Queens Park Swizzle

It starts with a rum. 

Generally speaking I don't like rum. Why? I blame Rum Cola's. I mean which person goes to a bar and decides to willingly mix Bacardi with Coke. What a gastly tasting beverage that is...until I went to the liquor store. After chatting a bit with the sales person, we decided to buy Sailor Jerry. Fair priced, tasty rum. To be more specific, a spiced rum. When I first took a sip it could clearly taste vanilla and cinnamon, but not too sweet. Well balanced. Really suitable for anything, pure or in a cocktail. Which of course the last one we did.

Sailor Jerry

This rum was actually created by Sailor Jerry fans. Norman "Sailor Jerry" Collins spent half his life sailing and the other half tattooing sailors. His style of tattooing was quite specific, Asian colouring and that combined with American design. Each bottle has a "tattoo" on the inside of the label. Quite the inspiration, if ever you need any. 

Background

The Caribbean is probably the heart of the rum world. Where rum came up together with sugar. That's why Sailor Jerry is distilled and will always be distilled there. Adding different spices to a rum was a tradition many sailors took to. The first rums where mainly quite harsh, so they added spices to liven it up, and improve the flavour.

Queen's Park Swizzle

This cocktail originated from the Queen's Park Hotel in Trinidad in the 1920's. It is seen as the forefather of modern swizzles. In many ways it is like a mojito, but this one's is slightly easier to drink. I'd see myself drinking this whilst on a sunny holiday, as long as their are palm trees. With the right ingredients this drink is refreshing, sour, sweet, pungent, and tasty. Very tasty.

How?

- 8-10 mint leaves

- 4 ounces of Sailor Jerry rum

- 2 ounces of freshly squeezed lime juice

- 3/4 ounce of simple syrup.(orgeat syrup would be pretty cool, but haven't tried it yet)

- Angonstura bitters

- Plenty of crushed ice

Gently bruise the mint leaves in a highball glass. Add crushed ice practically to the top of your glass. Add the rum, lime juice and simple syrup. Swizzle that stick* in the glass. Top it off with some Angonstura bitters, add more ice to top the glass off, because most of it will have gone down already. Garnish with a mint twig.

*Swizzle that stick

What the bleeding hell is a swizzle stick?

Swizzling is a way of stirring your drink, handy when you want to get your glass frosty.

You hold between you palms of your hands and stir up and down your drink. Just above the mint in this case. It, of course, mixes the different ingredients, and is a unique way of making your cocktail. You're not exactly stirring your drink with the swizzle stick as only parts of your drink get mixed at a time. The motion is controlled in small parts. Enough blabbermouthing....

Enjoy! 

Niklas X

Cradle Of Life

Well, the Cradle of Life, it was love at first sight. A few weeks ago me and Niklas went to the 2 years anniversary of the Old Fashioned Cocktail Bar in Ghent where the opening was announced of The Drifter, a brand new cocktail bar in Ghent specialized in Tikis. After drinking a few there, I got inspired to try out some Tikis myself. I loved the fruity taste, the use of different kinds of rum, the way it felt like summer in my mouth. So I woke up one morning and decided to look up some recipes.

The Cradle of Life was the first recipe I stumbled upon which was within my budget, and of course, the flaming garnish was an awsome extra. I already had the spiced rum, the white rum, lime, lemon, orange and Angostura Bitters. The only thing I still needed was orgeat syrup and Chartreuse Vert. So, I took my brand new notebook, wrote down the recipe and went into town to find the missing ingredients. In the Mobile Liquor store I had no trouble finding the Chartreuse and the orgeat syrup so I was ready to give it a go.

I knew I already had the perfect spiced rum: Sailor Jerry. A delicious rum with a vanilla and cinnamon taste which Niklas described beautifully in his blog about the Queens Park Swizzle. For the white rum, I decided to stay in my budget and I already had a bottle of 3 year old Havanna Club. All the other ingredients were easy to find since there is a fruit store just around the corner of my flat. The only thing I couldn't find were the right glasses. I would have loved to serve this drink in a Tiki mug or glass but these are bloody hard to find. I decided to use an old fashioned glass instead. Not quite the same but it did the trick. In the meantime I found a website where I can order nice Tiki mugs and glasses but this wasn't in my budget in the time.

