A weblog detailing cocktails, spirits, liqueurs, barware, bars, and bitters. Maintained by Michael Dietsch, a hobbyist mixer in Providence, R.I.
From the monthly archives:
photograph by Jennifer Hess
The 1948 first edition of David A. Embury’s The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks. This thing usually sells for upwards of $150-200, but Jen got it for a steal, from an online vendor who apparently didn’t know what he/she had. Although the dust jacket is missing, the condition of the book itself is excellent, with just a few scratches on the cover and a stamp on the edge of the book. But no tears, dogears, or obvious wear on the pages. Bargain!
TweetFor my friend’s birthday party a couple of weekends ago, I wanted to take a special cocktail. One that I’ve been wanting to try at home is the Ward 8–which is rye, lemon and orange juices, and grenadine–but Jen’s allergic to orange juice, so I’ve never mixed it up here. However, I thought it might go over well at a party.
Rather than trucking oranges and lemons, though, I decided to premix the juices and grenadine the morning of the party, mix, and bottle them. For the grenadine, I used Paul Clarke‘s recipe from Imbibe magazine. I used equal parts Pom and superfine sugar (half a cup each), which I shook together in bottle. I added an ounce of pomegranate molasses (which we found at Whole Foods) and shook it some more. (Paul, by the way, has a couple of other variants on grenadine recipes on his blog, if you want other ideas.)
Ward 8 recipes come in varying proportions depending on the taste of the mixer. I looked at a number of recipes and decided on these proportions:
Technique: Shake over ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.
To scale this up to party measurements, I had to do a little math. Since I was planning to add the rye and ice at the party and then shake, I didn’t add any water to the mix. (If you’re fully premixing a cocktail to prechill and then serve later–that is, if you’re mixing up the base spirit and all the modifiers and you’re not planning to shake it over ice just before serving–it’s good to add water since you won’t have the water you’d get from the ice.)
A 750-ml bottle of spirit equals just over 25 ounces, and I was using an 8-4-3-1 ratio of rye-lemon-orange-grenadine. I ignored an ounce from the rye and came up with these proportions:
Technique: Shake the last three ingredients in a 24-oz. bottle.
When ready to serve, pour equal parts rye and juice-grenadine mix into a shaker with ice. Shake and strain into a glass.
TweetCharbay wins!
If you’ve turned on the teevee at all this month, you know that Cali got hit hard by a deep freeze that wiped out its citrus crops. To the tune of $800-million bucks, it seems.
Bad news for those of us who like some fresh juices in our cocktails. But not everyone’s so unlucky.
Just days before the cold snap, Charbay‘s master distiller, Marko Karakasevic, picked up four tons of Meyer lemons from the grower. Charbay distills its fruited vodkas using real fruits instead of chemical compounds that mimic fruit flavor, so it’s important to get good produce. Without this shipment, Charbay wouldn’t have been able to produce its Meyer Lemon vodka this year.
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