Gefion Sour - MxMo LXVII

The theme for this month's Mixology Monday is Smoke - which immediately started the cocktalian part of my mind running.

Our gracious host Elena from Stir and Strain explains the theme this way:

Smoke has been everywhere this past year, from liquors to lemonades, to the hills here in Southern California(!); smoke in its many forms has been front page news.

For me, smoke is also a transitional element: it symbolizes the last summer bonfires, sitting around the fire pit making s’mores, and the start of the fragrant crackles from the fireplace announcing that fall is coming.

For September’s theme, I’d like to see how you interpret smoke. With your liquor or ingredients? Your glassware? Will you whip out a chemistry set to transform your cocktail into ghostly vapors? Do you own a home smoker, still in the box, that’s never been used? Well then, you’re welcome. Unpack those ideas and let’s set off a couple smoke alarms this month for MxMo.

I really didn't set out to, but this month's submission brings together quite a lot of the last MxMo themes.

Also Elana challenged me further by announcing on Twitter, that her submission would incorporate locally distilled spirits.

So I thought long and hard and came up with the Gefion Sour - named in honor of a goddess who plowed the island I live on in Denmark out of the middle part of Sweden. The "lost land" is now a lake.

Most of the ingredients in the Gefion Sour are from Sjælland or Lolland an island just south of Sjælland. The lemon however is from far away.

The basis - and where the theme comes in - is a lovely dill aquavit from Shumachers, just a 15 minute drive to the northeast of where I live. The aquavit has a very clear and crisp dill taste - it's made by extracting the fresh herbs in clear spirits - and a tiny bite of white pepper. And it is also certified organic.

I lavender smoked a deciliter using the same technique I described here - that was a cocktail inspired by MxMo LXVI. The lavender was grown right in my own garden.

Next I used the rest of my horse radish sirup from Hot Rod and finally I did a float sink of a completely new product: New Nordic Cherry Liqueur a wonderful alternative to Cherry Heering - thus tying into the cherry theme of MxMo LXIV.

• 6 cl lavender smoked dill aquavit
• 3 cl lemon juice
• 3 cl horse radish simple syrup
• 1 cl cherry liqueur

Shake the first three ingredients with plenty of ice, strain into an ice filled rocks glass and then gently pour the cherry liqueur on top of the drink over the back of a spoon. In my case the liqueur sank like a rock but the drink still turned out pretty.

My cocktail is obviously a riff on New York Sour - where red wine is floated on the top. I may just not have the right touch - or the difference in the proof of wine and liqueur may be the explanation.

I'm really pleased with this cocktail - the lavender smoke blends so nicely with the dill, the lemon, the cherry and a whisper of horse radish. I'll definitely be making it again.

And since I knew this would be an early afternoon drink and I was baking bagels anyway I had fun baking some miniature bagels to turn into snack with a garlic cream cheese (the garlic grown locally), onion and SMOKED salmon.

My 5 best cocktail books

It is a testament to all things digital that I only have one third as many cocktail books as books about Titanic.

Back in the early 90's when I became a serious student of the doomed ocean liner, there were no online resources or e-books. I couldn't even rely on a Danish book store to order the books I wanted so 3-4 trips a year to London and visits to Foyle's and other amazing book temples were necessary.

Along the way I even had the good sense to visit The American Bar at The Savoy  - but not picking up vintage bar books in any of the many used book sellers in Charing Cross Road and the little side streets.

Now some of what I buy are e-books and some are even audio books, but here are the 5 books in my possession I enjoy the most - and unlike Buzzfeed I'm not going to let you suffer through a count down:

1. The Drunken Botanist 
This book has it all: Stories, facts, recipes and just a touch of irreverence. Amy Stewart's book can help you with everything from planning a vegetable garden for maximum cocktail enjoyment to enlighten you about the history of Angostura Bitters.
 
2. To Have and Have Another 
Right now I'm on my second read through and I still can't wait to turn the next - digital - page because of the flow of Philip Greene's pen and general greatness of his subject. Mr. Hemingway and his favorite drinks deserve a great book like this.

