Saturday noontime drinks

Well, I have returned from my safari with virtually no physical and only limited psychological damage, and my parents are in town this weekend to welcome me home and to return my cats.

At lunchtime today, I offered my mom a rum drink.  I've only recently figured out what my mother's mixed-drink tastes are, and so I endeavored to make her a cocktail that she wouldn't hate.  (A tall order, I've found.)  So I made up a cocktail which will henceforth be called:

Mid-day in Georgia

3/4 oz light rum (Bacardi)
3/4 oz amber rum (Flor de Caña 7 year)
1/2 oz Jamaica rum (Myers)
1/4 peach, sliced
1/4 oz demarara syrup
1 dash Angostura bitters
2 dashes Fee Brothers' peach bitters
~1/8 oz homemade grenadine


Muddle peach slices with all ingredients except grenadine.  Shake with ice.  Double strain into a cocktail glass, and anoint the inside of the rim with a line of grenadine.  Garnish with a slice of peach.

Perfect for a warm summer afternoon.

And Mom loved it.  Whew.

Kenyan cocktails

As most of you know (by most, I mean all, since only my mother and I read this blog--Hi Mom!), I've been in east Africa for the last couple of weeks.  That little corner of the world is not known for its cocktails, so I stuck mostly to beer for its guaranteed sterility.  (Allow me to recommend Tusker Malt for those who may stumble across it.) My first night in Masai Mara, at the Mara Sopa lodge, I broke down and had an Old Fashioned because I saw that the bar...

...had Four Roses bourbon (the first non-Tennessee, non-Scotch whisk[e]y I saw in Kenya).


The next night, I approached the good bartender and university-trained mixologist, Wachira, who suggested that I order a Kenyan cocktail; I obliged and asked him to make me his best.  He obliged with the Sopa Special.


2 oz light rum (Kenya Cane)
~ 2 oz fresh mango juice
~ 2 oz fresh passion fruit juice
1 dash of grenadine


Combine, and stir.  Garnish with a lime wedge; serve with a straw.

Well, you really can't go wrong with rum plus fruit juices, and the fresh mango and passion fruit juices really bring the East African theme to the forefront.  This was a delicious drink that I will remember fondly.  Thanks, Wachira!

Syrups

Sugar is used in nearly every mixed drink in one form or another, whether by itself or incorporated via a liqueur, etc. In the distant past, it would be combined in its solid form with spirits and water. Unfortunately, our granulated sugar doesn't dissolve very readily in cold spirits with very little water, so syrups are widely utilized.

I nearly exclusively use syrups over granulated sugar (with exceptions including a sugar cube for a champagne cocktail or a sugar rim coating in a brandy crusta). When I make drinks with clear spirits, I usually use simple syrup; with brown spirits, I often use demarara syrup; and grenadine and raspberry syrup find their way into many recipes. These latter demonstrate that you can flavor your syrup with anything you want: cf. Berber syrup. You can make syrups with whatever ratio of sugar to water you want, but if you go much higher than 2.5:1, the sugar will precipiate into crystals at the bottom of the container. Go any less than 1:1, and the mouthfeel is unpleasantly thin. That said, this is how I do it:

Simple syrup

1 cup granulated sugar
100 mL (seriously) water
Combine in a saucepan. Raise to a boil while stirring; boil for several seconds. Store in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to several weeks.

Tuesday night cocktail hour(s) (cont. vi)

Mackenzie's second drink was the Clover Club, introduced to us by Kirk Estopinal at Cure. It's a classic and basically a gin daisy with egg white.

2 oz London dry gin (Plymouth)
1 oz fresh lemon juice
~3/4 oz house grenadine or raspberry syrup
1 egg white
Combine all but gin and 1/4 oz syrup and shake. Then add gin and shake with ice. Place remaining 1/4 oz of syrup in the very bottom of a cocktail glass, then strain mixture into the glass, layering it over the syrup which sits prettily at the bottom.

This is a very nice drink, indeed. Its acidity is softened by the egg white, and the texture is beautiful. I screwed it up the first go-round and then winged the correction, so the volume of grenadine is an estimate, but it's close enough. Try it yourself and see what you think!