Bibulo.us - We plead the 21st.

Spread Eagle Punch

When you love your guests and want them to know it, make this powerful and premium punch. It's yet another winner from Jerry Thomas's 1862 How To Mix Drinks by way of David Wondrich and was featured in the December 2009 issue of Esquire magazine. (Do go subscribe; they really have been keeping the quality very high lately and we often read it cover to cover).

One key to this punch is the oleo saccharum – the potent oil which lemon peels will give up to sugar after half an hour or so. There was no liquid in the pot shown in the picture on the right when the peels and sugar were first stirred together. It's magic! (Well, fine, it's osmosis, but that's as good as magic).

As with all good punches, freeze up a big piece of ice using a small bowl 48 hours before you'll be serving.

On the day of your party, peel 1 dozen lemons, getting as little pith as possible. Put them in 2 or 3 gallon pot and muddle them with 1 cup sugar. Leave them alone for 30 minutes and then come back to marvel at the delicious lemon oil exuded.

Add 2 bottles of a nice smoky single-malt Scotch – we recommend Laphroaig – and 2 bottles rye whiskey – Wondrich was right about how wonderful Sazerac is here. Stir, then put in 1 gallon boiling water and stir to dissolve the sugar. Cover and let cool.

When you pour it over your big ice block in your punch bowl later, add 4 thinly sliced, de-seeded lemons and grate half a nutmeg over the top.

Stunning. Possibly literally. This is a 44 proof punch. Put out the small glasses.

Pearlescent

"A subtle and pleasant drink, the Pearlescent also happens to be quite easy on the eye." - David Wondrich

Yet another winner from his Killer Cocktails.

• 2.5 ounces vodka
• 2 teaspoons orgeat syrup
• 1 teaspoon Luxardo Maraschino liqueur
• lemon peel strip

Shake viciously (with the peel in the shaker) and serve in a chilled cocktail glass.

This one premixes like a dream and since it's got no citrus juice will keep fine in the fridge. Just stick the bottle next to the ice, shaker, lemons, and channel knife and let guests go to town with these instructions:

1. Measure 3 ounces of the premixed cocktail into the shaker for each drink.
2. Cut a fresh twist of lemon peel for each drink over the shaker & drop in.
3. Add twice as much ice as liquid.
4. Close the shaker tightly.
5. Holding the base, with fingers over the lid, shake viciously.
6. Take off the little cap and strain your drink into a chilled glass.
7. Dump your ice & peels into the dump bucket.
8. Enjoy your drink.

Hoffman House

"The Hoffman House Hotel maintained New York City's best bar at a time when New York had nothing but great bars... It pulled in a strictly A-list clientele until it got hauled down and replaced with an office building. That was in 1915. Their version of the Martini is one of the most suave known to science." - David Wondrich

Again we turn to Killer Cocktails for another party winner.

• 2 ounces gin, Martin Miller’s or Plymouth is encouraged
• 1 ounce Noilly Prat dry (white) vermouth
• 2 dashes orange bitters
• To finish: orange peel strip

Stir with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Squeeze peel over glass & drop in.

Delightful.

Daisy Shim and Daisy Mocktail

• .75 ounces gin
• .5 teaspoon lemon juice
• .5 teaspoon lime juice
• 1 teaspoon grenadine (ideally from Small Hand Foods or homemade)
• 1 teaspoon sugar

Fill a small collins glass with ice, add ingredients and stir until chilled.

Top with .5 oz fizz water. This may be garnished with fruits in season, if desired.

This is an adaptation of the Gin Daisy (new school) intended for those seeking a lower-alcohol alternative. It's handy for that guest who needs to slow down their intake a bit while their body catches up (and if they really need it, you don't even have to tell them it's a shim; just get a little gin on your finger and wipe it around the rim and they'll never know).

For the Daisy Mocktail, omit the gin entirely.

Note to party hosts: premix all but the gin and put it in a squeeze bottle. 3 teaspoons is 1/6 of an ounce, so call it a scant 1/4 ounce pour and then add your gin or not depending on whether you're making a Daisy, Shim, or Mocktail. For kids and those with a sweet tooth, give 'em a little extra of that mix.

Gin Daisy (new school)

"Almost always just the thing for a man or woman in the dumps or out of them." - David Wondrich

• 2 ounces gin
• .5 teaspoon lemon juice
• .5 teaspoon lime juice
• 1 teaspoon grenadine (ideally from Small Hand Foods or homemade)
• 1 teaspoon sugar

Fill a small collins glass with ice, add ingredients and stir until chilled.

Top with .5 oz fizz water. This may be garnished with fruits in season, if desired.

Yes, it's another party favorite from a Wondrich book, this time Imbibe. This is the "new school" version, which is to say the fancy grenadine-rocks Daisy of the 1910s as opposed to the original orange-liqueur-up version from the 1870s.

Garrick Club Punch

Yes, it's another party drink from a David Wondrich book, in this case, Killer Cocktails. Who is surprised? The man has an uncanny sense for what makes our guests happy.

"Back in the early part of the nineteenth century, the Garrick Club was one of London's sportier institutions, with a membership made up of actors, slumming aristocrats, and other racy types."

• 1 liter (1 bottle) Bols Genever
• 8.5 ounces fresh squeezed lemon juice (preferably from Meyer lemons if in season)
• 8 ounces Luxardo Maraschino liqueur
• peel, with as little pith as possible, from 4 lemons
• 1 liter chilled fizzy water (soda or seltzer)

At least 36 hours before serving, freeze a huge ice block for the punch bowl.
An hour or two before serving, peel 4 of your lemons (you’ll probably need 10-12 large ones) and put them in a closed container with the other ingredients except the fizz water to get to know each other.
To serve, put the ice block in the bowl, carefully pour the punch over it, and add the fizz water.
Serves 40-50 people for a while and instills in even the most cocktail-unaware an urge to buy obscure ingredients like genever.