The glasses however were not my only problem. All the recipes I found for this cocktail were measured in ounces. The jigger I have was in millimeters. I decided to adjust the recipe a bit so it would be easier to measure all the juices, rums and syrup. I invited a friend (and later my partner in crime Niklas) to try out my latest finding and the result was smashing. We all agreed this was one of the best experiments we had tried so far. It was fruity yet the flavor of the rum was not lost. And the coolest part is that the drinker is given a choice: add the burning Chartreuse to the cocktail or not.

So this is how I did it:

-3 cl of spiced rum (Sailor Jerry)
-3 cl of white rum (3 year old Havanna Club, there probably is better but it is what I had at the time)
-1 cl of lime juice
-1cl of lemon juice
-1cl of orange juice
-2 cl of orgeat syrup
-2 dashes of Angostura Bitters

Shake all these ingredients in a shaker filled with ice vigorously. Strain this in a glass filled with crushed ice. Add a juiced lime shell to the glass and fill it with Chartreuse Vert and finally light it on fire. Please do watch out cause this one will get you wasted ;).

Cheers

Oskar

Tom Collins

The Tom Collins is a very simple yet refreshing cocktail. It was first made by a bartender somewhere in London named Collins. This man originally  used Old Tom Gin. And the cocktail was born. Later, lots of variations were invented using rum, bourbon, rhye whiskey, tequilla and even milk. I would love to write you all a huge blog about this one, but this cocktail is so easy to make and the ingredients are really basic so I am afraid this will be a short one.

The base of this coctail is gin. I used Bombay Dry Gin. This is not my all time favourite gin but I do prefer this one to its blue brother Bombay Sapphire. It leaves a bitter and a dry aftertaste in your mouth. Next is the lemonjuice and the simple syrup. Put everything in a shaker with ice, and shake strongly. The Tom Collins is best served in a collinsglass or a longdrink. Finish this with sodawater and a slice of lemon.

- 5 cl of gin
- 2 cl of lemonjuice
- 2 cl of simple syrup
- sodawater
- icecubes

Cheers!

Mint Julep

Ah, the Mint Julep. One of my favourite cocktails. 
It's simplicity, yet it evolves in taste whilst drinking it. When not knowing what's in it, there's actually a slight mystery around it. Obviously, the picture sort of reveals some of it, mint and ice. 

I have no clue why I ordered it the first time, but I do know it was in Cocktails at Nine in Antwerp.
Back when I went with Tom & Steve from The Old Fashioned Cocktail Bar in Ghent.
When I drank it, I didn't know what to think. Of course, the one I had in Antwerp was one with a twist. Never to be drunk by me again. I think there were bitters in there, loads of them. I'll never know, unless somebody else does, and decides to tell me! 

Anyway, after awhile it got in the back of my head until the guys from the Old Fashioned got silver cups. Ideal to keep the drink frosty, and lets not forget it looks fancy shmansy. Most of the time when people see the silver cup with mint as garnish, and some powder sugar for extra decor, they get curious. They all want to taste it, especially when I'm raving about it. 
Most of the people who taste it, tend to dislike it at first, maybe it's the bitterness in the beginning. That's when I always let them taste it, so they won't ask for another taste.

Now, I'm on a budget here, Oskar and me both actually. We can't afford fancy booze and we can't afford silver cups. We could afford mint. Decent mint.

The base of this cocktail is bourbon. Gin is used also, but not as commonly acknowledged.
At first we tried with Jack Daniels, 'cause that's what we had at the time. Though it wasn't ideal, none of the mystery was lost on me. It was what I hoped for.
It was clear though we could do better, so we tried with the Jack Daniels Single Barrel. Which it improved much more. 

In a later stadium, we'll use a better Bourbon, which will blow more than one sock off, I'm sure.

Everybody seems to have a different way of preparing it. Either way, it should only take about three minutes. Which makes it fun to drink at any time (even for breakfast, if that's your thing).

