#40. Paradise Cocktail

I had to go back and listen to the podcast to remember what this drink was. I remembered that it involved gin, and I remembered squeezing the juice out of an orange, but couldn't remember what it was called.

Pretty good, though. I remembered that it was pretty good. Equal parts gin, apricot brandy, and orange juice. I probably overdid it a little on the orange juice--i just juiced an orange and that's the amount we used. It was nice, though. Orange and gin is becoming one of my favorite combinations, and the apricot brandy is a pleasant additional sweetener.

So basically, sure. I'd drink it again. Why not? "Paradise" might be overselling it a bit, though, but hey. Hugo had to move a lot of drinks. You can't blame him for a little hyperbole.

#39. The Dutchess Cocktail

Question: Is this an intentional misspelling, to suggest that the duchess is Dutch? or is it just a mistake? I suppose we'll never know.

1:1:1 sweet vermouth, dry vermouth, absinthe. The absinthe makes it palatable, but neither the Bammer nor I enjoyed it much. Strong vermouth aftertaste, and although the absinthe is nice, it's not a drink with much complexity. There are a lot of things in this book that are basically flat and sweet, which is uninspiring but not so bad. Flat and dry seems kind of pointless.

#38. B. V. D. Cocktail

This one is out of sequence because I forgot about it. It is worth forgetting. It is terrible.

Equal parts French vermouth, gin, and rum. What? It's dreadful. It doesn't sound like a good idea, and it isn't a good idea, and you ought not drink it.

#37. After Dinner Cocktail

1:1 apricot brandy and curacao, plus lime juice and lime rind. Pretty good! Apricot brandy and curacao are both kind of mediocre drinks but the combination is pleasant enough and the lime pushes aside the bulk of the artificial taste that comes with low-end spirits. (Seriously: I'd get nice ones if I saw any for sale. But there isn't much of a market for apricot brandy, apparently.)

Pretty good. And, the first drink for the first practice podcast, "The New Old Fashioned." Look for it soon at an iTunes near you!

#36. Daiguiri Cocktail [SIC]

Rum, grenadine, lime. Done. The only question about this one is the loopy spelling. What's that about? No idea. Get it together, Hugo Ensslin, early 20th century bartender.

It's a classic, though. Just the right ratio of rum, sugar, and citrus. I don't know why the world needs so many variations. You don't need them all. Just drink daiquiris. Excuse me--daiguiris. Strike that. Just go with daiquiri.

#35. Oppenheim Cocktail

2:1:1 Bourbon, grenadine, Italian vermouth.

Yeah, this one is pretty much cough syrup. I know we've said that before, about other drinks, but this one really is the winner in the contest to taste the most possible like cough syrup. Congratulations, Oppenheim! Next time I get a cold, I'm just going to drink a couple of you and not worry about big cough syrup getting any more of my hard earned money. You hear that, big cough syrup? I'm onto your game.

Seriously, this wasn't very good, but anything that measures grenadine in units larger than dashes is going to be pretty suspect. This was pretty suspect. Skip it.

#34. September Morn

Rum, juice of half a lime, three dashes grenadine, and an egg white.

So, yeah--a daiquiri with an egg white. Because your standard daiquiri simply wasn't eggy enough. What? You didn't feel like egg whites were missing from your daiquiri? Yeah, I agree with you. I do not understand quite how this one came to be. Skip it.

Distraction; PUNCH in NYTimes

Pretty neat article about punch.

I wanna meet this guy and talk about punch with him, considering how many punches I have to make in order to complete this book.

PUNCH

#33. Blackthorn

1:1 sweet vermouth to sloe gin.

I have a question: does anyone make a good sloe gin? I'm not criticizing the drink. I'm talking about the fact that the only sloe gin I can find is a bottle of Leroux that was collecting dust in the discount corner. It seems like the majority of liqueurs leave me only two choices: Leroux or Hiram Walker. I assume both are highly sweetened and chemical-ized.

G said that the Blackthorn was somewhere in between candy and cough syrup. The sloe gin has a bit of a fake cherry quality, and an aftertaste, which I think explains the cough syrup feel. It's not bad though. It's hard to know what to do with a description like, "oh, kind of like cough syrup, but in a good way," but that's more or less the way it is.

Not a bad drink, but I need to find somebody else's sloe gin to really know. Otherwise I'll just assume that sloe gin is kind of an also-ran spirit.

Difford's recipe for the Blackthorn is nothing like this at all. It's much more like an Appetizer--all Difford's recipes with Blackthorn in the name have gin and Dubonnet. The color and taste are extremely similar, which makes sense. None of the ingredients are the same, per se, but all the ingredients are similar. Both are simply gin, plus a sweetener, plus an apertif wine of some sort.

#32. Appetizer No. IV

Another Dubonnet appetizer: 1:1 gin and Dubonnet with a dash of absinthe.

Pretty nice! I am amazed every time by how far a dash of absinthe goes. It's a lovely addition to the already tasty Appetizer No. 1, giving it just a slight licorice edge. The Jackson is probably the nicest of the gin and Dubonnet cocktails sampled so far, but No. IV is a close second. Recommended.

