Category: "Drinks"

Only for the Stout-Hearted

Don’t just reach for the usual. This St. Patrick’s Day, expand your dark-beer horizons with these inky ales.
By Joshua M. Bernstein

We can learn much about beer drinking from Ivan Pavlov’s drooling dogs. The Russian physiologist used whistles, tuning forks, and bells to make canines salivate in anticipation of eating. A similar conditioned response occurs on March 17. That day, drinkers wear green and reach for pints of pitch-dark Guinness. Let’s call it pack behavior.

Guinness fever runs so hot on St. Patrick’s Day that tipplers don’t bother diving into the deep pool of unique stouts. From smooth, luscious milk stouts to briny oyster stouts and the supercharged Russian imperial stouts, there are countless ways to drink dark.

Though the Irish invented the dry stout, they hardly have a monopoly on the style. Great American versions are available, from Maine-based Shipyard Brewing’s Blue Fin Stout to the Old No. 38 Stout, from Fort Bragg, California’s, North Coast Brewing.

If you like a slightly sweeter stout, look toward “milk stouts” (sometimes called “sweet” or “cream stouts”). Instead of half-and-half, the milk in question is lactose, an unfermentable sugar. When added to beer, lactose creates a fuller body and imparts a sweetness that can balance out the roasted characteristics. Wet your whistle with Young’s Double Chocolate Stout and the Left Hand Milk Stout Nitro.

Similarly smooth but less sweet is oat meal stout, which is brewed with a small percentage of the breakfast friendly grain. Oats create a silky, creamy brew with a lick of sweetness. Samuel Smith’s Oatmeal Stout is a classic British example, but Wolaver’s Oatmeal Stout and Rogue’s Shakespeare Oatmeal Stout are worthy brews.

Want to pair some food with your stout? Classically, oysters have proved an ideal pairing with stouts, with the briny salinity complementing the full-bodied, creamy brew. To unite those flavors, brewers have begun tossing freshly shucked oysters into brew kettles, creating complex ales like the Porterhouse Brewing Company’s Oyster Stout.

But if your goal on St. Patrick’s Day is getting pie-eyed, opt for the burly, engine-oil-black Russian imperial stout. It typically registers between 8 to 12 percent alcohol by volume, and dates back to the days of Peter the Great, who opened his nation to the West in the eighteenth century. Seeing a business opportunity, British brewers formulated beers that would appeal to the vodka loving citizens. Since standard porters would not survive the lengthy Arctic sea voyage, extra hops were added and alcohol percentages were elevated, resulting in a darkly potent brew. In recent years, American craft brewers have cottoned to this extreme style, creating winners such as Stone’s Imperial Russian Stout and Victory’s Storm King Stout, even aging them in bourbon or whiskey barrels. Crack open one of Goose Island’s boozy Bourbon County Stouts on St. Patrick’s Day, and your friends will be green with envy.

Only for the Stout Hearted
GOOSE ISLAND: BOURBON COUNTY STOUT
The imperial stout is aged in 12- to 16-year-old oak barrels once filled with Kentucky’s Heaven Hill bourbon. The result is a warming, boozy wallop, calmed by notes of chocolate and vanilla.
Only for the Stout Hearted
ROGUE ALES: SHAKESPEARE OATMEAL STOUT
Tinted like tar, the thespian-themed oatmeal stout has a terrifically luscious, creamy head and a nose of cocoa and caramel. It drinks nice and easy, offering flavors of milk chocolate, toasted oats, and a touch of hoppy bitterness.
Only for the Stout Hearted
SHIPYARD BREWING COMPANY: BLUE FIN STOUT
The midnight-dark stout, flavored with rich malt and bittersweet chocolate, is capped by a rich beige head. It closes crisp, with a bitter, lingering aftertaste.
Only for the Stout Hearted
THE PORTERHOUSE BREW ING COMPANY: OYSTER STOUT
Ireland’s Porterhouse creates top-flight stouts, such as the dry, assertively bitter Wrasslers XXXX and this bivalve beauty. Brewed with just-shucked oysters, the aromatic stout is silky as all get-out, with a touch of brine on the taste buds.
Only for the Stout Hearted
LEFT HAND BREWING COMPANY: MILK STOUT NITRO
Bottled under pressure with nitrogen (the gas that gives draft Guinness its creaminess), this stout charges from the bottle with tons of tiny bubbles, which cascade into a thick head as sumptuous as an angel’s pillow. Expect a luscious creaminess and flavors of roasted grains and milk chocolate.

