SeanMike over at Scofflaw's Den is making cocktails for mixologists, bloggers, and other folks, and naming them for those people.
And now he's made one named The Camper, made with blanco tequila, grenadine, lemon juice, pineapple grapefruit soda, and Peychaud's bitters. Sounds tasty- I can't wait to try me.
I wrote a story in this weekend's San Francisco Chronicle about Charles H. Baker's cocktails and their popularity, centering around the program at Heaven's Dog in San Francisco.
This line by Charles H. Baker Jr. introduces not an account of Cuban
rebellion but the cocktail Remember the Maine, which he was drinking
there while it took place. Baker wrote about drinks from his travels
around the world in the early 1900s, mostly during Prohibition, when
the drinking in the United States wasn't legal – or very good.
Other drinks in Baker's two-volume "The Gentleman's Companion" are
introduced from such ports of call as Beijing, Monte Carlo and Bombay
(now Mumbai), ripe with mentions of princes, peacocks, cruises up the
Nile and hanging out with Hemingway.
Bartenders in particular have latched on to Baker as a patron saint
of good living, and his cocktails and quotes from his writings are both
appearing on drink menus.
"I've always thought that when you have a drink there's so much that
comes with it: your friends, who you're with, the time of the day,"
says Erik Adkins, general manager of Heaven's Dog in SoMa. "And (Baker)
captured all that.."
But for all the excitement about Baker's cocktails, they share an unfortunate common trait.
read the rest of the story here.
In the story I also mentioned the forthcoming coffee/cocktail bar Fort Defiance, in Brooklyn, that should be opening later this month. But that's not the only bar to put Baker back on the menu:
The Brooklyn bar Clover Club dedicated a small section of the menu to what owner Julie Reiner says are Baker’s best cocktails this winter, including the Remember the Maine.
In Portland, Ore., the bar Beaker and Flask, named for the subtitle of one volume of “Gentleman’s Companion,” is set to open. Owner Kevin Ludwig says he’ll be featuring Baker drinks on the menu, though not exclusively.
In Amsterdam, speakeasy-style bar door 74 recently offered several pages of Baker drinks, with the menu letterhead mimicking the Baker’s own.
Baker's globe-hopping cocktail book is now helping those cocktails hop back around the world.
Hey look, I wrote another story for Epicurious.com!
It's the Top 5 Beer Cocktails, including ones you know like the Shandy and Black Velvet, plus ones that are probably new to you:
My previous story for Epicurious was the Top 5 Absinthe Cocktails.
Here's the second of my two stories in the San Francisco Chronicle this weekend.
Spirits: Bartenders find new ways to sweeten the deal
Nearly all cocktails contain a sweetening agent, the simplest of which is raw sugar or simple syrup. Other, newer options include ginger, elderflower, and blood orange liqueurs, floral sugar syrups, fresh grenadine, flavored honey, and syrups made from ingredients like agave and gum Arabic.
As usual, San Francisco bartenders are not satisfied with the selection.
In Gary Regan's weekly cocktail newsletter, he shares with us Neyah White's recipe that won the Vinos de Jerez cocktail competition. The recipe is below. It sounds easy because it's only two ingredients, but naturally one of those two ingredients involves seven other ingredients and takes two weeks to make.
To see the recipes for the runner-up winners by Nate Dumas of the Clover Club, Joel Baker of Bourbon and Branch, and Daniel Eun of PDT, you'll have to go to Gary's website. They're a pretty amazing variety of drinks.
Sherry Shrub
Adapted from a recipe by Neyah White, Nopa, San Francisco.
Winner of the 2008 Vinos de Jerez Cocktail Competition
22.5 ml (.75 oz) House-Made Shrub*
60 ml (2 oz) La Gitana Manzanilla sherry
1 lemon twist, as garnish
Stir over ice and strain into a small sherry glass. Add the garnish.
*House-Made Shrub
Adapted from a recipe by Neyah White, Nopa, San Francisco.
1 quart fresh elderberries, trimmed from stems
1 cup fresh huckleberries
5 cups evaporated cane sugar
1 quart cider vinegar
1 oz kosher salt
5 brown cardamon pods
1 oz. jigger of white pepper corns
In a large bowl, mildly press fruit with
bottom of shaker tin till every berry is at least bruised. Muddle
spices in a mixing glass till all the corns are at least cracked. Add
sugar, cover and let sit 5 hours or until a good syrup has formed (this
should happen in a cool place, refrigerate if not available.) Add salt
and vinegar and stir till salt has dissolved, cover and return to cool
storage and let age for at least a week. Then filter successively
through a china cap then a cheesecloth. Bottle in clean, sterile
bottle leaving a few inches of air under the cap. It is now ready to
use, but another week of aging allows for a deeper, more lingering
flavor. The beauty of this cocktail is seasonality and custom
flavors. It must be stressed that this is a seasonal concept and it
should be made with whatever produce is peaking the week you make it.