Duck And Cover - a bar in Copenhagen

Brasilian rosewood, black leather, dark walls and carefully muted light. Kasper Riewe Henriksen formerly of Ruby and a competitor at the Diageo Reserve World Class 2012 Global Final has opened a new bar in Copenhagen that send me right back to my childhood.

I loved an iconic Danish Design Magazine and it's adds for a certain kind of bookcase invented by Poul Cadovius that always had a glass of whiskey in it and a general feel of gentlemans club about it.

We arrived four very thirsty women and were warmly welcomed by Kasper himself who served us water and introduced us to the drinks list.

He is a very efficient bartender so we had our drinks very fast after making a decision. We had ordered a couple of Floral Fizzes, an Ipanema and an Rock Islands.

The latter was for me, and was the very happy marriage of Talisker and Honningsyp - a special mix of aquavit and honey the originated on the island of Bornholm out in the Baltic.

It was a lovely mix - mild smoke from the Talisker and sweetness from the honey. It reminded me of Penicillin - one of my favorite cocktails.

My three friends also enjoyed their drinks, so much so that the next round was one Floral Fizz, and Ipanema, a Gentlemans Cup and a Last Word for me. 

The Last Word was not on the drinks list - but now I know where I can get the best Last Word ever - it was more than perfect.

We visited Duck and Cover just after it opened on an afternoon of a public holiday. Not a busy time at all, but Kasper explained that it was fine with a slow start to get everything working and establishing routines.

I want to come back on a busy evening, and I know there will be many - the bar is in a perfect place in the neighborhood of Vesterbro, close to Lidkoeb a bar owned by the people who own Ruby and an up and coming cocktail spot in the city.

Mixology Monday - Balmy Rhubarb

Mark - the gracious host of Cardiff Cocktails - really challenged me this month with his theme for Mixology Monday: Witches' Garden.

In his announcement post he asked us to raid our herb garden. I really wanted to, but a long harsh winter has left me with a herb garden that looks more like the suburbs of Tjernobyl than anything else.

On the other hand I've spend most of this week slowly savoring my way through Amy Stewart's amazing book The Drunken Botanist, and that meant I had to rise to the occasion - or rather my herb garden had to.

What had survived was some sage and some balsam herb. And nothing can kill rhubarb so I had that too.

The kind of balsam I have is the one that has a camphor-like smell and taste - another one taste and smells more like camomile.  I love things that taste like harsh medicine so that's fine by me.

It's a very interesting herb with a long history and diverse usage from tea to place making in Bibles.

I made a very simple syrup out of some rhubarb, sugar, star anise and a tiny bit of water and cooled that of. Meanwhile I had time for some homemade salted almonds - just cook the almonds for about 5 minutes in quite salted water - I used 2 teaspoons for 10 cl of water - and then dry them in the oven.

The Balmy Rhubarb has a mezcal base and is an egg white cocktail.

• 6 cl Mezcal - I used Illegal Mezcal Joven
• 3 cl rhubarb syrup
• 1,5 cl lime juice
• 6 leafs of balsam herb
• 1/2 egg white
• 2 dashes strawberry balsam bitters

I started by basing the balsam herb up good with the rhubarb syrup and the lime juice. The I added the egg white and the mezcal and gave it a good dry shake. Finished of with adding ice to the shaker and then shaking again.

Strain into cocktail coupe (you could double strain but I kind of like tiny bits of herbs in my drinks) add bitter and garnish with a balsam herb leaf - or a pretty edible flower. I found a tiny colony of blooming chives growing on my patio.

Enjoy - and thanks for making be work and think Mark!

 

Donny Draper

As perhaps the only human being in the western world I don't get Mad Men - as in have tried, but have not caught the bug. However the impact the series have on pop culture - and the interest it sparks in certain classic cocktails is fine with me.

I like the occasional Old Fashioned and it's fun to play with.

What caught my eye when I spotted the Donny Draper was the sassafras syrup. I love root beer which is quite hard to come by in Denmark in a good quality.

