Onwards, to the first drink of the night.

#1

• 2oz Hangar One Raspberry vodka
• .75oz fresh lime juice
• .5oz St. Germain
• 3 dashes Peychauds bitters

Combine all with ice. Shake and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

#2

• 1.5oz Hangar One Raspberry vodka
• .75oz fresh lime juice
• .33oz Fernet Branca
• .33oz Clear Creek Pear liqueur
• 1 touch of rose water

Combine all with ice. For the rose water, I dipped a straw in the jar and then swirled it in the shaker. It is powerful stuff. Shake and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

I’m sure your Thanksgiving table looked just like mine: decorations, sweet potatoes, turkey, cranberries, you know, all the Thanksgiving fixings. Oh yeah. I left off the bottles of Laird’s Straight Apple Brandy, Angostura, and Angostura orange bitters. What? You didn’t have those sitting on you table? I’m going to give you a reason right now to have those on the table at Christmas.

You see, I’m a simple guy. I drink my eggnog from the jar because I don’t want to dirty a glass. I’d also rather figure out a cocktail from something I already have on hand than buy something else, which is what happened here. I was already buying Martinelli’s Sparkling Apple Cider for Thanksgiving and I just didn’t want to buy one more thing like champagne. It might be a lame rationale, but it’s mine.

I based this cocktail off of the classic Champagne Cocktail which has a sugar cube, Angostura bitters, and a lemon twist. I wanted my cocktail to scream apple and spice. The apple cider is sweet enough, so I ditched the sugar cube and added the orange bitters because orange is a good flavor to mix with apple.

The Martinelli’s Cocktail

• .75oz Laird’s Straight Apple Brandy
• 3 dashes Angostura bitters
• 1 dash Angostura orange bitters
• Top with Martinelli’s Sparkling Apple Cider

Add the apple brandy and bitters to the coupe or flute and then top with the Martinelli’s. (Make sure your Martinelli’s is very cold.)

This is an extremely easy drink to make. (Remember, I like easy.) I was making these at the table as I was refilling glasses. It isn’t very alcoholic, so you can drink a number of them as you spend time at the table. It has great apple flavor, good spice, and uses one of the most classic American spirits, apple brandy.

The Lucky Rita serves 181,333

• 2,125 gallons of Margaritaville Gold Tequila
• 708 gallons of Triple Sec
• 5,667 gallons of Margaritaville Margarita Mix and Lemon-X sour mix
• 22,667 Lime Wedges

Serve over 9 days. October 14th to October 23rd coinciding with the 7th annual Margaritaville street party.

Now, I’m no gigantic margarita expert, but that recipe looks like a tanker truck full of liquid crap. The numbers work out to a vat of 8500 gallons, with .046 gallons (or 5.9oz) of Lucky Rita per drink (not counting ice dilution of course.) While the press release doesn’t get into the nitty gritty of making the drink, I’m guessing they are mixing all of the liquid together and then just adding ice when they serve the drinks. However they serve it, it will still taste like a syrupy cup o’ crap with a ratio of 2:1, mixer to spirits.

That said, while I despise the margaritas pumped out by Jimmy’s camp, I still want to be that guy. He makes millions off of frozen jalapeno poppers and coconut shrimp. Yes. I will make disgusting drinks for millions of dollars.

Just to highlight different between how we make our drinks, let’s just scale up a proper margarita to serve 181,333.

Using the margarita recipe of

• 2oz tequila
• 1.33oz Cointreau
• .66oz lime juice

we can figure out exactly how to supply almost the entire city of Tacoma (population 198,397) with margaritas.

The Tacoma Rita serves 181,333

• 4,248 gallons of tequila
• 2,832 gallons of Cointreau
• 1,416 gallons of lime juice
• 181,333 lime wedges (because everything drink should have a garnish and I don’t like to half ass things like they did with the Lucky Rita)

There you have it folks, a proper margarita at scale.

Note: I just realized that the way I calculated the servings of the Tacoma Rita is off. It would actually serve more than 181,333. So that means the city of Fife, WA is invited too. Sorry I don’t feel like going back and changing my numbers.

