It’s that time of the year again, the one day I wear that ugly green shirt.
This blog does not endorse making light of political violence, or competitive drinking as a sport. In spite of those disclaimers, we take the day of old Eire to blog one of the few beer cocktails I’ve ever found palatable* — some others are quite loathsome –, and one that has been the misfortune of many an unsuspecting college student: the Irish Car Bomb.
All participants combine the following:
1 pint Guinness beer
3/4 oz. Irish whisky
3/4 oz. Bailey’s Irish cream
Pour Guinness into a pint glass, drop shot of whisky and cream into the beer. All participants then consume the resulting mixture as quickly as they can. The one who does it the fastest wins.
A Guinness float, made with Guinness and vanilla ice cream, can also be quite pleasant.
Fun Fact about Ireland: In Ireland they serve Guinness at room temperature, and enjoy disallowing people access to bars based upon their age and preferences in footwear.
*Jen wants it noted that she does not like this drink, as would prefer to sip a drink and dislikes having to chug
CocktailDB.com has a feature called the Mixilator, which uses some kind of algorithm to generate custom cocktail recipes based on your stated preferences or mood. Last night I was feeling uninspired, and so I gave it a spin. Here is the cocktail it recommended that I make:
OK, so it’s a bit presumptuous of the thing to assume that we have raspberry-flavored vodka. But I’m sure that if I went to the store I could get some. I’m a bit less confident that I could quickly locate the apricot syrup, but never mind that.
But Amer Picon? As I understand it, the stuff hasn’t been available in the United States for decades. I suppose I can buy some the next time I’m in France, but that hardly helps me make that drink this weekend. There is a product that I’ve read is similar, called Torani Amer, and it happens that I even know of a place that sells it! But it’s rare enough that most people would be out of luck.
The aptly named cocktail of times past, recently re-popularized by television’s Don Draper:
1 1/2 oz. Bourbon or rye whiskey
1 sugar cube
5 or 6 vigorous dashes of Angostura bitters
Muddle the sugar and bitters at the bottom of an old-fashioned glass, put ice and whiskey on top, serve with a cherry, orange slice, and anything else you might feel like adding.
As previously noted, there was a time when “cocktail” referred specifically to this basic recipe: spirit + sugar + bitters. In America, whiskey cocktails would be the preferred mix, though in Wisconsin the state drink is the Brandy Old-Fashioned, which uses the same recipe but with brandy as the spirit. Two-hundred years ago that drink would have been called a “brandy cocktail.”
The first printed definition of the word “cocktail” gives evidence of this fact, and is otherwise fairly awesome. It is from a paper named The Balance, from 1803:
Cocktail is a stimulating liquor composed of spirits of any kind, sugar, water, and bitters—it is vulgarly called a bittered sling and is supposed to be an excellent electioneering potion, inasmuch as it renders the heart stout and bold, at the same time that it fuddles the head. It is said, also to be of great use to a Democratic candidate: because a person, having swallowed a glass of it, is ready to swallow anything else.
Under no circumstances should any human being consume any amount of this product. Its flavor is of a liquor seeking to imitate gasoline, and the slightest taste of it is sufficient to compel horror and wincing for long afterward. It poisons any quantity of tonic water you may add to it. Neither vermouth nor bitters is up to the task of redeeming it. I would content myself to use it as a disinfectant, but its low proof makes me think it might be found wanting even in that use. I suppose it might be good for bartering following the breakdown of society in the wake of an earthquake, tsunami, or alien invasion.
A neat illustration of this gin’s social appeal: Beverages and More initially priced it at $18.99 per bottle. It is at present discounted to $6.99, and still there appear to be few takers.
I can’t imagine what went wrong. Beefeater’s standard London Dry is perfectly good, and their upper-shelf offering Beefeater 24 is better still. I suppose that everybody makes mistakes.
UPDATE: A reader suggests we could use the stuff as a paint thinner. We’ll see.
Just made my first sidecar ever.
Very nice
Fresh lemon juice makes all the difference.
Reminds me of a line from one of those blue collar comics, Ron White. If life gives you lemons, find someone with gin. Although, a sidecar has no gin, so it is not the best connection.
