Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Philly Cocktail Contest part 2

September 8, 2011 by Jen

 

The first time I came to Philly I was introduced to water ice, which was not quite like anything I had tasted before. Sure, I’d had crappy Italian ices from the freezer at the grocery store, but nothing as delicious and refreshing as a water ice.  So this cocktail is my nod to one of the things Philly does best. Included are several Italian boozes, such as Limoncello and Maraschino Liqueur as a further hat tip to South Philly.

Lemon Wooder Ice
1 oz Limoncello
1 oz Silver Rum
0.75 oz Lemon Juice
0.5 oz Luxardo Maraschino Liquor
0.5 oz Simple Syrup
2 dashes Whiskey Barrel Bitters
Lemon Peel & Maraschino Cherry

Shake ingredients well (except the bitters) and strain into a cocktail glass. Dash bitters across the top, garnish with a maraschino cherry wrapped in a lemon peel.

NOTES: REALLY really tasty; the limoncello really makes it taste like lemon ice, surprisingly.  This drink came out fantastically, though it may be on the sour side for some people.  If you don’t like your drinks as sour as me, you could try just .5 oz lemon juice and 1 oz simple syrup instead!

Posted in Limoncello, Luxardo, Rum, Whiskey Barrel Bitters | 3 Comments »

Philly Cocktail Contest

September 8, 2011 by Jon

Foobooz is running a contest this week to come up with an official Philly cocktail, so naturally we thought it’d be fun to throw our hats in the ring and try to come up with something. I went with one on the fancy side, and one simple and dirty. It seemed appropriate.

 

Riot Punch
3 oz XXX Shine Corn Whiskey
1.5 oz Blue Curacao
1 oz Simple Syrup

Combine ingredients in a glass, top with seltzer water and stir. Drink quickly and then go punch some other team’s mascot.

NOTES: Tastes pretty much like you’d expect. Simple to make, easy to drink, and even easier to get accidentally drunk.

 

The Broad Street Bully
2 oz Bluecoat Gin
1 oz Root
0.25 St. Germain
5 drops Lemon Clove Tincture
Vieux Carre Absinthe rinse

Chill, then rinse the glass with a couple drops of the absinthe and rim with lemon. Stir all the other ingredients well with ice and strain into the glass. Serve up.

NOTES: Pretty tasty. First run I rinsed the glass with Oban, which I almost liked better, but Scotland isn’t exactly Philly, so I went another way with it. Pretty easy to drink with a solid kick.

Posted in Absinthe, Blue Curacao, Corn Whiskey, Gin, Lemon Clove Tincture, Root Liquor, St Germain | Leave a Comment »

Hot Water Music

September 2, 2011 by Jon

Hot Water Music
2 oz Hendricks Gin
0.5 oz St. Germain
0.25 Creme de Violette
0.25 Getreide Kümmel liquor
2 dashes Angostura bitters
Top with soda water

Stir ingredients well with ice. Serve over small or crushed ice. Probably garnish with some kind of edible flower or something like that.

NOTES: Tried to come up with some floral-type ingredients to match with the Hendricks, and holy hell, it worked well. This is one of my favorites in a while. Almost entirely clear (important not to overdo the Violette or Angostura) with just a purpleish tint, and extremely drinkable. Slightly sweet and floral, but neither of those two things in excess. This was the first time we’ve really played with the Getreide Kummel, but damn, if it isn’t delicious. Definitely my favorite drink in a while. I think we might have another cocktail party winner here. And just think, I didn’t like gin less than a year ago. Now my two favorite drinks so far have been Bluecoat and Hendricks-based.

ICE NOTES: We found these weird little cheap ice trays at Bed Bath and Beyond that are really pretty neat. Giving them a bit of a test run as an alternative to crushing ice by hand with the tiny vintage ice crusher that takes forever and a day to fill a glass. Happy with them so far.

Posted in Angostura, Creme de Violette, Getreide Kummel, Gin, St Germain | 4 Comments »

Light Boxes

September 2, 2011 by Jon

Light Boxes
1.5 oz 10 Cane Rum
1 oz Applejack
0.5 oz Domaine de Canton
0.25 oz Lemon Juice
5 drops Lemon Clove Tincture

Shake ingredients well and serve up with a twist of lemon.

