Over the past month I have gotten madly into making cocktails. It has been a pretty fascinating experience filled with many surprising flavors.
Earlier this year my friend, Mike, started sending me interesting cocktail links, blog posts, and newsletters. It wasn’t frequent, but just every few weeks. Each time I responded with some form of, “That looks really interesting, looks like you have a new hobby!” To which he’d reply something on the order of “No time now, but you on the other hand…” Leading to my final, “Uh, no, I have enough hobbies not going to happen.”
Then came October. I’m not even sure what triggered it. Probably an algorithm serving me a couple cocktail videos and articles. And they were interesting! Now I’m not talking about complicated recipes with custom made syrups or fat-washed alcohols. It was the classics that intrigued me. The Old Fashioned. The Negroni. The Last Word.
At the same time I realized that I was kind of sick of beer. We have arrived at a paradox of choice in the beer world. Everyone is making beer and all of it tastes about the same. I said to Jesse, “Right now I feel like I could either stop drinking alcohol entirely or I should get into making cocktails.”
You know the choice I should have made.
You know the choice I did make.
Cocktails hit a few of my sweet spots. They are similar to cooking, which I’ve enjoyed in the past. They are creating a thing greater than the sum of their parts, which always intrigues. And stocking up on bottles is a form of collecting, which the CDs, Blu-Rays, and vinyl records in my office will tell you is me all the way.
Shopping trips ensued, both online and in person. My community is rather small, so alcohol delivery has been a godsend. I now have almost every bottle I could need to make any classic you could think of. I’ve whipped up several different syrups. Most of them are easy (giving you the side-eye, orgeat!).
Family visited after Thanksgiving and I tried batching a few recipes. Alton Brown’s Hot Toddy was okay, but nothing too special. The real hits were Brandy Alexander and Jack Rose.
The secrets to batching are:
- Test the recipe by figuring out your dilution (water). If it’s a shaken recipe, measure your finished cocktail, subtract the original ingredient measurements, and the difference is your dilution.
- Do not mix in juices or carbonated ingredients until just before service. Fresh-squeeze them just before adding.
- Chill your premix. Four or more hours would be good! Since you won’t be shaking or stirring with ice, the mix needs to be cold on its own.
- Chill your glasses in the freezer. Keep that drink cold for as long as possible.
- As a consumer, sip it, but don’t take all day. These drinks don’t taste nearly as good after sitting in the glass for an hour.
I did not fully test my Brandy Alexander. I suggest you test before finalizing your ratios because ours ran a little hot. (Also, I’ve learned that Wisconsin has a tradition of Brandy Alexanders around Christmas, but usually with ice cream instead of half and half. Many families would also let their kids have a single serving to celebrate the season.)
Brandy Alexander (basis)
750ml Cognac/Brandy (St-Remy VSOP French Brandy)
375ml crème de cacao (Tempus Fugit)
375ml half and half/heavy cream
100ml water
In testing the Jack Rose, I was stuck with apple brandies I could find locally. I tried E&J and, ooo boy, was that thing sweet. It wasn’t bad, but it was sent out of balance with sweetness and low alcohol content (only 30%). I was able to order J. Carver Apple Brandy, which is local to Minnesota and 45% abv. The common recommendation is Lairds Straight Apple Brandy 50% abv.
Jack Rose (basis)
750ml Apple brandy (Lairs Straight 100 Proof)
375ml Grenadine (prefer homemade)
125ml Water
375ml Lemon Juice (at serving time)
More from the Blog
One lonely blog post this month: Before They Were Huge.
Last month I reflected on seeing a They Might Be Giants show.
Announcing
Big news on the Good Enough front. We have launched Album Whale! Come on by and give it a try!
The reason for Album Whale was that Shawn and I were maintaining our own “2022 Favorites” lists on our websites. We wanted to automate building such lists. We also wanted a place to keep track of albums to try, as streaming services are terrible about giving us a place to save albums other than our collection. With enough people stopping by Album Whale, we also hope to have a place to discover and talk about music!
Thanks to Patrick for hopping on board and lending a hand as well. W00T!
Ephemera
Amazon Prime says:
More ad-free music, increasing from 2 million to over 100 million songs in shuffle mode
I wondered what that meant in practice, so I logged in via my browser. I searched for Pink Floyd’s The Wall. I can listen to the album, but only on shuffle. So strange.
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If you’re consistent, I guess this’ll happen to everyone who plays daily.
Wordle 505 1/6
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
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Last mild day for the fall, so I went for a walk.
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What do you think happens when you click on this in macOS’s Apple Music?
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A few days until this little creation becomes useful to my community again: www.owatonnaparking.com
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Read Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan 📚
The right book, exactly. At exactly the right time.
I really quite enjoyed this book, but the Google / Silicon Valley love has not aged well, unfortunately. It was easy for me to dip into the book’s world, though.
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DMB, been awhile.
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Just now realizing that Pink Floyd’s “Echoes” predates The Phantom of the Opera. Apparently it was a whole thing when Phantom premiered. What do you think?
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Nick Mason’s Saucerful of Secrets.
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Read Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman. Yeah, that was good. Though I never really internalize books like this. Gonna process my Kindle highlights, though, and hope for the best.
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It was a Detroit style night. I like it too much.
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Did you know Wayne Brady played Aaron Burr in Hamilton’s Chicago run? Wild.
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Passing on my concert love to my middlest and her good friend.
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Some links I found interesting:
- This thread seems awfully familiar to me.
- Could we be getting a CAPTCHA replacement soon?
- It’s important to keep tabs on all of the catastrophes.
- In the waves emanating from Twitter, some interesting sites have been rising. Not that I’ve signed up for Nicheless.
- Mike also reminded me of the genius of Weird Al’s Bob.
- My phone has been looking pretty minimalist lately, and this wallpaper ties it all together.
- This does seem like a better way to consume YouTube (I’m addicted to the place), but it’d be a lot of work. I would have jumped all over this 20 years ago.
- Doing some video processing (I take them off iCloud and put them on my NAS for easy family Plex viewing) and I’m reminded that this little ExifRenamer software is worth its weight in giving the author a PayPal donation every year.
- Are you on the latest photo sharing social network?
- Someone with a PC, please play Kevin Costner’s Waterworld and tell me how it is!
Click through for more ephemera.
One More Thing
As I went to send this newsletter I realized that I never sent last month’s letter! How embarrassing!
The good thing is that my intro story last month was terrible. So I’m not going to send it, though maybe I’ll rework that story for later presentation.
I did litter the above sections with some stuff meant for the prior newsletter, however, and that’s why this thing is so long. Don’t expect it again!