3. The PDT Cocktail Book 
Had this book not existed the Savoy Cocktail Book would occupy this place on my list. But Jim Meehan's book is just a more interesting mix of old favorites and new classics according to my taste buds. 

4. The Hour 
I have this as an audiobook - until I find and can afford a print edition with this piece of cover art. And I still I laughed out loud at Mr. Bernard DeVoto's more outragerous claims like: Remember always the three abominations are: (1) rum, (2) any other sweet drink, and (3) any mixed drink except one made of gin and dry vermouth in the ratio I have given.

5. Lommebogen 
This is treasure - a facsimile of a notebook kept by a Danish bartender in the 1930's - his own personal reference book when the proper proportions of the Sidecar or the Bijoux slipped his mind.

It also holds quite a few Danish cocktails - drinks he either made up himself or drinks that had a short lifespan. Some of the mnamed after Danish actors and popular culture icons. Many of them involving some pretty bad Danish liquors made from raw alcohol and essences.
 
What about books like The Savoy Bar Book and How to Mix Drinks you may ask. Well, they are great reference books as are my reprints of The Old Waldorf Astoria Bar Book and Bar La Forida Cocktails. But they do not inspire me quite so much to mix stuff on my own or delight me with facts and opinions as the top five do.

What are your favorite bar books?

Skinny Middle Manager

Yes, the name is a joke, and no it is not a diet cocktail.

I've been admiring Barbaras Aperol Tequila Swizzle all weekend. A very pretty and tasty sounding drink. My only problem is that I really don't like Aperol.

But the image stayed with me, as I was challenge by a middle manager at work to make him a cocktail with the name Skinny Middle Manager.

So here is how a figured a drink in honor of all those middle managers who put up with someone like me day in and day out should be mixed.

Coffee - can't have management without caffeine, but I couldn't imagine mixing Kaluha and Aperol, so I went with an espresso syrup made from 2 oz espresso cooked with 2 oz sugar.

Aperol - moderne, talked about, very bleeding edge and it tasts really bad too.

Next i wondered what kind of base spirit to use - something macho like bourbon, or something more androgynous. I went with white rum.

Next something healthy - middle managers have to take care of their bodies or they won't become senior managers - I decided on coconut water. And finally it seemed obvious to make the cocktail as a highball with seltzers - as highball is sort of cocktail code for long winded.

• 6 cl white rum - I used Plantation 3 Star which may explain why I never get a pay raise
• 3 cl Aperol
• 3 cl coconut water
• 2 cl coffee syrup
• Seltzers

Shake the first four ingredients with ice and then strain the cocktail into a highball glass with plenty of ice - top it of with seltzers and add your most bling cocktail stirrer to impress the boss.

And strangely enough it does not tast half bad - pretty good actually. The coffee taste works wonders on the Aperol.

The Prince

I'm in love with my raspberry bush. It has grown and expanded all by itself to cover parts of my really boring fence. And best of all it produces so many wonderful, big berries with a deep and complex taste.

Today I effortlessly picked 500 grams of berries - and there is at least twice as many left for tomorrow and tomorrow and....

There are many uses for the berries - the one most obvious to Danes is this delicacy. But I've already baked those and made cordial so today I decided to make sorbet.

I blended the fresh berries with the juice of one lime and passed the mush through a sieve to get rid of the little seeds. Then I added a simple sirup made from 1 dl sugar and 1 dl water.

The liquid was poured into a square shallow baking tin and placed in the freezer. I scraped through it after 30 minutes and 1 hour to minimize crystals and got a very nice sorbet out of it.

I don't know if I was already subconsciously planning a cocktail but I certainly had a lot of ideas when the thought hit me. I settled on the tried and true mix of raspberry and gin -but since I knew that the sorbet was on the sweet side I added Campari to balance it out:

• 3 cl Campari
• 6 cl Gin - I used Old English Gin 
• 1 dl of raspberry sorbet

Place everything in a shaker and shake until the shaker is well cold and the sorbet integrated into the gin and Campari.

Pour into glass over ice and garnish with raspberry and pretty flower.

A letter to the future

When your favorite bar closes....

Dear future cocktail historian,

You have been searching high and low for information about a particular bar that existed for four short years in Copenhagen back in the good old days - back in 2009-2013.

