Celebrate Love Through Thoughtful Actions
How do you celebrate love? Is it through thoughtful actions? Kind words? Physical touch? Time and time again, I find that I return to thoughtful actions – often in the form of cooking and making cocktails. A holiday like Valentine’s Day is a great excuse to craft a cocktail to surprise and enchant your partner or friends, but truly, this can and should be done any time of the year.
When building a cocktail with the theme of love or romance, it’s important to me to make it not stereotypically gendered – something anyone can enjoy, even if it may be a spirit they are not as used to. I started this recipe with the flavor inspiration of chocolate-covered strawberries, while not necessarily being limited to being a dessert cocktail.
For the base, I decided on unpeated single malt Scotch – a spirit with enough character not to be overshadowed, but to complement strong flavors like strawberry and chocolate. To keep the cocktail’s sweetness in check, I introduced strawberries as an infusion in the Scotch, rather than a syrup.
I highly recommend having organic strawberries in your freezer for this. Costco is a great cost-effective source, as they’ll be most dependable in ripeness any time of year, and texture isn’t a factor when making an infusion. Be sure to use a glass vessel for your infusion, agitate once a day, and keep it in a dark place until it’s to your liking – somewhere between 3-7 days should do the trick.
The star of this cocktail is Mozart Milk Chocolate Liqueur – a velvety and indulgent Austrian treat made with Belgian chocolate, cream, and Bourbon vanilla. Its made from a sugar beet distillate and sweetened with sugar from sugar beets as well. This liqueur brought a wonderful richness and depth of chocolate flavor to the cocktail. I further enhanced the vanilla notes with a bit of my favorite cherry bark vanilla bitters.
To round out the drink, I added cold-brewed milk oolong tea. Milk oolong hails from Taiwan and is known for its creamy, buttery taste. It’s absolutely fantastic on its own, but is also great to enhance a creamy mouthfeel in a cocktail while keeping it light. The resulting cocktail is sumptuous but refreshing, with the strawberry, chocolate, and vanilla flavors being perfectly balanced by the creamy freshness of the oolong.
Elevating the Hot Toddy with Unexpected Ingredients
Ever since I can remember, I’ve had a strong love for tea. Fresh, energizing green teas tend to be my favorites, but I’ve truly enjoyed most varieties I’ve tried and always look forward to expanding my tea knowledge. Without doubt, I have my father to thank for this appreciation. He’s been teaching me about tea since my youth and continues to share new ones that he’s discovered.
Perhaps you can say that each of our food and beverage loves is a mix of genuine flavor perception and nostalgic or emotional value. Given my feelings toward tea, I take hot toddies very seriously. The traditional hot toddy is a cocktail made with tea or warm water, liquor, lemon, and honey, with optional spices.
In my opinion, if all you can get at a bar is a Lipton tea bag with a packet of sugar, a piece of lemon, and a hearty pour of rail whiskey, perhaps grab a beer instead. Hot toddies are a drink to be treasured and appreciated because they allow so much room for experimentation. You can dream up countless combinations by swapping teas and playing with herbal and spirit components. Even the variety of honey you choose plays a pivotal role in the flavor profile of the finished cocktail.
I wanted to take the hot toddy inspiration to a more imaginative level with an unexpected tea, surprising botanicals, a quality spirit, and the use of my favorite type of honey. If all of these ingredients seem daunting, feel free to play around while sticking with the basic ratios. Consider starting with a tea and honey you have in your pantry, then work your way to acquiring these specific ingredients if you’re hooked on the hot toddy concept.
I started with a base of hot osmanthus oolong tea and added Copper and Kings American Craft Brandy, buckwheat honey, fresh lemon, and 11th Orchard Birch Bark Bitters. The tea has a buttery sweetness with floral and fruity notes from the osmanthus – it’s wonderful enjoyed on its own and really makes this drink shine by creating a smooth and complex foundation.
I took special care selecting a smooth spirit to add to the cocktail, as serving a drink warm can amp up the bite of sharper varieties. Copper and Kings American Craft Brandy gave me exactly what I wanted – oak-aged smoothness with a hint of fruity spice.
If you’ve never tried buckwheat honey, I highly recommend you get your hands on it. It’s on the dark end of the honey spectrum, almost like a molasses, with a distinctive scent and a rich, nutty, slightly bitter flavor. It’s not for everyone, but it’ll be a game-changer in your drinks if you enjoy the taste. I grab mine at a local honey farm in Southern Wisconsin, which offers the added bonus of helping with seasonal allergies – eating local honey can help with pollen sensitivity.
The honey added smoothness and aroma to this cocktail, blending beautifully with the oolong and brandy. I finished off the drink with some fresh lemon for balance and a dropper of birch bark bitters for brightness. The bitters are from a new Chicago-based company called 11th Orchard, who specialize in locally foraged ingredients that are indigenous to the area. All of their products are fantastic, but the birch bark variety really surprised me with its minty sweetness.