Here's what's in it and how I did it:

- Mint, about ten leafs. Big ones. 
- 1 cl of symple syrup. Muddle it, so you have a sort of mint infused sugarness. 
- Add chrushed ice. Don't quite fill it up.
- Bourbon. 5 cl should do the trick. When you add the bourbon you should see your ice melt, so make sure you have enough crushed ice for this one.
- Swizzle it with your swizzle stick.
- Top of with some more crushed ice. 
- Add a mint sprig for some garnish, maybe even some powdered sugar. 

There you have it, enjoy!

-x-
Niklas

Mojito

Although a bit mainstream, the Mojito has been in my top 3 of favourite cocktails since a long time.  The first time I drank it was in the popular Candela bar in Turnhout. Whilst drinking it I could imagine myself sitting on a Carribean beach, surrounded by six naked native girls while hand feeding a couple of flamingo's. The freshness almost blew me of my sox.

From that moment on, I was sold. It became a small obsession for me to find perfect Mojito. Because of its popularity back in the day, you could find it anywhere. There was no need to go to a cocktailbar. However, in most normal bars, the ingredients were not fresh, it was made too fast so the mojitos were kind of crap. I also started making them my self but it was never really what I was looking for. There was no balance in the cocktail. Too much rum, too much lime, too much sugar. Too much of everything except the mint. Now at the time I always bought my ingredients in the local supermarket. Most of the fruits they sell aren't bad but the mint misses freshness.

In the summer of 2009 I visited Cuba with my parents. being in the birthplace of rum and mojitos, I was really excited. Tasting a real Cuban mojito is something else. Although the Cuban mojito looks a lot simpler, Cubans take their time too make a good mojito. The taste was amazing and really fresh. Perfect for hot Carribean weather. I payed good attention to the way the Cuban bartenders made their Mojitos so I could try the same at home. There was no crushed ice and they didn't use muddlers. The Cuban mojito was made very easily. They filled the bottom of the glass with sugar, then drowned it with limejuice and muddled it with the flat end of the barspoon. Next was the rum: Havanna Club 3 anejos was most commonly used. Since the I always used this rum as well. I tried Cachaça once after a bartender gave me this advice but me and Niklas both found the rum too sweet for a mojito. After the rum, the mint was added to the drink. Big and fresh leafs, with an amazing fresh scent. the leafs were gently crushed on the sugar and lime with the barspoon. The last part were the ice cubes and sparkling water to finish the drink followed by a good stir to mix everything. Delicious!

Back in good old Belgium I decided to give it another go. I looked up some more recipes on the internet and had some advice from other people. I learned that people here do the strangest things with a mojito. Some add a little bit of Sprite in it. Although I would never use it myself, I can understand this. There is however a fool who even gave me the advice too replace the sparkling water with Red Bull. I almost vomited after hearing this.

The most important thing I was still missing for the perfect mojito, I recently found here in Ghent. I found the perfect fresh mint that was still missing in a local fruit and vegetable store on the Vrijdagsmarkt. The size of the leafs, the smell, the color, simply perfect. I did change a couple of things to the Cuban recipe. Instead of using only limejuice, I threw is 3 small parts of lime, muddled them on the base of sugar. Next, i added the rum. 6,5 cl of the Havanna Club 3 anejos. I gave the whole a good stir with my barspoon so the sugar would disolve in the rum and the limejuice. Then the mint followed. I was quite generous with it and forgot to count the leaves. but the most important to me was the smell, the scent of the mint has to be there but not overwhelming. I muddled the mint in the rest of the ingredients and added a bit of sparkling water, gave it another stir and added some crushed ice. I took a few more mint leafs and muddled them on the ice which gave an extra freshness. Finally I added a bit more of sparkling water, gave it a last good stir and topped it with some more crushed iced. Too give it the finishing touch, I garnished it with a small mintsprig.

So the ingredients for my perfect mojito:

-a bottom of cane sugar
-3 parts of lime
-6,5 cl of Havanna Club 3 anejos
-sparkling water
-loads of fresh mint
-crushed ice
-1 small mintsprig

Salud!

Old Fashioned

The Old Fashioned was unknown to me until recently. My friend  Niklas showed me the simplicity of the cocktail and so I got interested.
First I started looking up the history of this cocktail as it was called "the mother of all cocktail". The Old Fashioned became very popular in the United States during the Prohibition. The recipe of the cocktail already existed before the Prohibition but its popularity increased in small bars who were serving illegal alcohol. During this time there were severe penalties for consuming, transporting, brewing or serving alcohol.

