As a cocktail hobbyist I am extremely fortunate to live near New York City – there is almost no limit on the obscure bottles you can find there, and lately some of the more anticipated bottlings, like Creme Yvette, are launched in NYC first before the rest of the country can access them. Due to arcane (inane?) liquor delivery laws, you’re generally completely screwed if you’re a cocktail enthusiast living in Nebraska, or Idaho, or even Pennsylvania or New Jersey. I happen to live in NJ but the PATH train is my transport to the land of milk, honey, and mezcal. But sometimes even I hit a wall, that occasional bottle that some distributor has the gall to not sell in NY (please note the sarcasm) and suddenly I feel the pain for my fellow enthusiasts who are left waiting for that trip to NY or San Francisco to pick up these elusive products.
Wasn’t planning on doing two posts today but stumbled on this and had to react. If you’re learning to make drinks at home and wondering about the order in which to put things in your shaker, watch this video and then do the exact opposite.
A few links for today:
Life and sounds of a pig
Electronic music artist Matthew Herbert is trying to make an album based on sounds from the life of an industrially-raised pig to raise awareness of where our food comes from. PETA over-reacts.
Illegal Infusions
Bars in California are beginning to be penalized for house infusions, let’s hope this doesn’t spread.
Drinking in the future
Alex Day, formerly of Death and Company, gives interesting insight on why suspenders and handlebar mustaches may no longer be “necessary” in finer drinking establishments.
On the lookout for a new beer to try (no, it’s not all fancy cocktails in this household) Laura came across a gem, Brooklyn Black Ops Stout, a limited release stout from Brooklyn Brewery that is aged in bourbon barrels for 4 months. It has some of the typical chocolate/vanilla/coffee presence that a good stout often carries but felt a bit lighter than most stouts to me, perhaps due to the strong presence of the bourbon which provides a noticeable alcohol tang, cutting through, yet still in harmony, with the other flavors. The beer is bottled in a champagne-style magnum, but that’s not the only characteristic it shares with the bubbly wine – this beer has champagne yeast added to the bottle after aging has occurred (which leaves the beer flat) and re-ferments in the bottle, giving you the joy of the champagne pop when you open it and probably contributing to the lighter feel mentioned earlier. Another characteristic they share – this beer is 11% ABV, do yourself a favor and drink it slower than I did.
The vast majority of gin consumed in this country today and for essentially the last 100 years or so falls under the category of London Dry – Tanqueray, Beefeater, Bombay are the most popular and recognizable. This popularity can be directly attributable to the fact that a London Dry is generally the go-to gin for some of the more popular gin-based drinks, the Gin and Tonic and Martini, as the crispness from the juniper and citrus plays nicely with the flavors of tonic water and vermouth alike. Plymouth gin, a classic gin hailing from Plymouth, England and a category all on it’s own, is regaining some traction in the U.S. at more high-end drinking establishments as its smoothness and higher proportion of citrus notes make it as good in a Martini as it is in a sour or other citrus-based cocktail (don’t waste it in a Gin and Tonic, though, it can’t stand up to the an ingredient as powerful as tonic water). There are a whole crop of new boutique-style gins earning some popularity, but the vast majority of these are variations, albeit occasionally some highly creative ones, of a London Dry or Plymouth-style gin.
