Space Gin Smash

     6 Mint Leaves
  .25 Lemon
     2 Green Grapes
  .25 Green Apple
  .33 oz Simple syrup
1.25 oz Tanqueray Gin

In a shaker, muddle the mint, lemon, grapes, apple with the simple syrup. Add the gin shake with ice.  Strain into a rocks glass filled with fresh cracked ice and garnish with apple slices and a mint sprig.

Its been raining for the last few days straight and while gloomy and disruptive to my running schedule it is a perfect chance to try out some rainy day cocktail recipes.  A few months ago I saw this post about rainy day cocktails and have been thinking it since then.

Of the two cocktails featured the one I went for was the Space Gin Smash.  I went for it because, well, it looked the most like a rainy day w/ a foggy green / grey tint.  Mine is a bit pinker cause I couldn't find green grapes and had to go with red.  In my defense, I did go to two stores looking for green grapes and debated a switch to kiwi (except prior experience shows kiwi turns into an impossible to strain mush).  Guess it just must not be grape season or something.

The drink presents a mint smell with a bit of sharp citrus.  Taste is watery and begins with a bit of mint.  It moves to a light gin presence and ends with more lemon juice and some mint herbals on the swallow.  This is a really mild tasting drink.  Between the water from the cracked ice and the mild tasting grapes / etc it ends up tasting very light and diluted.  This not necessarily a bad thing.  I enjoyed the drink and it seemed to be pretty strong all things considered.  It is also a drink you could finish in less time than it takes to make it.

Which brings me to ny biggest complaint with the drink, all of the muddling.  I am fine muddling ingredients, but since the flavor of the apple / grape didn't really shine in the final product I am wondering if I can made a version of it where I muddle mint and use apple / grape juices or pre-make a batch of the muddle solution.  Because while a pleasant drink it didn't seem to justify the extra prep time.  If I can figure out a way to turn it into a punch it could be a winner.

Veruca Salt

1.5 oz Gin (Plymouth)
.75 oz Blueberry / Cucumber Shrub
  .5 oz Dolin Blanc
dash Grapefruit Bitters

Shake with ice and strain into a cocktail glass.

Here is another drink I made w/ the homemade blueberry shrubs from last week.  I worked off a recipe in this post from the cocktail virgin blog with a couple of changes to the recipe.  First I used Plymouth gin instead of Hendricks because it is what I had on hand.  To give it some cucumber notes I used a blueberry / cucumber shrub.  I also subbed Dolin Blanc for the Lillet, but I think next time I'll try it with Cocchi.

Unsurprisingly the smell is dominated by the shrub with funky cucumber and vinegar notes.  The taste begins with blueberries, switches to a little gin burn before fininishing with bitterness and citrus.  Riding over all of the phases is the cucumber taste.  This was a very refreshing drink.  I will have to try it with Cocchi though because I'd like there to be more bitterness on the end to contrast the shrub's sweetness.

Green Deacon

1.5 oz Plymouth Gin
   1 oz Grapefruit Juice
.75 oz Plymouth Sloe Gin

Shake with ice and strain into a chilled coupe rinsed with St. George Absinthe.

Taking another recipe out of the PDT Cocktail book (feels like I'm trying to cook through every recipe in that book) I chose the Green Deacon.  I went for this recipe for two reasons, the first is earlier in the day I made a different recipe using sloe gin (the Sloe 75) and wanted to show Skyler what other things sloe gin could do.  The second reason I made this drink is that the drawing on the page caught my eye.

Ok this drink is odd and I'm still trying to figure out my opinion of it.  At the start the drink has a lot of anise notes from the absinthe.  They fade as the drink goes on but it makes a pretty large impression on the overall drink.  The smell on this drink is sweet with anise and citrus notes.  The taste begins with anise and moves to dark plum and grapefruit flavor.  Somehow these flavors made me think of a bunch of different things like watermelon and lipstick (don't ask me how).  After a while the drink settled down and the grapefruit began to come through stronger.  At this point the drink reminded me a lot of the Peralta because they're both heavily grapefruit driven and start w/ a spicy / herbal liquor note (rye in Peralta, absinthe in the Green Deacon).

