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OK, so this isn’t a cocktail at all; it’s a whisky. Fall is whisky season, and sometimes all you need is a simple glass. I acquired this particular whisky last weekend while visiting the distillery, Kittling Ridge, for their “whisky weekend” event. Every fall for the past few years, they’ve released a new small-batch whisky [...]

I’m recently back from vacation in the Pacific Northwest, where I had the chance to try these Bittermens “Hopped Grapefruit” bitters at Liberty in Seattle. (Joel, our bartender that evening, was kind enough to both use them in a drink and let me sample them on their own.) I was already familiar with the Bittermens [...]

So far, all the cocktail syrups I’ve discussed in my Summer Syrup Series have come from the classic bartending tradition. Today’s, however, is drawn from an altogether different branch of the mixological family tree: Tiki drinks. The Tiki tradition calls on a wide array of different syrups, from plain old simple syrup to orgeat to [...]

Before there was grenadine, there was raspberry syrup. Okay, maybe that’s not literally true, but if you read early cocktail books, like Jerry Thomas’ Bartender’s Guide, you’ll see plenty of references to raspberry syrup… and none to grenadine. It’s an indispensable ingredient in the East India Cocktail and Clover Club, and makes a pretty fine [...]

With temperatures around here breaking records, it seems like the perfect time to look at one of summer’s greatest coolers: iced tea. When I was growing up, iced tea was always a manufactured product, with no relationship to the real tea my mother would drink by the pot every day. Instead, it came as a [...]

Is it possible for a blue drink to be good? People in some quarters spend a lot of time debating what, exactly, constitutes a craft cocktail. There’s lots of debate, but I’m sure most would agree that any drink that’s blue probably doesn’t qualify. But, as Jeff “Beachbum” Berry points out in his book, Beachbum [...]

When I first became interested in craft cocktails, orgeat was one of the first syrups on my “to buy” list. (Actually, the very first time I heard about it was when watching Amélie, in which one of the customers orders a Mauresque.) Strangely, though, I had never made it myself until recently. Originally made from [...]

My past Friday Night Cocktail posts have more-or-less reflected simply what I’m drinking at the time, with no particular overarching theme. For the next few weeks, that’s going to change, as I launch the Summer Syrup Series. Syrups are an indispensable part of mixology, and have been ever since the days of Jerry Thomas. Early [...]

In light of my recent explorations of Mexican cuisine, it seemed only appropriate to pair those meals with Mexico’s indigenous spirit, tequila. If your mental image of tequila evokes frat parties and efforts to remember the proper order to lick-shoot-suck, you should know that there’s a whole world of tequila out there for you to [...]

Although winter has held on for too long this year, spring finally seems to have set up shop, and my drinking habits are making their seasonal shift from brown spirits to white. And since it’s Easter weekend, what could be more appropriate than a drink with eggs? I’ve written about certain egg-based cocktails before, but [...]