrepreneur, once famously stated that “There’s a fool born every minute,” and you only have to stop and pay attention to what goes on around you to know he was very right.

So that’s the the name. What’s the drink like? Well, I enjoyed it, for what it’s worth. I was looking for worthwhile drinks for my apricot brandy too, so that was a bonus. The gin helps get the sweetness under control, and you can enjoy the taste of the apricot without the cloying stickiness of the brandy, and the flavours combine together well, along with a little citrus bite from the lemon to make it a nicely balanced concoction.

Also, I only found one relatively ancient post by Kaiser Penguin about it, so that’s three out of three for Barnum (Was Right)!

Recipe:

2 oz. Gin
1 oz. Apricot Brandy
1/2 oz. Lemon juice
2 dashes Angostura Bitters

Shake well until very cold and serve in a cocktail glass. Garnish with something citrusy.

Notes:

It helps if you use a good fragrant gin, in order to make the drink as complex as possible. Either that or dial back the apricot brandy a little to stop it from overpowering a weaker gin. After all, gin is what it’s all about today.

Rating:

- Unusually pleasant and well balanced.

Check out the rest of this Monday’s contributions at Oh Gosh!

It’s a scene that has played out countless times, in many a cocktail enthusiast’s house. You, as the host, try to find the ideal drink for each guest but somebody is being difficult:

Gracious Host: So, can I mix you something?

Guest: Well, I don’t know. Can you make me something nice?

GH: How about a Margarita? They’re fairly popular.

Guest: Oh no, that’s much too strong for me. Can you make something milder?

GH: Hmm, a Mojito? They’re all the rage you know.

Guest: I tried that once, but I didn’t like the taste of the rum in it. What else have you got?

GH: (without much hope) A Cosmopolitan? That has vodka in it, so the taste shouldn’t bother you.

Guest: Vodka? I tried that once and it was horrible! I don’t know, if you can’t fix anything nice, I’ll just have a Coke.

GH: (pride hurt) Well, do you like any alcoholic drinks at all?

Guest: Actually I never drink, only some Bailey’s now and again.

GH: (Eyes light up) Ah, in that case I have just the thing!

Gracious Host exits toward BAR.

Recipe:

1 oz. Brandy
1 oz. Créme de Cacao
1 oz. Heavy Cream

Shake very well with plenty of ice and serve in a cocktail glass. Sprinkle freshly-grated nutmeg on top and serve.

Notes:

Kind of like one of these pre-made cream liqueurs brought to life, using real fresh cream and good brandy, and not a preservative in sight. Whenever someone says they like Bailey’s, I mix one of these up instead. I haven’t had any complaints yet.

Rating:

- Rich, creamy goodness.

After a good meal, it’s always nice to relax with a snifter of brandy along with your coffee. It’s something I learned from watching my father and, even though I was hesitant during my younger years, it’s become a moment I look forward to after a weekend lunch or a nice dinner. For me, brandy is the sipping spirit – better than whisk(e)y or rum, which I prefer before eating.

The whole experience is great. Just take a big snifter, Fill it with hot water in order to warm the glass while you fetch the bottle of brandy, discard the water and pour in a generous measure. Warm the brandy by nesting the glass in your palm and swirling the liquid gently. Stick your nose in and feel the tingling while you take in the aroma. Take a sip and feel the flavors on your taste buds – It’s all great.

The only downside is that it can get a little, well, monotonous after a while. There are many people who enjoy their standard drink as part of their regular routine, but if I was one of those people, I probably wouldn’t be a blog about pretty much every kind of drink I can get my hands on.

How can you beat this boredom? Well, for starters, there are a few different kinds of brandy, even without going into brands. Sherry, Cognac, Armagnac and others make exploring all options a lengthy endeavour. Unfortunately, cost can also be a factor, and drinking brandy after a meal hasn’t become a cliché of the wealthy without reason. I think the most expensive bottle of alcohol I’ve ever seen was by Hennessy.

