Barreling Forward

I am now part of a group that is doing small barrel batches of cocktails and alcohol. Our previous two (the 12 Year Itch, which is Fernet, Antica Formula and Zaya 12-year rum; and a Perfect Manhattan) were both very good, but largely followed existing recipes. For our next, we've decided to break ground and try a rum blend, and we're doing it with precious little to go on in the way of precedence. So...where to begin?

My initial thoughts were to start with something very neutral, but softer than the typical Bacardi white. Fortunately, that was easy: I'm currently grooving on the Plantation 3 Star rum, which was introduced to me by Nicholas Feris of The Rum Collective during a Plantation tasting last year. Outside of a Cuba Libra, this inexpensive white has quickly replaced most other white rums for general use. It has a clean, clear, slightly sweet rum note that begs for complementary flavors.

Next, I wanted a little bite for the oak to mellow. Previous posts have sung the praises of Smith and Cross rum. Sharp, spicy and bitey, like an alley cat that will let you rub her belly until...NOW, it should introduce some interesting notes at the high end of the flavor profile.

We need the alcohol levels to be high going in, and if you want to boost the proof, I can't think of a better add than Wray and Nephew Overproof Rum. It's a staple around the house for falernum, but despite the 126-proof burn, it's not an unpleasant flavor and should help draw some of the flavors out of the barrel (which we're going to do a madeira soak on before we cask this concoction).

Finally, I wanted something to give us some elusive notes in small quantities. Our ratios for the above are 8:2:2, so with the majority of the blend so far focused on the 3 Star, a few flourishes shouldn't hurt. We're adding a bottle of King's Ginger, for a touch of a Scotch edge and of course the bold, bright ginger flavor of the liqueur (which is nestled quietly into the profile of the final mix, so we're not worried about overwhelming things). Finally, like those few drops of Pernod in a tiki drink, we'll top off the barrel with Cruzan Blackstrap rum, for a bit of color and and hint of dark (the barrel usually holds around 13-14 bottles, so if there's a bit of Cruzan left at the end of the day, we'll just have a Corn 'n' Oil or two and call it a day).

What will we have in a couple of months? I honestly don't have a clue. I'd lik
e to think we'll have a rum that started with some great high notes, and a midrange palate that will get filled in with the char and oak, making the final blend a candidate for Rum Old Fashioneds or a particularly complex base for simple tiki drinks. Part of what makes this so interesting is that we'll be making something that will be, in the truest sense of the word, unique. No other barrel, or environment, or preparation, or anything within this process–even if done to exacting standards by ourselves–will have the same result, for better or worse. If this works, we'll each have about a gallon of rum to savor and parse out for special occasions; if it's less than successful, well, one imagines I will still be able to choke it down with enough Coke and lime.

It's the quest of bartenders, mixologists and alcohol enthusiasts alike: to create something for a moment in time, for a specific audience, for a desired result. It's exciting to use our collected knowledge (and the shared knowledge of our local bartending community) to push the edges of alcohol knowledge a bit, and to share in the results of the labor at the appointed time. Whether I'll be gushing about the results, or finding ways to burn it off without anyone calling me on it, remains to be seen. For now, I've got a small vial of control sample, and a dream.

Oh Bother

The bartender gave me a half-smile, and shrugged. "Of course, you can't tell the customer no."

*****

Julie and I are in Chicago, and I'm vibrating with glee, as we're about to enter a tiki bar I've been waiting to enter for over a year–Three Dots and a Dash. It's off an alley behind another bar on North Clark (the also-tasty Bub City), and a short skull-themed stairway later, we're third in line to get in at opening time.

The Jet Pilot, it just wants you to be happy.
If by "happy," you mean "rollicking drunk."

We take a seat at the bar, and pick our drinks–she goes with their riff on the Painkiller, and I go with one of my evaluation drinks, the Jet Pilot. The Zombie is my first-choice go-to drink to compare a tiki bar to its compatriots, but at Three Dots the Zombie, although it looks pretty authentic from the menu, is also a $65 drink for 3-4 people. Another time, perhaps. We also tried several of the small plates offered (the tuna crisps, served with a quartet of sauces, was a nice, light counterpoint to the drinks ordered). The drinks arrived in their resplendent ceramic, and we were happy, happy patrons.

