january budget

[by john]

i haven't written about hitting my booze budget target lately because, well, i had been hitting it. but, as evidenced by all the dc posts, i blew way past it in january. the trip to julio's liquors for rum, apricot liqueur, rye, vermouth, and genever certainly didn't help, either.

we're talking a factor of two in overspending. (that's not so bad for astronomers usually, but...) a couple things salvaged january from going down in the cautionary-tale-of-profligacy or cut-up-my-credit-card categories. first, i had plenty of xmas and birthday money to blow through, so i knew the size of my cushion. and second, i reminded myself that a budget is not a hard limit as much as a guideline; E[x], not max(x). i'm already well under for february, so things will average out nicely.

moreover, budgets are flexible. i just ran through my 2009 spending and found, for instance, that i overestimated zipcar and clothing expenses, so i redistributed them to other pleasures, like dining out.

well, until i can experiment enough with those bottles from julio's, this will be my budget-saving drink of choice:

parsimony

2 oz italian vermouth

pour on the rocks. add a dash of bitters if feeling adventurous.

september budget

[by john]

it's getting to be the same old story, but i managed another month under budget. to get more fine-grained about it, though, i spent roughly $90 on schmancy cocktails, $45 on wine and beer to bring to friends' parties, $30 on a new bottle, and $15 at the beer-after-work sort of places.

huh, that's a 6:3:2:1 ratio; is that a common one for drinks? some people swear by a 2:1:1 spirit:citrus:syrup portioning for sours, or a 4:3:2:1 weak:strong:sweet:sour for punches, so perhaps. well, not really. after looking through my recipes, the 6:3:2:1 really isn't in vogue. i did find one drink, however, from a weekly blogger think (drink?) tank:

1 1/2 gin

3/4 green chartreuse

1/2 orgeat

1/4 carpano antica

1 dash angostura

(call the tiny portion of bitters extra tips or something, if you want to be strict about it.) what kismet, though - it uses carpano antica vermouth, the bottle i just got. unfortunately, this one goes down in the average column, despite looking so tasty on paper. too sharp and too sweet, i'm afraid.

at least my spending was in tasty proportion...

a saratoga patch

[by john]

cocktaileers haven't ended their honeymoon just yet with tequila and mezcal. they're reinventing classic drinks (witness the oaxacan old fashioned), they're making new ones (q.v. misty kalkofen's maximilian affair or anything coming out of mayahuel), and they're finding their favorite brands to mix with.

i've been dipping my own barspoon in, with the flux bias and ho(a)rfrost, but hadn't yet tried a tequila twist on a classic. so here's a new take on a saratoga. i forget when i was first introduced to the saratoga, but it was for one notable feature: it mixes two very different base spirits together, rye and cognac. it's kind of one of those average cocktails, better in concept than execution. i wondered if tequila's flavors could improve it:

the saratoga

equal parts: rye

cognac

italian vermouth

two dashes of bitters

the saratoga.2

1 oz rye

1 oz tequila

1/2 oz italian vermouth

3 dashes xocolatl-mole bitters

i like this better than the original. the earthy/herbal flavors of the rye and tequila play well together, whereas cognac is easily subdued by rye. plus, the x-m bitters get their voice heard in the herbal parley. it's not great, though - and it was highly dependent on ingredients. rittenhouse was too strong, punt e mes was too overpowering, and any more vermouth (dolin in the end) is too sweet.

but for now, it can serve as a patch, saving a classic drink from averageness.

restocking

[by john]

finishing a bottle is one happy, recurring consequence of stocking a bar. it affords the opportunity to try a new spirit, and congratulate oneself on beating the system of expensive drinks at a bar.

our collection has recently seen the demise of some french vermouth, benedictine, and two kinds of rye. all three of these are essential to my bar. french vermouth and rye are featured in nearly every classic cocktail (though rarely together in one drink), while benedictine has become indispensable to my herb-loving palate.

i'm anxious to pick up some dolin vermouth, which is even more delicate than the noilly prat we finished. as for the rye, i think i'll stick with the cheap-and-good-as-hell rittenhouse 100. the restocking will hit my bar-going habits a bit, but that's fine since i'll have new toys to play with.

