I had taken two finger-bowls of champagne, and the scene had changed before my eyes into something significant, elemental, and profound.
F. Scott Fitzgerald

Palative Potables - Outraged

Now, to be perfectly honest, I turn to the Dry Gin Martini frequently, for a variety of reasons, and even when I have no particular reason.  However, there is at least one occasion in particular when I turn to the dry gin martini - when I am pissed off.

A dry martini doesn't mess around.  It doesn't compromise, and it doesn't hide.  A dry martini has few ingredients - and they are both easy to find.  You can make as many different dry martinis as there are gins, dry vermouths, and ratios between the two.  When you drink a dry martini, it takes about as much from you as you take from it.

A Martini Moment

When I am angry and need to clear my head, I often turn to a dry martini.  It's no-nonsense complexion demands my attention at the same time that it oils my gears.  No matter how sour the thoughts on my mind, the cutting combination of dry spiced wine and London Dry Gin will force me to grimace and grin in a way that only the martini-drinkers of the world will understand.

My personal dry gin martini recipe (I am playing around with the classic touch of adding orange bitters, give it a try)

Redface's Personal Dry Gin Martini
5 parts London Dry Gin
1 part dry vermouth

Place 4-5 ice cubes in shaker, 3-4 cubes in a small cocktail glass.  Add the dry vermouth (or add a full shot and then strain it, your call) and the gin.  Shake three times lightly.  Slowly and deliberately double strain the martini into the cocktail glass (discard the ice obviously from the glass).  Add no garnish.  Gripping the glass fervently by its stem, think angry thoughts and then snarl into the glass as you suck in a full first sip.

Bubbly Cocktails

Picture Source

A glass of champagne gives you a feeling unlike any other beverage in your hand.  It is full of potential, full of airiness, and full of energy.  Whether you are enjoying a mimosa in the morning with friends, or celebrating an important event with a loved one, a glass of bubbly can liven things up in a way no other drink can.  Take a look at the Three Sheets episode on champagne.

I remember reading somewhere that it was too bad that champagne in America is only consumed on special occasions and for particular celebrations like New Year's Eve, and I agree with that.  A bottle of champagne is a perfect companion to many evenings, and can certainly be to good effect on almost any night when a few people gather.

I've never been a mimosa drinker - usually when it's mimosa time for others, I feel the orange juice is way too thick for my stomach.  Often for me, mimosas have been the staple for a morning after a long night of drinking, so I am in favor of a light drink that doesn't linger.  Suffice it to say I am no orangeman.


To circumvent the problem I have with orange juice in a cocktail in the morning, here's my take on a champagne cocktail with orange:



Orange Angelus
1/2 oz cognac
3/4 oz contreau
1/2 oz lemon juice
1/2 oz vodka
1 dash orange bitters
Champagne



Combine everything but champagne and stir.  Add champagne and sip, sip, sip.  The orange flavor comes out strongest from the bitters on the nose, but you can feel the warmth of the vodka for the finish fighting with the classic tickling of a sip of champagne.

Instead of the cognac and contreau, I use this French brand of orange liqueur and cognac that comes at 40% abv.  If you're doing that, find a comfortable ratio - for me it's 1oz "La Belle Orange" instead of the cognac and contreau.  Also, many champagne cocktails you will find will have some sweetener in them, I don't like sweet cocktails, so this is not sweet.  If you would like a sweeter cocktail, add 1/2-3/4 oz simple syrup.

Palative Potables - Paying the Bills

Today I would like to start a new Redfacery regular: Palative Potables.  In these entries, I will discuss various potables I take for everyday tasks.  Palative Potables will cover beverages I currently employ at various times in the week, or perhaps new ones for new occasions.

Today's entry, in honor of payday, is my Palative Potable while paying the bills.  Bear with me, the alliteration will not stay this agonizing.  Whenever I sit down to work out the next month's budget, pay any bills, or sign a check, there is one drink in particular I go for - cheap bourbon neat.  No water.

The Part you can't see says "80% Grain Neutral Spirits"

There is something about a glass of undiluted ethanol burning your mouth, your throat, and your gut before driving that tingle through your limbs that feels just like sending away your hard-earned cash.  Just don't breath through your nose.

Meeting Franklin Roosevelt was like opening your first bottle of Champagne; knowing him was like drinking it.

