Ramos Gin Fizz

RAMOS GIN FIZZ

The legendary Ramos Gin Fizz, originates from the year 1888 and has served many customers ever since. Today I'm taking a better look at this cocktail that has at least exceptional ingredient in it.

• 4.5 cl gin
• 1.5 cl lemon juice
• 1.5 cl lime juice
• 3.0 cl simple syrup
• 6.0 cl heavy cream
• 1 egg white
• a few drops of orange blossom (flower) water

With all the ingredients in a cocktail shaker, dry shake with pride for at least a few minutes. Then add ice and shake for a good 12 minutes. Yes, you heard me, 12-long-minutes. Well at least according to the original recipe you were supposed to shake it for that time. Back in the days when you made this the shaker was going around the bartenders, being shook by everyone for a long enough time. In my occasion I settled for ~2 minutes of dry shaking and ~3 minutes ice shaking.

Now strain your cocktail into a tall glass with no ice and top the drink of with some soda water. Stir and optionally garnish (I kind of forgot) with...say an orange slice, or a cherry speared between an orange slice. But something orangy, that's for sure :)

The texture of this cocktail was extremely frothy. Notes of orange clearly noticeable. Taste was smooth as fu*k. Tasted a bit like orange-milk, aftertaste a tad bitter. It's like a cousin for a Piña Colada! That's the taste! But...this cocktail did not give me a "wow" - effect. It's a good cocktail, but not that good. Was an interesting one, nonetheless.

Team Ding Dong

TEAM DING DONG

Today I created a cocktail requested by a colleague of mine! Introducing the Team Ding Dong! (no, I did not make this name up :D) When I first looked at the ingredients list, I started wondering whether the cloud berry jam would work with whiskey. Surprisingly though, it did!

• 3 teaspoons cloud berry jam 
• 1 cl lemon juice (fresh)
• 1 cl orange juice (fresh)
• 1 cl simple syrup
• 4 cl Jameson Irish Whiskey

Add everything in a cocktail shaker, put in ice and shake vigorously. Double strain into a chilled champagne glass. (Editor's note: Preferably a coupe glass, the flute did not work). Garnish with an orange twist.

As mentioned in my previous chapter, before I discuss the taste of this cocktail, the champagne flute was a poor decision for this cocktail. I had trouble straining the cloud berry jam "pulp" into the narrow glass, causing a bit of a mess. A coupe would've done a much better job + the garnish would've looked better.

That said, the taste. Marvellous! Easily spotted the whiskey, which was at the same time sweet and sour. The jam gave this drink its well-deserved body and even with 3 tea spoons of it, it wasn't overpowering at all. It gave...and exciting side note to this cocktail. A good cocktail made better with the right choice of glass!

Apinawiski (Monkey Whiskey)

APINAWISKI (MONKEY WHISKEY)

Here's an easy mix for everyone to try! As we already know, there are numerous mixes of X and coke, but this weird-ish combination of whiskey and banana, you have to try it to believe it!

• 2 cl whiskey
• 2 cl banana liquor (e.g. creme de bananes)
• coca-cola

Add the liquors in a high ball glass filled with ice and top it off with cola. No garnish needed. The Monkey Whiskey has a smooth notes of banana, the slight kick of whiskey and of course, whiskey + coke does work. All in all, not a  special cocktail, but an easy mix for any event!

Cucumber & Green Tea Mojito

CUCUMBER & GREEN TEA MOJITO

What a pleasantly summery drink we have here! Here is a Cucumber & Green Tea Mojito, first introduced by a friend of mine who found it from here and let me know about it. At first my suspic-o-meter gave a signal. Cucumber...and tea...and a mojito?? Well, why the fudge not??

I had to do some before-hand preparations for this cocktail. The recipe serves four and the ingredients are measured accordingly:

• 1 cucumber (save some for garnishin)
• 20 cl water
• 20 cl sugar
• 20 cl white rum
• 20 cl green tea
• 4 limes
• 2 pots of mint
• (club soda)

The cucumber syrup:

• 1 whole cucumber
• 20 cl water
• 20 cl sugar (almost a full US cup)

Cut the cucumber into slices and with the water + sugar bring to boil and then let it simmer on medium heat so that the sugar completely dissolves. Strain the cucumbers and let the syrup cool at room temperature a little while before putting it in the fridge.