The bar filled up fairly quickly (it's a segmented single room, so it's not hard to do). Our first drinks went down at an efficient pace. so a second seemed a reasonable plan of action. The menu proudly touted its "Selection of Fine Rums," and perusing the shelves, it's hard to argue. Sitting on the second shelf, my current darling of the rum world proudly held court with its blue and silver label: Smith & Cross rum, which features prominently in earlier entries on this blog. I call the bartender over.

"So what are you using the Smith and Cross for?"

She looked at the bottle a bit quizzically. "I'm not sure. We use Appleton as our Jamaican rum for most of our drinks. I can ask someone, if you want."

"No no, that's fine. Would you be interested in making me something with it?"

She paused for a moment. We've talked a couple of times up to this point, the usual light chatter and customer check-ins that barstaff should do. "To be honest, I really don't know the rum. We're trained on the menu drinks, and the managers don't really like us to improvise a lot." She half-smiled, and shrugged. "Of course, you can't tell the customer no..."

I can't complain about the bar, the drinks, or the service at Three Dots–quite the opposite. I'm eager to go back and explore more of the drink menu as soon as possible. And, our visit was within the first six months of opening, which means that, although they've had a proper shakedown by the public (the first crop of staff who won't work out have left, and the ones that will work out have some experience with the menu), they're still new enough to be adjusting to what is a non-standard bar menu (the tiki drink set is going to be a departure from the bartenders who may be accustomed to expertly mixing a never-ending parade of rum and Cokes or Old Fashioneds).

But, truth be told, I've been a bit spoiled. I have bartenders locally (hi Ravens Club, hi Alley Bar, hi Last Word) who are endlessly inventive, mixing drinks based on experience, mood and the occasional challenge from me. At places like Frankie's Tiki Room or the Zig Zag Café, I've shown up on their doorstep on a mission, and they've waxed poetic about both drink and spirits recommendations. I am so very curious about this amazing hobby of mine, and I've been fortunate to run across a bunch of bartenders, mixologists and drinking companions that support me in the quest part of the experience (and the drinking part, too).

I am VERY mindful of when it is appropriate to be all "make me something bartender's choice blah blah demerara rum" up in here. If the place is rockin', with drinks flying across the bar, I know not to interrupt or even get too chatty; I always figure that if I try a "make me something" move when a place is busy, Ray Foley is going to magically appear and Gibbs-slap me. "Get there early, hang out a bit, then back off as the place fills up" works pretty well as an MO for me.

Still, if there's a rum sitting on a shelf at a bar, and that bar is a tiki bar proclaiming its specialization in rums, it's a bit of a disappointment that I can't play a little bit. For all of the Bud Lights and rum and Cokes that crossed the bar in front of me (and going to an amazing bar like Three Dots to order Bud Light ought to earn SOMEBODY a Gibbs-slap or two), you've got a rum on your shelf that I like, and I want to see what you can do with it. So, I loved the experience, I'm ready to go back–but if that bottle of Smith & Cross is still sitting there, someone's going to make me a drink using it. You Have Been Warned.

The Steampunk Drink (Part 2)

So – we have Byrrh. Now what?

On the back of the Byrrh bottle, I found what turned out to be 95% of the drink I wanted to make. The Le Negociant is a 4-ingredient French lovefest:
- 1 ounce Byrrh
- 1 ounce rhum agricole (which means "rum made straight from sugarcane, skipping the molasses step)
- .5 ounce elderflower liqueur
- .5 ounce lemon juice

Rhum agricole is by default French, since Clément or Rhum JM are the usual go-tos, and both hail from Martinique in the French West Indies. "Elderflower liqueur" is St. Germain, and do not waste time with anything else. And with Byrrh's pedigree, we're not only solid French, but we're golden on the age of all of the above – 1866 for Byrrh, 1887 for rhum, and 1884 for the process used to make St. Germain. ("Le Negociant", by the way, refers to a French wine producer who buys grapes from a mix of smaller vineyards and combines them to create their own label's release.)

