The Friday Tipple: Carrot Top

We’re gripped by spring fever, Boozers. Never mind that Punxsutawney Phil predicted an extended winter or that we see snowflakes in Monday’s forecast— we are now firmly planted in meteorological spring and nothing can turn us back even as the clocks move forward just a week from now. Spring has sprung.

Building on last week’s exploration of root vegetable cocktails — and an unintentional nod to 1980s pop culture — we were inspired yet again by the fresh produce delivered by our friendly green grocer. Nothing heralds spring more than a cheerful bunch of carrots, sweet and crunchy and topped by a frothy head of green fronds. Carrots are particularly sweet in the early spring, when frosty nights help concentrate their natural sugars and the warm sunny days allow them to deepen in flavor.

The pairing of carrots with rye whiskey is a perfect match for spring, which, as Charles Dickens said, is a time “when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade” — the rye has a comforting spicy warmth while the carrots lend a welcome note of bright sunshine. The Carrot Top is a necessary shot of spring; go ahead and put on the flip flops that you’ve been eyeing longingly in your closet. You might want to throw on a pair of toe socks with them, just in case. Cheers!

Carrot Top

This lovely little infusion makes a fabulous aperitif on its own, but also makes a smashing cocktail when poured over ginger beer on ice (and, even better, throw in a splash of Stone’s Ginger Wine to add another layer of flavor). If you don’t have crystallized ginger, then substitute a couple of small chunks of fresh ginger and about a 1/2 teaspoon of raw sugar.

1/2 cup rye whiskey (we used Catoctin Creek Roundstone Rye)

1 carrot, freshly grated

3 chunks of crystallized ginger, about 1-inch each

Place all ingredients in a jar and set aside for two hours. Strain liquid and discard carrot and ginger. To serve, put two ounces of infused rye into a cocktail shaker with an ice cube and shake vigorously. Strain into an aperitif or shot glass and sip responsibly.

The Friday Tipple: Tailgater’s Toddy

Hang onto your helmets, Boozers. Yep, it’s time for that most hallowed of all American days: Super Bowl Sunday. Even as we write, tortilla chips are being crisped for homemade queso, pots of Mom’s secret chili are bubbling, and charcuterie enthusiasts are eagerly stuffing sausage casings. Let the games begin.

We’re pretty sure that you can’t enjoy football without a beer — or two — and a nice cold one can be tasty when you’re tucked up by the telly with a plate of nachos. But what if you’re tailgating in Indianapolis with a portable barbecue brimming with bratwurst? Time for a Tailgater’s Toddy.

If you’ve ever trekked through the frosty Eastern European countryside and stopped off at a roadside pub, then you’ll have encountered what can only be described as mulled beer — basically a strong beer that has been simmered with spices and is served warm in a large mug. The flavor is smooth and dark and brimming over with bone-warming richness; with the explosion of craft breweries across the United States, it’s easy to find a lovely local amber or brown ale or perhaps even a porter to serve as the base for this brew. We like to add just a tot of brandy, although a bit of bourbon would do just as nicely — it helps ease the pain, just in case your team doesn’t grab that trophy. Touchdown!

Tailgater’s Toddy

We like to use a beer that is somewhat malty but with a bite of hops to it — basically providing a balance of bitter and sweet that melds with the fruit and spices. Check out your local brewery and pick up a growler or two to bring home — brewers love to talk about flavor profiles and can suggest which of their beers will work best in this recipe.

4 cups beer (we like our local DC Brau, Port City, and Chocolate City)

1 cinnamon stick

1/4 teaspoon ground cardamom

1/4 teaspoon ground allspice

1 slice of fresh ginger, about an inch in diameter

2 wedges of apple, such as Granny Smith

1 small orange, sliced in half

2 TB honey (an orange blossom honey is nice if you have it)

1/4 cup brandy or bourbon (we used Catoctin Creek’s Pearousia Brandy for an extra kick of fruit)

Orange wedges for garnish (optional)

Put all ingredients except brandy into a 4-quart saucepan and simmer over very low heat, stirring occasionally, for 30 to 45 minutes. Remove from heat and add brandy just before serving in mugs or heat-proof glasses with a wedge of orange. Serves 2 – 4; okay, maybe just 1.

The Friday Tipple: Stormy Margarita

It’s Friday the 13th, Boozers. We’re not superstitious but a stiff drink on this gloomy winter day would certainly be most welcome. Our thoughts naturally turned to a Dark and Stormy, which is truly a season-less cocktail, but then we came across a rum punch recipe from Padma Lakshmi, the goddess of Top Chef, when she also commented about a salted lime juice popular in India. The rest, they say, is history.

