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My friend Jenn just sent me these, the menu she made for my cocktail party tomorrow! I couldn't be more pleased with this.

Tier 1 Drink: No-Frills Old Fashioned

Is it any surprise that I like this drink with a name like "Old Fashioned"? Best part about this cocktail is that it's hard to mess up. What are the ingredients? Check the dictionary, brother.

Whiskey, bitters, water, and sugar. It just so happens that you have all of these things (and more!) in your home bar. Here's what 'cher gonna wanna do to make it.

Take a glass. Any old glass will do.

Put some simple syrup in it. Put as much as you want.

Shake a few dashes of Angostura bitters onto the sugar. Put as much as you want.

Put a little water in there, just enough to help these things swish around together in the glass. If you like the way your tap water tastes, use that.

Fill the glass with ice cubes.

Put in some whiskey. Ounce and a half to two ounces.

Give this a stir.

Add some lemon zest if you have it.

Bam. Old Fashioned. Drink this just after you come home and change into some non-work clothes. Ideally, you're wearing a v-neck hanes and sitting in the backyard. When you're done, go make another––It will be better than the last.

Notes:
Several recipes will call for a cherry and an orange slice and lemon. This goes back to a time when whiskey was bootlegged and didn't taste so nice. Whiskey made today tastes pretty nice, so don't go too crazy with the produce if you don't want to. I like rye whiskey for this, and granulated sugar instead of simple syrup, but that's for another post. On a hot day I like to make this in a bigger glass and add a bunch of club soda instead of a little water. Ultimately, use what you have and make it how you like it.

Want to make another drink? Try the Manhattan.

Home Bar: Tier One

I've been talking for some time about writing a guide to assembling a home bar. Google will leave you with a dozen different how-tos that range from okay to awful. Martha Stewart even has one (and it kills me to say that it's not that bad).

The problem with these is that they assume the reader is going to go out and spend 500 bucks TODAY to make this bar happen--calling for three kinds of whiskey, two gins, two rums, vodka, tequila, brandy, sherry, port, six kinds of glasses and a dozen tools you'll never use. That's just unreasonable, especially for someone with limited experience with making drinks--the person, we assume, these guides are for. In order to fix this deficit in the internet, I submit my tiered approach to assembling a home bar.

Tier One - The Beginner 


This tier serves a dual purpose: To provide a strong foundation for expansion, as well as to explain the basics for someone who only wants the basics. The majority of people will want to be able to have the stuff on-hand to mix a decent cocktail, to impress a date or a father-in-law, but not be interested in making infusions, or reductions, or recreations of drinks long gone to antiquity. Regardless of your long-term goal, I advise watching Alton Brown's Good Eats about cocktails (Part 1, Part 2). There's three cocktails, information about glasses, and three tools you pretty much must have.

Hardware––Shaker, Strainer, Measure
You will be tempted to run out to the mall and buy these things. Do not. The selection will be too limited and the prices too high. BarSupplies.com has a wide selection of tools for very cheap.

Boston Shaker
The intro video gives a little explanation about boston shakers. I suggest the 18 oz and 28 oz. This combination gives you enough volume to mix anything from small cocktails to lemonade & iced coffee drinks. Total for both: ~7 bucks. (Compared to $50 at Crate & Barrel)

Julep Strainer
More practical than a hawthorn strainer. You can even use it to scoop out ice shards or lemon seeds that find their way into finished drinks. Hell, you can even use them how they're intended!

In julep drinks that are densely packed with ice.

Total: ~2 bucks.

Measure

I'm a little anal about measurements. Unlike grandma who, to her credit, cooked without a recipe, your grandpa measured twice and cut once. Standard jigger/pony measurement is 1.5 oz / 1oz. I don't like this because it makes it difficult to measure half-ounces without eyeballing. I like the 1 oz / .5 oz measure for exactly this reason. Sometimes you'll buy these and they're not true to size--not so with the Bar Supplies ones (I have a 1 oz / .5 oz and a 2 oz / 1 oz that both measure true).

Total: ~2 bucks.

All the tools you need for 11 bucks + S&H. Bar spoon? Use a table spoon. Muddler? Use a table spoon. Juicer? Use your hands. Zester? Use a knife. Bag for crushing ice? Use a washcloth. Glasses? Use what you have, go to goodwill, or use a jar. 

Software––Booze, Bitters, Sugar, Fruit.


Booze
Start with whiskey. One bottle of whiskey. That's it. No sherry, no two-kinds of tequila. Whiskey. Hell, it doesn't even have to be rye or bourbon or anything. You're starting out, you're going to make mistakes, you'll botch a drink or two. That's good, you want that––fudging a recipe is the best way to improve the next one (ask me how many manhattans I made before I decided on a recipe I liked). That in mind, don't get anything too fancy to start.

Want a recommendation? Use Jack Daniels. Not too expensive, you can buy it anywhere, and it's generally accepted among whiskey drinkers (They say Lemmy of Motorhead drinks a bottle of it every day. You ain't ever gonna be badder than him, so don't trip about JD). We'll talk more about whiskeys and flavor profiles and grain mash and all that some other time. Cost: Shoot for something between 15-20 bucks.

