Fee Brothers to Take Advantage of Angostura Shortage

In case you haven’t heard yet, there’s a shortage on Angostura bitters at the moment. This is by far not news to the cocktail community, and probably not relevant news to many others. However last night something at my local Wegman’s caught my eye:

Fee Brothers Old-Fashioned Aromatic Bitters are on sale! At Wegman’s!  Alright, maybe this excites me more than most (I do love bitters in general), but it’s especially exciting for a couple of reasons.

1. Wegman’s is indeed great. So great that I would miss it terribly if I ever moved somewhere I was not within at least 20 miles of one. It has a wonderful selection, great prices and customer service, and even a respectable beer selection. However, it’s not exactly a haven for the cocktail fanatic. Sure, they’ve got some Fever Tree sodas and a few jars of maraschino cherries. They normally carry Angostura as their only bitters, and I’ve bought a couple of bottles from them. But now it seems they’ve switched to Fee Brothers, which I’ve never even seen at the gourmet foods store, which carries far more in the line of cocktail-friendly ingredients (including Peychaud’s bitters, Torani and Monin syrups, and gourmet tonic waters and bitter lemon sodas).
2. Fee Brothers is a company from Rochester, New York. My hometown. It fills me with a rather immense amount of pride that one of only a scant half-dozen to a dozen bitters companies in the world is right there where I grew up (and still am less than 100 miles away from)!

So while I do love Angostura bitters and they are indeed irreplaceable, I’m glad to know that my hometown company stands to gain some ground during this shortage, because they are indeed wonderful. I highly recommend their lemon bitters, cherry bitters and grapefruit bitters, but my favorite is by far the peach bitters.

Don’t Squeeze Use Fee’s!

MxMo Punch: The Uppercut

I am thrilled to be posting my first contribution to MxMo (Mixology Monday)! This month’s topic is punch, and it’s being hosted by Hobson’s Choice.

Punch is one of my favorite tipples. I love the big punch bowls, the cups, the mixing of all the various ingredients, the simplicity of it all, the history behind it…it’s all quite awesome. I haven’t made too many bowls of punch to date, and recipes for single-cup versions don’t necessarily abound.  As such I challenged myself for this month’s MxMo event to make something that had all the ingredients a punch should have (sour, sweet, strong, weak, spice) while still being a single serving.

One thing I wanted to make sure of was that I used tea in the recipe: tea is a traditional liquid to use in punches as the weak part (while providing some of the spice as well). And besides, I rather enjoy tea. So here is what I came up with!

The Uppercut

The Uppercut

• 1 oz Pimm’s No. 1 liqueur
• 1 oz dry vermouth (used Noilly Prat)
• ½ oz dry gin (used Bombay)
• 1 oz unsweetened pineapple juice
• 2 oz highly sweetened black tea
• several dashes Angostura bitters
• club soda

Brew the tea strong and add enough sugar to make it sweet to taste (sweeter is better but go with your palate). Add it and the other ingredients to a cocktail shaker. Add ice and shake well, then strain into a glass. Top with some club soda and grate some fresh nutmeg over the top.

The flavor of this punch is quite nice.  All the spice from the tea and bitters give it

wonderful complexity, and the pineapple juice adds tartness/sourness but its taste doesn’t really come through, which is fine with me (I would have used lemons if I had any of them but being short on fresh citrus and cash I used what I had).  The bit of dry vermouth and Pimm’s also offer nice flavor and notes to it.  The club soda considerably dilutes it, so I might recommend doing without or possibly using a sparkling wine instead. The gin could also be played around with here (though it probably works better with the Pimm’s than other spirits), possibly using rye or bourbon, even brandy.  One thing is for sure, I will be making this again!

Assembling the ingredients for the punch

Cheers!

Update: The round-up for all posts from this month’s MxMo has been posted by Mike over at Hobson’s Choice: check it out here! Check it out, there’s a lot of great punches to be seen and tried!

Brewing the tea

Stout tasting! 11 Stouts Reviewed

OK, I’ll admit it: I’m not the biggest celebrator of St. Patrick’s day. There are a few parts of it, however, that I do like.  The beer is one of them.

