mix some drinks

I made simple syrup. It’s simple, all right: bring some water to a simmer, and slowly stir in as much sugar as you can get to dissolve.

I used 1 cup of water, and put in 4 cups of sugar before it stopped dissolving. The recipe said you could do about 2 cups of sugar. Well, it did crystallize quite a bit after I let it cool.

I’d like to make gomme syrup, which is the same thing but with some gum arabic. That’s supposed to be even better in cocktails than simple syrup. Alas, I don’t know where to get gum arabic. Sahara Mart, the local foodie grocery, didn’t carry it. (They didn’t even know what it was.)

Made my first attempt at the French martini tonight. Been eager to try this since buying some Chambord a few weeks ago. There are a variety of different recipes on-line. I went with:

2 oz. vodka
1 oz. pineapple juice
1/4 oz. Chambord

I wasn’t about to buy pineapple juice just for this. I bought some pineapple chunks packed in juice, and used the leftover juice from the can.

It needed more Chambord. So I poured another 1/4 oz., directly into the cocktail glass. That made it work as a drink. Next time, even more Chambord. I’m going to use 3/4 oz. That might ruin the balance the other way, but that’s a chance I’ll have to take.

Reading on-line and watching videos, it has become clear that keeping the gin and vodka in the freezer to make them super-cold so I don’t need ice is not the way to go. The Sriracha martinis made that way were indeed fantastic, but the word is that a martini needs some ice dissolved in it. The water is actually a key part of the drink.

I tried chilling a martini properly, by stirring ice into it and then straining out the ice, and it was indeed a huge improvement! Still not as good as the martini I had in a bar with RP, but really good.

Next thing I need: orange bitters. I used orange oil in lieu of orange bitters, though, and that was pretty good. But the flavor is not complex enough.

A lot of mixed drinks need to be shaken. I’d been avoiding those and just doing the stirred drinks, because I had no shaker.

I bought a 12-oz. shaker at Kroger’s. I figured I didn’t need a large shaker (the ordinary ones are 24 oz., I think), since cocktails are normally pretty small. Well, a Screwdriver made by shaking is indeed a lot more interesting than a Screwdriver made by stirring!

On the same visit to Kroger’s, I also bought a bottle of Angostura bitters. The shortage is over!

I plunked down about $35 and bought two bottles of higher-quality gin: Bombay Dry and New Amsterdam. Seagram’s seems to be regarded fairly highly in on-line reports, but I thought it was kind of dull. I’d tried Bombay Sapphire in bars, but thought the flavoring was a bit overwhelming, not something for a mixed drink.

Experiments: martinis, Sriracha martinis (only using New Amsterdam), gimlets, gin with diet grape soda (quite good!!), gin with orange juice (more interesting than the usual vodka Screwdriver), a White Lady (I also bought some triple sec), lots more.

I never liked gin when I was trying it in bars, but I was curious to experiment with it. A lot of cocktail recipes use it. So, I bought the cheapest non-sleazy-looking bottle of gin at Kroger’s: Seagram’s Extra Dry, on sale for $9.99.

I also bought a bottle of Cribari dry vermouth for $4 at Sahara Mart, and made myself a martini. Not bad. The martini was the one gin drink I had really liked when I got it at a bar. The one I made was nowhere near as good as the one in the bar. Probably because I’m using cheap ingredients. But I’m getting some idea of how these mixed drinks work. Experiments included making gimlets, and this variation on the martini: add 1 tbsp of Sriracha sauce. Wow! Now that’s good.

Cocktails are an extraordinary aesthetic world. I’m actually really glad I bought some liquor and started experimenting at home. Way cheaper than bars, and I can experiment a lot more, with a lot less worry about bad results. If one comes out awful, I just pour it down the drain.

It took about two weeks to get through that bottle of gin! Previously, most bottles of spirits would last six months to a year in my house.

Continuing to try a lot of mixed drinks in bars is no longer an option on a grad student’s budget. Buying enough different kinds of liquor to seriously mix drinks seemed too expensive, but I bought a bottle of vodka and decided to experiment. It was Stolichnaya (a Russian friend insisted that I get Russian vodka), and only cost $13. That’s the price of about two interesting drinks in bars, and could fuel a lot of kitchen creativity.

It took about a month to get through it. Some experiments included: drinking it chilled (in the freezer) and neat, the inevitable Screwdriver, mixing it with Kahlua and milk or cream, and mixing some chocolate syrup into it (pretty good, actually!). Yes, I bought a bottle of Kahlua to go with it.