Rum Club November

Join the Sydney Rum Club on Monday 16 November, 2009 for an in-depth, interactive presentation from rum guru and Reserve Brands Ambassador Nick van Tiel.

This Rum Club will give members the opportunity to taste one of the world’s finest rums, Ron Zacapa, as well as learn about the intricacies of the spirit.

Rum Club has been running for over five years and has members in London, Adelaide, Sydney and Melbourne. Session host Nick van Tiel has previously worked at London’s Trailer Happiness Bar where Rum Club was founded.

Come along to learn, ask questions and enjoy a few drinks with other like-minded rum aficionados.

The Rum Club will meet at Eden Bar & Restaurant at 6.30pm. The session costs $10, which includes membership.

Eden Bar & Restaurant

Shop 2, Level 8

MLC Centre

19 Martin Place

Sydney

http://www.therumclub.com/the_sydney_rum_club.phtml

To RSVP for the evening, email info@edenbarandrestaurant.com.au

Filed under: Bar, Sydney, Training , Ron Zacapa Centenario 23yr old rum, Sydney Rum Club

Jim Beam Small Batch Bourbon

I received a very special little present yesterday. The newest in the line of small batch bourbon’s from Jim Beam. I am a big fan of Basil Hayden’s and this bottle at least matches that. It was even signed by the Fred Noe, 7th Generation distiller of these fine Kentucky bourbons.

This latest small batch has port added to the spirit. The small batch website hasn’t been updated to talk about this new release, so I’m not sure as to how much port has been added, but the spirit still carries 40% ABV so I’m guessing not much. If you’ve tried the port finished Glenmorangie, which is single malt finished in a port cask, the addition of liquid port is noticeable in the Jim Beam product, but it works very well.

Anyone who has tried a Ruby Manhattan before will know that port deepens the cakey, sugary, fruity flavours in a good bourbon. This bottle from Jim Beam certainly delivers on that front with a complex, rich, almost Christmassy flavour to the spirit.

The bottle is the same as the one used for the Knob Creek, and the wax seal feels very plasticy. Unwrapping it uncovers what looks like a piece of duct tape and I ended up cutting of the bottom part of the wax, as it just seem to get in the way.

You’ll forget about all of that as soon as you smell the product though, so let’s not get too hung up on the little things.

It makes an excellent Old Fashioned with Peychaud’s bitters and a truly wonderful Manhattan with an amazing colour and one of the richest spicy finishes I’ve ever been lucky enough to experience. It’s very well distilled, and the port makes it incredibly smooth.

At $46.99, this is the bargain of the Small Batch range. You can pick it up online here as well. Shipping Australia wide. This would be the perfect little glass to be leaving out for Santa this Christmas Eve, just don’t be surprised if the bottle is gone by morning.

Filed under: Spirit , Great Value, Jim Beam Small Batch, Manhattan, Old Fashioned, Peychaud's Bitters, Port finish

Bootleg

Across the road from Jimmy Liks, Bootleg offers a well designed and relaxed environment that fuses eating and drinking together. Grab a seat at the bar and munch down some chicken liver costini and exquisitely cooked calamari. The olives are expensive (6.50 for a little bowl) but they are definately quality and worth every cent.

Grab a seat further down the back amongst old radios and darkly cool hipster ephemera if you’ve turned up in a group.

While the bar doesn’t have a cocktail list, the Negroni and the Martini are exceptionally well turned out, and I dare say if you know what you like they’d be able to help you with it. The wine list is also quite extensive.

175 Victoria Street
Potts Point NSW 2011
Phone (02) 9361 3884

You can also find them on Google maps here.

Filed under: Bar, Sydney , Bootleg, cool interior, Italian Food, relaxed, Victoria St

That’s a tasty Beveridge.

I already wrote today about the newest edition to my liquor cabinet, Johnnie Walker Gold Label Reserve. The master blender at Johnnie Walker, perfectly named Mr Beveridge has opened the Gold Label reserve stock to create a great new extension to the brand.

The quality and character of the spirit shine through in this version of the blended whisky standard, The Sour.

The tasty Beveridge.

45ml Johnnie Walker Gold Label Reserve, 15ml freshly squeezed lemon juice, 15ml real Canadian maple syrup, about 1/2 an egg white. Combine all the ingredients in a Boston glass and top with ice. Shake vigorously, you want to get the protein fibers from the egg to turn into meringue and give a great fluffy finish to the drink.

I know some people are squeamish about adding raw egg to a drink. It might be a little dicey, but the finish it gives the drink just can’t be found another way. Just to make things better, use an egg that is a couple of days old, it will fluff up much more than one straight from the chicken.

Filed under: At home, Cocktail , A tasty Beveridge, Johnnie Walker Gold Label Reserve, Lemon Juice, maple syrup, raw egg white

Lime in the Coconut

It’s getting warmer. Rum drinks and warm weather go together. Time to buy some tiki mugs.