Brew a cup (25cl) green tea and let it cool similar as the syrup.

Get your mixing glass ready. Drop roughly 6-10 mint leaves in the glass (you can smack the mint leaves gently before doing this for the essential oils to come up better), add the juice of half a lime and gently muddle the mint/lime juice. Now add 5 cl of the cucumber syrup, 5 cl green tea and 5 cl rum and stir to mix. 

Take a tumbler, fill it with ice and pour in the mixture. Garnish with a few slices of cucumber, a sprig of mint, a wedge of lime and optionally a splash of club soda is okay too. Using a straw helps a lot too! On a side note, I never needed to use all of the limes listed in the recipe, I did well with 2½, using 1 half/drink + a small wedge. Also, I never used the club soda, didn't hurt the drink though.

I made this for friends that came over today and their commentary on this cocktail was unanimous; a very refreshing summer drink! 

To wrap this up, actually making four cocktails was a bit of a hassle, but all's well that ends well! A good cocktail this was! (and still is)

Thanks for the input, Tacy! :)

Long Island Ice Tea

LONG ISLAND ICE TEA

Here we have one of those "epic" cocktails (such as the Singapore Sling). The famous Long Island Ice Tea. I made one of these back in the days with poor(er) success than now. I've gotten wiser from those years. And my equipment has gotten better. To be honest, this cocktail isn't really that hard to pull of, the amount of liquors might just scare some before anything has happened yet! So let's begin:

• 1.5 cl tequila
• 1.5 cl vodka
• 1.5 cl rum (white)
• 1.5 cl cointreau
• 1.5 cl gin
• 2.5 cl lemon juice
• 3.0 cl simple syrup
• cola

Except for the cola, add everything in your cocktail shaker, put some ice in it and shake vigorously. Strain into a tom collins (high ball) glass filled with ice and top it off with cola. A lemon wedge/slice for garnish + a few straws do the rest. As you can see from the picture, the alcohols are on the bottom, the cola on top of it and the general color is similar that of a ice tea (peach).

I can't remember much from my early years, but this one knocks my socks right off my feet! Albeit being a potent mixture, I can barely taste the alcohol in this one. In addition, it does taste like ice tea!

If you feel like doing something special with the items in your bar cabinet, this is definitely the one.

Bronx

BRONX

Introducing this cocktail with other words than the Wikipedia would be futile:

"The Bronx Cocktail is essentially a perfect martini with orange juice added."

Fair enough. So a "perfect" martini/manhattan/etc. is equal amounts of sweet AND dry vermouth in the drink. Excluding the cocktail garnish (one kumquat cut in half), here is the Bronx:

• 3 cl gin
• 1.5 cl sweet vermouth
• 1 cl dry vermouth
• 1.5 cl orange juice

Add everything in the cocktail shaker with ice, shake and strain into a chilled cocktail/martini glass. The kumquat decoration was wholly my idea, something yellow-ish and pretty to the side doesn't hurt this cocktail at all.

Unlike the dry martini, the sweet vermouth does not really work here. It has that Negroni/Americano - style bitterness which overpowers the rest of the cocktail. I could barely taste anything else than the sweet vermouth. This is definitely not one of my favorite cocktails. I'd rather have a dry martini instead.

Champagne cocktail Shaker style

CHAMPAGNE COCKTAIL SHAKER STYLE

More sparkling cocktails! Here is a champagne cocktail I made using the recipe Shaker Bar in Helsinki/Jyväskylä use in one of their mixes. It's an interesting one and I had to try it myself:

• ~1 cm piece of cucumber
• 2 cl midori
• dash simple syrup
• sparkling wine (champagne)

First, cut a pice of cucumber, drop it in your cocktail shaker and muddle the juices out of it. Add the midori and dash of simple syrup and ice and shake it but don't break it! Take your chilled champagne flute and doublestrain your mixture in the glass. Then, carefully layer the champagne (I used sparkling wine) on top of the base liquids. Again, be careful when adding sparkling wine to something sugary, it'll foam like crazy.

At this point you can either use dried cranberries (their way) or one cocktail cherry (my way) and drop them in the drink. A beautiful contrast between green/red. Some stir the drink once for the ingredients to mix but I left it as it was. Better that way.

This was an interesting cocktail. Especially towards the end the flavors from the cucumber and midori...they work! A dry beginning with a sweet after-taste. Not bad. Not bad at all!

