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).

Honey & Spice

1.5 oz Grapefruit Juice
   1 oz Lime Juice
   1 tbs Honey mixed with 1 tbs water
  .5 oz Allspice Syrup (Allspice Dram)

Shake with ice, Garnish with a grapefruit twist

Taking a break from alcoholic cocktails I pulled the Honey & Spice out of the mocktail section of Food & Wine's Cocktails 2011.

Smelling the drink I was hit with almost a tangerine citrus smell, wax, and allspice.  The flavor started off with sharp citrus flavors starting with grapefruit and moving into lime.  The drink reaches a flavor peak with a rounded honey sweetness which momentarily cuts through the tartness.  At the end of the sit the allspice flavors come in evoking a holiday feeling.  The final aftertaste is pure sweetarts but in a good way.  Definitely a keeper, and I may think up a way to create an alcoholic version.

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.