You have read loads of irrelevant dusty old web pages, that almost made your eyes bleed, looked through millions of meaningless so called tweets (what was that about? Why did people impose needless and arbitrary limitations on their communication back then? Wasn't it primitive enough just to use text? Well let some other historian unravel that strange business), you have tried to decipher endless amounts of strange, unfocused, badly colored photos (or Instagrams as they were called - almost as strange as the tweets - why did a whole generation loose the capability to take strong, clear photos with depth and accurate coloring? Again let another historian unravel this mystery).

And what did all your hard work get you, but these meager clues:

Consider this your lucky day - that one needle in the haystack actually connected to the thread that can unravel it.

I wrote both the so called Facebook update (Don't ask it's easier to print a full scale 3D copy of the Great Pyramid of Egypt from cupcake frosting than understanding early 21st century social media) and the tweet.

I did it because I wanted to let the world know, I was there. That I was an eye witness to cocktail history.

And I didn't only watch history - I tasted it (which may explain the not very accurate communication in the Facebook update (back then an unfortunate side effect of cocktails was getting intoxicated something that was eliminated in the 2030's and in my opinion took the fun right out of drinking, but I digress)).

The literal translation is: Last cocktail served from Molktes bar, damn it's bitter sweet Henrik Steen Petersen.

It literally was the last cocktail I ever had mixed by the talented staff from the brilliant Molktes Bar. A place that so dominated the cocktail scene in Copenhagen back then, that it never really felt the same way to me ever again.

You most understand that Moltkes was at the forefront of what was even back then described as the renaissance of the Copenhagen cocktail scene. It was not the first bar to try to reintroduce cocktails to the Danes who had for so many years been lost to first aquavit and mass produced beer and then cheap wine.

But it was the bar most dedicated to only serve the true classics, and the bar with the most precise grip on what hospitality means. A place that never became infected with the dreaded hipster-disease where wearing suspenders meant being too cool to talk to the bar guests or notice when their glasses was empty.

Perhaps you already knew some of this? Perhaps that's why you are trying to dig deeper into the history of this place.

Well, let me give you a lead - concentrate on the man who made this bar. Mr. Henrik Steen Petersen, who also gave Denmark the Copenhagen Spirits and Cocktails event, and who went on to further cocktailian greatness after the bar was closed.

As for the tweet? I'm sure you already know Jeff Bell as one of the worlds best bartenders at the time.

But did you also know, that he with just the help of a bar back single handedly ran Moltkes for more than three hours that night and delighted us with some of his own cocktails, several punches and some cocktails from the famous PDT?

Well, I can prove it. While the bottle of Old Pal, as far as I can remember barely made it through 2013, and I unfortunately had to sell the two signed menus - one by Jeff Bell and one by Henrik Steen Pedersen - a decade ago to finance my new, improved, artificial liver (I got the EO-model) there are images.

And fortunately for you I know exactly where they are on the remnants of what was back then called the internet (before the cloud after arpanet) and once I fired up my antique MacBook Air (very popular but already obsolete when I bought it so called PC) I could get them. You should see them float around this.

I'm sorry that text is the only way I know how to communicate and hope - if you do not know how to read - you have found someone who remembers how.

A very old Ginhound

Harvey Bonghead

This morning I took a catch up tour on Small Screen Networks many lovely presentations and I came across Jamie Boudreau's video How to Smoke a Cocktail that I have somehow missed previously. 

Also as I had found one of the most intriguing entries to the latest Mixology Monday was Feu de Vie's Wind Whisperer I figured the cocktails gods were trying to tell me something: Get smoking

I settled on building something from bourbon, rum, Galliano, lemon, rose tincture and burning Earl Gray tea.

As a gear junkie my first impulse was to buy a smoke gun, but I took a cue from Kate's solution and my bank manager thanks you for that.

So method was mostly inspired by Kate and drink mostly from Jamie Boudreau and the name is thanks to expert marketing of the Galliano company.