The first video features the amazing Derrick Schommer making a recipe he received from somebody on the internet. Nothing like the internet recipe-poor technique combo. Thanks Derrick.

Doing it right is the lovely Anu Apte of Rob Roy in Seattle, WA.

My batavia-arrack based cocktail.

The Concept

Using Jamie’s advice that you should build foam as a standalone cocktail, I began thinking about what I wanted to do. I knew I wanted to make something with pimento dram. I love the spice of pimento dram, but I find that in cocktails it is often a very powerful flavor that can be too much. In Ted Haigh’s Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails, the Lion’s Tail is a great cocktail, but the amount of pimento dram he suggests is overpowering. Obviously, different brands of pimento dram will taste different, but I use the (relatively) common and delicious St. Elizabeth.

I thought that a foam might be just the ticket. I followed with other ingredients that would match well with the pimento dram.

The Captain’s Two-Faced Foam

• 2 egg whites
• 2oz pimento dram (St. Elizabeth)
• 1.5oz lime juice
• 1oz water
• .25oz 1.25:1 demerara simple syrup (this is the ratio I had on hand. You can use whatever ratio you have)
• .25oz Angostura bitters

I pretty much just followed Jamie’s instructions in his video. I cut the recipe in half and used only one NO2 cartridge before I let it sit in the fridge overnight. You should be able to get about 10 drinks out of this batch size.

The Cocktails

My initial thought was to create a rum based drink to go under the foam since the pimento dram fits with rum so well. As I was browsing my bottles, I came across my bottle of Batavia-arrack. I decided that this would the base for my first drink.

• 1.5oz Batavia-arrack
• .5oz Clement Creole Shrubb
• .25oz lime juice
• 1/8oz demerara simple
• garnish with a mint sprig

I really liked this drink. It has great flavors that fit well with the pimento dram based foam. I may try tweaking this drink further to see if I can make it even better. I might add some more lime juice to see what that does to it.

Raw materials.

My wife requested a drink with ginger so out came the Domaine de Canton. As I wanted to both highlight the ginger and use up some of the vodka bottles we have, I used vodka as the base spirit.

• 1.5oz vodka
• .5oz Domaine de Canton
• 1 drop rose water

This thing was a mess. You couldn’t taste the ginger and this drink just sucked. Even with only 1 drop of rose water, it was still too much. That stuff is so powerful. I guess it was fine, but certainly not something I’d serve somebody. Stay away unless you can improve it.

My next drink was an actual rum based drink. I went with Barbancourt rum and built a standard rum based cocktail.

• 2oz Barbancourt rum
• .25oz maraschino
• .25oz lime juice

This one was also not great. It just tasted wrong. Not as bad as the vodka drink, but still not something I’d serve. This could probably work better if I played with the ratios a bit.

Sticking with the rum, I switched the rums and upped the lime juice. I thought this one would play with the sweetness of the foam better.

• 1oz El Dorado (3 year)
• .5oz Lemon Hart 151
• .75oz lime juice
• .25oz cherry Heering

This was my most successful rum based drink. It had good flavor that stood up to the strong spice of the foam. Or perhaps it was due to the fact that I’m a total sucker for Lemon Hart.

I returned to my foam the next day with a different approach. The spice should also work in the fall with brandy or calvados based cocktails. It actually worked out rather well and I just pretended that I was doing a Christmas in July thing like they do on QVC.

• 1.5oz Laird’s Apple Brandy
• .75oz Grand Marnier
• .5oz lemon juice
• Flame a lemon peel over the foam once done.

This turned out great. The apple brandy and the Grand Marnier with its cognac base fit with the spice of the pimento dram and Angostura. Feel free to give it a go once the weather turns a bit colder.

In the trenches creating drinks.

Learnings

• The foam keeps for a couple days. After that it gets thin and doesn’t hold up well in a cocktail.
• If your foam is complex and dynamic, I don’t think you need a crazy drink under it. Keep is simple and tasty.
• I prefer rapid prototyping, rather than tweaking a drink to death. I’d rather keep moving through drinks than try one drink over and over.
• So glad that I can ride on Jamie’s coattails.