speaking of budgeting, i hit april and may right on the nose. taken together, i spent about $397 of the allotted $400. solid.

local is the new pink

[by john]

i brought home two new bottles as part of my qualifying exam recovery program: four roses bourbon ($20 bottle!) and greylock gin, produced by a local distiller (on twitter, nice). drinking (cocktails) locally is a crazy idea unless you live in, say, kentucky or italy, but now i'm afforded that, er, additional warm and fuzzy feeling.

i decided to make a martinez with it. the martinez is a very old cocktail, with a long history better detailed in other more assiduous cocktail blogs. a precursor to the martini, but with italian vermouth. there are variations out there with french vermouth, which is what i was feeling like, so i went with cocktaildb's:

martinez (variation)

1 1/4 oz gin [greylock]
1 oz french vermouth [noilly prat]
1/4 oz maraschino liqueur
1 dash orange bitters [angostura]

stir with ice and strain into a cocktail glass. [no cherry for me, thanks.]

pretty delightful. surprisingly, the noilly prat managed to tame the greylock's botanicals on the nose. the taste: fruity, botanical, dry, and a little sweet, all with the distinctive gin backbone.

at the moment, i've run out of plymouth, so greylock will be the workhorse for a while. looking forward to it.


p.s. - it's the season for phd defenses, and some celebratory champagne got me thinking about what i'll be pouring for my own après-defense. i'd love to mix batches of an original cocktail, but that'd present a few logistical challenges. maybe champagne cocktails, then? i have some time to think about it, anyway.

passing and punting

[by john]

i passed my third and final qualifying exam last week, marking not only the start of my candidacy for a phd, but, more notably, the end of a horrendous month of extreme teetotalism. what better way to celebrate than beers, bourbon, burgers, and a trip to craigie for tom's cocktails? in response to my plea for a drink to erase volumes of astrophysical trivia, he whipped up some strange stepchild of a recipe, which included galliano, rye, tequila, and becherovka. whoa. uncanny light color, foreign flavor, and all too drinkable.

now, as i predicted before, my budget fared well in the month of may. that means i can give myself a $100 present for jumping through that flaming, spinning, glass-shard-encrusted academic hoop.

first on the list: punt e mes. this guy was (still is) the darling vermouth of boston bartenders for a while, and for good reason. it blows the socks off of martini & rossi. i just picked up a bottle this evening at the wine and cheese cask (where mike got his bottle) on my bike ride home from lab. they also had both kinds of dolin vermouth there, so i might have to go back...

to break in the bottle, i decided to give it a spin in one of my all time favorite cocktails, the cocktail à la louisiane:

cocktail à la louisiane

1 oz rye [rittenhouse]
1 oz benedictine
1 oz italian vermouth [punt e mes]
1 barspoon absinthe [st. george]
1/2 barspoon bitters

stir with cracked ice and strain into a cocktail glass.

the punt e mes has a gentle bitter finish, so i was most curious to see how that would play in the drink. and, voila, it shows through! first, it races to cut the sweet benedictine, then, after the absinthe has had its say, it outlasts with its bitter end. the punt e mes added a layer and a half to this already multifaceted drink. in retrospect, the m&r was only filler.

well, next on that list: st. germain (now that it's popular and can be found in every liquor store), cherry heering, greylock gin (a local distiller), and maybe galliano, four roses bourbon, another rye, bonded applejack, and who knows what else. the burden of choice!

taking the edge off tax day

[by john]

i just submitted my federal and massachusetts taxes. fairly painless, actually, except for the fact that i couldn't file online. (why schedule d screws everything up is beyond me. but it was worth it; i sold some old stocks and put the proceeds straight into my roth ira.)

to celebrate, i made an income tax cocktail. this is a true cocktail in the classic style: a variation on gin plus vermouth plus bitters. all very cheap ingredients (sub-$20 bottles), and versatile ones to boot. the cocktail itself is decent; a little flat of a taste profile, but balanced enough. (clearly, the only reason i'm writing about it is because of its name.) the linked recipe calls for a bit more orange juice, but since i'm not a huge fan of that citrus, i only use 1/4 oz of it. to compensate, i garnish with orange oil to bring out the hint in the drink.

income tax cocktail

1 1/2 oz gin {i use plymouth}
3/4 oz dry/french vermouth {i heart noilly prat}
3/4 oz sweet vermouth {martini and rossi for now}
1/4 oz freshly squeezed orange juice
1 dash angostura bitters

stir with ice and strain into a cocktail glass. squeeze an orange peel over top and discard. optional garnish: flamed dollar bill.

