A Guide for the Home Bartender
Combine all ingredients in a shaker with ice. Shake and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.
It starts with strawberry and pineapple pieces soaking in pisco for about a week. This is a perfect flavor combination that is a little bit tropical and a little familiar. Interestingly, the pineapple in the pisco still has a slight foaming effect that pineapple juice tends to provide--like a vegetarian foam.
Then St-Germain and citrus juices balance out to make for a candy-like cocktail that is really a different taste experience. A little sweet, but so many changes in the waves of flavors you detect as they wash over your tongue. I would do this one again with a different spirit, maybe with a fruitier Peruvian pisco.
Shake all ingredients with ice, then strain into a coupe.
There is also an unusual ingredient known as Combier Pamplemousse Rose Liqueur. This is made from the juice and peel of grapefruit steeped in cognac--and it's lovely. I knocked it off with the peel of one grapefruit and one ounce of its juice infused into 2 oz. of vodka and one oz. of cognac for about twelve hours. A lovely taste and very brilliant, but I only made enough for two drinks.
Combine liquid ingredients in a mixing glass full of ice. Stir and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Twist the grapefruit peel over the glass and drop it in.
This is one of the better ways to use Pisco (a grape spirit itself) by putting it in a sparkling wine. The number of ingredients is small and easy to prepare. All that is required is an open bottle of Chandon.
Combine all liquid ingredients except champagne in a shaker with ice. Shake and strain into a chilled champagne flute and top with champagne. Twist grapefruit zest over the drink and drop it in.
Pineapple juice comes to the rescue. Pineapple juice isn't in the original Planter's Punch, but it is not exactly sour. You can use a lot of it and it won't require balancing with sugar like grapefruit juice will. So I'm breaking the ban on Pineapple Juice for this recipe just this once and I think it works fine. The sweetness of the juice will balance against the bitter tannin of the tea and the tang of lime juice.
I also used a dash of Angostura and MurLarkey cinnamon whiskey just to spice it up a bit. And George Bowman rum was necessary for the fruity rum flavors of a good Jamaican rum.
Combine all liquid ingredients except for soda in a shaker with ice. Shake and strain over large ice rocks in a large blown red wine glass (stemless is best). Top with soda and stir before adding garnishes.
This is a fun way to get the whiskey to go down, which is the real point of a Fix--make it as easy to drink as possible and it will fix you up. Some fun ingredients in this, including Campari and ginger syrup. The Grand Marnier adds sweetness and citrus in a cocktail that already has a lot of both. My substitution is homemade Mandarine Napoleon. This just adds more mandarin orange and spice notes that Grand Marnier doesn't have.
The only "dangerous" thing about this drink is that it puts a potent whiskey in sweet honey and tart citrus juices for a summery-tasting sour. It goes down all to easily. But I don't lament using my good whiskey--that "old country whiskey" comes through in the finish.
Shake all liquid ingredients with ice and strain into a highball glass filled with crushed ice. Garnish with the grapefruit crescent.
Muddled cucumber adds a freshness and even a thicker texture to cocktails--I think it has to do with plant cell walls giving structure to flavors of the spirits (but I'm not sure). A sweet citrus liqueur like Aperol does wonders for the color and adding balance as well.
Scarlet Glow syrup is made from cooking the brand of hibiscus tea and sugar into a syrup. It is pretty and red. but doesn't do a lot for the flavor by itself. For mine, I used hibiscus syrup and tried not to worry if the flavor wasn't exactly right.
Muddle the cucumber wheels in a shaker then add ice and the remaining ingredients. Shake and strain into a highball glass filled with crushed ice. Garnish with the cucumber ribbon skewered on a cocktail pick.
To make cinnamon syrup you cook simple syrup with cinnamon sticks and allow it to cool before straining out the sticks. This takes about a half hour between dissolving the sugar, bringing it to a low boil and cooling it slowly. Then you have to juice grapefruit and bottle the juice and syrup together. That's three steps, but when you aren't making ingredients for mass consumption you can save yourself a step. If you have MurLarkey cinnamon whiskey you can save yourself two.
Simply put a splash of cinnamon whiskey in the portion of simple syrup you were going to use for the cocktail and you have cinnamon syrup. Now to make Don's Mix, just adjust the amount of grapefruit juice you will need and think of it as one ingredient--the juice itself--and the cinnamon syrup as another separate ingredient.
That is why I will include my modifications to the recipe so that it is easy to follow. I more than nailed this cocktail with my home bar ingredients and it was easy. The cinnamon sticks in the photo are just for show.