After making him a tasty Ankle Breaker*, he had a sudden affinity for cherry Heering, an excellent Danish liqueur. He went out and bought his own bottle so he could make his own Ankle Breakers without my assistance.

Not long after, I get a phone call telling me about this new drink he made. It was really just a highball, I recall it had cherry Heering and 7up and maybe something else. My first reaction was to scoff at the idea of using a product with high fructose corn syrup in a nice cocktail. My next thought was a suggestion. “Why don’t you take out the 7up, throw in some club soda and lime juice.” Craft cocktail that drink up. He tried my suggestion and reported that it was good.

On a visit home, I was treated to his new creation. It was OK, though a little one note. My contribution to the drink was adding some Angostura bitters. Bitters are a good way to add a bit of flavor and depth to a drink. Now for the recipe.

Shirley Temple Black by Robert Johnson, 2010

• 1.5oz cherry Heering
• .5oz lime juice
• 4oz club soda
• 4 dashes Angostura bitters

Add all ingredients to tall glass filled with cracked ice. Give it a quick stir and garnish with a lime peel.

*Ankle Breaker

I discovered this tiki drink in Beachbum Berry’s latest book, Beachbum Berry Remixed. It is a good introduction to tiki drinks because it is easy to make, requires few ingredients, and tastes delicious. It calls for lemon juice, but I sometimes swap in lime, depending on what citrus I have at home.

• 1oz fresh lemon juice
• 1oz cherry Heering
• 1oz amber 151-proof rum (I use Lemon Hart in mine)
• .5oz simple syrup

I knew that I wanted to work with tea since it is one cocktail ingredient that doesn’t get too much attention. I could easily see it becoming the “it” thing with cocktails, but for right now it isn’t. My favorite Tacoma cocktail bar, 1022 South, does some interesting drinks that use tea. With my initial idea in mind, I trudged down to the best tea place in Tacoma, Mat Hat Tea, and tried to find something that would work in my drink. The owner is a great guy named Tobin who will make sure your visit is memorable. $4.50 later, I was heading to my car with bag of high quality, Earl Grey Rooibos.

With some trial and error, I found a tea profile that I liked. The drink needed some sugar though, something sweet. Spice is a great flavor to pair with gin, and ginger was an option I had available. Domaine de Canton makes a fantastic liqueur that should be a consideration for any home bartender. A few iterations later I ended up with the T&T&Tea.

I used a Steuben glass for my photo.

Here are the instructions:

1oz Tanqueray gin (infused with loose leaf Earl Grey Rooibos tea— see below)
0.25oz ginger liqueur
2.5oz tonic water

Ice: cubed
Garnish: fresh ginger

Start with two cocktail glasses. One will be used to infuse the Tanqueray gin and the other will be used to build your drink.

Pour 1oz of Tanqueray gin into one of the cocktail glasses. Add 1 teaspoon of a high quality, loose leaf Earl Grey Rooibos tea. Let that infuse for about 15 minutes. If you have a mesh tea strainer, use that, and if you don’t you can always use a coffee filter to pour the infused Tanqueray through. You can infuse for longer or shorter depending on how strong you want the tea flavor.

Once your tea has finished infusing in the Tanqueray gin, and you’ve filtered it, add the 1oz of the infused Tanqueray to the other cocktail glass. Add 0.25oz of a ginger liqueur to the gin. Give it a quick stir. Add ice cubes and top with 2.5oz of tonic.

Garnish with a fresh slice of ginger. Enjoy!

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Instead, I’m going to start this mommy blog. I figure it is the best chance I have at gaining any sort of significant traffic. Hopefully, it won’t matter to my stay-at-readers, that I’m a) not a mom and b) male. So along with the latest solutions to mommy problems, I’ll share my thoughts on cocktails and spirits. They are actually surprisingly similar and I hope to establish why as I write more.

To get this party started.

Japanese Cocktail (published 1862)

2oz cognac
1/2oz orgeat
3 dashes Boker’s Bitters

After a couple of those, I might just be tempted to do this.