Cocktails
 

I do like my drink now and again. I’m not all too sophisticated in my selection of drinks. I have my same old drinks that I enjoy: Good large commercial beer with some micro brewery now and again. Wine: some “U Brew” stuff along with a small cache of Okanagan wines in my cellar. I also enjoy a good smoky peaty single malt scotch. And then I will make myself a cocktail when the time is right!

We’ve covered beers and scotches in other threads, but have we covered cocktails? I raise this one now only because I’ve just made myself a classic gin Martini. And I’ll share how I made my Martini to get this thread going just so I might get some other ideas as to what else I could make! I could, and have, Googled any kind of cocktail but that does not personalize it.

So this thread is about cocktail drinks YOU have made and enjoy. Please share your cocktail drink recipe. I will start with two of them:

Classic Gin Martini with Grand Marnier wash: Everything must be COLD! The Martini glass comes out of the freezer; the Gin (Bombay in this case) is either from the fridge or freezer. Vermouth, olives, Grand Marnier all from the fridge. No ice.

Pour a small amount of Grand Marnier into your frosty Gin glass, just enough to roll it along the inside lower half of the glass to “wash” it. Pour in (I free hand it) your 2-3 oz of Gin. Add Vermouth (5-10 drops). Add 2 or 3 olives (I use decorated stainless steel olive skewers). 3 small pimento-stuffed olives. Enjoy!
One of these just before a Rib Steak dinner and all is good!

Campari. Another cocktail which is refreshing on a hot summer day: Fill a tall glass with ice. Pour in a couple ozs of Campari. Squeeze ¼ orange into the glass and discard. Squeeze another ¼ orange into the glass and drop that into the drink. Fill with Tonic water. Stir and enjoy!

Although summer is almost done, the classic G&T is one of my faves...
For me it is the perfect summer cocktail.

I love a good Caesar. And also a Mojito. But not in the same night.

Classic Margarita

I don't use sour mix or margarita mix. I use a 50/50 mixture of fresh squeezed lime juice and fresh squeezed orange juice.

2 parts above mixture
1 part good tequila, I use Cazadores Reposado
1 part Cointreau

Fill a shaker with ice and the above mixture. Shake and pour into a chilled martini glass rimmed with salt.

I have a variation on the Lemon Drop. I call it a Cherry Lemon Drop or a Cherry Bomb.

1 part fresh squeezed lemon juice
1 part maraschino cherry juice (preferable stored in the frig)
1 part vodka (I use lemon Citron, stored in the freezer)
1 part Cointreau (I also store this in the freezer)

Shake with ice in a shaker.

Serve in a chilled martini glass. Garnish with a cherry. If you want it to be "lighter", put crushed ice in the martini glass first.

Tasty and very dangerous. Locally, they sell the maraschino cherry juice.

If you like Gin and Campari,


Take a regular Gin an Tonic and float a little Campari on top, add an extra lime.

I love lemon drops. I will have to try the cherry one.

I had an excellent cocktail at the Snake River Grill in Jackson called the Honey Badger. I have been experimenting and trying to duplicate it at home with little success. Maybe you guys can help?

Menu listed ingredients as: Glenfiddich, Amaro Nonino, Honey Syrup and lemon

Seems simple but haven't quite gotten it right. Any thoughts?

Love the classic Margarita, other than that, I stick with Mike's hard lemonade or schmirnoff's ICE. My drink of choice at home is Bud light PLATINUM.....no hard stuff.

Greyhound.

9dreizig's lady got me drinking Cadillac Margaritas this summer...

The official listing is
1.5oz Gold Tequila
1 oz Grand Marinier
1/4oz fresh lime juice


However I always just eyeball it, with the tequila part getting stronger the more I drink.. :D
So around 2 parts Tekillya, 1 part GM, and top off with Crystal Light Margarita mix. Nice light marg with a smoother citrus tone. :D

Vodka end of things:
IcePick (sweet tea and vo)
Arnold Palmer
Grapefruit Martini :)
Kettle, rocks, lime.
Ruby Red Absolute, crushed ice and a lime.

Tequila:
Patron, rocks, lime.
-or-
Anything aged in a whiskey barrel (many choices)...very smokey, great for sipping on the rocks with a paired cigar.

Mojito,
white rum, brown sugar, mint, lime, club soda. Very refreshing. Crush the mint, brown sugar, lime together , throw it in the glass over ice, fill with club soda, throw in a leaf for looks. It was good enough for Hemmingway,
oh yeah, lots of things were good enough for him.


edit, I forgot, you have to put the rum in the glass before the club soda.