As an interim measure, I picked up a young drinking coconut at the supermarket and decided to revel in the kitschness of it all.

Lime in the Coconut

15ml fresh lime juice, 30ml coconut juice, 15ml fresh pineapple juice, 30ml spiced rum, 30ml Mount Gay Extra Old rum,  10ml Amaretto. Shake all ingredients well and strain into a well iced coconut. Garnish in a garish fashion, I’ve gone with pineapple leaves, a wheel of lime, 1987 fluro straws and ice cube Moai heads.

Filed under: At home, Cocktail , Amaretto, coconut juice, lime juice, Mount Gay Extra Old, Pineapple Juice, spiced rum, tiki

Johnnie Walker Gold Label Reserve

It seems that the use of single malts in cocktails has finally shaken loose a few of the world’s whisky drinkers and opened them up to a new level of blended whisky, one that offers an extremely smooth finish and an interesting complexity. Coupled with the strength of the Asian whisky market. It’s not hard to see why Johnnie Walker has just bought this new product to the market for Christmas.

The Gold Label Reserve is premium from the start. Well boxed and with a heavy foil closure, it delivers on a great ritual opening the cap for the first time. The shadow moulding of Johnnie walking is raised from a heavy and nicely designed piece of glass and filled with a great color of liquid. One tiny misstep before the whisky hit my lips, one of those annoying anti refilling device thingies but it works well once you give it a shake.

The tasting notes talk of vanilla and honey and they’re there along with the expected Walker smoothness, especially when you take it simply, over ice.

I mentioned a drink before that I think suits the new arrival beautifully, The Stengah. The drink harks back to a time when the British had an Empire, not a soccer marketing franchise stretching around the world. An administrative bureaucracy forced on people’s left many hours free to be filled with tennis, mixed race love affairs and grain spirits from mid afternoon.

The Stengah.

Fill a highball glass with ice, add whisky to taste and fill the glass with soda.

The drink opens up the flavour of the spirit and the length and ice in the drink make it a lovely way to spend an afternoon. I might even try and shake it up into something later today.

Scotch isn’t my beverage of preference, but I really like this. It goes on sale tomorrow, and at $120 it would make a great gift. Diageo owns the brand, so you can probably expect distribution to be reasonably wide.

Filed under: Spirit , Blended Whisky, Johnnie Walker Gold Label Reserve, Soda, Stengah

Southside Cocktail

This is a drink that I was most thoroughly introduced to by Jacob Briars, socialist, bon vivant, erstwhile global Professor of vodka for 42Below and the eleventh best bar chef in New Zealand.

The Southside is essentially a Gin daiquiri  with mint. It is a simple drink that relies entirely on the quality of its ingredients. I’ve found that the round mint gives the best result and I prefer it with a softer Gin, like Moore’s or South but it is palatable whichever spirit you bring to the mix.

It’s another of those great drinks that got their start during the Prohibition. Although it’s Chicago roots set it apart from most of the classics and, appropriately are wrapped up in the Gangland culture and history of that time. The territories in the city were split North & South, the boys in the North had cornered the market in high quality spirits, smuggled across the border from Canada, leaving the Saltis-McErlane gang with access only to hooch and swill, manufactured locally and of dubious provenance. The mobsters used sugar, citrus and mint to cover the imperfections in their products. While history has not been as kind to Frankie McErlane as it was to Al Capone, Frankie blazed trails outside of the field of mixology, being the first man to use the Tommy gun and racking up at least 15 bodies during the bootlegging wars.

The Southside.

Two teaspoons of caster sugar, the juice of half a lime and 60 mls of South Gin. Combine in a boston glass and add eight leaves of mint. (don’t muddle it, you’ll only make it bitter.) Ice the glass and give it a good, hard shake. Double strain the mixture into a cocktail glass, a few of the smaller pieces of mint might get through, but it makes for a pretty drink with a few specks. Slap a couple of leaves over the glass to boost the smell and the flavour. Garnish with a single mint leaf.

What you’ll be left with is a great balance of sweet, tart and strong with an amazing cool element that makes this a perfect summer drink and in the Professor’s own words “Frrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrresh.”

Filed under: At home, Cocktail , caster sugar, Frankie McErlane, gangsters, Gin, lime, mint, Prohibition drinks

Pink Gin

Another old drink I’ve been enjoying lately is the Pink Gin. The drinks is made with Gin and  bitters from the House of Angostura.

Angostura Bitters began life at Angostura,  literally a narrowing of the Orinoco river that holds a city known later as the Bolivar city. The bitters were ‘discovered’ by Dr Siegert, a German following the original South American freedom fighter, Simon Bolivar. Most of the well researched sources I’ve found suggest that the good doctor probably borrowed heavily from the indigenous medicines of the area. The business moved to Trinidad and Tabago in 1876, where it has based production since.

