Cocktail Hacker

Well folks, the eve of the new year is upon us.  For some it’s already here.  For everyone I wish you a happy, healthy and prosperous new year.  Though, before we get too carried away with the revelry I think there’s still time for one last cocktail.  I’m going to take a quick look at the Violet Fizz from The Bubbly Bar as I promised earlier in the week.

Violet Fizz (The Bubbly Bar)

4 oz Brut Sekt or Prosecco
1/2 oz Monin Violet Syrup
1 oz Delicate Gin
Juice of 1/2 Lemon
1/2 oz Pasteurized Egg White
2 Pieces of Candied Violet for Garnish

1) Pour the prosecco into a cocktail glass
2) Combine other ingredients in a shaker
3) Shake with ice until well chilled
4) Strain into cocktail glass
5) Garnish with Candied Violet

Reading the recipe for this drink in the book it sounded really good.  Plus it’s a twist on the Ramos Gin Fizz, one of my favorites.  Mixing up the drink I ran into a few problems, but nothing that some recipe tweaking can’t handle.  First, I don’t have Monin violet syrup.  I do, however, have a bottle of Creme de Violette that would be delightful here.  Second, I don’t have any prosecco on hand and I’m comfortable enough to admit I’ve never heard of sekt.  After a bit of googling it seems that sekt is the German word for sparkling wine.  Now you know.  (I’ll let you insert the G.I. Joe reference)  Not to worry, I’m sure the Gruet Brut I’ve been mixing with this week will work fine.

Third, I don’t think the Creme de Violette adds as much sweetness as the Monin syrup would.  In my subsequent attempts I added a bit of simple syrup which sorted that problem out nicely.  Finally, my drink didn’t come together nearly as well as the one pictured.  When I poured the shaken components into the Champagne, I ended up with about six ounces of foam.  Not optimal.  I switched up the method and mixed it like you would a Ramos Gin Fizz.  I mixed the ingredients, poured them into a collins glass and topped it with the Champagne.  Same result, way too much foam.  I tried reducing the amount of egg white I added to no avail.  Simple enough, I just dropped the egg white all together and moved on.

Now that you’ve patiently read this rambling story I’d like to make a point as to why I wrote it all down.  When you’re looking at cocktail recipes and you don’t have the exact ingredients needed or don’t like the results, improvise!  Whatever you’re mixing should make you happy first and foremost and only after that adhear to classic recipes.  Cocktail recipes, as with those for cooking, are just guidelines after all.

Violet Fizz (Cocktail Hacker)

4 oz Brut Champagne
1 oz Gin (Hendricks)
1/2 oz Creme de Violette
1/4 oz Simple Syrup
3/4 oz Lemon Juice
Lemon Twist for Garnish

1) Add the Champagne to a cocktail glass
2) Combine other ingredients in a shaker
3) Shake with ice until well chilled
4) Pour gin mixture into the cocktail glass
5) Garnish with a lemon twist

So there you have my recipe.  I have to say, I really enjoy this drink.  It’s reminiscent of an Aviation, another favorite, which is definitely not a bad thing.  The color is a light sea green and the Creme de Violette gives the aroma a very delicate floral note.  The flavor is really well balanced and harmonious, with each ingredient coming through.  Note that I opted for a delicate gin as the original recipe suggested.  Good call.  Too much punch from the gin would overwhelm the Creme de Violette and Champagne.  Finally the effervescence from the Champagne is really refreshing.

Happy New Year all.  Enjoy your drinks tonight.

When I gave my shout out for Bloody Mary recommendations I got some great suggestions.  One, coming from DrinkSnob of Liquor is Quicker, is to try the Red Snapper.  In looking though the Joy of Mixology it seems that the Red Snapper could be thought of as a predecessor of the Bloody Mary.  The primary differences in the recipes are the ratio of juice to vodka and the amount and variety of add-ons.