Yes! G&T, as mentioned above. Vodka martini. Classic margarita, as mentioned above. Warm late summer Sunday afternoon that it is, I have one of the above in front of me at this very moment.

I am not much of a cocktail guy, but my wife makes a mean margarita, and a pretty wicked lemon drop. She is from Texas too James, hmm.

Key to the margarita is the OJ.

G&T for me or the drink that started "mixed drinks" in New Orleans, the Sazerac

Old Fashioned

Simple syrup
Orange bitters
Bourbon

Oh now this is the one. A zombie http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zombie_(cocktail) it even tastes like you are being really healthy. One does the trick so sit back and enjoy it.

sidecar. [think margarita, but the tequila is replaced with brandy.]

G&T
Pimms #1+Lemonaide, fruit, mint, and cucumber
Mint Julep

Two cocktails I enjoy are classic margarita and mojito.

G&T =/= cocktail

Negroni

1oz Gin
1oz Sweet Vermouth
1oz Campari
Orange Twist (very important!)

Pour ingredients over ice, use orange twist to stir, enjoy....

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1378749928.jpg

Very nice to see a margarita served up as a proper cocktail. Damn tasty, too! Almost impossible to get it served like this at a bar - even the fancy tequila-focused ones.

Another classic sour (2:1:1) that's usually butchered by the masses but is a revelation to many when prepared correctly is the daiquiri.

1.5 oz white rum, preferably a rhum agricole
.75 oz lime juice
.75 oz 1:1 simple syrup
small dash Angostura bitters

Shake. Serve up in a cocktail glass.

Tasty and a bit lower alcohol as the "sweet" is syrup instead of cointreau or something similar.

This same thing is awesome with gin instead of the rum. Can swap lemon for the lime in that case. Garnish with mint and I think it's a "Southside".

Love all of the sours. For a more complicated one see the Corpse Reviver #2: Equal parts gin, cointreau, lillet blanc, lemon. Shake and serve up in a pastis/absinthe washed cocktail glass.

Why not? Tonic=Sweet, Gin=spirit, Lemon=bitter

Vodka - tonic w/lime wedge...

whoops

Love part of the definition/wiki entry - (no parf'ing intended) - "Cock-tail is a stimulating liquor, composed of spirits of any kind, sugar, water, and bitters—it is vulgarly called bittered sling, and is supposed to be an excellent electioneering potion, inasmuch as it renders the heart stout and bold, at the same time that it fuddles the head. It is said, also to be of great use to a democratic candidate: because a person, having swallowed a glass of it, is ready to swallow any thing else."


That said, I don't drink liquor often. I think closes I'll come to a cocktail is cranberry w/ vodka (its bitter and sweet, should count right?) or perhaps a bloody mary w/ just v-8, garlic powder, horse radish (it is the bitter herb of passover!), hot sauce, and of course the vodka. Most of my other liquor consumption is either simple mix (bourbon & coke, etc) or liquor + ice (single malt, better bourbon, etc), or the very rare shot.

I also can't believe no one has mentioned the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster. Flavour "Like having your brains smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped around a large gold brick."


Take the juice from one bottle of that Ol' Janx Spirit.
Pour into it one measure of water from the seas of Santraginus V(Oh, that Santragian seawater! Oh, those Santragian fish!)
Allow three cubes of Arcturan Mega-gin to melt into the mixture (it must be properly iced or the benzene is lost).
Allow four litres of Fallian marsh gas to bubble through it, in honor of all those happy hikers who have died of pleasure in the Marshes of Fallia.
Over the back of a silver spoon float a measure of Qalactin Hypermint extract, redolent of all the heavy odors of the dark Qalactin Zones, subtle, sweet, and mystic.
Drop in the tooth of an Algolian Suntiger. Watch it dissolve, spreading the fires of the Algolian Suns deep into the heart of the drink.
Sprinkle Zamphuor.
Add an olive.
Drink . . . but . . . very carefully . . .

Funny story about the Gin and Tonic. I'm sitting in the lounge at the old Bombay Airport September 1988. No tonic water!!! How can there not be tonic water in Bombay?

So I ordered a gin and soda water and some sugar packets. I then took out a Chloro-Quinine tablet out of my med-kit and scraped enough in to give it the "tonic" flavor....