Beer for the Irish traditionally means stouts.  Stouts are typically dark in color, and use roasted malt. They can be strong (upwards of 7% and closer to 9-11% for imperial stouts) but often times are found (surprisingly by those new to stouts) to be lighter: 4-5%, which is not uncommon of a lager or other light beer.  The flavors present in stouts can vary quite a bit and often include things like coffee, chocolate, cherries, dried fruits, brown sugar, and of course a lot of roasty malt flavor.

I really like stouts, I might even consider them in my top 3 of beer styles overall (otherwise I’m quite partial to barleywines and IPAs).  As such I was quite pleased to be able to attend this year’s annual St. Patty’s Day Feast and Stout Tasting up the street at Mister Goodbar.  There 11 stouts to be had in all, and by the end of the night I was practically ready to sing a drunken Irish fighting song myself, but it was an actual tasting and I therefore have some (rather haphazard and scrawlish) notes to share on each one.

All the beers were served out of bottles into a half-pint glass I have for tasting except the Murphy’s, which was on tap and the Ten FIDY, which was poured from a can.

Murphy’s Irish Stout (Caldicot, Gwent, Wales) 4.3% ABV
Bouquet/Aroma: The aroma was quite malty, and a little fruity.  I detected some yeast in there too, as well as some faint coffee and chocolate notes.
Appearance: Black, with deep ruby/brown hues poking through.
Flavor: Really light flavor with lots of roastiness, but some playful sweetness in there too.  It’s quite nice, very drinkable.
Body: Very light bodied, really easy-drinking.
Overall Rating: 3.75 out of 5

Lost Coast 8 Ball Stout (Eureka, California) 5.9% ABV
Bouquet/Aroma: Some cherries in there, more of a roasty aroma than the Murphy’s.  A little more caramel sweetness, and less coffee/chocolate in the aroma than the first one as well.
Appearance: Black (all of these are really some variation of black!) with some deep dark brown hues in there.
Flavor: Tangier than the Murphy’s. More to it than just the roasted malt character, definitely some bitterness present from the addition of some hops. A different-tasting stout overall, and quite good!
Body: Medium-bodied.
Overall Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Rogue Shakespeare Stout (Newport, Oregon) 6% ABV
Bouquet/Aroma: There’s some roasted malt-ness in there, but definitely not as much as the previous two. Other than that, not too much going on that I can detect.
Appearance: Black again (surprise!), a creamy head with some dark brown hues.
Flavor: First thing I get is a hoppy flavor (definitely the Cascade variety unless I’m mistaken), and then it blends with a nice roasted malt flavor.  It’s very bitter, but in a pleasant way.  Nicely creamy and delicious!
Body: Light to medium.
Overall Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Goose Island Oatmeal Stout (Chicago, Illinois) 5% ABV
Bouquet/Aroma: Lots of coffee flavor, definitely some sweet notes.
Appearance: Black with some deep ruby and amber hues.
Flavor: Creamy, kind of sweet without being too sweet.  On the finish there’s sort of a candy-like sweetness.  This beer takes us a bit out of the “dry stout” category and into more of the “sweet stouts”.
Body: Medium body.
Overall Rating: 3.25 out of 5

Fort Collins Chocolate Stout (Fort Collins, Colorado) 5.3% ABV
Bouquet/Aroma: Some sweetness in there along with coffee (similar to the Goose Island)
Appearance: Super dark!  Barely anything poking through the inky blackness.
Flavor: Very flavorful.  Tangy with a big roasted malt flavor up front.  I definitely get a taste of dark chocolate in there too.  Overall it’s very bitter (in a pleasant way), starting with the roasted malts and up to the dry finish.
Body: Fairly light-bodied.
Overall: 3.5 out of 5

Left Hand Milk Stout (Longmont, Colorado) 5.3% ABV
Bouquet/Aroma: Toastyness and sweetness with plenty of roasted malt in there.  Really nice aroma.
Appearance: Black with deep amber hues, not as dark as most of the others.
Flavor: Very sweet up front, but well-balanced overall with some bitterness as well.  It’s quite pleasing!  There’s a little ethanol in the finish that I felt in my throat, which I found a little weird considering it is so light in ABV (I typically don’t get any ethanol in beers less than 10% or so).
Body: Medium.
Overall Rating: 3.75 out of 5

