Posted by Anita on 04.04.08 7:02 AM
“I recommend to the Congress the passage of legislation for the immediate modification of the Volstead Act, in order to legalize the manufacture and sale of beer…”
With these words, Franklin Roosevelt fulfilled the campaign promise that propelled him to the White House. By urging lawmakers to modify the terms of Prohibition, FDR hoped to stave off social unrest while the nation impatiently waited for the ratification of the 21st Amendment. Congress followed Roosevelt’s lead, and two weeks later the president signed the historic Cullen-Harrison Act, which amended the terms of Prohibition’s legal basis — the Volstead Act — to allow the manufacture and sale of lower-alcohol beer.
On April 7, the first legal shipments rolled out of the breweries; the story goes that the first barrel from at least one factory was brought directly to the White House. Regardless of the destination of that first delivery, there were many, many more to come: More than 1.5 million gallons of beer were reportedly consumed in the first 24 hours! Although the country’s drinkers would still endure a full eight months of relative sobriety before Repeal brought about the true end of the Noble Experiment — and the re-legalization of strong beer, wine, and spirits — at last the honest working man could return to the tavern for his pint of (weak) ale. 75 years later, we’re still celebrating.
Outside of a few localities with antiquated beer laws on the books, you’d be hard pressed today to find a commercial brew that could squeak by under the Cullen-Harrison threshold: 3.2% alcohol-by-volume beer is hardly heady stuff. But technicalities aside, there’s no reason not to enjoy a pint (or two) of your favorite ale to mark the occasion of the 75th anniversary of beer’s return to law-abiding beverage status.
The world of beer-based cocktails is a strange and storied place, where venerable working-man’s refreshers like Boilermakers and Redeyes rub shoulders with new-fangled concoctions like Turbo Diesels and Sake Bombs. But — at least in America — perhaps the best-loved mixed-beer involves no hard liquor, no soda, no juice… in fact, no adulterants at all. The Black and Tan — a beer parfait of sorts where dark stout floats atop a golden ale — may or may not have been invented Stateside, but it owes its soul (if not its actual pedigree) to Ireland. So popular is this beverage that Ben and Jerry’s introduced a limited edition, beer-flavored Black and Tan ice cream complete with adorable foam head.
Making a Black and Tan at home is a cinch: There’s no need for a specialized gizmo, just patience. Fill a pint glass — preferably the bulbous Imperial style, rather than the tapered American sort — about two-thirds full with the ale. The glass is wider at the top, so you’ll wind up with roughly equal amounts of each beer this way. Top the ale with the stout, pouring slowly over the back of a spoon.
If you use a stout other than Guinness, be sure it offers a lower alcohol content than the ale you choose, or you’ll end up with a Tan and Black. Pour too fast, and you might get something more like a Muddled Beige. If the latter happens, assure your guests they’re drinking it the way they would in the Old Country, where the drink is better known as a Half and Half, and layering’s a trick hauled out for American tourists.
Delightful as it is, the Black and Tan’s hardly the only beer cocktail that doesn’t require a shot of booze. Of the dozens of possibilities, here are a few of our favorites.
Black and Tan
1/2 stout, preferably Guinness
1/2 bitter (aka ESB-style pale ale in the US), such as Bass
Pour the ale into a pint glass, filling approximately 2/3 of the way to the top. Float the stout on top of the ale, pouring over the back of a spoon to keep the layers separate.
—-
Shandy
1/2 ale
1/2 ginger ale
Combine both ingredients in a pilsner or collins glass. Garnish with a lemon wedge or a sprig of mint.
—-
Snakebite
1/2 stout
1/2 hard cider
Combine both ingredients in a pint or half-pint glass.
—-
Panache (aka Radler)
1/2 lager
1/2 sparkling lemonade
Combine both ingredients in a pilsner or collins glass. Garnish with a lemon wedge.
—–
More beer cocktails from Drink of the Week:
– 1/5/07 Black Velvet
half Guinness, half Champagne
– 11/24/06 Michelada
Mexican beer with hot sauce, lime, and salt
beer, Drink of the Week, drinks, recipes
4 Comments »
Posted by a Special Guest on 03.28.08 7:03 AM
Editor’s note: Our pal Sean returns once again to Drink of the Week guest-bartender duties with a delicious, prettily pink cocktail inspired by the fabulous girl in his life.
