Last year's Manahattan – Imbibe. Barrel-ageing can impart finesse and complexity to spirits, and now a number of bars are trying to do the same with fully-formed cocktails.
Clinton Cawood talks to those who say wood is good Give bartenders access to small, affordable oak barrels and they’re going to age things in them. This is an immutable law of nature that we weren’t aware of until recently. It’s everywhere now. From the pioneers of barrel-aged cocktails, Artesian at The Langham, through to The Savoy, via Nightjar’s bestselling aged Piña Colada (pictured, left). ‘We try to have it ageing for at least a month in a 30-litre barrel before selling any, which we usually do over the course of a month,’ says Nightjar’s Edmund Weil.
Alex Kratena at Artesian says that his experiments in ageing cocktails and spirits began about two years ago and he points out that he’s been seeing the ageing process in various forms in London bars for some time. Barrel Aged Cocktails. Latest Drink Recipe Hot Toddies Suck – Long Live the Hot Toddy Here’s a fun little game you can play.
Go ask someone – preferably someone not wearing arm garters or quoting Jerry Thomas – and ask them what’s in a Hot Toddy. The more people you try this game with, the better, because you’re going to get a lot of varied answers. But I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that you’re gonna hear a few of the following ingredients: Lemon… ginger… honey… cinnamon sticks… cloves… cayenne pepper. The funny thing is that if you look at the earliest Hot Toddy recipe as it appears in Jerry Thomas’ 1862 Bar-Tender’s Guide, it contains none of these things. 1 tea-spoonful of fine white sugar 1 wine-glass of brandyDissolve the sugar in a little boiling water, add the brandy, and pour boiling water into the glass until it is two-thirds full Grate a little nutmeg on top.
Water, sugar, brandy, nutmeg. So, sure. 7 Do-It-Yourself Drink Projects. Isn't there something about springtime (what with its theme of rebirth), that just makes you want to try something new?
You know, decide to finally tackle that hobby or at-home craft project you've been thinking about doing forever but never actually made the time for. For drink enthusiasts the challenge may simply be deciding which one to start with. A Lesson in How to Make Bitters. You almost hate to hear it: Making your own bitters at home?
Yeah, it's actually not that difficult. Because there's no excuse now — and you start to think, how could I not have been doing this all along? Ideas for black cherry-ginger, or coffee bean-cocoa nib bitters rush in. If you're tapped in to the cocktail zeitgeist, odds are you already have bitters on the brain. (If you're not, here's what you need to know: Classic cocktails? "They're a kind of late-blooming extension of the classic cocktail trend that peaked about five years ago, and the more widespread grassroots, farm-to-table phenomenon that's taken place in the industry more recently," explains Dan Carlson, bartender at New York restaurant Saul.
At Saul, and its sister establishment The Vanderbilt, you'll find housemade bitters without boundaries: Saigon cinnamon and walnut; strawberry and Indian fennel. OK, so let's backtrack for a second. Amazon. How To Make Bitters « SpiritsAndCocktails.com. I’ve been asked many times, by many people about the “mystery” of making bitters, and today, finally, I am going to address this question.
Before we go into how to make bitters, let’s have a very brief discussion of what bitters are. Bitters were originally used as medicine, curing pretty much every ailment under the sun but usually centered around issues with digestion (have you ever added Angostura bitters to soda or ginger ale to help settle your stomach? If you haven’t, give it a go; it works.) Unlike today, bitters were usually taken by themselves, and it wasn’t until the late 1700′s that people started adding them to spirits (in themselves a cure-all) giving birth to the cocktail (and cocktail bitters). Today, cocktail bitters are added to one’s tipple to introduce subtle new flavors and help integrate all of the components of the libation together, offering up a much more complex and interesting cocktail. The first mystery of making bitters is quite simple: there is no mystery.
Saigon Cinnamon & Walnut Bitters. Combine all of the ingredients except for the water and simple syrup in a large (50-70 ounces) sealable jar.
Shake vigorously once a day for two weeks and taste the mixture intermittently along the way so you can become more sensitive to how the flavor changes. Put a few drops on your hands and rub them together, the cup your nose and mouth and inhale. Others insist on putting a few drops in a glass of soda water or tasting them directly on your tongue, but I've found that the former dilutes the flavor too much and the latter destroys your palette for about 20 minutes. For the third and fourth week, pay closer attention to your tasting notes — I usually hit gold around three and a half weeks, more than five and you're really almost past the point of no return.
Once you're achieved the desired flavor, strain the mixture through a chinois lined with 5-8 layers of cheesecloth into a nonreactive container. 10 Secrets to Perfect Liquor Infusions Slideshow. How To Make Your Own Ginger Beer. Latest Drink Recipe Hot Toddies Suck – Long Live the Hot Toddy.