So I set about getting some dried cut up sassafras root and was success full at the online store that supplies me with china bark for home made tonic water.

I followed the recipe for the syrup from this recipe for the Donny Draper and then I was ready to mix:

• 3 barspoons of sassafras syrup
• 3 dashes of Peychaud's bitter
• 6 cl rye whiskey - I used Pikeville

Mix the syrup and bitter in the bottom of an Old Fashioned glass, add the rye and a huge ice cube and stir until the glass clouds over on the outside. Then twist a short peel of lemon over the drink and drop it in.

Very simple and very complex as the ice melts - sort of like the world as we know it.

Beet Beet - Mixology Monday

The moment I saw the theme for this month's Mixology Monday announced by Rowen at the Fogged in Lounge I knew what I was going to mix.

At the end of March I attended Copenhagen Spirits and Cocktails and was served a Bax Beet Pinot during a seminar where Jacob Briars talked about The Secrets of the Worlds Best Bars - and blue drinks of course.

I don't remember much of what he said after I had the first taste - I was so occupied by trying to figure out, how it was made. It originates at Der Raum in Melbourne, Australia, a cocktail bar that I understand is now closed.

The combination of beet juice and Fernet Branca is magic to my taste buds. But then again beets features prominently as a condiment in Danish cooking and next to Finland and Holland I believe we are some of the biggest consumers of licorice - the black, strong, salty kind, not the red American kind - in the world.

Since I got the recipe for the Bax Beet Pinot we were served, I've made it a few times and that is my canvas for todays presentation:

Ode to Bax Beet Pinot

• 2 cl Fernet Branca
• 3 cl Malt syrup (add 1 part hot water to two parts Malt Syrup mix and cool)
• 1,5 cl lime juice
• 1,5 cl beet juice
• 1,5 cl Dubonnet

Mix everything in a shaker with ice, shake and strain into martini glass.

The recipe used at Copenhagen Spirit and Cocktails used sweet vermouth in place of the Dubonnet and simple syrup as the sweetener.

I like the - well - maltiness of malt syrup with the earth element of the beet juice and the quinine in Dubonnet cuts the drink nicely to the refreshing side.

Since I knew I would be up to my elbows in beets, peeling, juicing and what not I decided to try and brew beet juice in the same way as I regularly brew ginger beer. That is adding some, sugar, some citrus and a tiny pea of fresh yeast and then let it brew and carbonated for 48 hours with water.

I will say it's a bit of a mess - it's important to release the pressure in the brew after the first 24 hours, by unscrewing the cap on the bottle.

Fortunately something told me to do that in my garden because I ended up with a fountain of scarlet, foamy beet beer out of the bottle and all over my front garden.

However the finished product is quite nice - a mild beet taste, a very slight yeast and malt taste and lots of fine bubbles. This brew is the basis for my next presentation:

Beet Beet Cooler

• 2 cl gin
• 2 cl Fernet Branca
• 1 cl lemon juice
• 1 cl Cherry Heering
• 1 cl malt syrup
• 8 cl beet beer

Stir the first five ingredients with plenty of ice in a high ball glass, then add the beet beer and garnish with a slice of lemon dipped in a mixture of sugar and licorice root and caramelized on a hot pan, add festive peacock, umbrella or other fun long drink decoration.

Enjoy and thanks for the great theme Rowen.

Cherry in The Rye

I still have a small stash of a Cherry Liqueur the nice folks at Frederiksdal Gods are experimenting with. It's far still from the finished product - the plan is to age it in oak barrels - but it's already darn good and a nice alternative to Cherry Heering in my liquor cabinet.

Cherry in The Rye is a lovely easy cocktail just begging to be served over ice on a nice patio watching even a weak spring sun go down, but that is still not possible in Denmark and it works well in front of a fire too.

I believe it has been developed at Ruby in Copenhagen specifically with Cherry Heering in mind.

• 6 cl Rye Whisky
• 4,5 cl fresh lemon juice 
• 1,5 cl Maraschino Liqueur
• 1,5 cl Cherry Liqueur - like Cherry Heering
• 1 cl simple syrup - I used bergamot syrup made form equal parts sugar and fresh juice from bergamot oranges.