The base of our Stormy Margarita is a lime-ginger soda that we quickly whipped up and topped off quite simply with a big shot of Gosling’s 151, a lovely dark rum that matches our mood. Astonshingly, the first sip seems to help the skies to clear, and, by the time you drain the last drop, you’ll be dancing across the rooftops in joyous abandon. Or singin’ in the rain.

There’s nothing like a stormy drink to put a little pep in your step. Dust off those tap shoes, Boozers.

Stormy Margarita

Fresh ginger and lime are key to the bold flavors of this drink. We made our soda with a slug of Stone’s Ginger Wine, which adds complexity, but we also think it would work well with a splash of dry sherry. We also used light agave nectar, because it is not cloyingly sweet, but you could substitute sugar or honey to taste.

1 fresh lime, juiced

1/2 tsp. fresh ginger, grated

1 ounce Stone’s Ginger Wine (or dry sherry)

1 tablespoon light agave nectar (adjust to your taste)

large pinch of Kosher salt

1/4 cup club soda

2 ounces Gosling’s 151 Black Seal Rum

lime wheel for garnish

Place first five ingredients in a cocktail shaker and let sit for 10 minutes, then add ice and shake vigorously. Add club soda and swirl to combine, then strain into a glass over ice (this step removes some of the grated ginger so it doesn’t get caught in your teeth, but still leaves a strong ginger essence). Carefully pour rum over the top and garnish with lime. Cheers!

 

Mid-week Tipple: Lavender Lemonade with Hot Gin

photo courtesy Molly McDonald Peterson and Inspired Magazine

It’s National Hot Toddy Day, Boozers, and we just couldn’t resist. Even though this winter has been disappointingly mild, we never miss an opportunity to indulge in a bit of a toddy. It warms the spirits (yes, that’s a pun) as well as the body, and nothing could be more welcome on a gloomy day in January when the tree branches rattle against the telephone wires and even the dogs would rather curl up by the electric fire rather than hunt for errant squirrels.

We’ve offered several types of tasty toddies here on Good Booze, including the Hot Buttered Rum Toddy, the Epiphany, and even the chocolatey Tex-Mex Cocoa, which is perhaps not exactly a toddy, but will do in a pinch. Today we’re showcasing our Lavender Lemonade with Hot Gin, a toddy we recently developed for Inspired Magazine; we were inspired ourselves by none other than Bertie Wooster — that affable character created by author P.G. Wodehouse in his Jeeves and Wooster series. Bertie often calls out beseechingly to his unflappable manservant Jeeves for a “hot gin and lemon — go easy on the lemon” when he’s chilled from a long day out in the English countryside.

As we wrote in Inspired of this drink, “Nothing could be more civil than a proper hot drink by the fireplace when the wind is whipping across the meadows and a case of the sniffles is threatening tomorrow’s snowy hike around Willow Lake.” Quite.

Lavender Lemonade with Hot Gin

2 oz gin (we prefer Catoctin Creek Organic Watershed Gin)
¼ cup lemon juice, freshly squeezed
3 Tbsp local honey (add more or less to taste)
½ cup water
lavender sprig, fresh or dried

To make the Lavender Lemonade: combine lemon juice, water, and honey in a small saucepan, stirring over low heat. Add one 3-inch lavender sprig and bring lemonade to a simmer. Simmer over low heat for 15 minutes, but do not bring to a boil, stirring occasionally. Taste for sweetness/tartness and adjust to your preference. Remove lavender sprig before serving.

Pour 6 ounces of hot Honey-Lavender Lemonade into a large mug and add gin, stirring to combine. Garnish with lemon wheel (optional).

The Friday Tipple: Robert Frost-ini

We’re waxing poetic, Boozers. As we cozy up into the holiday season and the darkest days of winter, we yearn for snowy woods and horse-drawn sleighs, even as we profess a preference for global warming. There is something about the chill stillness of a December night that unites us all to transcend the boundaries of religion, geography, and culture.

And so we bring you the Robert Frost-ini. His poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” inspired us to create this December night in a glass, by combining our quick rosemary-infused vodka with a splash of Catoctin Creek’s Pearousia pear brandy. At the bottom of the glass, like a bright red cardinal perched on the snowy branch of a birch tree, is a soupçon of cranberry simple syrup, beckoning to you with its lip-puckering tartness.

Though your friends and family may be flung far and wide, you can all share in the welcoming darkness of December, as the days slowly begin to lengthen again into the promise of spring. Enjoy the moment.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep/But I have promises to keep/And miles to go before I sleep/And miles to go before I sleep. 

