Good Like, Weird Good

The Keegan (Mr. Boston, page 185) is four parts bourbon, three parts Aperol, two parts yellow chartreuse and three parts lime juice. I have two almost-empty bottles of lime juice in the fridge, so this was appealing, as was the chartreuse, though I have green and not yellow. So, you know, there’s that.

Normally I don’t like this kind of low-alcohol drink; I like stuff boozy. This was good, though. Strange good. Weird good.

Backward, “Nociprema,” Which Basically Sounds Like A Really Effective Antibiotic, Or Perhaps Even An Acne Medication

The Brooklyn, which I saw in the PDT book, is eight parts rye, three parts dry vermouth, one part maraschino and one part Amer Picon, which I knew we never had and which was probably the reason I’d never tried to make this drink. It turns out that Cio Ciaro — my guess for a substitute — was a reasonable substitute. That said, I don’t really smell or taste amaros or bitters, so how would I ever know what to really substitute. I actually thought to smell Peychaud’s bitters once and it smelled just like Old Spice or some such thing. Crazy.

Here’s a summation of Amer Picon and somesuch, as well as a telling about of a homemade sous vide version of Amer Picon.

Oh, and this was good, even without the Amer Picon.

The Age Of Vermouth

There’s a drink in the 1927 book Barflies and Cocktails called “Warday’s Cocktail” (page 75), which is 1 teaspoon of yellow Chartreuse (I used green because I only have green), “1/3 Italian Vermouth” — i.e., one ounce sweet vermouth, 1/3 gin (read: one ounce gin) and 1/3 calvados or Apple Jack (we used one ounce of Apple Jack).

I was intrigued by it because a gin/Apple Jack-based drink sounds really weird. That, and the chartreuse has been burning a hole in my pocket (perhaps it literally could . . .). It’s a pretty OK cocktail — sort of like the Ur or Platonic cocktail in that it just tastes like generalized “cocktail.”

(Barflies and Cocktails is really weird, by the way; very “23 Skiddoo” or whatnot. Lots of mixers and vermouthiness.)

On Yellow-Red Color Blindness

I was going to say, this drink was X, Y & Z and then I go back to the recipe and realize that it was very fucked up. On page 159 there’s a drink called the La Louche which is six parts gin, four parts Lillet rouge, two parts lime juice, one part yellow Chartreuse and one part simple syrup.

I knew I had green Chartreuse and not the yellow variety and thought “Oh well.” But it wasn’t until going back just now that I realized I missed the “rouge” part of “Lillet rouge.”

Anyway, this drink — with green Chartreuse and the non-rouge Lillet was kind of one note (as determined by the executive committee, not me), like a fancified gimlet. Maybe I’ll try it the normal way at some point.

What The Spanish-American War Hath Wrought

Another daiquiri bastardizing, this time the Benjamin Barker Daiquiri (Mr. Boston, page 105) except replacing rum with bourbon, so: eight parts bourbon, two parts lime juice, two parts simple syrup, two parts Campari and two dashes absinthe (here, pastis). Was good.