A Dash of Bitters

A weblog detailing cocktails, spirits, liqueurs, barware, bars, and bitters. Maintained by Michael Dietsch, a writer and hobbyist mixer in Brooklyn.

Category Archives: Gin

MxMo: Hair of the devil

August 13th, 2007

mxmo18-orangeIt’s fitting that this month’s MxMo should be about orange. Some of the first mixed drinks I ever quaffed had orange juice as an ingredient. In fact, I’ll let you in on an embarrassing secret, one that will no doubt get me 86′d from any bar that any of you might happen to tend or haunt… one of those orangey drinks was <cough>fzynvl</cough>. What can I say?! I was 14!

As an adult I traded up to the screwdriver, but it wasn’t long before that just seemed boring. I mean, voddy and OJ? Let me tell ya something, buddy–that crap’s just watered-down fruit juice.

And now, unfortunately, although I love orange juice, I seldom mix with it. Mrs. Bitters is allergic, I’m afraid. She can have neither orange nor grapefruit. Luckily, other citrus is clear, and that’s a good thing because without lemon or lime at my disposal, I wouldn’t bother with this site.

But that brings us to today’s MxMo, hosted by the zodiacal intoxicant herself, Gwen. The theme, orange.

Still more on gin tasting

July 14th, 2007

I’ve finally made the time to watch Robert Hess’s interview with Sean Harrison, master distiller of Plymouth Gin.

Harrison recommends a tasting method that I’d like to try

You’ve got to sit down in a bar, take a gin, add some water to it–a one-to-one with water–and get your nose in it and have a taste…. If you really want to get in to it, line every single gin up there is in the bar, put it in to a wine glass… and one-to-one with water and try it.

The entire interview is good, though, as he talks about developing and marketing gin; he’s also forthright that the flavor profiles of different gins mean you might use one gin for a certain drink and a different gin for another drink.

Antedote for a long, hot summer

July 10th, 2007

Here’s a crisp, refreshing drink for summer afternoons. I’m certain this isn’t original, but I can’t remember where I ganked the idea from.

Lemon Cooler

  • 2 oz. gin
  • 1 oz. limoncello (preferably homemade)
  • 1 oz. lime juice

Technique: Build in a tall glass, top with tonic water, and stir gently. Dash in some bitters, too, if you’re so inclined.

Soixante Seize

June 24th, 2007

I don’t know how many variants there are on the French 75, but they all seem to take a name that involves fiddling with the number: French 75, French 74, French 76, et cetera. This weekend’s drink is no exception.

I started with the beautiful bottle of St-Germain elderflower liqueur that Jen bought me on Friday. Because we commemorate our Friday wedding every week with a tradition we call Fizzy Friday, I wanted a drink with champagne. Luckily, a French 77 was among the drinks listed in the cute little booklet that hangs from the neck of the St-Germain bottle.

French 77? 78?Created by Simon Difford, brand consultant for St-Germain and well-known drinks scribbler, the French 77 calls for a shot of St-Germain and a quarter shot of lemon juice poured into a chilled glass and topped with champagne. (Image at right by Jennifer Hess.)

This wasn’t quite what I had in mind, though, mainly because I wanted some gin. I also didn’t want to chill the glassware. Although I’ve no problem chucking cocktail glasses into the freezer, my champagne flutes are a little fragile and I’m more than a little clumsy. Filling glasses with ice water never quite gets them cold enough for my tastes.

So I decided to shake everything but the champagne. Had I just won the Super Bowl or the Mega Millions jackpot, I’d have been happy to shake the fizzy and spray it around the backyard, but such was not the case. After shaking the gin, lemon juice, and St-Germain, I lifted a sample out with a bar spoon and realized two things:

  1. This would be a tasty drink on its own.
  2. And, oh yeah, it already is a tasty drink on its own.

(Even having read Anita and Cameron’s post earlier Friday, I didn’t connect the dots until sampling the pre-fizzy form of our drink.)

Soixante Seize

  • 2 oz. gin (I used Plymouth)
  • 1 oz. fresh-squeezed lemon juice
  • ½ oz. St-Germain liqueur

Technique: Shake over cracked ice and fine-strain into a champagne flute. Top with champagne.

In this formulation, the St-Germain is perhaps too subtle. I mixed again with a bit more of the liqueur but didn’t take note of the proportions. Equal amounts of lemon and liqueur would work best for this, I think, especially since the lemon and elderflower meld so well.