NOTES: A good start, but definitely not there yet. It smelled great, and it had a lot of the elements of a good drink, but in the end it was just sort of a palatable, forgettable drink. It went down smooth, didn’t have much of a burn (but a pretty solid boozy kick, in a good way), but the flavors just weren’t where they should have been. Could be better subbing gin for rum. Maybe up the Canton and Tincture and reduce or drop the Applejack? It needed one of the flavors to step up and be the hero. Promising, though. Worth tinkering with.

Posted in Applejack, Domaine de Canton, Lemon Clove Tincture, Rum | Leave a Comment »

Soft Machine

August 31, 2011 by Jon

Soft Machine
1.5 oz Cazadores Reposado Tequila
0.5 oz St. Germain
0.5 oz Aperol
1 oz Cantaloupe Purée

Cantaloupe Purée
Cut off the seeds and the rind of the cantaloupe, and puree the hell out of it in a blender. When there are no chunks left at all, you’re ready to go. Don’t bother trying to strain it like we did with the watermelon, the puree is less thick, but there is way less liquid.

Shake well with ice, serve up and garnish with a slice of cantaloupe.

NOTES: This was damn good. I’m pretty partial to cantaloupe, so I might be a little biased here, but I really enjoyed this one. I’m starting to have a really hard time not putting Cazadores in everything. I must have had a lot of shitty tequila in my life, because this stuff is like a whole different category of booze. The drink itself was sweet, but not cloyingly so, fruity and crisp. It was also the first bright orange drink I’ve ever made. This was a good one.

Posted in Aperol, Cantaloupe, St Germain, Tequila | Leave a Comment »

Year of the Flood

August 31, 2011 by Jon

Year of the Flood
1.5 oz Buffalo Trace Bourbon
0.5 oz Cazadores Reposado Tequila
1 oz Raspberry Vanilla Syrup
0.5 oz Benedictine

Shake well and serve over ice.

NOTES: Pretty tasty. I really like the taste of this syrup, but if we’re being honest, the follow-up drink was just 1 oz of the syrup and 3 oz of bourbon, and I think it held up better. I definitely want to do more work balancing this drink, I just need a way to let the individual ingredients come through a little better rather than just tasting sweet bourbon. Definitely less syrup next time, and perhaps 1:1 with the bourbon and tequila instead.

Posted in Benedictine, Bourbon, Raspberry Vanilla Syrup, Tequila | Leave a Comment »

Hurricane Project: Raspberry Vanilla Syrup

August 27, 2011 by Jon

Like the majority of Philadelphia (and the east coast), we’re barricaded in the apartment, waiting out this hurricane  everyone keeps talking about. In anticipation of the drinks we will doubtlessly get to making in the near future, we decided to try out a new syrup.

Raspberry Vanilla Syrup
1/2 pint Raspberries
1/2 cup water
2 vanilla beans
1 cup sugar
1 oz Vodka

Throw the water and raspberries into a blender and run it for a few seconds to get everything good and soupy. Bring the mixture to a boil with the sugar.

While that’s heating up, cut your vanilla pods longways and spread them open. Scrape out all the tiny seeds into a nice little pile, and throw the pile into the sugar/water/raspberry mix, which should be pretty close to boiling now. Mix it all together, and toss in the scraped vanilla bean pods. Simmer the whole thing for about 10 minutes, adding a little water if it looks like it’s getting too thick.

Once you’re finished, you’ll need to strain the hell out of it. I did 2 passes through a regular kitchen strainer for the big chunks, then twice more through a fine cocktail strainer. Once you’ve got it satisfactorily smooth (there will still be some vanilla beans in there, which is fine), stir in 1 oz of vodka to fortify, and put in the fridge without the lid on. Once it is cool, close tightly, and you’re ready to go.

This stuff tastes goddamn delicious. Drinks using it are definitely coming soon.

NOTE: Credit where credit is due: I got this idea from the (way too many) cookies I stocked up on from Cookie Confidential. They’ve got a raspberry balsamic cookie that is insanely good.

Posted in Raspberry Vanilla Syrup | Leave a Comment »

After the Quake

August 25, 2011 by Jen

In honor of surviving the Great Quake of 2011, I made a little post quake cocktail featuring RHUBY because we’re still enamored with it.