Bitters
"Hey, whoa. This is getting complex now. Can I get that at Vons?"
Naw man, it's cool. Get it at BevMo. You want Angostura Bitters. Bitters taste pretty strong alone, but make lots of drinks taste really good. In the same way that salt and pepper enhances the flavors in food, bitters enhance the flavors in drinks. Having this in your cupboard instantly takes your cocktail possibilities up a notch and impresses people who don't know much about booze (Something about being made with mysterious herbs from the Far East). Cost: ~7 bucks.


Sugar
I debated for a while between simple syrup and sugar cubes. Ultimately, simple syrup is the winner. You can use it for booze, or coffee, or iced tea because it doesn't need heat to dissolve. It's sweeter than regular sugar so you can use less, it's easy to make, and it keeps in the fridge forever. You definitely want to make it yourself because it's cheaper than the gas you'd use driving to the store to get it.

Simple Syrup (1:2 ratio)

Put 1 cup water in a pan over high heat. Add 2 cups sugar. Bring to a boil until the sugar dissolves, drop it to a simmer for 5 minutes, then pour into a heat-safe container. When it cools, stick it in the fridge and forget about it until you need it. Use within 6 months.

Fruit
Buy some lemons. With the exception of everything else, this is the only thing you need that can go bad if you don't use it quickly––and quickly is relative, these keep forever in the fridge. Always use real citrus, not the bottled stuff. Ask around, someone you know probably has a lemon tree that is heavy with fruit. Get lemons from them, or from the store for cheap.

There you have it. All told, assuming you don't have sugar at the house, you're looking at a $50 investment. Buy these things and build on them, or just keep them on a shelf until you bring a date back to your place.

But what to make for said date? Try an Old Fashioned.

Fourth recap

Talking to my landlord (he lives in the house next-door) about cocktails for a little while yesterday, he offered to let me experiment with some of the produce he has growing in his backyard. Came back with fresh mulberries, peaches, and plums.  

Mulberries, prepare to meet my muddler.

Mulberry cocktail #2 (up)

You Will Require:

Shaker

Strainer

Muddler

It Includes:

Juice of half-a-lemon

2 oz rye

handfull of washed and stemmed mulberries

1 barspoon of simple syrup

soda water or branch water

ice

In Detail:

Wash and stem the berries, place them in the shaker. Add simple syrup and muddle. Add just a spray of soda water to the drink while cleaning off the muddler, you don't need more than a half-ounce. Add rye (or bourbon, more on this in an upcoming post), lemon juice, and plenty of ice (not cracked). Shake violently to incorporate the fruit. Strain and serve up. Garnish with a smashed mulberry, or a slice of fruit in season, or lemon zest, or whatever.

Notes:

I took a slice of peach, removed the skin, rubbed it around the rim of the glass and then squeezed the mulberry over it. Did it make the drink look cooler? Yes. Did this change the flavor? Not a lot. Does it drastically change the overall beverage? No. The point here is that garnishing was nice, but don't feel it's necessary to do the peach thing. Save your money if you can't get the peaches for free.

Mulberries, you probably won't find in a store as they explode a little in your hand as you pick them; partially-exploded berries don't have a lot of shelf-appeal. Don't have these? Use raspberry or blueberry, but make sure you muddle well. 

Detail about variations on this theme after the jump.

Home Bar: "Bonnie Mason"

It's floating in the low 80s in Los Angeles, but in about two weeks the levee is going to burst and it's going to bump the daytime high about 20 degrees. So that you're ready, here is a life preserver:

The Bonnie Mason

This here is a summer drink if ever one was invented. Did you just mow the lawn? Come back from a bike ride? Maybe you spent a long, hard day graphic-designing. This drink is the medicine that will cure you.

YOU WILL REQUIRE:

Shaker

Muddler

Ice

IT INCLUDES:

2 oz bourbon

1 scoop apricot preserves

Soda water

Lemon

In Detail:

Take a good spoonful of the preserves and drop it into the shaker. To this, add the bourbon, a squirt of soda water, and a squeeze of lemon. Muddle these things together. Top with ice and shake violently, the ice will help with breaking up and incorporating the preserves. Pour into a chilled old-fashioned glass and top with more soda water (ice too, if necessary). Garnish, sit down, put the cold glass on your forehead for a moment, then enjoy.

Notes:

I got the idea of using preserves from my friend Peter who uses rindless marmalade in one of his concoctions. Don't use too much lemon in this drink, maybe a half-ounce, but go light; the lemon is intended to brighten the drink, not to sour it. For preserves, home-canned is best (naturally). I usually use a store brand that doesn't have high fructose corn syrup. Substituting the bourbon for rye is fine, same with soda water for branch water. The kicker here is that the preserves, upon shaking, will congeal to form little chunks and sink to the bottom of the glass. When you're done with the drink, they will be waiting there for you. You don't have to serve this in an old jelly jar, but... Dammit, yes. You have to serve this in an old jelly jar. There, I said it.

