Unbearable beingness of light

Tonight’s drink came from the minds at Milk & Honey, the renowned bar whose London outpost sadly closed at the end of 2020 (the NY original was kicked out by their landlords in 2013) – another victim of Covid shutdowns and landlords who didn’t see the need to extend some help to industries hit by the mandatory closures. There is a great write-up about the end of the era on the Difford’s Guide…

I discovered this when trying to find a drink that uses an amaro as an ingredient; I have a bottle of Asterley Brothers’ Dispense that really needs to be brought out more often: it has an excellent bitterness with a liquorice sweetness which is really moreish. Some online research, plus consulting my cocktail books, led to the Toronto recipe; it’s a 2006 revamp of a 1948 recipe, which in itself…

Hearth & Home

Hearth & Home After last week’s own invention, the Mekishiko Hito, I wanted to find another similarly smoky/spicy cocktail. Bourbon & mezcal seem to be fairly common combinations, but I was surprised to find this recipe from a restaurant/bar in New York, called The Daisy: this couples bourbon, mezcal and, to my surprise, yellow Chartreuse. The combination looked pretty unusual, and the garnish…

Mekshiko Hito This is another personal creation, born out of a desire to create something that could marry the twin smokiness of whiskey and mezcal, with a good bitter heft from amaro: the intention was to create a late-evening drink to be sipped and savoured, slowly and with reflection as the ice melted. I think I got it pretty well on the first pass. The name means ‘Mexican’ in Japanese,…

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Milk & Honey’s Right Hand

The classic Negroni is very much like the Manhattan: it’s a variable and customisable cocktail, as long as the basic recipe (spirit-vermouth-Campari) is respected. One variation is here, from Milk & Honey‘s Mickey McIlroy: the Right Hand. Here, the gin is replaced with a dark rum, and the rum and bitter flavours are drawn together with a few dashes of chocolate…

I follow several Instagram accounts where the drink photography is really good, and these often lead to drinks I haven’t tried before. A happy discovery on Friday was an image of an Old School from the Dragonfly bar in Hong Kong, which sounded very interesting indeed: no proportions were given, but looking at the combination, it appeared to be a Sazerac/Manhattan variant, so I re-built their…

A Margarita variant, the Division Bell comes from the mind of Phil Ward, one of the key bartenders credited with New York’s cocktail revival in the 90s. His much-missed venue, Mayahuel, closed there in 2017& has since re-opened amid some controversy, but some of his most popular creations from there live on. Here is the Division Bell, that pairs the smokiness of mezcal with the citrus flavours of…

Londoner with a Bulleit

Londoner with a Bulleit

My sample of Asterley Bros’ London fernet, Britannica, is proving very versatile, so I have been looking at other ways of using it. Adding a fernet or amaro to a Boulevardier recipe to give it a more cutting edge is a great variation – such as the Palpable Apathy, created by David Little at the Barnacle barin Seattle – so I decided to try something like that with my…

This drink is an update to a variation on the Manhattan, using the uniquely Italian strong bitter spirit, fernet, to replace the bitters that are so important in the Manhattan. Having re-magined the drink in an Italian style, they also re-named it I Fanciulli or the Lads. The result is a more bitter & powerful version of the Manhattan.

For my version, I was able to use the new London fernet, B…

Suze, the gentian-first Swiss bitter, is a very useful bottle to have in the drink stock; not nearly as sweet as its Italian relatives, the flavour is dry and distinctively bitter, much more so than even Campari.

Gentian isn’t only found in Size, but here it’s so the dominant flavour, it gives the drink a very mysterious herbal-vegetal quality, quite unlike anything else; a simple shot poured…

Naming cocktails is an odd thing: typically, the barman or establishment that invents a particular combination gets to name that drink (see the Ward 8for one example). Many stories are known, some are the source of controversy & plenty are lost entirely. With a limited number of ingredients, especially in the classic cocktail era, it’s hardly surprising that some cocktails even come in different…

Consistency is key in making good cocktails; after all, once you find the perfect way to make your Martini, you will want to be able to recreate that perfection each time, won’t you?  And one of the most important ways to ensure this is accurate and consistent measurement of your ingredients. That’s not to say it’s impossible to do this by eye, or by counting your pour time, but that is very…

The Manhattan formula, so simple but so adaptable, gives rise to endless variation. Some of these are deliberate attempt to rearrange the basic mixture; others seem to have arisen from the simple fact that a combination of a spirit, vermouth & bitters is a mighty fine one and a solid foundation for a very good drink. One of these variations is the Palmetto, recorded in the Savoy Cocktail book.…

After the Manhattan (see dozens of posts, passim), my very next favourite drink is the Old Fashioned: this classic mix of whiskey, bitters & sugar is so simple, yet can having a seeming infinite variety through the choice of the whiskey and bitters: use a rye, and the cocktail becomes drier and spicier, use a bourbon, and it becomes sweeter and softer. This time, I added a small quantity of my…

The Belmont is a truly odd little recipe – three ingredients: gin, grenadine & cream. I can’t think of many recipes that combine gin and cream, but the Belmont just goes straight for it, via the grenadine. The result, as described by my friend & fellow cocktail explorer, Craig Riley, is a ‘grown-up Baileys’. He’s right – the gin and cream should clash horribly, but the grenadine just seems to act…