—-
Last week, we celebrated one lunar year with our daughter dog, Reese. Like proper San Franciscans, we simply had to throw a cocktail party to, um, mark the occasion. But what to serve? Salty dog? Perhaps. Bark-tini? Ugh, no. Greyhound? Now we’re talking.
Nothing more than vodka and grapefruit juice, the Greyhound can be lovely with brunch, but it’s maybe not the most interesting option for cocktail hour. Luckily, we had just finished our inaugural batch of pompelmocello, and so we decided to sub that in for some of the vodka. And being cunning linguists as we are, we dubbed our newfound concoction the Italian Greyhound.
The name was apt, for when we were researching breeds while ‘shopping’ for a dog, Italian Greyhounds were front-runners in our consideration. Apartment-sized, trainable and loving, they seemed like a good match for us. The one deterrent was that they have a tendency to burrow under blankets and pillows, and if you accidentally and unknowingly sit on one in its ersatz lair, you can kill it. Maybe, we thought, we wanted something a little sturdier. In the end, we got our Manchester Terrier mix pound puppy, who at 17 pounds swaggers with the attitude of a dog many times her size.
Alas, there already exists a cocktail called the Italian Greyhound, basically your standard Greyhound with a float of Campari on top. It’s just as well, for in tinkering with the recipe further, I decided vodka wasn’t really the way to go anyhow. In order to convert the greyhound into something worthy of a cocktail glass, I had to bump up the booze-to-juice ratio, and vodka just wasn’t bringing anything to the party. Gin, on the other hand, offered enough complexity to offset the acidity of the juice.
All that remained from the original inspiration was grapefruit juice, and smaller amounts of it, but I still wanted to honor its provenance. Anita suggested dubbing it the Levriero — Italian for greyhound — and so a new cocktail was fledged.
Levriero
1 oz limoncello (or pompelmocello)
1 oz gin
2 oz red grapefruit juice
Shake with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with mint sprig or a twist.
Drink of the Week, drinks, holidays & occasions, preserving & infusing
6 Comments »
Posted by Anita on 03.21.08 7:02 AM
I don’t mean to brag, but I’m a pretty macho mixer. Despite my ladylike demeanor — hey, stop that snickering! — I can get a hoary frost going on the side of a cocktail shaker with the best of the boys.
But when it comes to cocktails that include a touch of egg white, I find they need a little extra oomph to keep their pretty heads about them. Plus, the amount of time it takes to shake an egg to a crisp foam means you’re likely to wind up with a rather watery drink.
Rather than tweaking the other ingredients to make up for this mechanical flaw, it seems easier to tip the laws of physics in the bartender’s favor. When making a Ramos Fizz, for example, I find it’s helpful to add just a touch of the soda to the shaker. I’m no Harold McGee, but my guess is that this small amount of priming helps the egg loosen up a little and creates a better foam, even before the final shot of soda is added in the glass.
But when you’re mixing fizzless drinks, you can’t go this route. Luckily, there’s another way to build foam without spraining your shoulder. During an early-afternoon brunch at The Alembic last fall, we spied a bartender putting the finishing touches on her fizzes with a hand-held stick blender, after shaking the ingredients first to chill ’em. Brilliant!
You don’t have to look far to find plenty of egg-based drinks to try out this frothing trick. There’s the venerable Sherry Flip, the old-school Morning Glory Fizz, the whippersnapper Silver Lining, the newly minted French Sheets, and dozens of others. But given the season — it’s spring at last! — allow me to suggest the Clover Club cocktail, an old-fashioned libation with a festive pink hue.
Although a pair of 1911 advertisements has convinced me that the original Clover Club recipe called for grenadine, I’m equally certain that the use of raspberry syrup (or better yet, muddled raspberries) was quite well established before Prohibition. The three oldest books in my cocktail collection — the Old Waldorf-Astoria Bar Book, Cocktails How to Mix Them and The Merry Mixer — call for some manner of raspberry in place of the grenadine, and a side-by-side tasting at our house showed the wisdom of that choice. Even using good homemade pomegranate syrup, the grenadine version is literally a pale second to the fruitier upstart. Without the berry flavor, it’s just a ho-hum gin sour with a little blush around the edges.
But don’t take my word for it: Try it both ways and see. You’ll undoubtedly find plenty of eggs this week to experiment with.
