Random Access Cocktails (RAC)

RANDOM ACCESS COCKTAILS

A good Monday evening to everyone! Last night I had a little game with a friend of mine after some heavy duty Dungeons&Dragons. He had brought a bottle of sour apple schnapps so I thought "Why not randomly decide two other liqueurs and whip up a drink of them?" What a splendid idea!

Three "rules":

1. 2 cl of sour apple included
2. one lime wedge squeezed in
3. 4 cl of apple juice included

So we headed to my bar cabinet and rolled a d20 to decide which Dekuyper liqueurs we would use! We both rolled once and with 20 bottles available we got the following combinations:

• peach & blueberry
• amaretto & watermelon

#1

sour apple, peach, blueberry, apple juice, lime wedge

So here's the first one. With a fresh aroma, you couldn't really notice the peach flavor. The blueberry on the other hand dominated most of the drink leaving only a crisp, US-candy-ish (jelly bean) aftertaste to it!

#2

sour apple, amaretto, water melon, apple juice, lime wedge

The second one was a peculiar mixture! You have that distinct almond aroma, tastes like amaretto and then changes to the watermelony flavors! The apple part has completely disappeared!

In its essence, both cocktails weren't "super delicious". Sure, one goes (for the ladies) but they both had a problem of being very sugary (like candy), synthetic and something youngsters would appreciate. All of this was culminated in our discussion:

Me: "Try having six of these!"

Friend: " :D "

Punch in the face

PUNCH IN THE FACE

Three punch ideas for a par-tayh

Good evening everyone. With my wife one (1!) day due from "labor" (these are interesting times, my dear readers), a good friend of mine gave me a challenge!

Last Saturday I bumped into him at my work. He had a friend who was organizing a big party and needed a good punch for it. So my friend challenged me to come up with a few ideas and preferably have a tasting at my place. Since I'm rather short on time (our first born should pop any given day now), I managed to make the tasting happen today.

I was given one restriction; the punch can't be overly sweet.

So as I rode my bike on Sat. (technically Sun.) night home, I came up with three ideas, of which I actualized two. I didn't know the "theme" for the party, so I made a range of different styles of punches which would work and if needed, could be tweaked easily.

For a punch, a few reminders. The most important part; garbage in, garbage out. Using crap products gives you a said result; crap. That said, it is vital to recognize we're building a punch here. So there's no reason to buy champagne when you can use sparkling wine. Well there's one obvious reason. You don't spend so much money with the latter. BUT say one uses juices for their punch. Getting the cheapest carton of concentrated stuff can and will make a big difference.

In addition, always work in parts. It is way easier making a big bowl of punch when you can easily e.g. ten-fold your amount of liquid poured in and still have the same consistency with each batch.

Lastly, freeze a carton of juice instead of a big chunk of ice for each batch. This way as the block melts it gives more flavor than just regular ice/water.

So let's get down to business. The three ideas I had were:

Grasovka-pear and the citron-peach, respectively.

• Grasovka (bison grass vodka)
• Xanté
• Cloudy apple juice (premium)
• Sparkling wine

• Citron vodka (in this case Absolut)
• Peach liqueur
• Orange juice (premium/"squeezed")
• Sparkling wine
• (twist, explained later)

And the last (which was not made since I didn't have the material)

• Bacardi Razz/Forest fruit vodka/Nordic berries vodka
• Cassis/raspberry/relevant liqueur
• Forest fruit juice
• Sparkling rose wine

With the first, I thought of a "wintery apple pie/pear punch" with cinnamon sticks/apple slices as a decoration. The consensus was this would work as a drink but was too heavy for a punch. The second one I made (two versions actually) was a solid candidate. The fact I squeezed the juice for the glass made it (surprise, surprise) very fresh and easily enjoyed! I made another version where I substituted the peach liqueur with apricot brandy and a Fanta and the difference was huge, in favor for the first version.

The last idea was something "forest fruity", merely to give options for a different kind of punch.

Whatever they decide to go with in the end, I really felt that this was a fun assignment to have as we also discussed total punch amounts + pretty much covered everything related to the party, punch and garnishes in general.

Watermelon Whip

WATERMELON WHIP

(Two versions of it)

Good evening again! Here is a cocktail I quickly summed up for my wife, is easy to make and tastes delicious! I call it the Watermelon Whip.

• 2-3 lime wedges
• 2 cl cointreau OR aged rum
• 2 cl watermelon liqueur
• pineapple juice

First squeeze in the lime wedges, add some ice and add the alcohols. As you can see in the pictures, on the right version I poured the watermelon liqueur last. Apparently it didn't sink and mix with the juice (which was nice). Top it off with some pineapple juice, add a few straws and if wanted a lime wheel/wedge as a garnish. Done!

This was an excellent drink. I used a smaller glass on purpose; if you have a bigger glass, just double the ingredients and you should be fine. The watermelon liqueur (which I haven't used before) worked well with the rest of the ingredients and even when I substituted the cointreau with aged rum, the drink didn't lose its initial "touch". The rum + pineapple did work together quite nicely!