Root56

ROOT56

A pleasant upcoming weekend to y'all! Here's a drink, from which I made actually three different versions (here's just the promopic :D). The Root56 (Route56 get it, also Jäger with its 56 roots/spices)

I tried with the original of course and then with Manifest and Spice (winterspice).

• 5 cl Jäger (4 cl for Finnish restaurants)
• ginger beer (instead of ale)
• 1-2 slice cucumber, lime wedge
• (fresh ginger)

In a high ball glass filled with ice. Add the jägermeister, ginger beer (ale) and garnish. The "official" mentions 1 slice of cucumber and a wedge of lime but feel free to experiment (fresh ginger or e.g. muddle lime wedges). Ginger beer gives a more zesty taste to it and I have to admit even one slice of cucumber gives enormous smoothness to this drink! Overall, the original version was the best as the winter spiced didn't taste other than ginger beer (it's also 25% ABV). With Manifest you have a much distinct, drier taste to it. Eventually it is up to you, which you prefer the best. But I recommend trying the basic one first.

Gingerhassle

GINGERHÄSSÄKKÄ

(GINGERHASSLE)

(I know, it is in Finnish)

Hello everyone! Here's a very refreshing drink, initially asked by a customer (do something citrus-y) and I thought of summoning something up for them. It turned out to be so good I figured "hey this makes one helluva drink!" Since this doesn't have a proper name yet, it is called a "Gingerhassle". Yeah, that'll do :D.

½ lime's juice

2 cl cointreau

2 cl gin

ginger beer, to top

On a highball glass filled with ice, press the juice of ½ a lime onto it. Add the alcohols and top the whole thing up with ginger beer. Garnish with a lime wheel, add a straw and there you go!

It is both fresh with good notes of citrus, orange and ginger. The lime juice cuts the tight gingery notes and the gin I used (a london dry style) was more in the background. Nonetheless, an excellent drink this was!

Jallumuuli

JALLUMUULI
(aka JALLUKINKERI)

A Finnish classic

Hey everyone! Here's a classic, that has reach a solid place in the Finnish bar culture, the Jallumuuli or Jallukinkeri. Easy to make, easy to drink and easily ordered again :D, this drink consists of:

• 4 cl Jaloviina * (A Finnish cut-brandy)
• 2 lime wedges (muddled)
• ginger ale

In a highball glass, muddle the lime wedges, add ice your Jaloviina* and top it off with ginger ale.

As said, the lime juice and ginger ale really helps cut the edge from the brandy, making this suitable for...pretty much anyone! 

Moscow Mule

MOSCOW MULE

No cupper mug, but still has the kick!

Hello everyone and welcome back! Today I came to realize that in the past years I still had not made the Moscow Mule. Given, it's a well known drink and when done properly, tastes a-mazing during the summer time.

As you already see, I did not use the traditional Moscow Mule cup (I don't have one), so any good sized tumbler will do. What you'll need is:

• ½ of a lime + 1 lime wheel
• 5 cl vodka
• ginger beer, not ale. BEER.

The reason I have to stress the importance of using ginger BEER is that it is a completely different product than the ale one. Ginger ale, in all its fairness is just carbonated water with ginger flavoring, but ginger beer uses real ginger, has that spicy kick and just overall tastes about...I don't know, a thousand times better.

So what you want to do is the following: Squeeze the juice of the ½ lime into your tumbler, you can drop the shell in the glass as well. Add 5 cl of vodka and fill the glass with cracked ice (not blocks nor totally crushed). Add your ginger beer and garnish with a lime wheel. Serve.

Extremely refreshing during the summer periods, if you ever get a hold on to some ginger beer, try this cocktail!

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 "

Dark'N'Stormy

DARK'N'STORMY

"It was a dark and stormy night..."

Well not quite, but close enough! This whole Midsummer weekend has been rainy and well, quite dark! To honor that I've made a very classic cocktail (variant) called Dark'N'Stormy!

Fair enough, this drink demands the use of Gosling's rum (which I don't have) and their own ginger beer but heck, I will now cut some corners and as mentioned, make one of my own. Go ahead, Gosling, SUE ME! :D What you need:

• ginger beer (go for the fiery ones)
• 6 cl dark rum
• a little bit of lime

In a highball glass filled with ice, pour the ginger beer in. Do leave some room for the rum. Then pour in the rum to create a layer as seen in the picture (the stormy bit on top of calm waters). Squeeze in some lime and garnish with a lime wheel. (Add a straw) & serve.

Quite excellent a summer drink! Given, the use of Kraken rum (I got to say the use of Krakens and stormy drinks to fit in like a glove!) made this cocktail taste different than probably intended, but it worked well! The spiciness of both the rum and ginger beer were an absolute "wow".

My thumbs up for this!