Not listed by Difford's, but then, he's light on absinthe cocktails in general. Ask for this one around town! Bring back the Appetizer No. IV!

#31. Millionaire Cocktail 1

This made me feel like an absolute Millionaire. Or maybe more of a thousandaire. I mean, it's fine, but you'd expect more expensive ingredients, wouldn't you?

Rum, apricot brandy, sloe gin, grenadine, lime juice. Recipe calls for Jamaican rum, which we didn't have on hand. (Don't tell the booze police!)

This tastes exactly like fruit punch. It scarcely even tastes like it's a drink that you are drinking. It is the color of fruit punch, too. I feel like this is not so much for millionaires as nine year olds. Millionaire nine year olds? Richie Rich? Millionaire Cocktail 1, I rechristen you the Richie Rich. Please put on your short-pants tuxedo, and enjoy.

#30. Saxon Cocktail

Further adventures in nonsense names: The Saxon. Half a lime, a couple dashes of grenadine, Bacardi (specified by name as some sort of product placement arrangement), and orange peel.

Here's my opinion on this drink: how many different variations on rum plus citrus plus sugar do we really need? A dozen? A thousand? A dozen thousand?

Yes, that's right; we need a dozen thousand, and that's why we've got the Saxon. Which of these ingredients do you think makes it the saxon? The Caribbean rum? The Mediterranean fruits?

This is a fine drink but you have more room in your head for trivia than I if you see any value in keeping all these nearly-identical drinks straight in your brain.

#29. Jackson Cocktail

Here's a nice one: One-to-one orange gin and Dubonnet, plus orange bitters. I assumed, based on previous infusion experiments, that there was no reason not to just leave some oranges in some gin for a long time and call that orange gin. Correct me if I'm mistaken! Good thing no one reads this. Otherwise I'd probably get corrected all the time. ("What? The Golden Bronx Cocktail is my favorite! I drink them every afternoon at the Gentleman's Club!")

Anyway, orange gin, Dubonnet, orange bitters. Lovely! I enjoyed gin and Dubonnet previously, and the extra citrus is understated and delicious. Note to self: make more orange gin, so as to make more Jackson Cocktails.

Difford's doesn't even include orange gin as a possible ingredient. For shame! For shame!

Caught up!

That does it for the August / September backlog. Now, onwards and upwards! Hooray!

#28. Champagne Cocktail

We had some champagne because neighbor A brought some to drink with strawberry basil sorbet. Strawberry basil sorbet and champagne is not in this book, but it is delicious. Note to everyone: get some strawberry basil sorbet, and some champagne, and combine, as it is delicious.

Ensslin's champagne cocktail is angostura bitters, a lump of sugar, orange peel, lemon peel, and champagne. This is a pointless drink, so I'm going to add a new tag: pointless. Look: you're already drinking champagne. Drink the champagne and be happy. Or, if you must add something to it, fine. Get some sorbet. This other stuff is just silly and a needless delay between you and your champagne.

Difford's version is similar but involves cognac too. He doesn't see much point in it either, I might add.

#27. Golden Bronx Cocktail

Ah, yes. Some more egg, please.

We drank this one purely in the name of efficiency. The Bronx, you may remember, was 2:1:1 gin, sweet vermouth, and dry vermouth, with orange juice. The Golden Bronx is the same, plus an EGG YOLK. I can only assume that this was someone's idea of breakfast, or a health tonic, or a masochistic trick. It certainly couldn't have been because someone had a Bronx, which is a pretty reasonable drink, and then decided that it needed an egg yolk for that extra something special.

We only made it because we had an egg yolk left over from the Beauty Spot. And so that we could cross it off the list.

I don't remember enjoying this all that much. Mostly, I just remember thinking over and over again about how I was drinking an egg yolk. I see no reason to try this again.

#26. Beauty Spot

Two-thirds gin to one-third grenadine. Oh, and an egg white.

I believe this drink was the beginning of my downfall, but I'm well on the way to recovery so I forgive you, Beauty Spot. That is an absolute huge amount of grenadine. I've been making my own with straight sugar and either pomegranate juice or pomegranate and cherry, and I'm pretty sure I use slightly less sugar than generally recommended. But even that way, a 2:1 ratio of booze to syrup is a sweet mess.

And the egg, yes. The egg white. On the one hand, it adds some nice froth. On the other hand, that's a lot of egg. With no soda water or anything to cut things a little, it starts to feel like an awful lot of egg. Or maybe that's purely psychological? And I'm just not over thinking that drinking raw egg is a strange thing to do? Not that strange a thought, considering that there is no question but that drinking raw egg is kind of an odd thing to do.

Not a terrible drink, mostly because it's too sweet and nothing that's too sweet can be all that bad. But, pretty unlikely to be a part of my regular repertoire.

Where Were We?

September got away from me, is what happened. A final night in August (or maybe September?) found me drinking too many of these concoctions and suffering the obvious consequences. The worst thought is that, since they went undocumented, I may have to drink them again. We shall see.

But, no, this is not one of the millions of abandoned blogs. I deleted my abandoned blogs already so as to limit my blog footprint. It's just the right thing to to.