#imaginationgin

Silver Cocktail

What a classic tasting gin cocktail! All the bitter and sweet flavors are in perfect balance in the Silver Cocktail. The maraschino liqueur, though in small quantity, really goes well with the bitterness of the dry vermouth and gin. Orange bitters, also in small quantity, link up with the lemon twist to send the drink in a citrus direction. It's bold and interesting, yet not so strong as to cause you to wince. All evenly spaced. Maybe that is why this cocktail is called "silver," despite there being no egg white to affect the color.

Yellow Fingers

This is a fun, funny dessert drink cocktail with a tropical accent. Banana liqueur and blackberry brandy are the sweetener for this creamy cocktail. But banana liqueur tastes so fake and sugary. I was glad to use the richly flavored MurLarkey Banana Whiskey. Coupled with their gin, you get a dessert drink with traction. Whiskey flavors as well as real dried banana and a mouthful of gin botanicals bombard your senses. For the blackberry brandy, I used my homemade blackberry brandy by dissolving blackberry preserves in cognac and fine straining out the liquor.

Grand Royal Fizz

Now that I'm focusing on Fizzes right now, there's no reason not to do the Grand Royal Fizz. It's been so hot and a Fizz, even a creamy one, will cool you down and relax your brain quickly. This Fizz differs from many others by having no egg. Instead there is half-and-half and orange juice. I fresh squeezed all the juice for this drink so it was amazingly fresh tasting!

Straight Law

The name of this cocktail suggests that this drink belongs to the "Judge" category of cocktails. These are usually a clear spirit served up with juices or wines. On second look, though, this is a simple stirred cocktail designed to spread out the rich nutty flavor of Amontillado sherry.

I chose to use ImaGination gin that MurLarkey Distillery gave me because it has a deep earthy character. You mostly notice the large proportion of sherry in this drink, but that one ounce of ImaGination comes through with botanicals like grains of paradise.

3 oz. Amontillado sherry Lustau Los Arcos used)

1 oz. gin (MurLarkey ImaGination gin used)

Thunderclap

The Thunderclap is a wallop of a cocktail, as the name suggests. It's four ounces of booze and it comes across as a whiskey cocktail since that is the main ingredient. To make it I used MurLarkey spirits. MurLarkey in Bristow, Virginia, makes both whiskey and gin. Their Heritage whiskey is a bourbon-style mash with some barley in it. It tastes like a mix of Irish and bourbon whiskey. They also make Imagination gin, a New Western style gin with less juniper but fun flavors like kafir lime leaves, lemongrass, ginger, rosemary, celery gentian root and szechuan peppercorns. With all that spice, a round Christian Brothers brandy calms the thunderclap down.

Twin Six Cocktail

There's something very classic about this cocktail. It has a bitterness and a lovely foam that reminds me of a whiskey cocktail. I'm a little puzzled why it is named after a pair of gunfighter's guns, but this cocktail is classic old style American. It makes sense to use an American gin like Imagination, a New Western style gin. Juniper is not welcome in such a silky drink with vermouth bitterness. This gin is made in Bristow, Virginia.

Red Cloud

There are storm clouds brewing, but this cocktail is a lovely red cloud. I'm not sure if the name of this cocktail comes from the influential Oglala Lakota chief, or just a description of the drink's color. I happen to think that the use of apricot brandy, lemon juice, and gin produces a light, cloudlike cocktail. So here is MurLarkey distillery's ImaGination gin, with rosemary, celery, grains of paradise--dark flavors that ground things. Then sweet apricot brandy and grenadine to cut the lemon juice, but not by much. Angostura bitters distinguish this cocktail from many of these red cocktails with gin and apricot brandy--a very common classic trend.

Diamond Head

I'm not sure if this cocktail is named after the Hawaii volcano state monument on Oahu, but it is monumental. Look at that head of foam that tops this potent drink! Gin and apricot brandy with lemon  juice are a perfect combination you see over and over. Then there's egg white, which makes this cocktail a lot like a gin sour with apricot. MurLarkey ImaGination gin is a good choice for this drink because it has a hefty botanical load that keeps things interesting where other gins would get overwhelmed by egg white and lemon juice.