Blugu

The theme for this month's Mixology Monday is Blue, I can't complain about it because I picked it and put the goal posts as far apart as I possibly could in my announcement post.

January needs a bit of color – or perhaps the month after all the holiday mania makes you feel…blue? Either way this month’s Mixology Monday is a chance to live those emotions out. You can dazzle us with a brilliant blue drink or you can share that blue feeling with a melancholic drink.
Blue has been predicted as a new cocktail trend several times in recent years… But any mixer of blue drinks is faced with a bit of a dilemma as there is nothing “natural” about E133 – the most common of blue food colors: Do I really want to mix chemicals into my prefect mixture of fresh juices and good booze? Feel free to interpret blue as freely as you wish – if natural is the way you want to go blueberries, violets, cornflower or red cabbage could be good ingredients to work with.


My own entry this month started with the blue curacao I started 21 days ago. This recipe was my inspiration, but not one I followed.

I started with three different oranges: A navels orange, a Bergamot and a Seville orange. It would probably be more correct to say three different citrus fruits, the Bergamot my be in the lemon family.

I put them in a jar with one whole split vanilla bean, eight cardamon pods, one star anise and a bit of extra fresh peel from half a Bergamot I had lying around. I added 3 dl sugar and the filled the jar with aquavit and brandy in the ratio 4:1. The aquavit was a mild tasting brand without much dill or caraway.

I shook the jar daily for a week until the sugar was dissolved and then today after about 25 days I broke into the jar. Literally - the lid was stuck - and filtered the resulting orange liqueur through two different sieves.

Then came the moment, when I was ready to add the E133 blue food coloring. My glass bottle was rinsed out with boiling water and filled with about half the orange liqueur.  Everything was ready. Except me: No reading glasses. I reach for a bottle of color, poured and was very surprise to see a deep warm green color.

Well, guess what - green food color will do that!

Good thing I still had half the orange liqueur left. Second attempt was a succes: A deep blue color. I can dilute it with water for a lighter color and less alcohol, I will do this as needed.

To test this new marvel of a cocktail ingredient I settled on the footprints of a Pegu.  Behold the Blugu:

• 6 cl gin - I used Bulldog
• 2 cl blue curacao - I used my homemade undiluted
• 2 cl white grapefruit juice
• 1 cl banan liqueur - I used Giffard<

Measure everything into a shaker, fill with ice and shake good and hard. Strain into cocktail coupe and enjoy.