Red Snapper (Joy of Mixology)

1 1/2 oz Vodka
1 1/2 oz Tomato Juice
2 Dashes Lemon Juice
2 Dashes Worcestershire Sauce
Salt and Cayenne Pepper to Taste

1) Combine ingredients over ice
2) Shake until well chilled
3) Strain into a chilled cocktail glass

I liked this drink for the most part.  It’s by no means my favorite and I can assure you I won’t be ordering it over something like an Aviation.  But, it’s pretty good.  Definitely an ancestor of the Bloody Mary, for the most part the flavor profiles are the same.  With the obvious note that the Red Snapper is a much stronger cocktail.  More thoughts on the two when I wrap up the Bloody Mary later in the week.

My week of Salty Dogs started when I mixed some up for my cousin Tara and I.  I followed the simple recipe I laid out at the beginning of the week, 2 oz vodka, 3 oz grapefruit juice.  The only grapefruit juice I had on hand was the kind in the tiny cans and I failed to rim the glasses with salt.  D’Oh.  As you can guess we were already well on our way to failure.  After a tentative couple of sips we both concluded that the drink was much too sour in its current form.  I added a touch of raspberry syrup and all was right in the world again.  But of the failings I mention above what was the key to making this drink tasty?

I picked up some grapefruit and decided I’d give the drink a go with fresh juice (always a good call).  However, much to my surprise, it seems I hadn’t read the label very well and came home with pink grapefruit.  Which, I found out on a second trip to the store, is all they have right now.  Nevertheless, I juiced them up and mixed up a cocktail, complete with salted rim this time.

This time the drink was much more palatable than my first attempt.  The pink grapefruit juice is less sour than white grapefruit and quite a bit sweeter.  Be warned, this version goes down very easy.  The vodka is lost to the sweet/sour flavor of the pink grapefruit and before you realize it your glass is empty again.  The salt was a nice touch but really works much better with the sourer white grapefruit.  If you’re using pink go light on the salt and I’d suggest only rimming half the glass.  That way you only have to have salt if you want.

The same evening Aaron was over to finalize our Tales of the Cocktail plans and he chose to mix up the Difford’s recipe (below).  This recipe changes things up a bit by adding a touch of Maraschino to the mix.  This has two effects on the cocktail.  First, it will sweeten it up a bit, which could be needed if you’re going the white grapefruit route.  Second, it gives the drink a little more interesting flavor.  Like the Aviation you’re using the Maraschino very sparingly so it’s flavor is subtly applied.  Overall Aaron was very surprised and pleased.  He sums it up best: “[I] really thought it would be more like my college ‘whatever juice I can find and vodka drinks’.”  Well said my friend.

Salty Dog (Diffords Guide #7)

2 oz Vodka
2 1/4 oz Grapefruit Juice
1/8 oz Maraschino
Salt for Rimming

Finally I circled back to where I started the week and gave the canned white grapefruit juice a second go.  With this second attempt I came to a different conclusion.  The sourness of the grapefruit juice is actually quite refreshing.  But it does make you slow down your sipping.  The salt is a nice touch, but not entirely necessary in my opinion.  However, if you decide to leave it off know that you’re now drinking a Greyhound, amazing what a touch of salt can do.

My bottle of Creme de Violette finally arrived from Sam’s Wine last Tuesday.  I eagerly opened the box and pulled out a bottle of lovely violet colored spirit.  The beautiful color is the first and most striking thing you’ll notice about a bottle of Creme de Violette.  I admired for only a short time though before I had to break the seal and sample.  The smell, and not surprisingly the flavor, are distinctly floral.  This is a medium sweet liqueur, a little less sweet than Cointreau for comparison sake.  Ok, so enough about the Creme de Violette, you’re here to find out what impact it has on the Aviation.  Quite a lot I must say.

I started off with Erik Ellestad’s approximation of the original recipe.  The resulting Aviation is much less sweet than some of the other recipes that I’ve tried, but at the same time not overly sour which is interesting.  In other recipes as the sweetness decreased the drink became quite a lot more sour.  I think this flavor profile is a direct result of the addition of a small bit of simple syrup.  My big gripe about this recipe was that the flavor of the Maraschino and Creme de Violette were not as present as I would like.