Back to the Future

Back to the Future whiskey
It’s been 200 years, but the not-so Old-Fashioned is still a cocktail to savor.
By Meaghan Dorman

Every good foundation starts with a brick. In the cocktail world, that brick is the Old-Fashioned, a simple blend of sugar, bitters, water, and spirit that later led to the Manhattan and the Martini. In the 1800s, when men drank a whole lot more and the misguided theory of Prohibition hadn’t yet been conceived, rye whiskey was the popular choice. In those days, when you needed something hearty to brace yourself against the long, laborious days, a dash of sugar to take the edge off the whiskey, bitters to protect your stomach, and a bit of dilution to help it go down was just the ticket. If you asked for a cocktail, an Old-Fashioned is what you got. Today, that concoction is just one of thousands of mixed drinks to choose from.

Then came 1920—the dawn of the Prohibition era. Along with all the Boardwalk Empire–esque crime and glamour, there was a major bastardization of cocktails. Skilled bartenders left the country, booze was made from anything and everything, and mixed drinks were concocted simply to cover up caustic hooch. When Prohibition was repealed and the Old-Fashioned reappeared, it had the addition of muddled orange and neon-red cherries, and usually a splash of club soda. Not exactly the best way to appreciate whiskey.

But in case you missed the news flash, we’re in the midst of a cocktail renaissance. Bartenders are bringing back the classics and making them with quality spirits and realistic proportions. You can get the Old-Fashioned made the old-fashioned way: just a sugar cube, bitters, good American rye, and water in the form of a nice chunk of ice. Add a little citrus zest and you’ve got a piece of bygone times—a drink made to sip so you can shrug off the day’s stress.

“It’s the father of all cocktails,” says Michael McIlroy, a longtime bartender at New York City’s cocktail mecca Milk & Honey. “It’s also how I judge new whiskies when I try them. If it makes a good Old-Fashioned, it’s worth while.” While the standard choice is rye, any quality whiskey can make a solid drink. Bartenders’ love for the Old-Fashioned has led not only to the use of other spirits, but to the birth of new cocktails. A Oaxaca Old-Fashioned uses mezcal and reposado tequila with agave nectar as the sweetener, and the Benton’s Old-Fashioned at PDT (Please Don’t Tell) in New York City uses maple syrup and a baconfat-washed bourbon. McIlroy and his co worker, Richard Boccato, spun the classic into the American Trilogy, using orange bitters, a brown-sugar cube, and equal parts rye whiskey and Laird’s bonded apple brandy.

The point of the original—and the cocktails it inspired—is to highlight the spirit without overwhelming it, and though the combination of bitter and sweet adds a bit of complexity, the spirit is still the backbone of the drink. While the current trend is for flavors and infusions to run amok in cocktails, this one keeps it simple in the best way. But in case you need another reason to stir up this classic masterpiece, take McIlroy’s advice: “Every Old-Fashioned you drink makes life a bit better.”

OLD-FASHIONED
Ingredients:
• One sugar cube
• Two healthy dashes of
Angostura bitters
• Two ounces rye whiskey
• One solid piece of ice
Combine all ingredients in a rocks
glass and stir. Garnish with a lemon
and orange peel, squeezing the
citrus oil on the drink first.