Shake with ice and strain into nice glass for winter libation - or serve over ice for summer treat - you might even add a little seltzer or weak homemade tonic water for an interesting high ball.

Old Garden - Mixology Monday

This months theme is to put it crudely: From Crap to Craft - or as Scott Diaz from Shake, Strain and Sip, who hosts Mixology Monday writes delicately in his announcement post: From Crass to Craft.

It's a great theme and I immediately had several ideas, many I had to abandon simply because I could not think how to turn crass into craft.

In my home country, Denmark, we have a long history of very bad long drinks and highballs. They are usually mixed by and for young people in dance halls and devised to mask the taste of cheap alcohol.

One example is the Fire Engine - a mix of a bright red, very artificially tasting raspberry flavored soda pop with vodka. A shot of Jägermeister turns it into a Fire Engine with bells and whistles.

Others are named after favorite (with children) ice lollies and made in a very similar ways. And most have a history like the Long Island Ice Tea.

Then there is the Old Garden. Invented in the 1960'ies on one of the car ferries running between Gedser in Denmark and Travemünde in Germany.

The story goes, that a drive of a truck belonging to a flower company called Old Garden (Gammel Have in Danish) asked the bartender to come up with something new, as he was tired of rum and cokes. (This was back in the days when - at least in Northern Europe people thought nothing of drinking and driving. The car ferries made a good profit from the bar and from the restaurant where people drank beer and aquavit with their food. It wasn't until 1976 that police could stop drivers and check if they where DUI.)

The bartender came up with a mix of vodka, banana liquor, Roses Lime, orange juice and Schweppes Bitter Lemon.

It became very popular in parts of Denmark served at the start of parties to get people in the mood.

This is the drink I've chosen for this weeks challenge.

And I've been working on it for some time - to put maximum craft into it.

I started by making my own Bitter Lemon syrup:

I cooked two organic lemons cut into eight pieces each with 2 cups of water and 1/2 cup of sugar for 20 minutes. Since I always have simple syrup around I did't work too hard on the bitter/sweet balance - but you can easily stir in more sugar after you have strained the syrup. I find that it keeps well in the fridge - and mixes well with both tonic and seltzers.

Then I chopped a firm banana and put it into a small jam jar and covered it with Banks 5 island rum for a few days - about 1 cup worth of rum. The banana turns brown even completely covered by the rum, but don't worry once you strain the rum through a fine mesh sieve and some cheese cloth it will be fine.

Next I put a whole vanilla pod roughly chopped into a small jam jar and covered it with 1/2 cup Absolut 100 proof vodka for a few days.

And now I'm ready to mix:

• 1 1/2 oz vanilla vodka
• 1 oz banana rum
• 5 oz freshly squeezed orange juice
• 1 oz freshly squeezed lime juice
• 1/2 oz of simple syrup with bergamot (just use the juice from a fresh bergamot as a substitute for some of the water)
• 8 oz of homemade Bitter Lemon (I mix 1 part syrup to 3 parts tonic water)

Shake and serve in highball glass over ice - garnish with banana boat made from a slice of orange with a sail of a gummy banana.

Enjoy - and do not drink and drive!

Hawaii O - Mixology Monday

As a child I did not much like chocolate. Most of my little school friends liked milk chocolate and most adults liked dark chocolate. I found the first overly sweet and the latter too bitter.

I preferred liquorice - the black, salty kind.

But then I tried a Hawaii ring. A candy shaped like a slice of pineapple out of the Del Monte can - consisting of a pineapple tasting jelly center coated with dark chocolate.

I loved it.

For some reason I thought about this candy, that has long been discontinued, when I read the theme for this months Mixology Monday.

I asked Stewart - the gracious host - of the party if it was okay to invert candy into cocktail and got the go ahead.