Coopers Best Extra Stout (Regency Park, South Australia) 6.3% ABV
Bouquet/Aroma: There’s an interesting fruity aroma here, with some berries and maybe cherries?  Of course the same roastyness as before is there too.
Appearance: Black with dark brown hues (sigh).
Flavor: Very tangy bitterness here, a little fruitiness.  There’s a roasty flavor in the backbone, along with some hops, and a dry finish.  Quite nice overall!
Body: Medium.
Overall Rating: 3.75 out of 5

Lagunitas Cappuccino Stout (Petaluma, California) 9.2% ABV
Bouquet/Aroma: Coffee aroma, some sweetness to it along with a little bitterness (Is that possible?  Can people smell bitterness?).
Appearance: Black with deep amber hues.
Flavor: OK, I have to admit something on this one. I occasionally smell and/or taste some pretty weird stuff in beers. When I first had Wolaver’s Alta Gracia Coffee Porter, I tasted goulash. Now, I might think I have some crazy taste buds or something but others with me usually confirm my weird tastes in some manner or another (a friend with me that night thought the same beer reminded her of stuffed peppers). So onto the flavor for the Cappuccino Stout: overall I thought it was really different. It had a sweetness to it, but definitely had a nice balance. The coffee flavor was less like brewed coffee and more like raw coffee beans. And — here’s the kicker — the flavor reminds me of stove-top macaroni and cheese mixed with Frank’s Red Hot sauce.  Weird, right? My friend and fellow beer aficionado Eric did agree with me along with some others at the table, so I know I’m not too crazy.
Body: Medium to heavy.
Overall Rating: 4 out of 5

Arcadia Imperial Stout (Battle Creek, Michigan) 8.4% ABV
Bouquet/Aroma: Fruity, and a nice malty aroma.  Not nearly as roasty as some of the others (definitely something I’ve noticed in many imperial stouts (of which this was the night’s first).
Appearance: Blackest of them all so far!  Really dark.
Flavor: Very sweet, quite big and thick.  Very malty, with dried fruit flavor. There’s ethanol in there for sure, and it’s a bit more acidic because of that, but overall very well-balanced and tasty!
Body: Medium to heavy.
Overall Rating: 4 out of 5

Oscar Blues Ten FIDY (Lyons, Colorado) 9.4% ABV
Bouquet/Aroma: Smells a bit metallic (it is from the can). There’s a strong malt aroma with some sweetness in there.
Appearance: Super-black, like motor oil!  Really viscous, this one is the darkest one of them all.
Flavor: Sweet and bitter, quite balanced.  There’s LOTS of ethanol behind this one, you get it right away and throughout.  Overall though it is very smooth and creamy.
Body: Medium to heavy (heaviest).
Overall Rating: 4.25 out of 5

Great Divide Oak Aged Yeti Imperial Stout (Denver, Colorado) 9.5% ABV
Bouquet/Aroma: On this one I definitely get a hop aroma.  Cascade/Amarillo, somewhere around there is what my nostrils detect, but don’t hold them to that!  Of course a large malt aroma too.
Appearance: Heady, black with deep brown hues.
Flavor: Really nice!  This is definitely my favorite of the night. There is an oaky, vanilla roastyness. The flavor is super big, and there is not as much alcohol vapor as in any of the other beers. I do love oak-aged beers in general!
Body: Medium (not nearly as viscous as the Ten FIDY.
Overall Rating: 4.5 out of 5

This event overall was super fun! The beers definitely were arranged well; aside from the Murphy’s at first (perhaps I just like beer on tap better), the beers for me went almost in order of least favorite to most. I can’t wait until the tasting next month!  Until then, cheers and happy St. Patty’s day!

The Violet Hour and the Juliet & Romeo

This past fall, I was able to visit my friend Jeff in Chicago for a weekend. On Friday night, we made our way to a speakeasy-style bar called The Violet Hour.  He had been before with some friends and had only good things to say about it, and I had been reading about it online for a while, so I was quite “chuffed” (as Jeff would say) to check it out.

The bar only allows people in if they have room for them to sit; i.e., no standing around, no elbowing your way to the bar for a drink.  It makes for a very nice atmosphere in my opinion.  Very sophisticated, classy, enjoyable.  To some it can seem a bit stuffy if not downright snobby, but I guess it depends on where you’re coming from!

