Little Engine (Death & Co. Recipe)

 

Some fun ingredients in this cocktail make it a sweet dessert drink, or something to enjoy on a fall day. Apple butter makes great spiced and sweetened cocktails and lends a little richness of color and flavor. Maple syrup, though, is almost necessary to balance the acids in this cocktail. 

I love how a mild scotch and port come together to make for a fruity spirit drink that almost feels like a sweet Sling. 

• 2 oz. Famous Grouse scotch
• 1/2 oz. 10-year tawny port
• 1/2 oz. lemon juice
• 1/2 oz. maple syrup
• 1 tsp. apple butter
• 1 apple fan garnish

Combine liquid ingredients in a shaker with three ice cubes. Short shake and strain into a double rocks glass full of crushed ice. Garnish with the apple fan. 

Grouse Rampant (Death & Co. Recipe)

 

"X" Marks the spot with the Grouse Rampant. This a spicy take on the classic egg white foamed Sours served in a coupe glass. There are some very specialized ingredients at work here: fuji apple infused Famous Grouse scotch is the main one, requiring a few days panning in advance. Then there's honey and cinnamon syrup (or cinnamon whiskey flavored honey syrup in my case.) Finally the Peychaud's bitters "X" makes this drink as fun to look at--almost, anyway--as drinking.

To make the infusion of fuji apples, I used one large fuji apple diced and a half bottle of Famous Grouse. Apples infuse quickly, so 24 hours is all that is really needed to get rich apple flavors from the fruit. But after a few days the scotch loses a lot of its smoke and pepper and you are left with something like a sweet apple whiskey.

I make my cinnamon syrups with MurLarkey cinnamon whiskey. A few drops per cocktail (added right to the jigger) is all I need to transform honey or ordinary simple into something similar to cooking cinnamon sticks into the syrup. So as long as I have this shortcut available, I'm taking it. 

• 2 oz. fuji apple-infused Famous Grouse Scotch
• 3/4 oz. lemon juice
• 1/4 oz. acacia honey syrup
• 1/4 oz. cinnamon bark syrup (1/2 oz. honey syrup and 1/4 oz. MurLarkey cinnamon whiskey used)
• 1 egg white
• Peychaud's bitters

Combine all ingredients except bitters in a shaker and dry shake to create foam. Add ice and shake again to chill and strain into a chilled coupe. Use Peychaud's bitters to form an "X" on the foam in two swipes.

Tea in the Sahara (Death & Co. recipe)

Of all the infusions that I've made, I've never considered green tea and coconut infused scotch. But that is what is required for Tea in the Sahara. You need a dry, almost peppery infusion of Famous Grouse to pull this off. So I recommend getting dried coconut, not confectioner's coconut with all the sugar. It will really unbalance a cocktail like this that has no citrus except for the garnish. 

Besides the infusion, Strega is the only other spirit ingredient and honey syrup is the main sweetener. This drink is light but has body from Strega and honey. The scotch burns, but it has picked up earthy nuttiness from the green tea and coconut. (For my tea, I used sensha for its grassy notes.) The lemon coin (a thin slice of pith from the narrowest end of the fruit) hints at teatime with a cocktail that has a lot of exotic pastiche for a scotch drink.

• 1 lemon coin with a bit of pith
• 2 oz. coconut green tea-infused Famous Grouse scotch
• 1 tsp. Strega
• 1 tsp. acacia honey syrup

Squeeze lemon over a mixing glass and drop it in. Add the remaining ingredients and stir with ice. Strain into a double rocks glass with no ice. 

 

Scotch Lady

 

The Pink Lady is a great gin cocktail that is at once classic and up-and-coming in the bar scenes. It's a descendant of the Fizz without soda. Now that gin is coming back, The Pink Lady is popular again. I think it is because it is so light and refreshing, and that means a change in the base spirit changes the drink. Any restaurant can swap out a unique gin, something like Old Tom or infused gins, and you have a drink that many will enjoy as if for the first time. 

This rendition, the Scotch Lady, is a simple swap out of ingredients that goes slightly richer with apple brandy and scotch as the main ingredients. When you first try it, you get mostly apple and lemon notes. A lot of the freshness of the Pink Lady. In the aftertaste, there is a throaty hum of peat and malt from scotch. Famous Grouse is a nice blend for this drink because it isn't shy. A rustic blend, the Grouse has character by itself but is tame with company like egg white and lemon juice. 

• 1 1/2 oz. Famous Grouse scotch
• 1/2 oz. Laird's Applejack 86 
• 3/4 oz. lemon juice
• 3/4 oz. simple syrup
• 1/4 oz. grenadine
• 1 egg white
• brandied cherry garnish

Combine all ingredients except garnish in a shaker and shake without ice. Then add ice and shake to chill. Strain into a chilled coup and garnish with a cherry.