(i should give a shout out to these adorable oxo measuring cups, which get down to the 1/4 oz. now indispensable in my bar.)

cheers to that.

burying the lede

[by john]

at the risk of living up to my own title, i'll put my point up front: i went to drink last night and tried two new spirits, but had them in cocktails with other ingredients that, well, buried them. lesson learned.

my friend steven is visiting from nyc for the weekend, which is more than occasion for a trip to drink. i was excited to show off boston's best to steven, who had taken me to some great nyc speakeasies last month.

we found perches at the ice peninsula, where misty was holding it down. we held her captive for a while, asking her what she was working on (a lot, it turns out, but no names yet). steven went for the laphroaig-rinsed apple brandy cocktail, with some benedictine and muscovado (molasses-like) simple syrup. my interest was piqued when misty mentioned dolin vermouth (this stuff is hard to get).

the dolin drink was mostly dolin blanc (not your typical cocktail), with smaller amounts of rye and green chartreuse. the effect was intriguing - a pale colored drink with ebbing hints of rye. but the chartreuse (one of my favorite spirits, don't get me wrong) cut through everything, leaving little to taste of the vermouth. we got to try some of the dolin alone, and i think its delicate profile would be more suited towards a gin drink like the marguerite. steven's cocktail, incidentally, was fantastic - the dry, peaty hint of scotch acted as guardrails for the driving, complex sweetness of the rest of the drink.

for our second round, we both went the digestif route to settle our dinners from the south street diner. i had been eyeing the cynar bottle the whole night, having never tried the artichoke-based liqueur. when misty said a ponte vecchio contained equal parts cynar and fernet (the you-drink-it-if-you're-in-the-industry drink), and a bit of citrus, i was sold, on curiosity alone. the fernet's sharp, minty elbow overpowered the body of the cynar, but the drink was easier to sip than a shot of fernet, for sure.

steven, again, chose inspiredly and got an appetizer l'italiene: 2:1 punt e mes to fernet, with dashes of absinthe and simple syrup. the nose on this drink was crazy...sort of savory, reminding me of bacon. the taste, though, was sweet and nicely rounded. cool.

so to set this extended metaphor to rest, the next time i try to discover the story of some new alcohol, i'll have it in a drink that doesn't make me read between the lines.

to start

[by john]

the question comes, predictably, after the necessary rituals of hanging coats, tossing down napkins, and pouring water: 'what can i start you off with tonight?' no matter what current cravings are floating around my mind, i'm always paralyzed. order off the menu? revisit a classic? sample one of those top shelf bottles?

a couple weekends ago, i went down to craigie with my boyfriend. i had given a little pre-thought to the 'starting off' question, and had determined to try tom's vermouth. this hardly helped me decide on a first drink any quicker - tom informed me that he was making two vermouths in house, deflating my simple line of questioning. but he steered me towards the red vermouth, letting me try it as we parleyed back and forth, weighing options from a martinez to a negroni to a marconi wireless. after minutes of vacillation (my guy had already decided - 'something creamy'), i fell back on the touchstone of the manhattan. what better way to calibrate a sweet vermouth, after all?

and so i begin this blog with the same sorts of hesitations and false starts. i might as well start simply then. me: i'm john, a graduate student in physics, as are my cohorts, naveen and mike. intent: to write about drinking, drinking in boston, drinking on a grad student budget, and other things i haven't thought of yet. mike and naveen sits on the food end of the gourmand spectrum. we might even talk about science!

alright, those are enough ingredients for now; we'll see what literary equivalents of chartreuse, flaming orange peels, and absinthe drips come later...