Clover Club
1-1/2 oz gin
3/4 oz lemon juice (some say lime)
1/4 to 1/2 oz raspberry syrup (or grenadine)
white of 1 egg
Shake all ingredients with ice for at least a minute until very well chilled. If desired, strain into a measuring cup or a second shaker can, and buzz with a stick blender for 10 seconds to create a denser froth. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass.
Drink of the Week, drinks, recipes
7 Comments »
Posted by Anita on 03.14.08 7:07 AM
Happy St. Paddy’s Day!
A wee bit early, you say? Nae, says I.
Although St. Patrick’s Day is usually observed on March 17, this year — with Easter coming so early — a bit of liturgical arcana has moved mountains. Because Catholic rules prohibit the celebration of saint’s feasts during Holy Week, the Church has actually moved St. Patrick’s Day to March 14. (For those of you keeping score at home, the last time this ecclesiastic clash occurred was 1940, and the next time will be 2160… so we’ve got a few years to plan.)
Most bishops are none too happy about drunken revelry during the holiest week of the year, and the clever ones are supporting the official shift by offering dispensation to their flocks, absolving them of the sin of carousing on a Lenten Friday, which is traditionally a day of abstinence. As you might expect, this once-in-most-lifetimes rescheduling has plenty of civic celebration-mavens in a tizzy — apparently, not everyone got the memo, and most cities (and nearly every bartender I’ve asked) will still be trotting out barrels of green beer on Monday.
But regardless of when you’re celebrating, there’s got to be a better glass to raise than watery, shamrock-colored beer. Please, I implore you: Grab yourself a snoot of Jameson (or Bushmills, if you’re of a Protestant sort), a pint of Guinness, a Black Velvet, or something else — anything else! — that reminds you of the Land of Saints and Scholars.
One of the best of your options, Irish Coffee was brought to America in the early 1950s by the then-owner of San Francisco’s Buena Vista Cafe, Jack Koeppler. Haunted by the drink he’d enjoyed at Shannon Airport before a seaplane flight home from the Emerald Isle, Koeppler and his friend Stanton Delaplane, a travel writer for the San Francisco Chronicle, tinkered and experimented for months to replicate the formula. Koeppler even made a return trip to Ireland — all in the name of “research”, of course — and brought back the official recipe from Joe Sheridan, the bartender who (by most accounts) invented the drink. Even today, enjoying an Irish Coffee at the Buena Vista remains one of the few legitimate reasons for a trip to Fisherman’s Wharf, an otherwise benighted stretch of The City best left to the socks-and-sandals set.
The cafe caused a tempest in a coffee cup last year when word leaked that the recipe had — gasp! — been altered. Although the current owner claims that cost was not a factor, the fact of the matter is that the Buena Vista abandoned their private-label whiskey in favor of off-the-shelf Tullamore Dew. The subtle change is lost on most customers, and the ol’ BV still turns out more than 2,000 Irish Coffees a day to windswept tourists as they toddle off the cable cars at the end of the line. I assure you that, Tullamore Dew or no, it tastes a heck of a lot better than green beer.
Irish Coffee
4oz fresh, hot coffee
2oz Irish whiskey
whipping cream
sugar cubes
Pour hot water into a footed coffee glass to bring it to temperature. Meanwhile, whip the cream lightly, just enough so that it will be able to float atop the drink, but not until peaks form. Pour the hot water out of the glass, and add two sugar cubes. Fill the glass about 3/4 full with hot coffee, and stir to dissolve the sugar cubes. Add the shot of whiskey, and top with the lightly whipped cream, pouring over a spoon to keep the layers distinct.
bar culture, coffee & tea, Drink of the Week, drinks, holidays & occasions
11 Comments »
Posted by Anita on 03.07.08 7:07 AM
What is it about ginger-beer drinks that brings together unlikely bedfellows? The Moscow Mule, for example: Two guys sitting around a Hollywood bar, trying to come up with a novel way to slog their middlebrow vodka and their slow-moving sodapop, combine their bevvies in a novelty copper cup. Somehow, this unholy alliance actually resulted in a fabulous drink, one of the few vodka cocktails I’ll actually admit to liking.
Likewise, here’s our friend the Dark & Stormy. Or, I should say, the Dark n’ Stormy®. Yup — some wily bastard had the gall to trademark this classic island refresher. Worse yet, the corporate overlords who own the name actually go around telling people that it’s unlawful (!) to build your beverage with any other rum besides Gosling’s Black Seal.