The Robert Frost-ini

2 ounces rosemary-infused vodka (recipe here)

1/2 ounce Pearousia or pear brandy

a few drops of Italian sweet vermouth

scant teaspoon cranberry simple syrup (recipe below)

reserved cranberries

Put vodka, Pearousia and vermouth in a cocktail shaker filled with ice. Shake vigorously. Pour cranberry simple syrup and a single cranberry into the bottom of a chilled martini glass. Strain the contents of the cocktail shaker into the glass and enjoy.

To make cranberry simple syrup:

1 cup sugar

1 cup water

1/2 cup frozen cranberries

1/2 teaspoon orange zest

1 teaspoon gum arabic mixed with 1 teaspoon water (optional)

Combine first four ingredients in a small saucepan and bring to a simmer over medium-low heat. Allow to simmer for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally, until it thickens into a syrup*. Reserve cranberries and strain the syrup, then allow to cool.

* Optional: at this point, you can take the pan off the heat and mix in gum arabic paste, which will make the syrup thicker. Not necessary, but it has a nice texture.

The Friday Tipple: Hot Buttered Rum Toddy

Achoo, Boozers! We’ve just suffered through our first sniffles of the season and were sorely in need of relief — so we grabbed the bottle of rum faster than you can say “decongestant”. It being the holiday season, we wondered if we could combine our purely medicinal hot toddy with a somewhat more festive hot buttered rum. The verdict? Why, yes you can.

Many people associate hot buttered rum with the winter season, but most have never actually had one. Granted, it does sound a little odd: boiling water, rum, butter, sugar, and spices. It seems even more strange to drink butter, but when you consider that you’ll happily dollop whipped cream — a close cousin of butter — on a hot chocolate (or, even better, our Tex-Mex Cocoa), then it begins to sound more palatable.

For our Hot Buttered Rum Toddy, we chose to use an orange spice herbal tea; we also think it would work equally well with an apple spiced tea, or a holiday-inspired tea like Comfort and Joy. We used Gosling’s Black Seal Rum, but you could substitute your favorite liquor, from a spiced rum to gin to bourbon to Grand Marnier. Forget the Nyquil — mix up your toddy and tuck yourself up in bed with a box of Kleenex and a few classic holiday movies. You might almost enjoy yourself. Gesundheit!

Hot Buttered Rum Toddy

The key to this drink is, naturally, the spiced butter compound. If you prefer to make this dairy-free, you can easily substitute a vegan butter spread.

1/4 cup butter, softened

3 tablespoons brown sugar

1/4 teaspoon each of ground nutmeg, cinnamon, and ginger

Tea of your choice

Boiling water

Rum, or other liquor, of your choice

To make the spiced butter compound: mix the softened butter, sugar and spices in a small bowl until well combined. Cover and refrigerate until firm, about one hour.

Steep the tea in 5 ounces of boiling water for 3 or 4 minutes. Add up to two ounces of rum (depending on how bad your cold is), stir well, then top with a spoonful of the chilled butter compound. Enjoy!

The Friday Tipple: Tex-Mex Cocoa

Brrr, Boozers. The end of November may have been unseasonably warm for many of us, but December is quickly making up for lost time. As we bundle up in our Snuggies, our thoughts naturally turn to… tequila.

Yes, dust off those bottles of agave goodness — tequila need not be only a summer refresher, and don’t forget about the triple sec. The natural bite of tequila means that it is perfectly complemented by cinnamon and cocoa, and the triple sec provides a lightly sweet citrus note — combining together for a rich and spicy winter warmer.

Because we do like a little kick to our cocoa sometimes, we chose to add a few drops of hot sauce to the mix — our local favorite is Uncle Brutha’s. It gives that extra little sizzle as you curl up next to a crackling fire. We’re also pretty sure that Tex Mex Cocoa would be the drink of choice for a midnight visitor on Christmas Eve — Santa gets a little tired of milk and cookies.

Tex Mex Cocoa

We make this with almond milk, which adds a nice nutty undertone to the cocoa. Use a good quality ground cocoa — it will add richness to the flavor.

1 heaping teaspoon ground cocoa

1 heaping teaspoon sugar

1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

A few drops of hot sauce

1.5 ounces silver tequila

3 ounces hot (but not boiling) almond milk (unsweetened)

triple sec

Mix cocoa, sugar, and cinnamon in the bottom of a mug. Add tequila and hot sauce and stir together into a slurry, then mix in the hot almond milk until well-incorporated. Float a little triple sec across the top. Now that’s what we call holiday cheer!