So here is my contribution - a liquid dessert:

• 6 cl white rum (I used Banks 5 island white rum, but a slightly drier white rum would be a tiny bit better)
• 3 cl white creme de cacao
• 12 cl fresh pineapple juice
• Dash of Bitter Truth Xocolatl Mole Bitters

Shake everything over ice, double strain into a cocktail coupe and garnish with freshly grated dark chocolate.

Enjoy and thanks for hosting Stewart! (For some reason I always imagine that the hosts of Mixology Monday try all the cocktails people come up with and then set to work on the write-up;) )

Chartreuse Swizzle - with a kiss of cherry

I know I'm late to the Chartreuse Swizzle party, but the idea of mixing green Chartreuse with Wray and Nephew over proof rum and not getting my throat burned was too tempting.

I started with the improved recipe developed by Kaiser Penguin.

I knew I wanted to add some cherry liquor too.

I've gotten a vial of not yet matured cherry liquor from the makers of the amazing Frederiksdal cherry wine and I figured this was the cocktail to test whether or not they have got the balance between sweet, sour and alcohol right.

In my opinion they have - through the strong earthy flavors of the sizzle the cherry was easy to pick up - and I used less than 3 cl.

• 8 cl green Chartreuse
• 1.5 cl Wray and Nephew over proof rum
• 6 cl pineapple juice
• 4 cl lime juice
• 3 cl falernum 

I put everything in a shaker with a bit of ice an shook it vigorously, than I strained into a pretty big low ball glass full of crushed ice - and then I poured a small amount no more that 3 cl of the cherry liquor into the center of the cocktail.

I had wanted to make a green mamba lime twist  (your blog - and drinks - always inspire me Tiara) for a garnish - but none of my limes had a peel looking nice enough for that.  

Mixology Monday: Amalienborg

This month Mixology is all about fortified wines.

Jordan Deveraux of Chemistry of the Cocktail almost had me experimenting with port, Madeira or sherry.

But in the end my interest in wine fortified with quinine won out.

I was ready to see if I could come up with my own mix and started to thumb through a pretty special Christmas gift I got i 2012: A reprint of a handwritten bar manual a Danish bartender called Axel Sørensen wrote in the late 1930'ies when he worked at a now closed bar in central Copenhagen called Café De la Reine - the Queens Cafe.

The reprint has been made possible in a collaboration between Henrik Steen Pedersen who runs one of Copenhagen's hidden gems Moltkes Bar and the grandchild of Axel Sørensen.

Thumbing through the manual I noticed a cocktail called Amalienborg. (it may have an almost identical twin called Coronation)

Axel Sørensen suggest that it's mix of one half part Dubonnet, a quarter part gin and a quarter part French vermouth.

The cocktail - named after the Royal palace in Copenhagen - had also caught the eyes of the folks at Molktes bar. However they suggested different ratios of the ingredients. And I changed the French vermouth out for Kina L'Avion D'Or .

So with two quinine fortified wines I figured I needed a sweet gin and chose Old English Gin.

I present the twice updated Amalienborg cocktail:

• 9 cl Dubonnet
• 4 cl Kina L'Avion D'or
• 3 cl Old English Gin

Shaken with ice, strained into a cocktail glass and with lemon twist for a garnish.

Thanks Jordan for hosting!

Suhm Heering Float

As a Dane I considered it my patriotic duty to try out any cocktail I come across with Cherry Heering.

It was first produced in 1818 in Copenhagen and have since conquered the world.

So when I stumbled upon the Suhm Heering Float at Cocktail Virgin Slut I knew I had to mix it.

Root Beer is a mystery to most Danes - the taste is recognizable from a certain brand of chewing gum but that's the extend of most of our reference.

I personally love the taste and knew I would like the Suhm Heering Float - if it's not as perfect as I hoped for it's only because Cherry Heering is not as good as it could be these days. But that is another story.

• 6 cl Cherry Heering
• 2 cl golden rum
• 1 egg yolk
• chocolate mole bitters
• root beer

Add the first four ingredients to a shaker and shake hard without ice for 15-20 seconds, then add ice and shake until the mixture is very cold.

Strain into a highball glass and add the root beer. Garnish with some tasty Maraschino cherries.