First set up your cocktail ready to shake:

• 4 cl bourbon - I used Bulleit
• 4 cl rum - not too sweet I used Barbancourt 3 star
• 1,5 cl Galliano
• 1,5 cl lemon juice
• 5 drops rose tincture

Next find a way to burn some Early Gray tea leaves and collect the smoke. Not knowing what to expect smoking and smell wise I set it up on my little grill: A piece of aluminum foil shaped into a little tray, a broken wooden chopstick on two sides of a small pile of Earl Gray tea leaves, an upside down funnel to direct the smoke into an inverted glass bottle.

It worked well and once I had a bottle full of smoke, I corked it and brought it into my kitchen where I gave the cocktail a good shake with ice and strained it into the smoke bottle before pouring it into a coupe and garnishing with a pretty flower. I figured bongheads were into flowers back in the day, weren't they? I can't remember.
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In the Drink

Just to prove that I do have other interests besides all things booze, I want to post my first series of photos with tiny people.

I'm certainly no Boffoli, William Kass or Slinkachu and I just use my iPhone.

But it is quite fun to think these dioramas up and even setting them up.

Enjoy.

Disclaimer: No gin, ice, Maraschino cherries, lime, mint, rum or sugar was hurt during the photo shoot. 
 

Fire Engine with Lights Flashing

I was a little pressed for time on Monday, as the deadline for this month's Mixology Monday approached, and I did not find time to mix my runner up cocktail.

Then today as I noticed my raspberry bush was almost bend to the ground with ripe berries I knew what a great start to my little midweek weekend would be: A Fire Engine.

In Denmark it's a quintessential 80's, dark age of mixology-type drink.

Danish kids have been served Red Soda or Hindbærbrus - a horrible artificial raspberry soda pop - since before I was born.

In the 80's someone figured the taste was strong enough to mask even the cheapest vodka and the Fire Engine was born.

At some point someone wanted to get drunk faster and added Jägermeister and came up with the name Fire Engine with Lights Flashing.

I figured this drink could be salvaged by decent ingredients, so I started by making fresh raspberry cordial.

I make the stuff as old school as possible: Equal amount of berries and water, and half the amount of sugar along with the juice of one lemon (about 1 dl) plonked into a small pot.

Then I cook this - a gently rolling boil - for 4-5 minutes and strain and press all the liquid out of the pulp.

Since I plan to drink this within the next 1-2 days I just bottle it and stick it in the fridge. A little vodka will probably add up to a week to it's life.
 
Next I set to mixing in a highball glass with plenty of ice.

• 6 cl gin
• 1 cl Fernet Branca
• Raspberry soda*

Start by adding the gin and almost top with the soda - I just mixed equal amounts of cordial and seltzer but you have to find your own golden ration - gently stir until glass is chilled and then float a small amount of Fernet Branca on top and garnish with a slice of orange expending the oil on top of the drink.

Simply put - raspberry and gin is a match made in heaven, as the Clover Club Cocktail is testament to - and the liquorice notes of the Fernet works well with raspberry too.

If liquorice is not your thing - then either leave it out, in which case the drink is just a Fire Engine - or mix it with the gin to start with so it's incorporated into the finale taste profile.

Either way welcome to my youth.

Hot Rod - MxMo LXXVI

The name of my entry for MxMo LXXVI is only really fun if you understand Danish: Rod is Danish for root and this cocktail contains juice of not just one root but two - one of them hot enough to be called the chili of the North and supposedly burn the stomach lining of a cow or horse unfortunate enough to eat it.

This months theme for Mixology Monday is Fire. Kate of Muse of Doom - the gracious host - puts it like this in her announcement post:

Tiki-philes have their flaming spent lime shells and scorpion bowls. Classic cocktailers have the magic of a flamed orange zest. Molecular mixologists have their Smoking Guns. (and yes, frat boys have their flaming shots.) Even brunchtime drinkers have spicy Bloody Marys.

You don't have to go full Blue Blazer, not nearly -- heck, you could go full Fireball Whiskey! (or Fire Rock Pale Ale, etc..) You could riff on the Old Flame or come up with an inventive name of your own. You could even use a good firewater or burned wine. (and if you're grilling fruit, save some for me, will ya?)

In essence, bring the heat! Bring the Fire! Bring your inspiration!