Get It Right: The Manhattan.

There is quite a lot to be said for innovation and improvisation when a night of slinging drinks finds you with a dearth of ingredients and a group of guests expecting a deluge of booze. These "Cocktail Impossible" scenarios have resulted in some very fine beverages indeed.

However, it's still important to know the basics––those cornerstone beverages called upon by the people of your grandparents' generation when they wanted to get sloshed. In that spirit, I present to you...


Get It Right: The Manhattan.

There is much to be said about the history and cultural significance of The Manhattan. Just think, every one of these men has had the beverage you're about to craft.

(One of these guys is my Dad.)

I like to keep the (If I may borrow the nomenclature from The Great Alton Himself) hardware and software on hand at all times, which isn't a chore considering their multitudinous applications in the kitchen. I've tried a number of different recipes for this drink, none that fit the taste of a manhattan I remember from my recent visit to New York, so I've pieced this together mostly from trial and error.

YOU WILL REQUIRE:
A large vessel in which to stir the beverage.
A bar spoon.
A strainer.
A stemmed glass.
Ice (functioning more as hardware than software here).

IT CONTAINS:
2 oz. Rye Whiskey.
½ oz. Sweet Red Vermooth.
Angostura bitters.
Sugar Cube.

IN DETAIL:
1. I use a sugar cube for this instead of simple syrup because the vermouth provides a lot of sweetness on its own; The sugar won't fully dissolve in cold water so the flavor it imparts is subtle. Saturate a single sugar cube with Angostura. Here is the technique I submit to you, after having seen it performed by an expert bartender named Mark on the island for which this beverage was named...

Angostura bottles have a little rim on the spout, perhaps designed with this technique in mind? Place your sugar cube atop the spout and invert the bottle until the sugar is totally saturated––Careful not to crush it in the process.

Place the saturated cube into your vessel. Depending on your tastes, you may choose to add more bitters. I feel that this is enough, but you could add anywhere from 3-7 more dashes. Keep in mind that more bitters in this drink, the less you'll be able to taste the rye. That can be good or bad depending on the individual, but that's a topic for another post. Mash the cube now with your bar spoon or muddler if you have it.

2.Next, the vermouth. I use Noilly Prat at home, but the best manhattans I've ever had were made with one called Antica––so fine that you could drink it by itself and have no complaints.

3. 2 oz Rye Whiskey. Some recipes call for Canadian Whiskey in a manhattan. Use rye. Old Overholt is fine (~$16), but you could do better if you want to spend the money.

4. Now, crack the ice--A lot of ice, and crack it well. This is a stirred beverage and ice with more surface area will make for better chilling. A good handfull will do. Place the ice in the vessel and stir vigorously. Stirred drinks require quite a lot more time to cool than shaken drinks, and since this one includes sugar in a solid form, you'll need to stir it for about as long as it takes you to sing the first verse and chorus of The Battle Hymn of the Republic. Go ahead and do that while you stir. Any water that comes off the ice will help the other ingredients fuse together. If the ice melts entirely, add more and continue.

5. When you conclude the last throaty bars, strain the drink into a chilled up glass. Garnish. Always garnish. Traditionally, the recipe calls for a maraschino cherry. The real ones are nice, but the ones you get at the grocery store are execrable. The only recommendation about them I can make is that you stay away. Since it's more likely that you'll have citrus fruit lying around than a 20 dollar bottle of cherries, garnish with a strip of lemon or orange zest––I know I do. If you wish to impress the end-user of this beverage, go ahead and ignite the oil in the rind with a match, but make sure you do it in front of them because it's almost pointless unless they get to see the flames.

There. Now drink this drink and remember that your great-grandad used to work backbreaking job, 12 hours a day, to raise a family on a salary that's less that what you spend a month on your cell phone bill. If you were to meet him today, however, he wouldn't be ashamed at your baby-soft hands or poor work ethic. No sir, because you'd make him one of these suckers and impress upon him that his descendant knows a thing or two. He'd tell you that you got it right.


(My actual great-grandad. For the record, though, I'm sure he would have tanned my hide if he knew I wasted a whole match on making a got-damn cocktail.)

Home Bar: Blood Royal

As promised, a cocktail recipe featuring the home grenadine.



This recipe is for two cocktails, but can be halved for those of you sad individuals who prefer to drink alone––but in that case, why not make both anyway? What else were you going to do with your evening?


"Blood Royal"
YOU WILL REQUIRE:
A shaker (Boston if you're a pro).

IT INCLUDES:
The juice of 1 lemon (~2 ounces).
The white of 1 egg.
~4 dashes Angostura (Feel free to get creative here).
2 ounces of home grenadine (less if you prefer).
3 ounces of dry gin.

Shake enthusiastically to create an attractive foam. Strain into up glasses and garnish with lemon peel.

The beverage is, essentially, a gin fizz that I modeled on the Fitzgerald, replacing simple syrup with grenadine and adding egg white to give the drink body. Now, go body the drink.

D.