Rinse a coupe glass with absinthe (Ricard) and dump. Combine the remaining ingredients in a shaker with ice. Shake and double strain into the glass.
And that is simply saying that this cocktail is an imaginative way to take tequila and juice. It is as good with food as it is by itself. But the whole experience speaks of hot weather and long days and the relaxed moments that shorten them considerably.
Rim a highball glass with kosher salt. Shake all ingredients except soda and garnishes, then strain into the glass filled with ice cubes. Top with club soda. Garnish with the lime wheel and jalapeno.
The nice thing about this cocktail is that it satisfies the itch of the shaken gin cocktail drinker without putting them off because of the bitterness. Instead, the bitterness gives backbone to the grapefruit juice. A brief note about blood orange liqueur: there's not much of that available. Aperol or in my case, Ambrosia, are fair substitutes with their rich, sweet citrus flavors.
Combine all ingredients except garnish in a shaker with ice. Shake and strain into a chilled coupe glass. Squeeze the grapefruit zest over the glass and garnish with it as a twist.
Let me go on the record that a list of ingredients in the drink isn't a name. At least we pretty much know how to make this cocktail just by reading the name. But I have to say that there is a lot of good things going on with this cocktail. A Sour is always a crowd pleaser, but the well-kept secret that akvavit and grapefruit juice, plus the elderflower notes of St. Germain, is a stroke of genius.
Funny enough, I'm using my own akvavit, and even though this bottle of St. Germain is authentic, the liqueur is my own combination of elderflower syrup and raw spirits. It's a good substitution, however. For my raw spirit, I use Smirnoff #56 for hit 100-proof kick. It is also 2-1 with MurLarkey Justice white whiskey in my homemade akvavit. Even if you don't like the herbaceous flavor of akvavit, you should give this cocktail a try. It has a lot of things that will win over most people, even if they are shy about trying unusual spirits.
Combine all liquid ingredients in a shaker with ice. Shake and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Twist lemon zest over the glass and drop it in.
I want to point out that Einstok Brewery in Iceland also makes a pale ale that is very English in style with their glacier water source. It took me many tries to find an ale that would best represent this style of beer cocktail. And most American pale ales wouldn't work, but something familiar like Bass probably would. But Einstok pale ale was a good call, and it reinforces the Scandinavian theme of this cocktail.
Combine bourbon, Swedish punsch and juice in a shaker with ice. Shake and strain into a pint glass full of fresh ice. Top with ale and stir. Garnish with the grapefruit wedge.
But when the sip finishes, you get such a light lift from all the heavy sensations. Firstly the grapefruit juice ensures that the body of the liquid itself is light. Your final impression is a citrus fruit cocktail (grapefruit often being associated with with ginger and cognac warmth. It is an expression of love, and very French at that.
Combine all liquid ingredients in a shaker with ice. Stir and Strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Squeeze the orange zest over the glass and lay it on the rim.
The Diki Diki is very tropical in fact. Swedish punsch includes cloves and cardamon, so it has that equatorial bitter note. There's also black tea and lemon scent sweetened with brown sugar. The spirits are a combination of rums, but in this case, my recipe involves mixing MurLarkey lemon and three tea whiskies with rum.
Combine all ingredients in a shaker with ice. Shake and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.
In place of peach brandy, I used an equally artificial peach whiskey by Bird Dog. It's actually pretty good when used in tropical drinks and is probably my favorite cheap flavored whiskey purchase. Actually it was a gift, so it was very cheap--free.
Combine all liquid ingredients in a shaker with ice. Blend until smooth and pour into a double Old Fashioned glass. Garnish with the fruit pieces.
White tequila gives this tropical drink an herbal spiciness that is missing in a lot of Caribbean-themed cocktails. I really appreciate the direction it takes the cocktail from the typically sugary and sweet rum that is the focus of these kinds of drinks. Again, the orange slice on the cocktail is misleading if you are trying to guess the ingredients. The thing you can't identify: grapefruit juice.
Old Tom sounded appropriate, but it would have been lost in all that grapefruit. So would a simple London dry style gin (although this is perfectly acceptable if that is what you have on hand.) Doing the smell test on several bottles, I arrived at my homemade dry gin. This steeped gin had the right piney and tannin notes to stand out past all of that juice. The combination was lovely and made this the best cocktail I had that day.
Combine all ingredients except orange slice in a shaker with ice. Shake and strain into a double Old Fashioned glass full of fresh ice and garnish with orange slice.