Aviation (Erik Ellestad)

3/4 oz Lemon Juice
1 1/2 oz Plymouth Gin
2 Dashes Maraschino (~1/2 tsp)
1/2 tsp Creme de Violette
1/2 tsp Rich Simple Syrup

So, on the tasting continued with a modification of my prefered non-Violette recipe.  I found that the Violette added an entirely new level of complexity in the flavor profile of this drink.  The result was nicely floral and exceedingly pleasing.  In addition the color of this recipe was absolutely gorgeous.  As you can see from the picture above the color is a light violet color that you rarely see in cocktails.  Still wasn’t exactly what I was looking for though.

Aviation (Mod of Dan's Recipe)

2 oz Gin
1 oz Lemon Juice
1/4 oz Maraschino
1/4 oz Creme de Violette
Touch of Simple Syrup

I next turned to the second recipe list in Diffords Guide #7.  This recipe upped the Violette to 1/2 oz which sounded appealing but lowered the lemon juice to only 1/2 oz as well.  As with the others the color is very striking, really in love with the look of this cocktail.  The aroma of the Violette comes through very nicely.  Although the Violette is the primary background flavor the Maraschino is still there as well.  This recipe has the perfect level of sweetness in my mind but due to the cut in the lemon juice the sourness isn’t where I’d like.

Aviation (Diffords #2 - Classic Recipe)

2 oz Gin
1/2 oz Creme de Violette
1/4 oz Maraschino
1/2 oz Lemon Juice

So where do all of these experiments lead us?  Well, I enjoyed the Violette level of the Diffords recipe, but the sourness was too low.  The sourness and sweetness of the modified recipe are right where I wanted them, but the Violette was a touch low.  A simple combination of the recipes leads to the Cocktail Hacker Aviation.  This recipe produces a cocktail that has a nice level of both sweet and sour.  The Maraschino is present but the Violette becomes the background star.

Aviation (Cocktail Hacker Recipe)

2 oz Gin (Junipero)
1/2 oz Creme de Violette
1/4 oz Maraschino (Luxardo)
1 oz Lemon Juice

The Aviation is an amazing cocktail with or without the Creme de Violette.  However, if you can find a bottle of Violette it will bring this cocktail to a new level of flavor complexity.  The added floral aroma and flavor are amazing, not to mention the color the Violette brings.  If you can’t find Violette at your local liquor stores turn to the internet, there are a few suppliers that can get you a bottle, for a price of course.

I entered this week with a bit of trepidation.  You see about a year and a half ago Aaron and I were both just getting in to mixing cocktails.  We decided that with the 4th of July fast approaching we should throw a party and feature gin drinks.  Being new to the game we both looked around on the net and found some drinks that sounded good.  The Aviation was one of the ones we chose and we stocked up on Maraschino and lemons, being gin lovers we had plenty of that on hand.  We used Regan’s recipe from the Joy of Mixology and whipped up our first batch.  The results were, well, unexpected.  Since neither of us had ever had Maraschino before we had no preconceived notion of what this drink might taste like.  Those of you familiar with the flavor of Maraschino likely know where I’m going with this.  This liqueur has a certain funk to it.  The taste is most certainly an aquired one and not what you’re expecting when you hear the words cherry liqueur.

So, to wrap up that little tale I haven’t mixed one since.  But I knew, deep down, that there must be some merit to this cocktail for it to have survived as long as it has.  So on the tasting schedule it went.  The first recipe I tried was Regan’s, again.  This time I think my pallate has matured because I quite enjoyed the flavor of the Marachino.  That said I don’t feel that this recipe is particularly balanced.  The Luxardo (my Maraschino of choice) completely eclipses the flavor of the lemon juice and the gin (Plymouth) barely shines through as well.  A good start, but I think we can do better.

Next I sampled the recipe from David Wondrich’s Killer Cocktails.