However you punctuate the damn thing, it’s another product of oddball circumstance: During the late 1800s, the British Navy either bought or built (depending on who you ask) a ginger-beer plant on the island of Bermuda. Your guess is as good as mine as to what prompted Her Majesty’s finest to get into the soft-drinks line, but there you have it. It didn’t take long for the boys in blue to add their daily tot of rum to the spicy soda, and a beverage was born.
Now, I’m not entirely certain that the bartenders of my fair City are acquainted with the attorneys representing the interests of Gosling’s Export (Bermuda) Ltd, because — just between us kids — I’ve seen them pouring pretty much any dark rum that comes to hand. And trust me, I’ve watched a lot of these being made this winter: It seems like every Dom, Duggan, and Harry in SF has added this golden tipple to their cocktail list. Bars of some fame have hosted entire evenings devoted to the drink (Dark n’ Stormy night, har har). There’s no denying it: San Francisco’s pros may be knocking back Fernet, but the paying stiffs out front are guzzling rum-spiked ginger beer like it’s never going out of style.
Contrarian though I am, I’ll grudgingly admit that the best Dark and Stormys we sampled were indeed made with the legally prescribed brand. But I think it’s safe to say that your choice of ginger brew — and please, don’t use that supermarket crap, or even the fabulously subtle Fever-Tree here — will have a much more dramatic effect on the end result than any small variations in rum labels.
Given the drink’s naval origins, it’s a fair bet that Pusser’s wouldn’t be far off the traditional mark, for example. And I’ll vouch that the drink’s awfully good when made with a quality gold rum — like Appleton VX — and a sassy Southern ginger ale like Blenheim… although this turns it into something more like a “Fair n’ Breezy”. Cameron, lover of all things molasses, prefers his Stormys on the Extra Dark side, made with Cruzan Blackstrap and Bunda from Down Undah.
So, go ahead: Experiment, and find your own favorite combination. We promise not to sic the laywers on you.
Dark & Stormy
2 oz dark rum, preferably Gosling’s Black Seal
6 oz ginger beer (or quality ginger ale)
limes
Fill a highball glass with ice, and pour the rum over the rocks. Add the ginger beer to fill, and garnish with a healthy wedge of lime.
Drink of the Week, drinks, recipes
7 Comments »
Posted by Cameron on 02.22.08 7:01 AM
While trying to untangle the history of the Martinez, I started to feel like Jack Nicholson trying to get a straight answer out of Faye Dunaway in “Chinatown”. Built primarily from gin and sweet vermouth, the Martinez looks like the love child of the Martini and the Manhattan.
In the annals of cocktail lore, the Martinez is often cited as the parent of the Martini. Sister? Daughter? Both? Aw hell, Jake. I guess you can add cocktails to the list of things that get respectable if they last long enough.
Like many classic cocktails, the Martinez mutated over the years in response to changing tastes and available ingredients. Originally made with Old Tom Gin and a larger vermouth-to-gin ratio, the modern Martinez is a much drier tipple.
Martinez
— adapted from Gary Regan’s The Joy of Mixology
2 oz gin
1 oz sweet vermouth
2 to 3 dashes, or up to 1/4 oz Maraschino liqueur
1 dash bitters (typically Angostura, but Peychaud’s for an interesting variation)
lemon or orange twist
Combine liquid ingredients in cocktail shaker over ice. Stir until well chilled, and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with twist.
Drink of the Week, drinks, recipes
7 Comments »
Posted by Anita on 02.15.08 9:31 PM
I know Valentine’s Day is officially over, but I’m not quite ready to leave the smooches and sweet-nothings behind quite yet. Like many of our friends, this year we’ve shifted our romantic celebration to the weekend. We’ve learned the hard way that being rushed through an overpriced set menu at a crowded restaurant, or scrambling to make a memorable meal at home on a weeknight, is no great recipe for romance.
Although it’s not quite as bad as going to a bar on New Year’s Eve, trying to find a suitable sip for your sweetheart is perilous at best. I get a headache just thinking about the insipid sea of sickly-sweet Cosmos and cheap Champagne that’s floated out in poor Saint Valentine’s name each year. Bleh.
Even if you already celebrated your amorous occasion last night, you might fancy a taste of Royal Romance this weekend. According to CocktailDB, this faintly exotic drink won first prize in the British Empire Cocktail Competition of 1934. Curious about which particular liaison might have captured the creator’s fancy, I did a little digging.