Another option is to spice up your brandy somehow, and for this I recently found the B&B. The name is just the initials of its ingredients, Brandy and Bénédictine. The combination is surprising because it manages to use the potent fragrance of the brandy and use it as a vehicle to push the herbal notes of the Bénédictine into your nose at the same time. I find it works very well, and will be having at least a couple more before I get bored with it…

Recipe:

1 oz. Brandy
1 oz. Bénédictine

Pour into a brandy snifter and serve.

Notes:

The original recipe I found lists building this drink on ice as a possibility, but I don’t recommend it. If you can take the booze straight at room temperature, then that’s how you’ll enjoy it the most.

You’ll really want to use the snifter in order to get the whole aroma thing going. Getting a nose-full of the mixture is definitely one of the highlights of this drink.

Rating:

- I really wasn’t expecting to like it this much.

I’m not really into sipping spirits. There are exceptions, like a brandy or eau-de-vie after a meal, but as a general rule I don’t do straight booze. That doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate the nuances of a fine spirit, of course, but I prefer having a vehicle to help it on its way.

Usually an Old Fashioned will do the trick for bourbon as well as other dark spirits such as rum. However, while browsing Beachbum Berry’s latest book Sippin’ Safari, the Rum, Gum & Lime struck me as having similar qualities and being more adapted to rum because of the lime juice it contains. Having tried it, I can happily report I wasn’t wrong. This simple recipe is great for appreciating a fine rum without having to drink it straight.

The Bum also recommends Ron Pampero Aniversario as being a good rum for this drink, if you’re undecided as to which rum to go with. I picked up a bottle since it was on my shopping list anyway, and have to second this recommendation. It really is a smooth and rich rum, and is a pleasure to taste. The original was made with a rum called Infierno, from Cuba, but this hasn’t been available for decades.

I’ll be using the Rum, Gum & Lime in my rum tastings from now on, no doubt about it.

Recipe:

1 1/2 oz. Rum
1/2 oz. Lime juice
1 tsp. Simple Syrup
1 oz. Seltzer

Stir everything in an old-fashioned glass with ice, and garnish with lime and orange peels.

Notes:

You may want to adjust the seltzer and simple syrup amounts to your taste and the rum you’re using. If the rum isn’t very intense, it can end up tasting watered-down with a full ounce of seltzer.

Rating:

- A cool tool for rating rum (I should work for The Sun)

When Great Britain was still the colonial power in the world, one of the lesser-known colonies it held was Burma, the largest country in Southeast Asia. Modern Burma, or Myanmar, is a thoroughly unpleasant place to live because of the oppressive military dictatorship that runs the place, especially in recent times.

Back when it was a colony, on the other hand, life was good if you were a foreigner. If you could get past the local climate, which was probably unlike anything you had ever experienced before if you were European, your quality of life was much higher than that of any local. Decent food, all the gin-and-tonics you could stomach (for medicinal purposes, of course) and in the evenings you could head to the club, just like any British gentleman.

One of these clubs was the Pegu Club. experts can’t agree on whether it was located in Pegu, a town about 60 km. northeast of the capital, Rangoon, or if it was in Rangoon itself. Regardless of its physical location, it was well regarded by its patrons, which included people like Rudyard Kipling, and must have been a pretty special place.

It’s signature drink was known just as the Pegu Club Cocktail. A simple mix of gin, Cointreau and lime juice, it is one of the great classics that has descended into obscurity with the passing of time. However, since the recipe is so simple, there really is no excuse for at least trying it once.

The problem is that all-too-common lack of an authoritative recipe. Thankfully it’s just a problem of proportions, since the list of ingredients is agreed-upon, and it allows you to mess around with what you prefer. I tried the version in Ted Haigh’s Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails, and a few others I found on the net, and finally decided on one that reduced the amount of lime juice somewhat, since I felt it was overpowering the drink. Here is what I came up with.

