Spirited Cocktails

Good scotch cocktails are hard to come by. We have a few classics, like the Blood and Sand, but for the most part, whisky cocktails lean much more heavily on bourbon or rye. Scotch just has such a unique and present flavor of it’s own that it tends to compete too harshly with other ingredients. And besides, it’s just so delicious when served neat.

But a good friend e-mailed me this morning asking that I send her the recipe for one of her favorite cocktails, The Penicillin, and in doing so she brought this great scotch cocktail back to my mind. The Penicillin was created by infamous Milk & Honey bartender Sam Ross, and it’s sure to cure what ails ya. Read More

Last weekend, we had our first snow here in New York City. It was a bitter, windy night on Saturday when I wandered into one of my favorite bars, chilled to the bone. This bar has an amazing cocktail menu, blending the best of classic cocktails and modern mixology, but as much as I wanted a drink, the idea of something shaken with ice at the moment was almost unbearable. What I wanted was a hot toddy. Read More

We’re thrilled to welcome back guest-blogger Katy, who brings us another easy and delicious small plate to accompany your cocktails!

Eggplant season is just starting here in North America so you may start seeing it at you local farmer’s market. Why not try making Baba Ganoush?  This Arabic staple tastes delicious, is easy to make and fun to say.   Choose eggplants that are firm to the touch, have a smooth and shiny skin and are heavy. Avoid eggplants with brown or soft spots and have a dull color. Read More

The folks over at LiquorSnob.com have a recipe for the very timely Swine Flu Cocktail. It has all the necessary ingredients:

• Absinthe (medicinal, of course)
• Tequila (from our friends in Mexico)
• Bacon-infused Bourbon (obviously)
• And Lemoncello (why not?)

You can find the full recipe here. Enjoy!

Being a New Yorker, one doesn’t need much convincing to try something called a Brooklyn Cocktail. So when Lush Life (Follow @livethelushlife on Twitter) posted a new video in their 12 Second Cocktail series, I had to follow their instruction and try my own.

Here’s what you’re going to need:

1.5oz Rye
1/2oz Dry Vermouth
1/4oz Maraschino Liqueur
2 dashes Angostura Bitters

Simply combine the ingredients in your shaker with ice, shake well, and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Read More

So the Kentucky Derby is coming up this weekend, which means that everybody and their brother will be making Mint Juleps. There’s a long and storied history behind the Mint Julep – it’s preparation, and it’s relationship to the Kentucky Derby – on Wikipedia, so I won’t bore you with it here. I’m not going to make a Mint Julep either; it’s too cliché. Instead, we’re going to make an Apple Julep.

Many of my readers from the South will cry sacrilege here, but I find the Apple Julep to be a refreshing and creative adaptation. Don’t yell at me until you’ve tried it! Read More

The daiquiri is one of the simplest of all cocktails, and also one of the most misunderstood. All too often, people confuse the daiquiri for that mix of sugar, cheap booze, and food coloring that comes out of a Slushy machine in Vegas. In truth, not only is the real thing easier to make at home, but it’s much tastier too!

The basic daiquiri follows the formula for a traditional sour:

2oz base spirit
3/4oz sweet
3/4oz sour

In the case of the daiquiri, the spirit is Rum, the sweet is simple syrup, and the sour is fresh lime juice. Simply combine those three ingredients in the 2/.75/.75 proportion (with ice!), shake vigorously and strain, and you’ve got yourself a very fine cocktail. But it wouldn’t be much fun if we stopped there! Read More