Be sure to read Anita and Cameron’s post on Le Bourget to see their thoughts on the lemon/elderflower marriage. Also, if you’ve not seen the lovely St-Germain bottle, check their photoset for this drink.

Gin, bathtub not included

June 10th, 2007

As promised, Jen and I tasted a sampling of seven gins, in honor of the 40th anniversary of the death of Dorothy Parker. These were remnants of bottles bought and mostly drunk over the last several months, so there was no real logic to what gins we were sampling. In alphabetical order, we tasted

  • Aviation
  • Bombay
  • Bulldog
  • Hendricks
  • Junipero
  • Plymouth
  • Tanqueray

Gin tastingThe gin was served neat, at room temperature, in identical glassware. It was a blind tasting for Jen, but not for me since I poured the gins and kept them in an order where I’d be able to identify them later. We took rough notes and in tasting the gins, we came to realize some of the shortcomings of the methodology I used.

First, I don’t think serving the gins neat was the right choice. The Hendricks, for example, was tighter at room temp than it was, later, with a slight chill. With the chill, it released the rose and cucumber nuances for which it is well known. None of those came out at room temperature. For this reason, I’m a little reluctant to write up our tasting notes. I’m just not sure how faithful they are to each gin’s character.

When the New York Times held a gin tasting, back in early May, the tasters chose to sample gins in martini form, and this seems to me a wise choice.

Also, I wonder whether seven gins were too many to taste at one time. I think comparing three or four at one time might help fight palate fatigue.

I am eager to start doing regular taste tests for various spirits. I feel like I learn more about the characteristics of spirits in comparison than I do when sipping an Aviation or an Old Fashioned. So we’ll revisit this soon and taste-test various martinis.

MxMo Quatorze: Champagne

April 16th, 2007

mxmo14-champagneFor this month’s Mixology Monday, I decided to try something new–the Plum Royale.

I came to this with a melange of inspiration:

  • Anita’s post on the Rosemary Five got me thinking about pairing fruit and spice in a champagne drink.
  • A day after I read her post, I had a Gin Royale at brunch and decided to riff on that.
  • Finally, Jen brought home some beautiful black plums.

Plum Royale

photograph by Jennifer Hess

So with three ingredients already in mind–gin, champagne, and plum–I had to find my spice.

In Googling around to find inspiration, I came across an article about Plymouth gin that discussed, among other things, the botanicals in Plymouth–angelica root, cardamom pods, coriander seeds, lemon peel, orange peel, orris root, and juniper berries. Hm, cardamom. Turns out that cardamom and plums are a popular pairing, so I chose to go that way.

I made up a variation on this Cardamom Lime Syrup, sans lime this time. I also made a plum puree. The puree, gin, and syrup formed the basis for the drink, which I topped with champagne.

Delicious.

Plum Royale (a.k.a. the Eve Plum)

makes two drinks

  • 4 oz. Plymouth gin
  • 2 oz. plum puree
  • 1 oz. cardamom syrup
  • Mint sprig, for garnish

Technique: Shake over ice and divide between two champagne flutes. Top with champagne and garnish with a sprig of mint. (The mint is more for presentation than for flavor, so feel free to leave it out.)

Cocktails ‘n’ ersters

February 19th, 2007

What do you drink with oysters on the half shell? Jen and I usually have wine, normally a Muscadet, but we recently found ourselves with BeauSoleil oysters but no appropriate wine.

So Jen challenged me to come up with an appropriate cocktail to pair with oysters. We wanted something crisp, aromatic, and lightly briny. We had no olives for a martini, but I remembered a drink I had made some time ago and wanted to revisit: the Paez.

This drink originated at Little Branch in Manhattan, but I first heard of it through Paul Clarke’s blog, Cocktail Chronicles. A fine-grained sea salt is important here because it blends well with the liquids, and is subtle in the drink–almost unnoticeable, but present enough to marry drink and bivalve in a pleasing way.

Paez

  • 2½ oz. gin
  • ½ oz. dry vermouth
  • 6 dashes Peychaud’s bitters
  • pinch sea salt

Technique: Stir with ice, strain into chilled cocktail glass, garnish with lemon twist.

A Dash of Bitters

A weblog detailing cocktails, spirits, liqueurs, barware, bars, and bitters. Maintained by Michael Dietsch, a writer and hobbyist mixer in Brooklyn.