French 75

FRENCH 75

Are you ready for a special drink? Because this classic one sure is one! Introducing the French 75. I've longed for this cocktail for such a long time now and finally...finally I had the opportunity to create this truly fantastic cocktail!

• 2 cl fresh lemon juice
• 2 cl simple syrup
• 4.5 cl gin
• champagne (or sparkling wine)
• lemon twist for garnish

Before we start, some recipes substitute the gin for cognac (being the "French" 75, not the British 75), but either way it is fine. Just note that using quality cognac will of course alter the taste of this cocktail. I used gin, though.

Shake the first three ingredients in a cocktail shaker with plenty of ice and (double)strain into a champagne flute (a tall tom collins glass will do just fine, if you don't have a flute). Top the drink with the sparkling wine and decorate with a lemon twist. Remember that the sparkling wine will react with the sugar causing heavy foaming so pour it gently and carefully. Also, I used a rather large slice of lemon peel and given, it does look more beautiful in the drink than just a small twist.

Taste-wise. Phoooie! Just amazing. A perfect harmony I must say! This is definitely a drink for brunch or a good social event. You can't go wrong with the French 75.

Dry Martini

DRY MARTINI

Probably the most iconic cocktail of all time, the Martini has arrived! I here-by present you with the classic dry version of it. Before we get down to business, there are numerous ways you can do it. The relative proportion of vermouth to gin varies depending on how you like yours to be done. I always remember my mother saying how a bartender made the martini extra dry; he just showed the bottle of vermouth to the customer before proceeding in making the cocktail meaning he did not even use vermouth to begin with! A copy-pasted story from Wikipedia tells how Noël Coward suggested that the ideal martini should be made by "filling the glass with gin then waving it in the general direction of Italy." That's some crazy shit right there...

Nonetheless, this is how I made this:

• roughly 2.5 cl dry vermouth
• 5 cl gin

I did some preparations before-hand. I had my mixing glass in the fridge, likewise the vermouth and gin were both there. I also added some ice cubes in my cocktail glass and filled it with water. Basically, all of my ingredients and tools were properly chilled.

First, I filled my mixing glass with ice and poured over the vermouth. I then stirred it only a couple of times before discarding the vermouth. My ice now had that aromatic flavor from the fortified wine I used, but none of it is included in the final product.

I then added the gin and stirred the drink for about 20-25 seconds, chilling it well (and giving some dilution in the process). I discarded the ice-water mixture from the cocktail glass and strained my gin in it.

Finally I cut a piece of lemon peel, pressed the essential oils over the drink, gently rubbed the peel around the rim of the glass and dropped it in.

The classic martini.

Now a few words about the drink and its taste. When I was a young boy, I remember I ordered this drink at a restaurant. At that time it tasted like crap. Fair enough, my taste buds had not developed yet. But now...well I'll be damned, this was something completely different! The lemon peel freshened this cocktail up by the magnitude of a thousand! Albeit being "only gin in a glass", I could easily drink this without grinning.

Visually this cocktail is aesthetic, beautiful, elegant, simple and complex in flavors. Classy as fuck.

Airmail Cocktail

The Airmail cocktail

Good morning everyone! This morning I tried something completely "different". How does a mix of rum and champagne sound like? My thoughts exactly. After this cocktail I've come to the conclusion that either I:

1. Used wrong ingredients when creating this
2. Don't like the mix of rum and champagne

Either way, I present you the Airmail cocktail. Many sites have different proportions of how much you need  of each ingredient. This is what I used:

• 1.5 cl honey syrup (to make honey syrup, use the same amount of honey and hot water, stir until consistent)
• 1.5 cl lemon juice (many imply the use of lime juice)
• 5 cl white rum (many imply the use of rhum agricole)
• champagne, sparkling wine, etc...

Combine the three first ingredients, shake with plenty of ice and strain into a coupe glass. As seen in the picture, I had a cocktail glass. Top off with brut champagne (or sparkling wine, whatever you have in hand at the moment).

Now that I think of it. I have probably fudged things up to begin with. But regarding this cocktail, not much to say. The rum and champagne mix does not quite cut it. This is definitely a cocktail I should either work on more to perfect it...or just ditch it as a bad one. I mean, not every classic cocktail is good just because of its "classiness".

On the positive side...I can drink the rest of the champagne on its own.