The alcohol served in these bars were not the most tasty beverages. In order to sell the drinks, bartenders had to show their creativity. So they started mixing their drinks with fruitjuices and other non-alcoholic drinks. And so (ironically during the Prohibition) the popularity of cocktails, and especially the Old Fashioned was born.

The first recipe I tried was from Manuel Wouters. The cocktail was easy to make but while drinking it I found the taste of orange too strong. I muddled the sugar on the lemon and the orangepeel along with 2 dashes of Angostura Bitters. The aroma rising from the glass while muddling was amazing. I had no idea there was this much flavour in the peel. While making the cocktail I was really excited because of the different smells coming out of my glass. But when finished, I found the orange dominating the drink.

So for my next try I only checked the history books (read wikipedia) a bit. The original recipe told me to muddle the sugar and the bitters only on the lemon peel and adding the orange at the end. Because the orange was not muddled in the glass along with the lemon, sugar and Angostura, it does not dominate he cocktail, but there is a delicate hint of it.

My recipe for the Old Fashioned:

1 lemon peel
1 orange peel
1 barspoon of sugar
2 Dashes of Angostura
5 cl Bourbon
1 cl of simple syrup
sodawater
ice cubes

Muddle the lemon peel, the Angostura in a tumbler glass with the back of a barspoon. Add a little bit of soda water to dissolve the sugar. Add a few ice cubes and the bourbon and stir. add the last ice cubes, the syrup and the orange peel and stir once more.

Cheers!

Whiskey Sour

The Whiskey Sour was the first cocktail that caught my attention. It is a simple cocktail with whiskey, lemonjuice and simple syrup. In some variations egg white is used to create a layer of foam on top of the cocktail.

When I first decided that I would make the Whiskey Sour, I looked op some recipes on the internet. The web is filled with websites containing cocktail recipes. The recipe I first tried, was made in a shaker with crushed ice, juice of half a lemon, half an egg-white, two barspoons of simple syrup and 4.5 cl. of my favourite whiskey. So I took all the ingredients, the eggs were easy to find, fresh lemons from the local grocery store, simple syrup from the supermarket and the only whiskey I had (Jack Daniels No. 7).
The main taste in the cocktail was the lemon. I invited some friends over to taste it and our conclusion was that the cocktail was a bit dull and there was no trace of whiskey in it.

After digging deeper in the Whiskey Sour recipes I noticed that the egg white was not a real important ingredient and I figured that this might be what made the cocktail dull. So the next try was without  the eggs.
There was no foam on the cocktail but it had a clear yellow colour but the taste of the bourbon was still missing. So on njam.tv I found the recipe of Manuel Wouters. He also used bourbon in his Whiskey Sour so I used the same amount of ingredients he did. The final result was not what we were looking for. The combination of the bourbon and a larger amount of simple syrup only made the cocktail sweeter.

So I went back to my original recipe without the eggs but instead of adding 4.5 cl. of bourbon, I added 6.
The bourbon finally came through the sour taste of the lemon, but it was not yet the cocktail I was looking for. The Whiskey Sour I had in mind, was sour, but with a smokey toch of whiskey hidden inside it. So i went looking for another whiskey. I didn't want to try another bourbon cause I knew the result would be more or less the same. In the Mobile Liquor Store in Ghent, there was a large selection of different whiskeys. I was looking for a good but not to expensive whiskey here. Afterall we are on a budget. So I bought a bottle of Bushmills. This turned out to be a good choice. Using the Bushmills instead of Jack Daniels made the whiskey more smokey instead of sweet. My search for the perfect Whiskey Sour was over.

And now I proudly present my first cocktail recipe:

- 6 cl. of Whiskey (no bourbon)
- Juice of half a Lemon
- 2 barspoons of simple syrup

Put all the ingredients in a shaker filled with icecubes. Shake untill the shaker is ice-cold.
Serve in a Tumbler-glass with icecubes, a slice of lemon or orange and a cocktailcherry.

Cheers!