After the Quake
1.5 oz RHUBY
1 oz Amaro Montenegro
1 oz homemade grenadine
2 dashes West Indian Orange Bitters
Vieux Carre Absinthe Rinse

Rinse a coupe with a few drops of absinthe then shake ingredients well with ice, serve up and mist with orange peel oil then rim glass with peel and garnish.

NOTES: A fairly simple drink, but needs some tweaking. Originally I made it without the grenadine but it was a bit too sweet and strong.  Because our homemade grenadine isn’t as sweet as a store-bought brand, Jon suggested I add an ounce to see if it mellowed out the drink, which it definitely did. I think this is a good base but I feel like the drink is missing an element to make a little more palatable. Any ideas?

Posted in Absinthe, Amaro Montenegro, Grenadine, Orange Bitters, Rhuby | Leave a Comment »

A Look Inside Hop Sing Laundromat

August 22, 2011 by Jon

Photo: Drew Lazor at Meal Ticket

For a few hours on Saturday, Jen and I had a chance to sit down and talk with Lêe, the man behind the soon-to-open Hop Sing Laundromat in Chinatown. Reporting isn’t really our thing, but we’re pretty excited to see what kind of place Hop Sing turns into so we thought we’d share it here.

It’s great looking on the inside so far. The whole décor of the place has been put together with an attention to detail that seems above and beyond what most places aspire to. The physical space behind the bar looks like what I imagine most bartenders would dream of, and the overall concept feels a lot more democratic and customer-oriented than is the norm in the craft cocktail scene. Lêe was very deliberate in stressing the atmosphere he wants to create: relaxed, fun, and above all, private. No cell phones will be allowed in the main room (a bench will be available in the entryway for the express purpose of taking phone calls), no pictures, and the tables will be set further apart than most of us are probably used to.

As for the drinks, the emphasis seems to be on stripping away the flash of the 20-ingredient cocktail and focusing more on the balance of classics like Manhattans and Sidecars: the perfect combination of a few simple parts. Lêe also tell us that he believes that drinking is a highly personal experience, and if you want to substitute a drink ingredient (say…from a bottle of $200 scotch to Johnny Walker Red), not only will the bartender happily oblige without explaining to you that he knows better, the price of the drink will reflect the change.

By his own admission, Lêe is a little bit crazy. Parts of the interior of Hop Sing have been done and re-done many times over because he doesn’t think they’re just right. The bar was moved from one side of the room to the other based entirely on the sight-lines of the bartenders and servers. The whole undertaking looks like a lot of passion went into it, and we are pretty excited to see how the whole thing pans out. We’ll definitely be reporting back in a month or so when Hop Sing Laundromat finally opens its doors.

Hop Sing Laundromat is located at 1029 Race Street in Philadelphia. Read more about it on Meal Ticket and Foobooz.

Posted in Bar Reviews, Miscellany | 8 Comments »

RHUBY + Bluecoat Gin = match made in Heaven.

August 19, 2011 by Jen

Still doing more experimenting with RHUBY here at HomeSpeakeasy!  Like I said yesterday, I was really excited to start mixing it with some gin as well as a tincture of peppercorns I made.  After letting the tincture soak for a day, I decided to throw all these things together and see what happened.  The result was incredible; it was one of my favorite drinks that I’ve made lately!

Bel Ami
1.5 oz RHUBY
1 oz Bluecoat Gin
0.5 oz simple syrup
5 drops pepper tincture
1 dash angostura bitters

shake ingredients well with ice, serve up and mist drink with lemon peel oils, rub the peel around the rim, then use as garnish.

NOTES: This drink was a big winner for me. I really enjoyed the subtle flavors of the two spirits, plus the pepper tincture gave it a really nice kick right at the end. The only slight change I’d make was use a fresher lemon to get more oil spray and also add maybe 0.5 or 0.25 oz of fresh lemon juice to give it just a hint of sourness. I’ll probably make that drink again tonight because it was so damn tasty.

Also please excuse this image – my real camera is in the shop getting fixed so it’ll be out of commission for a few weeks, sadly.

Peppercorn Tincture:
Empty 1 tea bag and fill with peppercorns.  Tie up loose end of the tea bag with string and put in a small jar.  Fill with high proof vodka or everclear. Steep for at least a day or two up to 6 weeks if using a lower proof vodka. Shake lightly every other day.

Posted in Angostura, Black Pepper Tincture, Gin, Rhuby | 4 Comments »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »