Item: Mixers » Lime juice

MxMo LXVI: Bein’ Green – October’s Still Green

Happy to see MixMo online cocktail parties back in action. It was a blow for me to miss «Equal Parts» event due to my illness. Excellent topic, very interesting. My respect is to Frederic for that event and for reviving MixMo parties, of course.

Also my warm words come to Ed of the Wordsmithing Pantagruel who hosts the current party and has invented a topic for it. So timely now, «Bein’ Green» is the theme for the party and Ed’s explanation is:

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The Reverb Crash

Funny that the first Tiki drink I write about is not of those famous drinks such as Mai Tai or Zombie. There is more fun because my Tiki season has started when summer comes to the end. Anyway, I’m drinking Tiki cocktails from time to time during last three years but get only just ready for writing about it.

My choice was a bit spontaneous. I was in mood for something exotic when buying two big pink grapefruits in a local store. Juiced, they’ve provided me with a 0.5L bottle of fresh grapefruit juice, and that was a reason for making grapefruit inspired Tiki drink.

So I’ve switched over to The Reverb Crash, a relatively new Tiki cocktail in which grapefruit juice works with passion fruit syrup and rum.

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Alizé Daiquiri

Do you love classic Daiquiri? If you ask me, I’ll answer that I didn’t understand it until I’ve got used to mix there aged Cuban rums only. Cocktails with lime and white rum make me sick, to be honest. Too acid and plain for my taste. A few years later Moscow stores offered too little rum and there were mainly cheap white rums: Cuban pair Varadero and Havana Club and Puerto Rican Bacardi, of course. Later the situation has improved a lot but since those times I dislike «ron blanco».

So now I’m used to take medium-bodied aged Cuban rums when I need to mix Daiquiri. Maybe that’s wrong but the cocktail benefits from strong and distinct rum flavour. Also I’m choosing aged rums when I want to make some fruit twists on classic Daiquiri. And this time I’ve used it in my passion fruit inspired cocktail.

Here I’ve used Alizé Gold Passion, a modern liqueur based on Cognac and passion fruit. With Cuban rum, it creates wonderful tropical aroma – fruity, spicy and exotic.

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Hedgehog in the Fog

This post is dedicated to Pernod pastis, French anise aperitif. Many people dislike it because anise and licorice flavours remaind of cheap cough medicine. In the times of Soviet Union when I was a child, my mum gave me such medicine which tasted and smelt of anise seeds and licorice root – not the candies a baby would enjoy.

Now I’ve got rid of that dislike, mostly for anise and not licorice. I can drink Pernod neat but in cocktails I like it much more.

The cocktail I write about is an adaptation of modern recipe called Green Beast which has got Chairman Trophy award in Ultimate Cocktail Challenge 2011. The original recipe calls for Pernod Absinthe, a hard-to-find alcohol in Russia. All my attempts to buy it have failed so I’ve turned to Pernod pastis.

With Pernod pastis, mint and some changes in proportions, my «Green Beast» version looks like another cocktail, and that’s why I’ve decided to change the title. Now it’s called Hedgehog in the Fog – like a cartoon character of the same name which was very popular in 80s in Soviet Union.

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Mandarine Margarita

Tequila is not a spirit I often used in cocktails. I can’t say that I don’t like tequila but usually I prefer gin and whiskey. The cause is unclear. Maybe tequila isn’t as flexible as other spirits in use or I just have no chance to enjoy good tequila yet.

In any case, usually I take a bottle of tequila only to make Margarita, a perfect cocktail that I can’t stop to enjoy. Besides classic Margarita, I love to make mandarin and strawberry versions from time to time.

It’s funny that it’s harder to buy high quality strawberry liqueur rather than the same mandarin liqueur. Cognac-based Mandarine Napoléon is a quite expensive stuff but it’s widely available and of highest quality so this liqueur is a must for the cocktail I’m talking about.

Mandarine Margarita was my long-term wish since I’ve saw it at Science Of Drink. Version with Cointreau was a bomb so I was burning with desire for Mandarine Napoléon version. And when I’ve bought the liqueur, I’ve made Mandarine Margarita right away.

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Ruby Rangoon

Another long drink I want to talk about has a weird history. Unfortunately I have no direct access to sources mentioned below and can’t say exactly about it. Information I stubbornly gathered in Internet is a quite diverse so my summary version looks like a theory.

Because the first recipe I’ve found was a cocktail from CocktailDB, I’ve named the article Ruby Rangoon. Maybe that’s not completely correct but I love this version much more than all others.

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Dark and Stormy

When I’ve made my first batch of ginger beer, I realized that I hardly ever drink it neat. It was too dry and burning for me. But there was an advantage – I could give a try to cocktails based on ginger beer, at last!

At first I’ve tried Dark and Stormy cocktail, a powerful combination of dark rum and spicy ginger beer.

Bermuda’s national drink, Dark and Stormy is deeply rooted in the traditional daily portions of rum served out in British Navy. The cocktail calls for Bermudian Gosling’s Black Seal Rum and local ginger beer. Very strict conditions, isn’t it?

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White Wagtail Cocktail

Another cocktail with Van Gogh Açai-Blueberry Vodka I’ve created after unsuccessful efforts to discover original cocktails with this hard-to-find vodka. I was trying to produce a berry-flavoured light cocktail with strong herbal background. Hope I succeeded in my attempt.

Surprisingly the hardest thing was not to achieve the best taste but to get acceptable appearance. Van Gogh Açai-Blueberry Vodka has wonderful lilac color but lose it completely after mixing with citrus juices. Happily, Parfait Amour liqueur helped me to keep the original violet color with steel-blue tint.

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Boukman Daiquiri

It’s so far from summer, and I don’t dream of it. That’s just a thing I promised myself to do some day. This cocktail looked so beautiful therefore I can’t resist the temptation. Not long ago I’ve made a batch of cinnamon syrup and redeemed the promise to taste Boukman Daiquiri.

I’ve found the cocktail recipe at the Imbibe. Created by Alex Day from the Philadelphia’s The Franklin Bar, this modern Daiquiri variation has two key components which made a difference in the cocktail flavour. The first is the cinnamon syrup I wrote above, and the second is Cognac.

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MxMo LII: Forgotten Cocktails – Cameo Kirby

Forgotten Cocktails, that’s the topic for November 2010 Mixology Monday event hosted by Dennis at his Rock & Rye blog.

The topic is not easy as it seems at first time. Here in Russia cocktails are not forgotten, they’re unknown.

I’ve remembered one cocktail  I saw earlier at «Approved Cocktails, authorized by UK bartenders guild» by Harry Craddock. Cameo Kirby, it looks like another Martini-like cocktail, and then I’ve tried it but can’t find anything about it in Internet except one more Google-book  «Gourmet’s Guide to New Orleans» by Natalie Vivian Scott and Caroline Merrick Jones.

The title Cameo Kirby is known thanks to old movie released in 1923. Who knows, maybe the cocktail was named after that criminal drama.

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