Know Thyself

One of the reasons I haven't posted much on this blog in recent months is that I've not been inspired.  The more I drink, the more I realize that there are but a few truly exquisite drinks.  After that, there are thousands that are "really very good," but these never approach the others.  With a few exceptions, the best drinks are the simplest and the oldest.  So I've not been routinely inspired because it's a rare event that one encounters a brilliant new drink. 

However, I was inspired by Jamie Boudreau, who posted on his Old Fashioned, cubed and syruped last October, to fashion a complex drink on a classic framework.  The first iteration was amazing.  I then made the mistake of upgrading the liquors to premium grade (Rittenhouse and Martel VSOP); this mistake drowned out the subtlety of the original, so I dialed it back again...


skinny (slightly less than) 3/4 oz Sazerac 6 year rye
skinny 3/4 oz Cruzan Single Barrel rum
skinny 3/4 oz Paul Masson brandy
1 tsp 2:1 demarara syrup
16 drops Smith-house Berber bitters

Combine and quickly stir with ice, making sure not to dilute the mixture too much. 

This cocktail is worthy of consideration with some of the greats, and could fill in for a Sazerac, Old Fashioned, or Manhattan as your daily tipple (that is, if you make some of my Berber bitters for yourself). 

Berber bitters

In a previous post, I mentioned my first attempt at homemade bitters. The incarnated concoction was, at once, haphazard and finely tuned. The haphazard came at the beginning; the fine tuning came at the end. Let me explain.

A week before I left for Africa, I placed more-or-less arbitrary amounts of several common suprasaharan spices in 95% ethanol (Everclear), and I let these steep for about a month.  In general, I placed about 1 fluid-oz-worth of substrate in approximately 2 oz of Everclear, added a dash of water, and let it be.  Herbs and spices were cloves, coriander seeds, cinnamon sticks, cardamom seeds, whole and crushed peppercorns, whole cumin, ground allspice, and ground paprika.  When I returned from abroad, the solutions were ready for extraction.  

I assembled a homemade Buchner vacuum filtration apparatus to separate the liquids from the particulate matter, and I isolated the infused solutions.  Next, I had two considerations: first, the flavor profile I wanted to create by combining the solutions; second, the fact that I had severe tinkering limitations due to the finite (and small) volumes of the infusions.  

After a little experimentation, I set my course and settled on this ratio:

 

*The base of nearly all bitters is a combination of infusions created from bitter barks and roots. I use a solution created by combining equal parts of quassia, calamus, and catechu in 95% ethanol for 1 week.    

The result was a delightfully complex and flavorful bitter solution which solidly stands its ground against the traditional players.