The downside to this is that the wait to get in usually takes a while.  So we put in out name at the door (we had a party of 6 in total) and headed across the street to an Italian bistro for a few drinks and appetizers.  I had a drink there called a “bicicletta” that was quite good, a refreshing aperitif-based fizz.

After about an hour and a half of waiting, we headed back to The Violet Hour, and got in after about 10 more minutes of waiting. The inside of the bar was quite well presented, with very high ceilings and large velvet curtains between the rooms.  There were a few chambers containing tables, booths and sitting stools (more like ottomans really), but it wasn’t a very open place: almost more of a maze.  As we passed the bar on the way to be sat down I tried to catch a glimpse of the bartenders and bottles/ingredients they were working with.  Next time I go I’d like to sit at the bar and watch the drinks being made.  Where we sat was nice though, a high-backed booth and several ottoman-stools, which is what I sat on.

The waitress brought us each a menu, very large and contained within a 2″ 3-ring binder, and a carafe with some water.  We each ordered a drink.  I decided to start with an Improved Holland Cocktail: Genevieve, Luxardo Maraschino, and Angostura bitters.  It came in an old fashioned glass with a large orb of ice, which was the first ice sphere I had ever seen, and was quite good.  Everyone else, for their first drink, chose the Juliet & Romeo, billed as “Beefeater, Mint, Cucumber, Rose Water”.  It sounded good to me too, and Jeff and his girlfriend Nancy had had it before and raved about it.  But when the cocktail waitress brought us our drinks and I sampled some of theirs, I knew instantly why they liked it so much.  It was wonderfully refreshing!  The combination of flavors worked so amazingly well together to produce a lovely drink.  It was served in a coupe glass with a carafe on the side (the recipe makes more than can fit in a small coupe glass).

Months later, I recently tried to recreate this cocktail a few times.  Not remembering the ingredients listed exactly, I tried with St. Germaine (elderflower liqueur) and mint bitters…but to no avail.  Finally I looked online and found that a few people had listed a replication of the cocktail, complete with a recipe and instructions!  I abandoned my attempts to find out how to make the drink myself in my excitement and followed the recipe, with exceptional results! Here it is for you to try at home, but don’t neglect its creators!  If you find yourself in Chicago, visit The Violet Hour for a truly excellent cocktail experience; these guys really know their stuff.

Juliet & Romeo, at The Violet Hour

Juliet & Romeo (recipe found via LiquorSnob)

• 2 oz gin (Beefeater or Hendricks would be best here, but I say use what you’ve got.  Play with different gins and experiment!)
• ¾ oz fresh-squeezed lime juice
• ¾ oz simple syrup
• 3 drops rose water
• 3 drops Angostura bitters
• 3 slices peeled cucumber
• 6 sprigs mintMuddle the cucumber with a tiny pinch of salt.  Slap the mint (clap it together between your hands to release the oils just a bit — don’t make this cocktail too bitter by muddling the mint into oblivion!).  Add the rest of the ingredients and let everything sit for a bit (30 seconds is recommended).  Shake with ice, then strain (I double-strained) into a chilled coupe glass (use a cocktail glass if you haven’t any coupes…if you’re looking for some, check your local thrift stores).  To garnish, float a mint leaf with 1 drop of rose water atop it, and add several more drops of Angostura bitters on the surface of the drink for color and aroma.

OK, so it’s a bit involved to create.  But the ingredients are fairly simple, not a lot of crazy different liqueurs, spirits or aromatized wines to need to have on hand.  The rose water is probably the strangest ingredient on the list, but I find it at my local Wegman’s and I’ve heard it can be found at ethnic food shops, particularly Indian ones. I think it’s worth the effort though, and definitely one of the tastier libations I’ve made of late.

Juliet & Romeo, made at home

Other drinks I had at the Violet Hour included a Blackberry Caipirissima (Flor de Cana 4 yr, Lime, Demerara Syrup, Blackberries), a St. Mark’s Reviver (Pisco Acholado, Lime, Egg White, Luxardo Maraschino, Cherry Bitters) and a very well-made Ramos Gin Fizz.

Cheers and enjoy!