We agree wholeheartedly about the benefits of using fresh lemon juice. As for the gin and lemon juice, we will remember the principle the next time life gives us lemons.
This is rightly a classic. Our friend Zach complains that he often orders it at bars out of desire to be holding an “old man drink,” (which certainly the Whiskey Sour is) and finds it a rude awakening when he discovers himself subsequently holding a rather effeminate-looking yellow drink with a cherry in it. The drink thus presents itself as a paradox.
The Whiskey Sour:
1 1/2 oz. Bourbon or rye whiskey
1 tablespoon sugar
1/2 oz. lemon juice
Muddle the sugar and lemon juice at the bottom of a glass, then add whiskey and stir on ice. Serve either on the rocks in an old-fashioned glass, or straight up. Garnish with a cherry.
The name that this drink has retained, the whiskey sour, points to an important truth about the historical development of mixology. Early on, before the vermouths and elixers and liqueurs entered the picture, there were two basic classes of mixed drinks: cocktails and sours. Cocktails were spirit + sugar + bitters. The Old-Fashioned, formerly called the “whiskey cocktail”, is the only drink of this class to have survived to the modern day. Sours were spirit + sugar + lemon or lime juice. So one could have a gin sour if one wished, or a brandy sour, or a tequila sour. The whiskey sour is the only one to have held on to the old name, but most of the popular cocktails that reign still are variations on the basic sour recipe: think Margaritas, sidecars, and even the gimlet!
As a variation, one can use equal parts Cointreau and lemon juice. I tried calling this the “General Grant” for awhile, but the name didn’t really work. Alas.
This is a drink that I serve to guests who are new to the whole cocktail thing. Nobody has ever claimed not to like it — but some of them might have actually hated it, who knows? In any case, Jen and I are big fans:
The Bronx Cocktail:
1 1/2 oz. gin
3/4 oz. dry vermouth
1/2 oz. sweet vermouth
1 oz. fresh-squeezed orange juice
Stir on ice, serve straight up with a cherry or orange peel garnish
was ranked number three in “The World’s 10 Most Famous Cocktails in 1934”,making it a very popular rival to the Martini (#1) and the Manhattan (#2).
That’s high praise!
The “origin stories” of these classic, pre-Prohibition cocktails are usually controversial or contested, in line with the maxim about success having many fathers. One of the claimed originators was a hotshot New York bartender named Johnnie Solon, who claimed to have invented the drink on the fly, in response to a wager between customers. He claimed to have chosen the name because
I had been at the Bronx Zoo a day or two before, and I saw, of course, a lot of beasts I had never known. Customers used to tell me of the strange animals they saw after a lot of mixed drinks. So when Traverson said to me, as he started to take the drink in to the customer, “What’ll I tell him is the name of this drink?” I thought of those animals, and said: “Oh, you can tell him it is a ‘Bronx’.”
Did people in those days really hallucinate animals so often? Science sadly affords us no means of discovering the truth.
This is a drink that I sometimes use to trick people into liking gin.
1 1/2 oz. gin
1/2 oz. Rose’s lime juice
Mix on ice in an old-fashioned glass. Garnish with a slice of lime.
Raymond Chandler, the great author of detective novels, liked to make this drink with half gin and half Rose’s. Indeed, if you consult the “Gimlet” entry in the Oxford English Dictionary, you will find a quotation from Chandler recommending just this recipe. I think that such a ratio would make a disgustingly sweet drink, but that was the age of dictators and of the atom bomb, after all, and people needed some comfort.
Stir ingredients in ice, serve straight up with a cherry
Many in the cocktail set say that this should only properly be made with an American whiskey. I think such narrow provincialism has no place in the modern world, and generally use Canadian Club. But I’ve also had great success using Old Overholt rye whiskey. And there are many good bourbons on the market these days.
This blog does not endorse making light of political violence, or competitive drinking as a sport. In spite of those disclaimers, we take the day of old Eire to blog one of the few beer cocktails I’ve ever found palatable* — some others are quite loathsome –, and one that has been the misfortune of many an unsuspecting college student: the Irish Car Bomb.
