Cocktail Hacker

Sure, it’s no longer against the law to mix and drink these cocktails, but we can always pretend right? The Scofflaw is the perfect drink for that kind of pretending too. The ingredients are classic, especially if you go with Rye, and you should. The flavor can range from dry to sweet depending on your taste. Finally, the color is simply stunning.

I started my experiments this week with The Joy of Mixology recipe (2 oz Rye, 1 oz Dry Vermouth, 1/2 oz Lemon Juice, 1/4 oz Grenadine) and found it to be a little too dry for my liking. The next recipe I mixed up (1 1/2 oz, 1 oz, 3/4 oz, 3/4 oz), from Forgotten Spirits and Cocktails, was on the opposite end of the spectrum, much too sweet. After a couple recipe tweaks I settled on one that I really like which ups the sour and sweet notes while keeping the whiskey and vermouth flavors present.

Scofflaw (Cocktail Hacker)

1 1/2 oz Rye

1 oz Dry Vermouth

3/4 oz Lemon Juice

1/2 oz Grenadine

Some parting comments. I tried both rye and bourbon in this cocktail and found both worked very well. But, as in the Manhattan, I felt the spiciness of the rye worked better in this application. I also used my homemade hibiscus grenadine that I discussed earlier in the week which is a little less sweet than some. Depending on the sweetness of your grenadine you may want to play with the amount you add to get the sweetness you’re looking for.

This month’s Mixology Monday is being hosted by Matt Rowley of Rowley’s Whiskey Forge. The topic, Hard Drinks for Hard Times, I’m sure hits home for a lot of us. My 401K is down 8.9% for 2009 (don’t even ask about 2008), I have friends and relatives who have been laid off, overall times truly are hard. Thankfully I’m in a lucky position working at a stable job that I enjoy. That doesn’t mean I can’t do a little cutting back on spending though. On that note I’d like to offer up my Recession Gin and Tonic.

Recession Gin and Tonic

2 oz Burnett's Gin

6 oz Canada Dry Tonic Water

1 tsp Realime or Other Bottled Lime Juice

1) Combine in a double old fashioned glass with ice

2) Enjoy

3) Repeat

If you’ve been reading CH for a while now you already know about my love of the squeeze lime, which I waxed poetic about for MxMo XXXII. However, not everyone agrees with my use of bottled juice as is evidenced by the haiku battle that raged in my blog comments. I’ll certainly grant you that squeeze lime, or really any bottled juice, doesn’t offer the freshness of flavor that fresh juices bring. On the other hand, they do offer convenience and affordability, which is key to surviving tough times.

For this G&T recipe I’ve used Burnett’s gin. I picked up my first handle of Burnett’s after reading this review by Jonathan Forester. Jonathan nailed it in his review. This is a gin that is very inexpensive but packs a good deal of flavor. It has a nice amount of juniper and the citrus notes are strong enough to make it a great gin for a G&T.

Finally, I went with Canada Dry tonic water, my now favorite super market tonic water. Clearly I could have chosen to go with store brand tonic water, but even though I’m going for an inexpensive cocktail here, I still want it to taste good. I am actually drinking these afterall.

So how hard is this cocktail going to hit your wallet? It’s not going to hit it hard at all. It’s going to be like a kitten falling on a pile of pillows.

• Burnett’s Gin (1.75 L) $15.99 -> 2 oz $0.54
• Realime (15 oz) $3.09 -> 1 tsp $0.04
• C-Dry Tonic (6×12 oz) $2.99 -> 6 oz $0.25
• Total Cost Per Drink $0.83

Eighty three cents. Try to wrap your head around that number. That’s cheaper than a soft drink nearly anywhere. It’s cheaper than a crappy cup of coffee from the vending machine in my office. And to make things even more impressive keep in mind that none of the ingredients that I used were on sale. If you were able to score these on sale I think you could drop your total cost per drink down to around $0.65 easily. Bam! Recession solved…Oh, wait. No, not really. At least you’ve got a tasty beverage to keep you going though.

scofflaw

1. One who habitually violates minor laws or fails to answer trivial court summonses (such as parking tickets.)

2. An iconoclast

Per wikitionary the word scofflaw was coined as a response to a content during prohibition times. The contest was in search of, Jeopardy style, a word meaning “a lawless drinker of illegally made or illegally obtained liquor”. The contest offered $200 as the prize and received nearly 25,000 entries. Not particularly surprising considering that would buy you about 100 pints of alcohol if you could find a bootlegger to sell you some.

The cocktail is clearly named after this newly coined word and, per Gary Regan, the cocktail was created in 1924 by Jock, a bartender at Harry’s New York Bar in Paris.

Scofflaw (Joy of Mixology)

2 oz Bourbon or Straight Rye

1 oz Dry Vermouth

1/2 oz Lemon Juice

1/4 oz Grenadine

Orange Bitters to Taste

1) Combine ingredients in a shaker over ice.

2) Shake until chilled and strain in to a cocktail glass.

I’m excited about this cocktail for a number of reasons. First, it gives me the opportunity to make some more homemade grenadine. Sure, I still have some left in my fridge and freezer, but since pomegranates are in season right now I can do it right this go round. Second, I’m going to pick up a bottle of Noilly Prat dry vermouth. This may not seem particularly exiciting, but Noilly Prat has recently re-released their original dry vermouth formula for the US market and I’ve been looking forward to giving it a try. Finally, it’s a bourbon cocktail and it seems like it has been much too long since I featured one.