Orange Blossom Martini

A very popular drink for parties. Easy to mix in batch.

4 parts Hanger One Mandarin Blossom vodka
1 part Lillet Blanc
drop of orange flower water (if only making a drink or two, or a dash for more. The idea is "just a wee bit since the Hanger One already has some")

Serve in a cocktail glass with a sugar rim and an orange peel garnish.

Martinez

Never mind that Dinah grew up there, the Martinez is one of our favorite drinks, made even more entrancing with these particular ingredients.

1 part Bols Genever

2 parts Carpano Antica Formula vermouth

2 dashes Luxardo Maraschino liqueur

1 dash orange bitters

Stir with ice, serve in a cocktail glass or coupe with a lemon twist.

Fish House Punch

A fine old concoction from the 18th century. Tasty and dangerous.

2 parts dark Jamaica rum

1 part cognac

1 part lemon juice

1/8 part peach brandy

3/8 part sugar

2 parts water

Dissolve the sugar in some of the water, add the lemon juice, then the other ingredients, stir and pour over a big block of ice. Let stand in a cool place for an hour before serving. If the weather or room is hot, use a bit less water to offset the faster melting of the ice  block.

This is just one of the many fine party drinks we've gotten from David Wondrich's wonderful Esquire Drinks, regrettably - near criminally - out of print.

Hello, new year.

Welcome to 2010, everyone! Thank you all for your patience as our posting became less frequent in the second half of 2009; more projects heating up on all our burners left us stretched a bit thin in the blogging department. We're reviving our good habits with a series of recipes we've featured at our cocktail parties over the last year or so. In the spirit of one of those other projects, Dinah's holiday Discardia (about which she's writing a book), we're releasing ourselves from the self-imposed pressure to have a picture before the post goes up. If you try the recipes and get a great shot you'd like us to use, drop us a note at this domain.

As always, here's to quality quaffing!

cheers,
Dinah & Joe

10 years of thinking about cocktail logistics

On November 7, 1999, Dinah posted the following on her personal blog at MetaGrrrl.com:

Planning a party?

Here's how to calculate your cocktail needs. (from Paul Harrington inventor of The Jasmine)

What's changed in a decade?
HotWired Cocktail is gone (thank you, Internet Archive, yet again for preserving our past!); the Alchemist's advice remains sound (though we opt for smaller glasses for cocktails served up); Dinah's still trying to stop underestimating her ice needs; we've become nitpicky enough to say "really, more like .5oz from a lime"; and The Jasmine still belongs on the Campari bottle.

Lila

Bright, sassy, sweet, with a little spice. This new drink was easy to name.

 

The Lila Cocktail

2 oz Square One Botanical Spirit

1 oz black pepper syrup

.5 oz St. Germain elderflower liqueur

.5 oz lemon juice

Shake with ice. Serve up in chilled cocktail glass.

(The syrup is easy: 1 cup water, 1 cup sugar - it's nice with brown sugar to give some color & extra flavor, and 15 or so black peppercorns. Boil 5 minutes, cool, then store in a glass jar in the fridge. Splash in an ounce of vodka to preserve it if you won't use it up in the next week or two.)

This was the second try coming up with a new drink to use Square One Botanical, which they introduced this April but we first tasted this month. It's a tricky ingredient for us because fruit-centric, sweeter cocktails are not our default territory. It is described as "certified organic neutral grain spirit (made from 100% organic American rye) infused with 8 organic botanicals: pear, rose, chamomile, lemon verbena, lavender, rosemary, coriander and citrus peel" and the pear is most definitely the dominant flavor note.

Imagine gin if instead of juniper you had pear. That's not quite it, really, there's more going on, but it's close and certainly closer than "pear flavored vodka" as a descriptor.

As with all the Square One varieties, it comes in that lovely square bottle with the nice indent making it easy to grip. Very pleasing design and very handy for re-use.

The Lila makes a good bottled cocktail, just mix up everything but the lemon juice and keep it in the fridge. Fresh squeeze the lemon when you shake up your drink and you're all set.

We're looking forward to getting another bottle (thanks for the sample, Square One!) and trying this again. As the lack of cocktail pictures might suggest, we drank it all up after creating the drink for a dinner party. We suspect, like Lila herself, it would take well to a bit of the bubbly. Please do let us know in the comments if you try out a Lila Collins with soda water or an Empress Lila with a champagne float.

Jon Santer

Generous with his knowledge, conscientious with his technique, and, from what we've seen, bullshit-proof, Jon is a foundation beam in our San Francisco cocktail experience.

Perhaps one the seeds of this site can be traced back to a quiet opening time at Bourbon & Branch when Jon schooled us on gin varieties. If you aren't so fortunate as to catch him without a line of other eager drinkers - slim chance of that - then he'll be happy to teach you about spirits over at The Beverage Academy.

If you've ever enjoyed a Revolver at Bourbon & Branch, you can thank Jon; that's his drink. If you're sipping some Martin Miller's gin, well, a nod in his direction for that as well; he's a brand specialist for them in San Francisco. If you're happily sampling the great drinking options in San Francisco, he's got a hand in that too as the President of the Northern California Chapter of the United States Bartenders Guild.