Although I really don't drink too much these days I've been really fond of resurrecting old cocktails for some time now. It kind of started out when I found a pre-prohibition cocktail book at a used bookstore. Niow for some reason I have grown quite fond of making Tiki drinks. Finding and recreating the original recipes can be remarkably challenging. Here is the recipe for a Navy Grog. Supposedly it's the original Don the Beachcomber version. I can't confirm that but I can say it's both tasty and wickedly powerful!

1 ounce Don Q Cristal light Puerto Rican rum
1 ounce Coruba dark Jamaican rum
1 ounce Lemon Hart Demerara 80 proof rum
¾ ounce fresh lime juice
¾ ounce fresh grapefruit juice
¾ ounce club soda
1 ounce honey syrup
Place all ingredients into shaker, add ice, shake and strain into double old-fashioned glass. Add ice cone. Serves one.

Honey Syrup
1-to-1 ratio of honey to hot water. Stir to blend, then let cool.

Ice Cone
Pack Pilsner glass with crushed ice and straw and freeze.

If you're going to make a margarita, you might try this, which is the correct recipe:

2 parts blanco tequila
1 part orange liqueur
1 part freshly squeezed lime juice.

Bonus points if you use Mexican limes, not Persian limes.
NO OJ.
NO margarita mix, sweet and sour, etc.
No aged tequilas.

Another one that doesn't suck it the Tequila Sunrise.

Two parts OJ, one part tequila, a little grenadine, over rocks.

JR

JD - That may be the original recipe, but I suggest you try the ones I make. And yes, Mexican limes are better, but good luck finding them.

I can find them, the hard part is squeezing enough juice to make a margarita....

JR

I guess it is a cocktail if you squeeze lemon juice into the drink. I never thought of the garnish as an ingredient.
I also don't eat the parsley sprig that some restaurants use to garnish their steak.

Classic martini for me. The ritual of making it is part of the experience.
Fill martini glass with ice and water, set it aside. Get out the unstuffed, green olives, Tangueray, & vermouth. Fill a shaker with ice and add 2 oz gin, shake. Skewer a couple of olives. Shake gin again. Empty glass and shake dry. Shake gin again. Pour in some vermouth and swirl it around the glass, dump out excess. Shake gin. Add olive skewer, pour in the gin.
Sit back and enjoy.

Yea, that sounds GOOD! Love me some lemon drops, and love me some cherry, so cherry lemon drops sound pretty good.

My current favorite:
2 shots of cherry brandy with can of sprite = slutty shirley temple
2 shots of cherry brandy with can of coke = cherry coke

Both of which have good flavor with almost no alcohol taste but have a pretty good kick.

If you have a good blender, a variation on the margarita is as follows:
1/4 cup water
3/4 cup cazadores
1/4 cup grand Marnier
1/4 cup sugar
1 whole peeled lemon
1 whole peeled Lime
1 whole peeled Orange
key lime juice to taste
4 cups ice
blend well, serve in salt rimmed tumblers
(apologies to Vitamix blender manual)

I'm in MD. The best breakfast/brunch drink you can have (on the weekends of course) is an Old Bay Bloody Mary.

Here's a recipe I like (though I use a little more Vodka and skip the olives). Combine with oysters, cream of crab soup, or a poached egg with hollandaise over a crab cake, etc. Yummy.

Recipe: Old Bay Bloody Marys
Makes 2 drinks

For the drink:
4 oz. vodka
16 oz. tomato juice
1 tbsp. Worcestershire sauce
Juice of one lemon
2 tbsp. olive juice
2 tbsp. horseradish
1 tsp. hot sauce
Freshly ground pepper
1 tsp. Old Bay, plus extra for the rim

For the garnish:
2 stalks of celery
A few olives
Two lemon slices

What to do:

Combine all the ingredients—minus the vodka—in a pitcher. Taste and adjust seasoning to preference.

Run a lemon along the rims of each glass. Then dip each rim in a dish filled with Old Bay seasoning.

Fill glasses with ice, pour 2 oz of vodka in each, and finish with the Bloody Mary mix. Garnish with lemon slice, olives and celery.

My Marg receipt (not for the faint of heart).

Fill pint glass with ice cubes.
Fill half way with good (not great) tequila.
Splash of triple sec (IMHO it is a waste to use good Grand Marnier or Cointreau)
Top glass off with sweet and sour (don't bother with marg mix) fresh squeezed lime juice and sugar is better but I am WAY too lazy for that.
Pour back and forth in another glass to mix.
Consume (yes I'm also too lazy to salt the rim)

Spirit of '72

2 parts Vodka
1 part Rye Whiskey
1 part Maple Syrup Liqueur