I’ve really enjoyed my week with the Bronx. I hadn’t experimented a lot with oranges in the past so I decided that this week my focus would be on finding the right orange juice for this cocktail. To start my journey I found all the oranges I could and got to juicing. From left to right they contenders are: Cara Cara Navel, Valencia, Minneola Tangelo, Moro (Blood Orange), Honey Tangerine and the bottled contender, Simply Orange (Original Pulp Free).

Now, a couple quick comments. One, I realize not all of these are oranges, but they all have similar flavors so I added them to the running. Two, I had a Navel in my fridge that I was going to use for the juice off, but it was a bit leathery, so I passed. Now for some results.

Cara Cara Navel – The color of Cara Cara juice, a gorgeous orange/pink, is truly the star here. They are sweet but not overly so and have little to no sourness.

Valencia – Valencia juice is the flavor I naturally associate with freshly squeezed orange juice. There is basically zero sourness and the sweetness is pleasant but not overwhelming.

Minneola Tangelo – Nice orangy flavor here, but with extra sourness. This quickly became my front runner for the Bronx.

Moro (Blood Orange) – As with the Cara Caras the color is the star here. The Moro steps up though with a perfect level of sweetness for this drink and the additional sourness that some of the others are lacking. We then had two contenders for the Bronx position.

Honey Tangerine – It’s quite obvious where the name for these came from. The juice is very sweet and has a distinct honey flavor. A good fruit, but not what I was looking for in the Bronx.

Simply Orange (Original Pulp Free) – Sweet with nearly no sourness. Definitely lacks the brightness of fresh squeezed but it’ll do in a pinch.

So, as you can see from my quick reviews I was leaning towards a juice with more sourness for this cocktail. From playing around with the Bronx I feel a juice with additional sourness leads to a more balanced cocktail. As a side note I found you can add a small dash of lemon juice to the sweeter juices to get some additional sourness. About 1/4 oz in 1 oz of orange juice worked out very nicely in the case of the Simply Orange, but I’d start with about an 1/8 then sample and add more if needed.

Now for some recipes. I started with The Joy of Mixology recipe (2 oz Gin, 1 oz Orange Juice, 1/4 oz Sweet Vermouth, 1/4 oz Dry Vermouth, 2 Dashes Orange Bitters). What first struck about the Bronx is that it’s not nearly as sweet as I expected them to be. I had anticipated with the orange juice and sweet vermouth that this drink would be on the sweeter side. Not so. Instead you get wonderful gin flavor, a subtle orange sweetness and the herbal notes of the vermouth. These go down very easy, which oddly (or perhaps not so) seems to becoming a trend around here. I didn’t find the orange bitters added much other than, not surprisingly, a touch of bitterness. Overall, I’d call them optional.

Next I tried out the recipe in Difford’s guide (1 1/2 oz Gin, 1 oz Orange Juice, 3/4 oz Sweet Vermouth, 3/4 oz Dry Vermouth). The result is much more vermouthy, which in this case I don’t think is really necessary. With this much vermouth you lose the subtle notes from the gin and orange juice.

Finally I went to Wonderich’s Esquire recipe (2 oz Gin, 1 oz Orange Juice, 1/2 oz Sweet Vermouth, 1/2 oz Dry Vermouth). Basically Regan’s recipe with some increased vermouth. This version is also very dry. Sadly with this much gin the orange flavors somewhat faded in to the background.

Info in hand I was ready to craft my own version of the Bronx. I like more sour notes so I suggest going with Moro blood oranges or Minneola Tangelos. I’m guessing there are plenty of other oranges that would give the needed sourness, but I live in a land locked state with zero citrus, so I use what I can find. 3/4 oz of each vermouth was too much, but 1/2 oz pumped up the herbal flavors and that worked for me. Finally 2 oz of gin seemed to dilute the orange, so for my money 1 1/2 oz is the way to go.

Bronx (Cocktail Hacker)

1 1/2 oz Gin

1 oz Orange Juice

1/2 oz Sweet Vermouth

1/2 oz Dry Vermouth

Orange Twist for Garnish

This week we’re heading by to NYC, well a borough at least. We’re going to be enjoying a blend of gin, sweet vermouth, dry vermouth and orange juice; a Bronx Cocktail. As with many of the other cocktails I’ve discussed here there are a few stories floating around as to its origin. Seems it could have been discovered in Philadelphia by Joseph Sormani in 1905. Which would to lend credence to the claim that it was printed on a cocktail menu from 1906.

However, the story I believe is that the drink was created by Johnnie Solon, a bartender at the Manhattan hotel. The story goes that Johnnie was challenged to make a new cocktail by a waiter named Traverson on behalf of a customer eager for something new. Taking spin on the Duplex (a popular drink of the time combining sweet and dry vermouth and orange bitters) Solon crafted what would quickly become a huge hit. As Traverson carried the cocktail to the waiting partron he asked what it would be named. Solon responded with “A Bronx.” Seems Solon had recently been to the Bronx Zoo where he had seen lots of beasts he’d never seen before, which reminded him of the stories customers would tell him of the beasts they’d seen after imbibing a bit too much. The name stuck, as you can see, and the rest is, as they say, history.

There are a lot of recipes for this cocktail so I’m eager to get to experiment with them all. Below you’ll find Regan’s recipe, which is as good a starting place as any I suppose.

Bronx Cocktail (Joy of Mixology)

2 oz Gin

1/4 oz Sweet Vermouth

1/4 oz Dry Vermouth

1 oz Fresh Orange Juice

Orange Bitters to Taste

Orange Twist for Garnish

1) Combine all ingredients in a shaker with ice.

2) Shake and strain into a cocktail glass.

3) Garnish with an orange twist.