April 19, 2015

Pink Cadillac


My shameful cocktail secret hails from the longest running cocktailbar in Copenhagen outside of hotel bars. All you need to know to see the interior in your minds eye is the bar’s name: MexiBar.

Normally I would never admit, that I have partaken and even enjoyed a drink from the Dark Ages of Mixology, but Whitney of Tipicular Fixin’s leaves me with no choice with her MxMo theme: Drink of Shame:
So, you’re a certified, mixologist, craft-tender, bar chef, or fine spirit enthusiast…now. But, there was a time when you only ordered Long Island Iced Tea. Or, maybe you always made the Jello shots for your frat? Perhaps you’re the reason that your local had an Island Oasis machine for so long? Rye & Ginger? Vodka Seven? Someone was ordering these things. Your street cred would be ruined if you ordered or (gasp) served one now, but don’t you miss it, just a little? Wouldn’t you love to have one more Jolly Rancher? A chance to drink a mudslide without shame? We all made questionable drink choices in our past, the popular drinks from 1970 to the year 2000 were a cheap, sugary mess. Now is the time to resurrect your favourite drink from the time before modern Mixology. Give a new life to the drink… maybe you need to use fresh ingredients, or you can try elevating the spirits. Make everything from scratch or remove an offending ingredient. Do whatever you can to bring back and legitimize a drink you used to love. 
So let me introduce you to MexiBar: It opened sometime in the early 1990’s, it’s still running and must be be very close to it’s 25th anniversary.

The bar serves a few old classics made with great speed but no real love and many, many drinks of the 80’s variety with lot’s of vodka, cream, garishly coloured “fruit” juice and the garnish is often umbrellas and hanging monkeys.

For a few years that was the choice you had in Copenhagen if you didn’t want to go to a hotel bar to get a cocktail.

So we chose Mexibar. And regardless of how often I tried to make “good” choice when ordering at some point during the evening I started to drink Pink Cadillacs.

According to the bar menu it’s a mix of gin, vodka, Malibu, cream, grenadine, pineapple and orange juice topped off with bitter lemon.

So that’s what I had to work with.

Since I refuse to buy Malibu on the grounds of being a snob I left a good amount of fresh coconut squares steep in Plantation 3 Star white rum for 10 days.

I also decided to get a little more taste into the drink by using a good, clean dill aquavit instead of vodka. Homemade Grenadine, check, a decent bitter lemon, check, and of cause fresh juice. And to add to my overwhelming snobbery: Organic Cream.

Time to mix:
  • 3 cl gin - I used Tanqueray
  • 3 cl dill aquavit - I used D Argentum from Den Ny Spritfabrik - you could use vodka instead
  • 1,5 cl coconut rum - if using Malibu I would say up the amount of gin to 4,5 cl
  • 3 cl fresh pineapple juice
  • 3 cl fresh orange juice
  • 2 cl grenadine - I bring fresh pomegranate juice to a boil with half the amount of sugar, strain and cool it.
  • 3 cl heavy cream
  • 5-6 cl of bitter lemon
Measure everything but the bitter lemon into a shaker, shake hard with plenty of ice, strain into a hurricane glass and top off with bitter lemon.

Garnish with orange slice and pineapple tops and every piece of 80’s drinks paraphernalia you can lay your hands on.

The taste? Sweet like candy although the bitter lemon saves it from being undrinkable to my superior and evolved taste buds. But dang we had fun at MexiBar.



April 14, 2015

Improved Whiskey Cocktail in a hip flask


If a couple of weeks ago someone had asked me to tell them what pictures the words hip flask put in my mind, I would have given them two scenarios: An elderly uncle too alcoholic to be more than a back pocket away from booze or Barty Crouch Jr. polyjuiced into Mad Eye Moody in Harry Potter, constantly swigging the potion for fear he becomes himself again.

In other words more flask than hip

But then I was directed to the webpage of the Swig flask and a completely different picture materialised: Me on the beach, the sun setting in the distance, a small snack, good company and a strong, good cocktail in the flask and perhaps a couple of nice glasses.

Suddenly I could totally see the need for a hip flask in my home bar. Hip in the hip way.

And now that one of these flasks have landed on my desk - full disclosure as a gift from the Swig Company for me to review - I’m going to test drive my latter association well in advance of warm weather and good company.

First job: To figure out which cocktails would be good out of a hip flask. Even in a spring as cool as this, I still think anything like a Martini or an Aviation would be too warm by the time I made the 10 minute bicycle ride to the beach.

So I’m thinking more along the lines of an Old Fashioned, a Manhattan or even a Negroni. I could perhaps mix them ahead of time and stick the flask in my freezer for an hour before setting of?

The downside to the Old Fashioned and the Manhattan is the sugar, will it be hard to clean from the flask?

Well as it is made from steel I do not see, why I couldn’t pour boiling water into it and swirl any leftover sugar out.

And I’ve had this idea for An Improved Whiskey Cocktail forever, so I mixed it in my mixing glass, poured it into my flask, and gathered the stuff for a cold sundowner on the beach in April.


  • 6 cl Rittenhouse 100
  • 1 bar spoon homemade pineapple syrup(bring fresh pineapple juice with slightly less than an equal amount of sugar to the boil, strain and cool)
  • 1.75 cl Maraschino liqueur
  • Dash of Eucalyptus bitter
  • Dash of Absinthe


So here are my impressions:
  • You need to take the pouch off - if you don’t go for the naked Swig flask- in order for it to stand securely while you fill it.
  • You need either the original Swig funnel or another small funnel to fill it.
  • The screw top while certainly beautiful can be a little hard to get a grib on when your hands are cold, and you need to keep track of it, it’s easily lost.
  • It kept my cocktail fairly cold during the approximately 20 minutes from being filled until I took the first swig
  • I can't wait for warmer weather and cocktails on the beach.