-Winston Churchill

You Always Thought You Were Smarter For Loving Booze.... Now You Know

The beauty in this new report on "Why Intelligent People Drink More Alcohol" is that it defines things so methodically that I couldn't find a single hole in the logic in two full reads (one sober as a monk at matins, the other a few degrees in).  Evolutionarily speaking, smarter individuals try new things - and alcohol is new.

I love it!  Plus, that zinger that finished off the third paragraph had me laughing my ass off.

The final paragraph also had a tidbit of sense that I find refreshing: 

That such behavior [binge drinking and getting druuunk] is detrimental to health and has few, if any, positive consequences, is irrelevant for the Hypothesis.  [The hypothesis] does not predict that more intelligent individuals are more likely to engage in healthy and beneficial behavior.  Instead, it predicts that more intelligent individuals are more likely to engage in evolutionarily novel behavior.  

 Intelligent people are not, ceteris paribus, more likely to make good (healthy, moral, salacious) decisions, they are just more apt to do novel evolutionary things.  Brilliant!  This means I can still plausibly claim to be intelligent while also explaining why I am ombibulous and spent the whole day Sunday feeling like crap.

A Recipe For Success

It is very easy to fall into a rut when mixing drinks.  For me the rut is usually seasonal - in the winter I drink a lot of Bourbon neat, in the summer it is a lot of Lion's Head, etc...  However, flexibility in mixing drinks is key.

Nobody drinks the same drink year round, or at least if you do, get a life, you're boring the shit out of me.  Anyway, there is a time and a place for particular drinks.  Now, I don't really go for rigidity in determining what to drink - I'll take an aperitif for dessert as readily as I'll take a margarita for lunchtime - but keeping up with the season is an integral part of daily drinking.

With that in mind, I'd like to encourage one thing in particular today: no matter what the season or recipe, get yourself a juicer and use fresh lemons and limes.  As a man who has many times before made drinks with bottled juice when that's what available, I feel experienced enough to have an opinion.  And my opinion is buy a couple limes for a dollar or two; put them in the fridge; when you want to use one, take it out a hour before and let it warm up.  No matter what season it is or what drink is your potion of choice at the time, fresh citrus is the way to go.

One change always leaves the way open for the establishment of others.
-Niccolo Machiavelli

The Duchess

Simple cocktail recipes always make me happy.  There's something rewarding about mixing a cocktail with even proportions, simple combinations, or easily accessible ingredients.  Well, the recipe I have in mind today fits two of those three - absinthe is still not quite as accessible as most liquors. 

You might remember the Duchess Cocktail from A Night of Vermouths.  The Duchess was a pleasant surprise, and one that has set me down a whole different path in cocktails since then.  There's something snooty about vermouth to me.  Maybe it's the fact that Jungle Juice was about the flavor complexity available in college before the Slickheel Saloon opened up.

Either way, the Duchess is a perfect example of a simple cocktail that uses the flavors of strong ingredients to craft a unique taste.

The Duchess
1/3 Sweet Vermouth
1/3 Dry Vermouth
1/3 Absinthe

Last time I said give it a light shake, this time I'll advocate stirring it.  It won't make too much difference, so do it however you'd like.  Now after a few of these, I decided the flavors were a little too touchy - one of the ones I made had a little too much anise aftertaste, one had too much dryness.  So to remedy both, I decided to add (what else?) some bitters.  My call was Peychaud's bitters, as it darkened the drink a little (I was having a little trouble with the color being a sickly mix of green absinthe and sweet vermouth, so some peychauds darkened it up). 

Gan Bei!

Satanic Cocktails - 吃 火 魔鬼

This installment of Satanic Cocktails is the Meehouland - The Fire Eating Devil.

吃 火 魔鬼
1 1/2 oz Sloe Gin
1/2 oz Sweet Vermouth
1/2 oz Dry Vermouth
1 Dash Orange Bitters
Lime Wedge


Stir and strain.

I would suggest that you pour this into a thin, curvaceous glass, rather than a more angular glass like a rocks glass.    I'm not sure about the taste, because of the Sloe Gin, it has that sticky sweetness that a fake colored liqueur gives, and it stays coloring the glass.  I've come to love the effect perfect vermouth has on most simple liquor mixtures.  I'm glad my distaste for dry vermouth in my martinis (which endures) did not prevent me from learning to love vermouth in all sorts of cocktails.