Frightfully Delicious

Frightfully DeliciousKeep your tricks. This Halloween, adults get to enjoy all the treats, thanks to these strong and spooky potions.
By Joshua M. Bernstein

I fondly recall dressing as Chewbacca for Halloween when I was a child, and knocking on my neighbors’ doors. I never had to resort to tricks. I always received treats: Baby Ruths, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, Nerds—enough goodies to keep me sugar-twitchy for weeks. As an adult, my increasingly furry shoulders and chest ably approximate my old costume. Yet on Halloween, I don’t dare ring my neighbors’ doorbells to beg for candy. Moreover, I’ve lost my taste for the sweet stuff. But dang it, on Halloween I still crave a treat.

Happily, the witching season is the perfect opportunity to scare up a spookily delicious cocktail. Head to a bar during October, and chances are you’ll find alcoholic renditions of candy, such as Tootsie Roll or Milky Way Martinis. The trend “taps into the kid in all of us who ate candy corn and all the sticky little things on Halloween,” says Paul Clarke, a contributing editor at drinks magazine Imbibe. But just like childhood’s Halloween-candy binge, “taking in that much sugar in a drink is not a good idea,” Clarke says. “People forget that one time they ate too much candy and barfed their guts out. They seem doomed to repeat their mistakes.” Instead, Clarke suggests dipping into the rich canon of creepy sounding cocktails. For starters, he likes a devilish libation named Satan’s Whiskers. “It’s a delightful little drink with a citrusy, sour component that’s pretty approachable,” Clarke says of the marriage of gin, Grand Marnier orange juice, and both dry and sweet vermouth. “It’s not going to pound you over the head with an overwhelming amount of sugar or alcohol.”

Equally easygoing is the morbid sounding Corpse Reviver No. 2, the origins of which stretch back to the nineteenth century. Back then, Tylenol and Alka-Seltzer couldn’t come to the rescue. Instead, barkeeps concocted morning-friendly drinks purported to revive the dead—or, at least the deathly hungover. “It’s not as potent as a Martini or a Manhattan, and even the lightest of lightweights will be able to have one,” Clarke says of the bright concoction, which is fashioned with gin, Lillet, Cointreau, fresh lemon juice, and a haunting hint of absinthe.

Following in the Reviver’s deathly footsteps is the Obituary Cocktail, which hails from that land of ghostly intrigue, New Orleans. “It touches back on the flavors we saw in the late nineteenth century,” Clarke says of the drink, whose name doubles as the moniker of a secret order of New Orleans tipplers. “Essentially, it’s a Martini with a little bit of absinthe. It’s very dry, very potent, and has an ethereal anise flavor. People who enjoy anise and the botanical complexity of gin and vermouth will love this drink.”

What if you don’t love anise and you still want to experience the Hallow een spirit? Turn your taste buds on to the Zombie, a potent brew that’s “designed to pound you into submission,” Clarke says. Popularized by legen dary California barman Donn Beach in the 1930s, the Zombie is a precisely calibrated blend of fruit juices, aromatic liqueurs, and rum, rum, rum: The original Zombie, served at Hollywood’s Don the Beachcomber, reportedly packed a whopping seven and a half ounces of hooch. While the drink lands a boozy haymaker, the fruit juices ably mask the alcohol. The result is a “complex cocktail that hits with lots of different flavors,” Clarke enthuses. “It’s incredibly delicious when mixed properly.”

Therein lies the problem. The Zombie is so brawny, yet simultaneously easy-sipping, that the original Beachcomber forbade customers from tipping back more than two of the tiki drinks—any more and you’d become as brain-dead as a ghoulish flesh-eater. Then again, maybe you should have a third. Consider it your Halloween costume.

The Trader Vic’s Zombie
1 ounce Jamaican dark rum
2 ounces Puerto Rican light rum
1/2 ounce 151 Demerara rum
1 ounce Orange Curaçao
1 ounce lemon juice
1 ounce orange juice
1/2 ounce Grenadine
1 ounce Orange Curaçao
1 dash Pernod
Mix ingredients with a large chunk of ice. Stir well, then pour over cracked ice in a tall glass or large tiki mug.