White Negroni

   2 oz Plymouth Gin
   1 oz Lillet Blanc (Dolin Blanc)
.75 oz Suze (Bittermens Amere Sauvage)

Grabbing another recipes out of the PDT Cocktail Book I decided on the White Negroni.  Negroni's are a drink I really want to like, but don't.  They're a too sweet mess of flavors that doesn't blend well.  To really learn to like negroni's I need to start doing some tests with different vermouths + ratios.  Either way, I decided on this white version for 2 reasons.  The first is of course, that I really want to like a negroni.  The second is that it asks for Suze, which is an ingredient that doesn't come to the U.S., but thanks to the new Bittermens Spirits I believe I have something I can replace it with.

In Bittermens new spirit line there are two that I don't really know what to do with, The Amere Sauvage and the Amere Nouvelle.  Originally didn't want to pick them up, but then after some research I figured one could be used for Amer Picon, and the other Suze since their botanical list seemed similar.  So in this drink, I'll admit, I accidentally started with the wrong one.  I made it with Amere Nouvella the one I feel is closer to Amer Picon.  The drink was ok, but it wasn't negroni like at all.  There was lemon, citrus and some bitter notes, but nothing as assertive as Campari.  It tasted closer to dry vermouth cinnamon and oranges.  Good, but no negroni.  After doing a double check I realized that I should of been using Amere Sauvage as the Suze substitue.

Wow, what a difference.  The smell is all lemon oil and doesn't give a hint of what is to come.  The sip is a real shocker.  It starts light and lemony for a split second and then you are hit over the head with a bitterness reminiscent of Campari.  Instead of the grapefruit and bitter herbs I'm used to from Campari though the dominant flavor I get is ginseng.  Within the ginseng 'I'm rubbing my tongue against a tree root, in a good way' taste there are hints of orange and honey and a warming sweet vermouth note. Sweet drink.  The flavor profile of the Amere Sauvage brings a welcome and surprising change to a Campari standard.

Campari Punch

2 oz London Dry Gin (Plymouth)
1 oz Campari
1 oz St. Germain
1 oz Grapefruit Juice

Shake with ice, strain into a rocks glass.  Garnish with a grapefruit twist.

Campari Punch has a special place in my heart because it was one of the first craft cocktails I tasted.  Before I was interested in cocktails I ended up a tasting at K.J. Baarons where Corey Bunnewith was showing off summer punches.  Tasting them I was floored.  Not by flavor (though they were very good) I was more surprised by the number of bottles of liquor that would be necessary to make each one.  The thought of having a home bar with all of the required ingredients seemed expensive and impossible.  I decided that the Campari Punch was the most doable on my limited budget, even though I refused to buy St. Germain for months afterwards (I used elderflower juice from IKEA for a few weeks).

This drink ended up changing my thinking in two ways.  It made me realize that I may have to start purchasing a few pricy ingredients if I wanted to make interesting drinks.  It also opened a new realm of flavors by introducing me to my first bitter liqueur.  I made these drinks religiously with my first bottle of Campari till I couldn't even stand to look at that lurid red liqueur let alone restock it.  When I finally forced myself to stomach the thought of drinking Campari again, I fell in love with it all over. 

For this version I used a combination of Plymouth and Rogue Pink Spruce gin and fresh pink grapefruit zest and juice.  The drink starts off with a huge grapefruit nose from the zest.  Overtime the nose changes a bit to include a bit of almost clove like bitterness from the Campari and an almost bubblegum St. Germain smell.  The taste bounces between two spectrums, sweet and bitter.  For the sweet flavors it starts with the pink grapefruit and ends with an almost passion fruit sugar note from the St. Germain.  As for bitterness, the grapefruit to Campari transition is seamless.

A few notes on this, I feel that the grapefruit juice quality and the gin play a huge role in the end result (maybe why I ended up going off of them for months).  Recently I made it with Bombay and an older grapefruit in my fridge and I could barely stomach it.  The gin was too offensive and the drink didn't hold together, which is why this time I selected milder gins for this version.