The drink is terrific - the Byrrh's red wine (and, to be clear, this is mistelle – fortified red wine that's sweeter than a traditional red) gives it a front sweetness, the St. Germain gives it floral and citrus notes and a gentle sweetness, the rhum adds a light rum flavor that contributes another sweet note, the herbals and undernotes of the Byrrh and the St. Germain dancing just out of reach. It's a great drink...

Von's 1000Spirits. I took their word for it.

...but I did say the word "sweet" four times in the above paragraph. One of my mandates, as you'll recall, was that the current drink being served was "too sweet." Now, this is not pina colada sweet, but it's definitely going to register as sweet on the palate. This is not necessarily going to be a problem, but the closer I can walk to the border of sweet and tart, the wider the audience I can reach with this drink.

So, we flash forward to September, on a beautiful night in Seattle where my friend Ron and I are walking the streets of Seattle looking for Byrrh. (In reality, we're just looking for drinks, but if you've got a goal, it's purposeful drinking, right?) Surprisingly, there was no Byrrh at Von's 1000Spirits (though I did pick up another nifty trick for the steampunk bartender), and I had a great throwback drink with a nifty local story. At The Diller Room, I got a pity-carding at the door (at my age, always appreciated), and a great side-by-side comparison of a variety of quinquinas. No Byrrh, but I did get to try Cocchi Americano straight for the first time (think Byrrh, but with a moscato base) and the local entry into the category, Chinato D'Erbetti. Both were interesting, but not what I was after...

Finally, we ended up at the Zig Zag Café, tucked away as you head down towards the shoreline from Pike Place Market. Ron had been there the night before, and had sung the praises of the place effusively. Ricardo was our bartender for the evening, and upon asking about Byrrh, immediately produced a bottle of the stuff for our amusement. So, we had him mix up a Le Negociant, parse it out into a couple of glasses for control sample purposes, and resolved to come up with the perfect variant of the drink for our purposes.

After a couple of abortive attempts to add additional ingredients, Ricardo made an observation. The sweet is coming from three sources in the drink; what if we can modify one of the existing spirits in the drink to take the sweet edge off? The Byrrh was off-limits, and the St. Germain is a beloved favorite, so the rhum became the sacrificial victim. I really wanted to keep rum, but didn't want to add a rum that would overwhelm the drink (Bacardi would add a sharp undertone, anything dark would drown out the herbals, and so on).

Suddenly, Ricardo reached over to the rack and pulled down a semi-familiar bottle – Smith & Cross Jamaican rum. This was one of the stars of our rum dinner from a few months ago, providing a knife-like palate-cleansing alongside foie gras. The rum is navy-strength (meaning that it would not prevent gunpowder from igniting), and is a blend of two traditional Jamaican run processes (part aged less than a year, part aged 18-36 months). Adding it to the drink not only took a bit of sweet out (both in its own flavor and in the extra proof knocking a bit out of the front of the drink), it added some additional spice notes that worked beautifully with the drink. And, as required for steampunk purposes, the Smith & Cross mark dates to 1788. We had our cocktail recipe.

The drink is pictured in the
Etched Bullseye Martini Glass
and is available for purchase
on the Contemporary Complements website.

Finally, we needed a name. Adding the Smith & Cross gets us a British/French blend that doesn't have a lot of commonality–Jamaica was a British colony, and I couldn't find anything evocative of a connection between the spirits or the countries of origin. So, I fell back on the original creators of my primary ingredient. We're only swapping one ingredient from the Le Negociant, but both to separate it from that drink, and to not force inebriated passengers to butcher French in front of our poor bartender, a simple nod to The Violet Brothers seems in order.

The Violet Brothers
1 ounce Byrrh
1 ounce Smith & Cross Jamaican rum
.5 ounce St. Germain
.5 ounce fresh lemon juice

Shake with ice in a cocktail strainer. Serve in a martini glass.

It's been a fun ride, and to all of my companions along the way, (especially Ricardo at the Zig Zag), I'm delighted to have a drink that I'm confident to pass along to our steampunk partygoers. Thanks to Kim Maita for the challenge, and if you try it, let me know what you think!