Punch Drunk

Punch Drunk
Once the original San Francisco treat, the elegant South American brandy pisco is making a countrywide comeback.
By Joshua M. Bernstein

For the longest time, Johnny Schuler barely gave pisco a passing thought. Back in 1977, the successful Peruvian restaurateur and wine aficionado only used the strong, colorless South American brandy to concoct Pisco Sours, a cocktail constructed with egg whites, simple syrup, bitters, and lemon or lime juice. Pisco was for mixing, not savoring solo. But one day a colleague called him, distressed. It was the middle of a pisco competition, and the tasters were tipsy: Instead of spitting out samples, they were swallowing them.

Schuler volunteered to lend his palate. His first four samples barely merited a raised eyebrow. Then the fifth glass was poured. “I said, ‘What’s this?’ ” recalls Schuler, who sniffed the glass deeply. He took a tiny taste, then another. “It was smooth, round, and elegant,” Schuler sighs. “It was beautiful. It dawned on me that pisco was a whole world of flavors. From that day forward, I haven’t stopped drinking it.”

Despite a heritage that stretches back to the sixteenth century, when Spanish settlers devised the distilled elixir in Peru, pisco barely registers on imbibers’ radars. The oversight should soon be corrected. In recent years, top-shelf piscos have set sail from South America to the States, where barkeeps have put their spin on the spirit that looks like vodka, but boasts a multifaceted flavor and bouquet.

At New York City’s sultry, subterranean 1534, the Pisco Sour is given an Asian twist thanks to lemongrass syrup, ginger juice, and a dusting of chai green tea. In Chicago, modern Latin restaurant Nacional 27’s Chicha Sour is made with pisco plus an infusion of egg whites, purple corn, lime, and bitters. Across the country, San Francisco’s Pisco Latin Lounge mixes its namesake with everything from cilantro to absinthe to passion fruit. Elsewhere in town, Cantina serves a cavalcade of pisco cocktails, including a punch packed with crushed pineapple, citrus juice, Angostura bitters, and “secret sauce.” Consider this a return to form.

During the gold-rush era, pisco landed in California aboard traders’ vessels. San Franciscans quickly cottoned to the brandy, especially bartenders’ newfangled creation: the pineapple-loaded Pisco Punch. “It was the fashionable drink to have in San Francisco,” says Schuler, who also hosts the TV show Por Las Rutas del Pisco and wrote several books on pisco. The strapping punch ruled San Francisco bars till 1920, when Prohibition severed the pisco supply.

Nowadays, there’s no shortage. But there are crucial lessons to learn before buying your first bottle. For starters, look at the country of origin. While both Chilean and Peruvian pisco are fashioned from fermented grape juice, the Chilean version is distilled to rocket-fuel strength, usually around 150 proof. It’s then aged in wooden barrels and diluted to about 80 proof, resulting in a harsher spirit that’s typically paired with soda. By contrast, Peruvian pisco is distilled to bottle strength (around 76 to 86 proof), then sent to slumber in a nonreactive container, perhaps made of glass, cement, copper, or stainless steel. The result is a purer-tasting spirit, the unadulterated essence of grapes.

Try choice Peruvian expressions such as the silky Campo de Encanto (“Field of Enchantment”), which has a floral, slightly fruity bouquet. Also excellent are the earthy, fullbodied Macchu Pisco, which has a subtly peppery note, and the smooth BarSol—the gentle bouquet of ripe fruit is beguiling. Then there’s Schuler’s noble entry to the marketplace, Pisco Portón. “It’s a gentleman’s drinking spirit, a spirit for conversation,” Schuler says of his creation. The refined potion drinks warm and slightly raisin-sweet, filled with grassy aromas that detour to tropical fruit and chocolate. It’s a little like … well, “It’s not comparable to anything,” Schuler says. “Pisco is its own category. It’s the newest—and oldest—drink on the market.”