The resulting cocktail is warming, unbelievably smooth, and uplifting with its rich bouquet of fruity, nutty, and floral aromatics. If you have a tea set at home, it’ll make the presentation even more lovely and special for your guests.
Smoking Up a Sophisticated Cocktail
After first setting eyes on a Smoking Gun at Apogee Lounge, one of the most imaginative bars in Chicago, I knew I’d eventually need to add one to my arsenal of mixology toys. Quite conveniently, the maker, Breville, reached out and offered to provide me with one in exchange for participating in a virtual holiday mix-off along with 9 other influential bartenders and mixologists.
Getting the opportunity to play with a new medium made me want to take my cocktail creation in a completely different direction from anything I’d done before. I selected Japanese whiskey and sherry to form the backbone of my cocktail. Both are ingredients that are praised in modern cocktails, yet I had only tried them when going out for drinks.
I quickly found that Japanese whiskeys come in quite a range of prices and flavor notes, but Kikori Whiskey seemed like a particularly intriguing option to mix with. Made entirely from rice and aged in sherry casks, Kikori feels like a mash-up of the best attributes of sake and more traditional whiskey. It’s a wonderfully unique addition to the world of whiskey and features a floral aroma with a caramel-smooth finish.
I also learned that sherries come in many varieties, each of which boast a unique flavor profile. Sherry is defined as Spanish fortified wine crafted in the region surrounding the city of Jerez de la Frontera – the word “sherry” stems from Jerez. Within that category, the wines vary from very dry to sweetened and have undergone different degrees of aging and oxidization. I chose the Manzanilla variety, which falls on the drier end of the spectrum, and was named with the Spanish word for chamomile tea due to flavor similarities.
I played up the floral notes in the whiskey and manzanilla sherry with fragrant, fresh-squeezed Meyer lemon juice and a wildflower honey syrup. The honey syrup balanced the dryness of the sherry, and the Meyer lemon juice tied the other ingredients together with a touch of pleasant acidity.
The coolest thing about using the Smoking Gun in creating a cocktail is that you can fill it with a number of different wood chips, dried herbs, or dehydrated fruit. This allows you to enhance the drink’s flavors by engaging the sense of smell and truly takes the cocktail to the next level. I used applewood chips and dried chamomile flowers to smoke this drink. The applewood chips created a sweeter, fruity smoke and were a perfect match for the floral sweetness of chamomile.
The resulting cocktail is a bouquet of flavors unlike any I’ve enjoyed before – it starts out with a bit of floral dryness, transitions to the creamy smoothness of the honey and whiskey, and finishes with a touch of sweet smoke.
Crafting a Refreshing Gin-Based Infusion
If you’ve been following my blog for some time, you’ve probably noticed that I enjoy using infusions in my cocktails. They’re quite easy to prepare if you understand the proper length of infusion time for various ingredients. Simply add fruit, herbs, tea, or spices to liquor, wait while it infuses, and then strain out all the solids to stop the process.
Infusions are an excellent way to add complexity to a drink because they have no added sugars and don’t water down the overall cocktail. I’ve done infusions for both flavor and color with great results. I was recently approached by the company Teroforma to test 1pt’s newest product line of artisanal spirit infusion blends.
I typically do infusions with one or maybe two ingredients at a time and then add additional flavors in the cocktail mixing process. In contrast, all of 1pt’s seven blends feature at least four thoughtfully layered herbs, spices, and teas, meaning you don’t need to add much to the infused spirit to make a fantastic cocktail.
I chose to play with their Citrus Blend, a mix of lemongrass, ginger, lemon verbena, Yerba Mate, and marigold petals. Given the freshness and citrus character of the infusion ingredients, I chose to use a London Dry Gin for the spirit. London Dry Gins aren’t necessarily made in London nowadays, but tend to be more juniper-forward, higher proof, and with a citrus component. Beefeater is particularly great for infusions, as it’s very reasonably priced, fairly straightforward in taste profile, and therefore quite versatile.
I wanted to use honey to completely smooth the bite of the gin and thus draw the focus entirely to the brightness of the infusion. Instead of using a plain honey syrup, I paired blackberries with wildflower honey for a pop of color and a delightfully tart fall flavor that I slightly accentuated with a bit of lemon. I then topped the drink with club soda to give it the refreshing feel of a gin and tonic.
The resulting cocktail was fresh, herbaceous, bright, and complex. Stir all ingredients other than garnish with ice, then strain into a stemmed glass and top with crushed ice. Garnish with lemongrass and dehydrated lemon and enjoy while taking a deep breath of cool air after a rainstorm. If you’d like to try 1pt for yourself, use the code valcohol10 for 10% off orders over $20.
Crafting a Spiked Root Beer with Natural Mixer
We’ve all shared the days of enjoying simple rail drinks at dive bars or parties. The ingredients tend to be fairly ubiquitous, ratios are forgiving, and just about any bar can create one to your liking. For my next series of recipes, I was inspired to channel that rail drink nostalgia into more complex, healthier alternatives. You won’t be able to find these ingredients at your typical bar, but you will be able to reminisce upon your college days and broaden the comfort spheres of your pickiest friends.