The bitters were found to have some value as a sea sickness tonic by the Privateers and members of the British Navy, who took them back to their home port and source of Plymouth Gin.

There are many variations of how the drink should be served. From a single dash, stirred with Gin and strained up in a martini glass to four dashes, two pub shots of Gin lengthened with tonic. I would guess that the original would have held only Gin, a healthy dash and some brackish water to lengthen a beverage on a vessel that would only know ice in the arctic.

Distillation has come a long way since then and after diligently working my way through a number of variations I can say only how I like it. Unsurprisingly the recipe I have had most luck with belongs to the muse of my blog, Kingsley Amis. He didn’t probably use as much ice as I have and he always complained about squeezing the zest of citrus for oil, but I think it makes the drink. He suggests Booth’s or Plymouth, having neither, I have tried it with Tanqueray, T10, Beefeater and South. South and the export Tanqueray produced the best results.

Everyday Pink Gin.

Fill a glass with ice and dash six good belts of Angostura over the cubes. Add a good belt of Gin, the photo is a little stingy so say 50 mls. stir the mixture to soften and meld the two together. Take a postage stamp sized piece of lemon rind and twist it over the glass. rub the rim to lift the taste just a little more.

If you’re serving it to guests, a little jug of tonic or soda to handle those who don’t like their spirits quite so neat.

Filed under: At home, Cocktail , angostura bitters, Gin, naval tradition, Pink drinks that aren't girly

One more thing, sah, Rhubarb.

I’ve written before about how much I love Ron Zacapa 23 yr old. It was no small amount of delight that I welcomed a courier bearing a bottle to my door. The rum is made from the first pressing of sugar cane to produce a wonderfully smooth rum in the agricole style. It is aged using a Solera system, similar to that employed by Bacardi and then a mix of rums from 6 to 23 years old are blended by a magical woman to create this wonderful drink.

On my trip to the market, I noticed both the fresh rhubarb on the shelf and the latest shipment of blood oranges from the hills. the elements of a perfect cocktail. I know that their are people out there who would say that it’s a waste to use such a great product in a mixed drink, but much of drinking is subjective and sitting here, drink in hand, I think its ok.

Rhubarb Rum.

50 mls Ron Zacapa Centenario 23 yr old, 40 mls freshly squeezed blood orange juice, 15 mls rhubarb syrup. Shake over ice until very cold, strain into an iced old fashioned glass. Garnish with a cinnamon stick.

I’m about to make another.

Rhubarb Syrup

Add 500 grams of sugar to 500 mls of hot water. Chop four stems of rhubarb into thin slices and add to the mixture. Heat the mixture and crush the rhubarb as it gets soft. Strain the mixture into a 750ml bottle. The pink liquid should keep in a fridge for a few weeks at least. Invite some friends round to polish it off before it turns.

Filed under: At home, Cocktail , blood oranges, cinnamon, Rhubarb, Ron Zacapa Centenario 23yr old rum

The Monkey Gland

This is one of Harry’s drinks. Published in 1922, his book, Harry’s ABC of mixing cocktails lays claim to it. The drink is made with Gin, orange juice, absinthe and grenadine. I’m not sure why, but this drink makes me think of Colin Peter Field from the Hemingway Bar in Paris and his rules for making cocktails. I remember, first reading, then hearing them straight for his lips.

I probably thought some of them seemed like a limiting. Ideas like only using a single base alcohol with the addition of citrus, small amounts of aromatizers and bitters. They do maybe limit complexity, but they also leave balance and subtlety, naked for you to experience. The orange juice tarts the drink with the strength of the Gin and the great finish of the absinthe.

The Monkey Gland.

50 mls of Beefeater Gin, 50 mls of orange juice, 10 mls absinthe, 10 mls grenadine. Over ice in a shaking glass, combine and shake with some vigour. Strain it up. I’ve gone with a ridiculous twist, but i’d also like to give a rockmelon hook supporting a plastic hanging monkey or absolutely nothing at all.

Confession time. I used a store bought fresh squeezed OJ that was quite sweet and used a pomegranate concentrate instead of grenadine.

There is something rewarding about the feeling you get working through the classics. One of the nice things about this drink is the story of its name. Harry was quite fond of naming drinks for the clients and things happening in their shared sphere of experience.

The Monkey gland got is name from Serge Voronoff, a French doctor of Russian extraction famous for his work inserting thin slices of monkey glands (testicles) into patients scrota to deliver exuberance and youth. UK footballers the Wolverhampton Wanderers were among those who swore by the therapy.

It’s definitely an enlivener.

Filed under: At home, Cocktail , absinthe, Gin, Gin shaken, grenadine, Monkey Gland, Orange Juice