Portonero
2 ounces Pisco Portón
1 teaspoon fresh lime juice
1 teaspoon simple syrup
1 slice of ginger
1 dash of bitters
Ginger ale
Pour all the ingredients except the ginger ale into a tall glass with ice. Fill with ginger ale. Stir and garnish with a lime wedge.

Rum for Your Money

Rum for Your Money rum So long, Piña Colada. The oft-maligned rum is stepping out from its umbrella topped past to be reborn as a rarefied spirit worth the splurge.
By Joshua M. Bernstein

For decades, rum has been the cheap floozy of the spirits world, a tacky booze to mix with cola or whir into an umbrella-topped libation. But lately rum—a grab bag of distilled spirits crafted from sugarcane and its by-products, mainly molasses—has rehabilitated its besmirched name. The white and spiced rums you pounded in college have been joined by oak-aged elixirs and artisanal spirits that are on par with, and sometimes exceed, more revered dark spirits. “Whiskey and Scotch converts are leading the way to the rum shelf,” says spirits expert Edward Hamilton, who runs the Ministry of Rum website.

Which rum is worth opening your wallet for? Look for rhum agricole—agricultural rum. Instead of molasses, the French West Indies’ specialty is made with fresh-pressed sugarcane juice. The result is clean and grassy, floral and citric, making rhum agricole a great drink to sip neat or in a cocktail, such as the simple lime-and-sugar Tí Punch.

Fresh rhum agricole is aged in barrels, mainly French oak, to impart the lush notes of vanilla and wood, and has a darker tint that bourbon fans will favor. After at least three years of marinating in a barrel, the agricole is dubbed rhum vieux, or “old rum.”

When buying a rhum agricole, examine the label. Numerous Caribbean distilleries use sugarcane juice, but France’s Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée certifies that only Martinique’s seven distilleries can lay claim to rhum agricole. Brands worth buying include Rhum J.M, Rhum Clement, Neisson, and Depaz, which specializes in aged rums.

While rhum vieux requires just three years of aging to earn its appellation, other rums are slumbering in oak for 12, 15, or even 30 years, making them as complex and nuanced as a snort of Scotland’s finest. In fact, Renegade Rum takes its super-rare, single-vintage rums and “enhances” them with oak-cask aging at Scotland’s famed Bruichladdich Distillery, resulting in snifter-worthy sensations best served straight—mixing would be blasphemy.

In Barbados, Mount Gay Rum makes two exceptional long-aged specimens. The Extra Old naps in bourbon-soaked oak for up to 15 years, and presents a nose of sweet fruit and oak and a zesty finish. By contrast, the 1703 Old Cask Selection—named after the year Mount Gay was founded—incorporates rums aged from 10 to 30 years; expect a nose of cigar-friendly leather and oak, and flavors that flit from bananas to candied fruit. From Guatemala, you’ll find the fab premium rums of Ron Zacapa. The distillery’s exquisitely nuanced Centenario line stars spirits aged up to 15 or 23 years, and the exemplary XO (extra old) is aged in bourbon, sherry, and wine barrels before being finished in cognac casks.

To splurge on a once-in-a-lifetime liquor, look toward Ron Abuelo Centuria. In honor of Varela Hermanos’s 100th anniversary, the Panamanian distillery released an extra-antiquated version of its benchmark Ron Abuelo rum. The Centuria is a select blend of privatereserve rums aged up to 30 years in oak barrels that once held bourbon. It’s equal parts familiar and unexpected, a tropical luxury worth savoring beneath, not with, an umbrella.

Life on Top
INGREDIENTS
1 ounce Neisson Rhum Agricole Blanc
1 ounce Maker’s Mark bourbon
1/2 ounce sweet vermouth
3 dashes orange bitters
Stir all ingredients in a mixing glass. Strain over
a large ice cube into a rocks glass. Garnish with a
flamed orange peel.
Recipe courtesy of Michael Neff, co-owner of
New York City’s Rum House.

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