On a serious note: remember that lass in Britain who lost her stomach because the mixologists weren't in control of the dangerous elements they were using in a cocktail? Let's have none of that here, huh? There's a lot more to Fire than just the electrochemical reactions happening on the end of a lit match. Stay safe and trust your gut about what you're comfortable doing. We're all here to have fun.

I immediately knew I wanted to work with Armoracia rusticana commonly known as horseradish. It's about the only edible plant grown in Denmark that has any kind of heat - other than stinging needles, but been there, done that.

The next obvious ingredient was aquavit - a name not often used in Denmark - most people call it snaps or brændevin. The latter literally means burned wine, because the first commercially produced spirit in Denmark was made by distilling wine. Pharmacists and munks had the market with this expensive medicin believed to cure anything from pox to the plague from the 1200s.  If it didn't at least you died happy - if you could afford it because obviously it was expensive.

Not until the 1600s when someone figured out snaps could be distilled from fermented wheat instead of expensive imported wine did aquavit gain popularity as a beverage and not as medicine.

Since I was already looking a local ingredients I decided to use carrot juice as a mixer hence the second root.

And when a friend gave me an amazing bottle of a tincture of Apothecary's Rose it all came together:

• 6 cl aquavit - I used Brøndums Snaps which has a mild taste of caraway
• 6 cl carrot juice
• 3 cl lemon juice
• 3 cl horseradish syrup*
• 3 drops of rose tincture**

Shake with plenty of ice and double strain into cocktail coup. Garnish with tiny carrot.

It turned out really well - the horseradish does not overpower the other ingredients, but it adds a bit of bite along with the aquavit to balance out the sweetness form the carrot juice. The rose tincture brought it all together.

* Bring equal amounts of fresh grated horseradish, sugar and water to a boil. Let steep for 15-20 minutes and then strain.

** My friend Dana, who made the rose tincture, kindly supplies this recipe:
Stuff a small jam jar full of petals + stamens of rosa officinalis. It must be officinalis, because rugosa imparts the scent but not the flavour, whreas the other gallicas impart the flavour but not the scent ... get the picture? Officinalis.

Cover with vodka and let steep three days. Strain, wring all the moisture out of the petals - and repeat three times more. Four glassfuls of petals + stamens to the same jarful of vodka!

Strain, stopper airtight, and let sit for three months at least to mature before using.

This yields a very concentrated 'image of a rose'. We are talking drops, not dashes. May be diluted 3 - 4 times and will still give you an intense scent and flavour of midsummer roses.

Frambuesa Colada

I have mixed my share of earnest, grown up, serious cocktails. But once in awhile it is fun to be a little frivolous.

I'm not talking about cutting corners or being lazy, just about going for smooth and even sweet tasts when that would be good.

At TOTC I enjoyed Jeff Berry and David Wondrich's seminar about the Dark Ages of Mixology between 1967 and 1988. To prove their point they started by blending a hap hazardly thrown together Martini or whatever you would call a glass of gin, vermouth and slush ice.

They did it without paying any attention to the proces - and asked a couple of the guests to taste their work - to illustrate the greatest problem of the dark age: Bartenders complete lack of pride in their job.

So someone glancing at my concotion of raspberry, lemon, rum and coconut cream could probably confuse it with sloppy work - it isn't I promise!

I just needed something relaxing to end my week. A week which started with a gig on the morning show of Denmarks most popular radio broadcast on Monday  where I shared my experience at TOTC and found myself recommending the Sidecar - at 8.30 a.m. 

So as I was transitioning into weekend mode I noticed quite a few lovely ripe raspberries on my plants and remembered I had a can of Lopez cream of coconut and a more Nordic edition of a Pina Colada seemed the thing to mix.

I cooked the raspberries for 5 minutes with a sprig of rosmary, the juice of half a lemon and some sugar - I even tweaked it a tiny bit with a dash or two of a lovely violette sirup I have.

Then I strained the sirup, cooled it a bit and mixed my Colada:

• 2 oz white rum - I used Havanna Club 3 Anejos
• 1 oz raspberry syrup
• 1 oz lemon juice
• 3 oz Lopez cream of coconut

Shake with plenty of ice and strain into tall glass over fresh ice.

Garnish to your hearts content and most importantly: Enjoy.