Recipe:

2 oz. Gin
1/2 oz. Cointreau
1/2 oz. Lime juice
2 dashes Angostura Bitters

Shake with lots of ice until the shaker is frosty, and pour into a cocktail glass.

Notes:

I think with a good pungent gin I might push the gin back to 1 1/2 oz., but I’ll need to wait until I can get to a liquor store to try that because my gin stocks are currently very low.

Still, it’s pretty good. I’d encourage you to try it.

Rating:

- Let’s get hot and sweaty.

The Planter’s Punch is one of that class of drinks with no fixed recipe. If you look in ten different places, you’ll likely find ten different formulations. Many books and databases even include several variations, giving each one a number.

I decided to look into the history of the Planter’s Punch to see if I could find a definitive or original recipe, but things don’t seem to be that clear. According to Wikipedia, the first known reference to a Planter’s Punch is in the August 8, 1908 edition of the New York Times, where a generic recipe is given as this little poem:

This recipe I give to thee,
Dear brother in the heat.
Take two of sour (lime let it be)
To one and a half of sweet,
Of Old Jamaica pour three strong,
And add four parts of weak.
Then mix and drink. I do no wrong —
I know whereof I speak.

Now I don’t know about you, but to me that seems like an invitation to improvise. The recipe gives four ingredients — lime, Jamaican rum, something sweet and something weak. Lime and rum are fixed, so we’re left with two ingredients to play with. Thankfully the measures were easy to translate into modern units, with each part being half-an-ounce in my interpretation.

For Sweet I decided early on to use my newly acquired Orgeat syrup (there’s a Mai Tai post coming soon when I can source the quality ingredients needed). I tried another version with a new homemade grenadine I’ve been toying with, but the Orgeat was somehow more satisfying. That may just be me favouring something new, though.

Weak is obviously some sort of fruit juice. Orange and pineapple are the usual suspects here, so I wanted a little change from that, but without going all out and using mango or passion fruit either. I settled on grapefruit juice as being out-of-the-ordinary enough without being cliché tropical.

For the rum, I cheated slightly because I found that the full given amount of dark Jamaican rum overpowered the drink. So I reduced the Jamaican rum to one ounce, and threw in some Havana Club Añejo 3 años for it’s distinctive nose and taste. I suppose that reading my new Beachbum Berry book arsenal is having an effect on me.

As to the name, it’s an allusion to the numbers given to variations I mention in the beginning of the post, joined with a rather geeky pop-culture reference.

Recipe:

1 oz. Dark Jamaican Rum
1/2 oz. Light Rum
3/4 oz. Sirop d’Orgeat
1 oz. Lime juice
2 oz. Grapefruit juice

Shake with plenty of cracked ice until you can’t feel the tips of your fingers, and serve in a large tall glass.

Notes:

The Orgeat is pretty pronounced, so you may want to reduce it to 1/2 oz. to make it more subtle. Either way, it’s a nice drink that’s refreshing and not too sweet.

I’ll also be trying this with a slightly less pungent Jamaican rum, and using the full 1 1/2 oz. to see how that works out.

Rating:

- Refreshing and different.

July’s Mixology Monday brought us a whole host of cool drinks, from many great blogs. Interestingly, the bramble was the only drink mentioned by two different people, and this attracted my attention.

Originally mentioned over at Bartender Thinking, the Bramble is the child of Dick Bradsell, a respected London bartender. As the Thinking Bartender points out, it can be adapted to many different fruit liqueurs, such as creme de cassis, etc. I haven’t gone that far in my experimentation yet, but the idea of using a gin/lemon juice combination as the base for a fruity drink doesn’t seem too bad to me. I will try other variations.

The recipe calls for Plymouth gin, something I haven’t been able to find here. I have no idea what it adds to the drink, but I can tell you that with both Bombay Gin (regular, not Sapphire) and Seagram’s, the result is quite good. Also, I tried both variations mentioned in the post and ended up using the original recipe. The variation was just too sweet for me.