It turns out that the alliance in question was quite the fashionable one. In September of 1934, England’s Prince George, the Duke of Kent, proposed to Princess Marina of Greece and Denmark. According to royal-watchers, the bride was “an accomplished linguist and skillful dressmaker … also widely renowned for her style and beauty.” The groom was no slouch, himself. “Cheerful, popular and handsome” Time magazine said of the Duke in reporting his betrothal, tactfully glossing over a social life that would exhaust Bertie Wooster, including a long history of affairs with glittering celebrities, socialites, and entertainers of both genders, and some dabbling in pharmaceutical recreation.
These two glamorous royals made headlines during their brief courtship, and had all London in their thrall in the run-up to the wedding — just the sort of hubbub that leads to the christening of a cocktail. Perhaps the Grand Mariner was a pun on the bride’s name, the gin a nod to Jolly Old England. Add some passion fruit juice for its allusions to ardent love, and grenadine for a bridal blush, and voilá: a cocktail worthy of the crown.
Royal Romance
1 1/2oz dry gin
3/4oz Grand Marnier
3/4oz passion fruit juice
grenadine
Shake the gin, Grand Marnier, and juice with ice and strain into a cocktail glass. Drop the grenadine from a bar spoon into the bottom of the glass as a garnish.
Drink of the Week, drinks, holidays & occasions, recipes
6 Comments »
Posted by Anita on 02.08.08 12:01 PM
The fall that Cameron and I started dating was a brutal season. Everyone we knew seemed to have one of those colds that catches you in its grip and refuses to let go. The sound of coughing and sneezing was everywhere, and it seemed like the whole city of San Francisco had a red nose and bags under its eyes.
That was the first time — though certainly not the last — that I heard Cameron describe his favorite cold remedy, the Two-Hat Cure: “Grab a bottle of whiskey and put your hat at the foot of the bed. Get into bed, pile the blankets high, and take a good long pull of whiskey. Keep drinking until you see two hats.” It may not cure your cold, exactly, but you definitely won’t care.
In all seriousness, medical experts tell us to exercise caution when drinking while under the weather: Alcohol can dehydrate your already overtaxed system, and many over-the-counter medications are downright dangerous with booze. But even our grandmothers knew that there’s definitely a time and a place for the medicinal powers of whiskey. Especially when combined with sugar or honey, it has the power to calm coughs and soothe raspy throats. Adding warm water or juice helps adjust for the dehydration factor and alleviate sinus congestion. And its sedative effects can give over-exhausted bodies the push they need to get some much-needed Z’s.
In short, a Hot Toddy is just the ticket when you’re feeling under the weather. It’s one of those highly adaptable recipes — CocktailDB alone lists more than 20 variations — but nearly every Toddy follows a simple formula: Combine a shot of (usually brown) liquor and a sweetener (sugar, honey); fill the glass with warm water (or cider, juice, etc.), and garnish with complementary aromatics; traditional choices include lemon wedges, orange peel, and warm spices like cinnamon, nutmeg, or cloves. The less-commonly-seen cold toddy follows the same basic model, but is served in a rocks glass over ice.
While spending the last two-plus weeks battling a world-class cold and its aftereffects — and in the spirit of month’s edition of Mixology Monday hosted by the fine Mr. Patrick at Jimmy’s Cocktail Hour — I’ve been exploring a number of variations in the key of Toddy. I started with bourbon, honey, and orange peel; I sampled brandy, lemon juice, and sugar; I tried rum with brown sugar, cloves, and nutmeg. But my favorite flavor combo includes a strong slug of 100-proof applejack, sweetened with unbleached sugar cubes and garnished with a stick of Mexican cinnamon and star anise. After all, if an apple a day keeps the doctor away, I’m all for it.
Hot Apple Toddy
1oz to 2oz applejack (or brandy, whiskey, etc.)
1 to 2 natural sugarcubes
hot water
Garnishes: cinnamon stick (preferrably Mexican canela), star anise, or other warm spices; lemon wedge, apple slice, orange peel, etc.
Place the sugar and applejack in the bottom of an Irish coffee mug. Add hot water to fill, stir to dissolve sugar, and garnish as desired.
Drink of the Week, drinks, Mixology Monday, recipes
11 Comments »
Posted by Anita on 02.01.08 6:54 AM
My friend Sam brought us the most fabulous hostess gift: A vintage copy of Robert Vermiere’s Cocktails – How to Mix Them. It’s a little pocket-sized gem of a book, best known as one of the first sources for the Sidecar. (It’s possible Harry MacElhone’s ABCs of Mixing Cocktails beat Vermiere to the punch, but both sport a 1922 publication date so I’m content to call it a draw.)