The first drink in my series is a take on the classic rum and Coke. Typically, this rail contains its namesake ingredients of white rum and Coca-Cola, with a splash of lime. I’ve never been much of a soda drinker due to its sugar content and additives, so I sought to replace that flavor profile with a more natural, balanced alternative.
As you have probably figured out by now, I absolutely love to use tea in cocktails. It’s widely accessible, can be incorporated in a variety of ways, and adds so much depth while giving you control over sweetness levels. In my endless search for natural cocktail mixers, I stumbled upon Pearl Soda Company, based out of Portland, Oregon. They kindly shared several of their tea-based soda syrups with me, and I was blown away by how much the Dancing Dragon variety, crafted with sarsaparilla root, pu-erh, yerba mate, and honeybush teas, mimicked a true old-style root beer with a touch of earthy depth.
I gravitated to aged rum instead of the traditionally used white rum because I wanted something with deeper oak flavor to yield a smoother beverage. Luckily, I stumbled upon Grander Rum, an all-natural rum produced with care in Panama and aged for 8 years in Kentucky bourbon barrels. I found the rum to have a wonderful aroma of caramel and vanilla and a great strength to form the backbone of balanced cocktails.
To further enhance the sweet, spiced, earthy depth of this cocktail, I added some of Bittercube’s Blackstrap Bitters. Crafted by a duo of Milwaukee-based cocktail consultants, Bittercube Bitters feature extremely well-blended flavor combinations without any artificial ingredients. I’ve enjoyed all of their flavors, but the Blackstrap variety truly made this cocktail shine with a deliciously aromatic mix of sarsaparilla, molasses, and cinnamon.
The resulting drink is comparable to a delightfully spiked root beer with a hint of herbal character and a molasses finish. Stir all ingredients with ice in a mixing glass until chilled, then strain into a soda fountain glass and top with crushed ice. Serve with a straw and an optional slice of dehydrated lemon for some extra sunshine. Enjoy while recounting tales of your craziest college shenanigans.
Crafting a Cocktail Inspired by Japanese Culture
In spring of 2011, I finally realized one of my dreams – visiting Japan. My curiosity with Japanese culture was spiked by the book ShÅgun and Miyazaki movies (extra Valcohol points if you’ve seen Totoro). I went on to take an elective Japanese history course at college, and one of the themes that stood out to me most was celebrating the beauty of the fleeting moment. So many aspects of the culture center on this concept and teach the indispensable patience it takes to appreciate that beauty.
I was lucky to have a friend teaching English in Fukuoka, so I started my voyage there and then continued on to Kyoto and Osaka. One of the most ephemeral yet timeless spots on our journey was the blooming Philosopher’s Path in Kyoto. Walking along the cobbled pathways by the side of a babbling canal and surrounded by flowering trees and ancient temples, I truly lost myself to the breathtaking beauty of the moment. While the cultural site has so much history behind it, the state of the path is always changing as nature works its course.
I wanted this cocktail to evoke the transience of nature and the richness of Japanese culture, so I chose to craft it with matcha tea and a likeness to cherry blossoms. Matcha tea is a powdered form of green tea leaves, traditionally used for the Japanese tea ceremony. Similar to other Japanese green teas, matcha is bold, grassy, and vibrant in flavor. Because the leaves are actually consumed in the powdered form, matcha is especially high in antioxidant and vitamin content. Matcha can range considerably in price depending on its intended use, so I recommend selecting a less expensive, culinary-grade variety for a cocktail application.
Natural cherry blossom flavoring is surprisingly difficult to find outside of Japan, so I had to get creative with my substitutions. I knew I needed a floral element, a hint of cherry, and a sweet aroma. The combination of rose water and Bittercube’s Cherry Bark Vanilla Bitters was the perfect solution. Note that there’s no need to overpay for rose water since it’s a common component of Middle Eastern cooking and therefore available in much more cost-effective form than what you would find at a gourmet grocery store.
To emphasize the grassy and floral notes of the cocktail, I used a base of Death’s Door Gin. Simple and always delivering in quality, Death’s Door has been one of my favorite gins since I first started exploring the spirit. Of course, I especially love that it hails from Wisconsin.
I finished the cocktail with egg white and fresh lemon to smooth the boldness of the matcha and the strength of the floral flavor. Lemon balanced the sweetness of the matcha syrup and gave the drink a pleasant, lingering tartness. The resulting cocktail is truly one of my personal favorites, with its lovely marriage of grassy tea, bright botanicals, aromatic blooms, and creamy finish.
Energizing Cocktails to Power Your Night
You know you’re getting older when your bedtime starts moving farther up, and the question of whether or not to go out becomes an internal struggle. In these cases, the question tends to be: do I need another drink or some caffeine? While an energy drink cocktail or a simple soda mixer may seem convenient, there are so many alternatives that