Recipe:

1 1/2 oz. Plymouth Gin
3/4 oz. Lemon juice
1/2 oz. Simple Syrup
3/4 oz. Creme de Mure

Build everything except the Creme de Mure over crushed ice and stir. Add a straw and slowly pour in the Creme de Mure to create a cascading effect.

Notes:

The final drink is just a delivery mechanism for Creme de Mure. Not that this is a bad thing, of course. It takes a very sweet liqueur and turns it into an enjoyable and refreshing drink, without masking the original flavour or adding too much extra. It just goes to show that originality can be tied to simplicity.

Rating:

- A great little drink.

To finish this short run of brazilian drinks, I’m going to cover another batida. Whereas the Batida de Coco I presented yesterday is very light and refreshing, the Batida de Manga is a creamier, sweeter drink. From what I’ve seen, together they represent the two most common styles of batidas in Brazil.

Manga is portuguese for mango, so this is still very much a tropical drink. Instead of sugar, this drink uses condensed milk as the sweetener, which is key to getting the creamy factor. Of course, this makes the blender mandatory.

Also, it’s important to use a rich mango nectar in order to make the drink denser. Even better, use a slice of mango.

Finally, you can substitute any fruit, really, instead of the mango. Passion fruit, strawberries or bananas come to mind.

Recipe:

2 oz. Cachaça
3 oz. Mango nectar, or a slice of mango
2 oz. Condensed Milk

Throw everything in a blender with plenty of ice and blend until creamy and frothy. Serve in a tall glass with a small slice of mango, a straw, cocktail umbrella, the works.

Notes:

Not much to say, a nice poolside drink. You can tone down the alcohol if you’re planning to guzzle a whole lot of them.

Rating:

- Pretty nice.

Following on from yesterday’s Caipirinha, here’s another popular brazilian drink.

A Batida is actually a generic term for a sweet drink made with cachaça and some type of fruit, and then blended with ice. From my research it looks like each person makes it their own way, using different sweeteners and even spirits other than cachaça. Of course, each fruit will require its own level of sweetness, so really the only thing that is constant about these recipes is the use of ice (even the blender is sometimes optional, you can just shake with crushed ice).

I’m going to present a simple coconut batida, both because I have the ingredients and because its the only version I had heard of before. I’ve settled on the following recipe:

Recipe:

1 1/2 oz. Cachaça
3 oz. Coconut Cream
2 tsp Sugar

Place everything into a blender with plenty of ice and go nuts. Alternatively, you an crush about a cupful of ice and shake everything up in a shaker. You can strain the result or not, depending on your taste.

Notes:

With so many options, it was difficult to decide which ones to try. I tried a couple of ratios and the one above was the one I liked best. It’s better to make a weaker drink because you’ll be drinking it really quickly and making another one.

I ended up crushing some ice and shaking because I couldn’t be bothered to set up the blender. It worked pretty well, but I’d recommend adding the sugar first with a splash of water to dissolve it a little first. Alternatively, just use some simple syrup.

Rating:

-A very refreshing summer drink.

Since Brazil’s national spirit is cachaça, it’s only fitting that their national drink be the Caipirinha, a cocktail where it is the main player.

Recipe:

2 oz. Cachaça
2 tsp Sugar
4 Lime wedges

Cut a lime into 6 wedges. Into a wide-bottomed glass, drop four lime wedges and the sugar and muddle vigorously. When all the juice has been extracted from the wedges, fill the glass with crushed ice and finally pour in the cachaça. Stir everything together and serve with a straw.

Notes:

If you’re looking for a great summer drink, you can’t really go wrong with booze and limes. We’ve seen it while looking at cuban cocktails, and the caipirinha reinforces the idea.

You can try this drink with cubed ice and it will also work well, it depends on how much dilution you’re after.

Oh, and if you’re feeling virile, you can make a real man’s Caipirinha. The site is in portuguese, but I’m sure the pictures will get the point across.

Rating:

- It doesn’t get four stars because I’m unlikely to have cachaça at home on a regular basis.