I spent a happy afternoon flipping through the book’s age-darkened pages, amusing myself by deciphering the spidery notes in its margins scribbled by some long-ago drinker. It’s a treasure trove of possibilities.
Alas, the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.
I’ve had no desire whatsoever to experiment, much less to imbibe. Like nearly everyone else in my area code, I’ve been slammed by the bug that doctors are calling the Super Cold. I’ll spare you the litany of disgusting symptoms and secondary infections, but I feel compelled to brag that I made a nurse say “Eeeww!”
After a trip to the emergency room and enough prescriptions to supply a small pharmacy, I’m finally back among the living. I even managed to have a drink or two last night. But frankly, the idea of tinkering with proportions or doing a lot of in-depth historical research is still making me a little woozy. Luckily, there were enough great bubbly-based drinks flowing at the Cockails and Canapes party that I won’t have to leave you in the lurch this week. Here’s one of my favorites:
Le Mistral Mauve
1/2oz to 1oz creme de violette
1/2oz rosemary-infused simple syrup, or to taste
Brut Champagne or other dry sparkling wine
Measure the violette and rosemary syrup into a Champagne flute. Top with a dry bubbly, and garnish with a blossoming herb. (We used rosemary, but any pretty sprig will do.)
To make rosemary syrup, measure equal parts water and sugar into a saucepan. Bring to a simmer over medium-low heat, and stir occasionally until sugar is completely dissolved. Add a large bunch of rosemary to the pan, and remove from the heat. Allow the rosemary to steep in the syrup until its flavor is very pronounced. Remove the rosemary, and strain the syrup through a fine sieve (or a coffee filter, if you want to be fancy).
I usually add a fresh sprig of rosemary to the syrup bottle; it reminds me what’s inside, and has the side effect of looking rather charming. Flavored syrup keeps in the refrigerator for at least a week. Other drinks that use rosemary syrup include the Gin-Gin Cooler and the Rosemary Five; It’s also lovely in sparkling water as a homemade soda.
EDITED TO ADD: If you can’t find creme violette in your area, Monin makes a lovely non-alcoholic violet syrup that you can use in its place. Lots of restaurant supply stores sell these syrups, or you can buy them on Amazon.
Drink of the Week, drinks, recipes, wine & bubbly
9 Comments »
Posted by Anita on 01.25.08 7:03 AM
Last weekend’s do-it-yourself bubbly bar was a source of great amusement for our guests. Aided by a handy cheat-sheet, the crew whipped up Kir Royales and Champagne Cocktails and Death in the Afternoons aplenty. For the teetotalers, we also offered an assortment of homemade syrups and alternative sparklers — Seltzer Sisters soda water and two kinds of ginger ale — along with suggestions for non-alcoholic spritzers.
One of my favorites in this category is the venerable Horse’s Neck, a deceptively simple combination of a ginger ale and long strip of lemon zest that dates to the late 1800s. Popular though the soft drink was, it didn’t take long for clever barkeeps to fortify it. As early as 1897, columnists allowed that “a dash of whisky is said not to interfere with the agreeable taste of this drink.” By the turn of the century, the once-optional shot was nearly a foregone conclusion, although the original recipe enjoyed a revival of sorts during the temperance years.
The boozed-up version — known as a “Horse’s Neck with a Kick” or a “Stiff Horse’s Neck”, depending on which mixology manual you consult — adds an ounce or two of your favorite brown liquor to the glass. Most recipes call for whiskey of some sort, but you find occasional mentions of brandy or even gin. Wander a little further afield, and it’s not too hard to see the hoofprints in similar beverages: Swap rum for whiskey and a lime wedge in place of the lemon twist, and you’ve got a Dark & Stormy. Substitute vodka, and you’re 2/3 of the way to a Moscow Mule — even the name is a clue!
Horse’s Neck with a Kick
1-1/2 to 2oz bourbon or rye
ginger ale
bitters
lemon zest
Place a long, continuous spiral of lemon zest in a Collins glass, hooking one end over the rim to keep it from sinking. Fill the glass with ice, add the bourbon and a few shakes of bitters, and top with ginger ale.
1 Year Ago — DOTW: Bobby Burns
Drink of the Week, drinks, recipes
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