Aviation (Killer Cocktails)

2 oz Gin
2 tsp Maraschino
3/4 oz Lemon Juice

This recipe makes a drink that is much more sour and the gin really shines through in this one.  However, still not the balance that I’m looking for.  I felt the drink could use a touch more sweetness (provided by the increased Maraschino in Regan’s recipe) so I mixed up another, this time adding 1 tsp of simple syrup.  This additional sweetness however, masked the lemon’s sourness almost completely.  D’Oh! Still not what I’m looking for.  As a side note, the recipe from Killer Cocktails is nearly identical to the one in Vintage Cocktails and Spirits, so I chose not to make both.

Next I decided to try a recipe posted by Dan in the comments on my initial Aviation post.

Aviation (a la Dan)

2 oz Gin
1 oz Lemon Juice
1/2 oz Maraschino
Tiny Dash of Simple Syrup (~1/2 tsp)

This, my friends, is the Aviation I’d been looking for.  The drink is much more balanced with enough sweetness coming from the Maraschino and tiny dash of simple syrup.  The sourness is present and bold, but not over powering and you still get enough of the pleasing Maraschino funkiness.  My only remaining problem was that the Plymouth was masked for the most part.  Thankfully I have lots of other gins to choose from and quickly remedied the situation with some Juniper Green.  This recipe is the one that will go down in the Cocktail Hacker tome of knowledge as my preferred recipe.  Thanks for the excellent tip Dan.

But wait!  You must be wondering what happened with the search for Creme de Violette.  In short, I struck out.  I checked the four largest liquor stores in the Boulder area and none had it in stock.  Even DaveCo, the largest liquor store in the world which claims to have everything, had none.  In fact, they hadn’t ever heard of it.  Liquor Mart offered to special order a bottle but said it would take a least a week to arrive.  I’m not that patient folks.  So, I turned to the interwebs and found that Sam’s Wine had it in stock.  However, due to a typing error on my part the bottle didn’t ship until Thursday.  So…I’ll be putting up another post next week discussing the recipes that lean more toward the classic.

The Aviation is a classic cocktail that now lives a life of relative web 2.0 anonymity.  A search on Wikipedia will link you directly to the general cocktail page, which doesn’t do anyone much good as the page doesn’t even list a recipe.  Thankfully my reference books had a few recipes and my fellow cocktail bloggers have done their experiments as well so I have a good starting point for the week.

The first recipe for the Aviation to see print was in Hugo Ensslin’s book Recipes for Mixed Drinks printed in 1916.  I, sadly, do not have a copy, but Erik came to the rescue by posting the recipe on his site.

Aviation Cocktail (Original Recipe)

1/3 Lemon Juice
2/3 El Bart Gin
2 Dashes Maraschino
2 Dashes Creme de Violette

Shake well in a mixing glass with cracked ice, strain and serve.

Now, I’m guessing the first thing that popped in to your head is “What the hell is El Bart Gin?” I know it was certainly the first thing in mine.  From what I can best ascertain its a long gone brand of Dry Gin.  About all that can be found on the net these days about it is sales of new tin signs and news about the sale of a mint condition antique sign that went for $60,500 at auction.  I think its safe to assume though that El-Bart was one of Ensslin’s favorite gins as it is called for in some of his other recipes as well.  Following that my second question was in reference to just what exactly Creme de Violette is.  In doing a bit of reading in Vintage Cocktails and Spirits and online I had my answer.  Creme de Violette is the name given to a group of French liqueurs whos main source of flavoring and coloring is violets.

Creme de Violette is a touch hard to find in some areas in the US as there is only one importer (Haus Alpenz), and one brand being imported (Rothman & Winter).  I’ve checked one local liquor store, but no luck there.  I plan to do some more extensive searching tomorrow.  An interesting note is that due to the relative scarcity of this liqueur in the US most modern recipes you’ll find don’t list it as an ingredient at all.  For example below is Regan’s recipe from The Joy of Mixology.

Aviation (Joy of Mixology)

2 oz Gin
1/2 oz Maraschino Liqueur
1/2 oz Fresh Lemon Juice

I’ve certainly got a full week ahead of me and I can honestly say I’m really looking forward to it.