Mojito

MOJITO

2009

2011

2013, fresh mint from my own garden

 Probably one of the most known cocktail of all time, this is the Mojito. It is very nice to see how my skills and abilities as a mixologist have bore fruit. Just look at the pictures from the past years. In 2009 I barely knew how to muddle. The end result, shredded mint leaves and a funny lime wheel on the rim of the glass. In 2011 the glass isn't even filled up. Or then I took a picture of it after I had sipped several times of it. Contrary to 2009, I actually used the mint stalks. Now, 2013 I knew how to muddle and I even had my own mint from my garden. What could go wrong? Nothing I say, nothing. I'm really proud of my work. But let's begin, shall we? Do mind there are countless amounts of different ways to make a Mojito, this was mine.

• 5 cl white rum
• 1 tablespoon simple syrup
• ½ lime cut in four pieces
• ~12 mint leaves and a sprig for decoration
• crushed ice
• club soda

Gently slam the mint leaves on your palm and drop them in the glass. Add the simple syrup and gently press the mint leaves in order to release their oils. Don't shred, press. Add in the lime cuts and muddle them as well. Fill the glass ½ way with crushed ice and pour in the rum. With the help of the bar spoon mix the ingredients in the glass. Fill the glass with crushed again and top it off with club soda. Add a sprig of mint for decoration, pop a few straws in the glass and enjoy.

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! :)

Caipirinha

CAIPIRINHA

Caipirinha in 2013

Caipirinha in 2016, pretty much exactly three years later

It all started in the summer, 2009, when I made this drink. Well, not per se, back then I made a Caipiroska where I substituted the Pitú needed to make this for vodka.

Almost four years after I now made the "original" version, the Caipirinha. Still as simple as ever, all you need is (love):

• 5 cl of Pitú (cachacha) (2016 version was Ypioca)
• ½ a lime, quartered + a wedge for garnish
• 2 - 2½ tea spoons of granulated cane sugar

Muddle the sugar, half a lime (which has been quartered) and the cachaca in a tumbler. Add some ice and in a churning kind-of-motion mix the ingredients. Add more ice if needed. Finally, stick a few straws and if you want to decorate your drink, a lime wedge will do the trick.

That's it! I really enjoyed the sweet-sour taste this cocktail has and the Pitú's distinctive flavor gives quite the edge to it! This is a good summer drink or better yet a small party drink, if you mind the work.

Editor's Note 2016:

This cocktail is the shit! After a proper Caipirinha a vodka-based -roska will never substitute this beauty! The perfect summer time's drink!

Gin & Tonic (GT)

GIN & TONIC

2012

2016

Gin, ahoy! I present thee with a cocktail I have made short shrift of for many years. But I recognize the beauty of this drink now. I shall make haste and construe the formula of this savoury cocktail:

• 4 cl Gin (I used Bombay Sapphire)
• tonic water
• a wedge of lime

Supply a high ball glass with plenty of ice, add up the gin followed by a topping off with tonic water. Slice up a wedge of lime and do squeeze the juices of into the drink and use the rind to sweep on the rim of the glass. Finally, drop the wedge onto the drink and enjoy.

 

Surprised as thou might, I have used a proportion of 1:2. Not only did I manage to capture all of the exquisite and aromatic flavours of the Bombay Sapphire but created a marvellous symbiosis with the tonic water. Not forgetting the sweetness of the lime juice, this cocktail has reached new heights in my personal favourites list.

I shall go hunt some foxes now. 

"Tally Ho gents! And off after that fox!"

2016, editor's note

I've come a long way since my 2012 G&T. Not only have multiple producers brought their own gins for us to enjoy (there are seriously so many available at the moment), the sheer amount of different tonics has skyrocketed. As you can clearly see from the two pictures above, I would make my G&T now a tad different. But only a tad.

• 5 cl gin
• a small amount of tonic
• garnish, what is recommended for the gin in question

Using a small tumbler will make your G&T better since the relative proportion of tonic-water is less meaning the botanical flavors of the gin come out better. Thus I would and will recommend ordering a G&T "short" if you can! Taste the difference!

Red Corona

RED CORONA

"Opened up another vial, started drinking more beer
So I could wake up next to Heather Locklear"

 - Nine Coronas by Weird Al Yankovic

Today we're making a beer "cocktail"! Tuning up the original Corona to make a Red Corona you need:

• 1 bottle of Corona Extra
• a slice of lime
• 2.5 cl vodka (1 shot)
• a dash of grenadine

I used a British shot measure, 4 cl of vodka (using the Finnish standard) could be implied but I want to stay loyal to the original recipe so to speak.

What you need to do is the following. Open the corona and take a few sips until the beer level is around the bottle neck. Add the vodka, grenadine and squeeze in the lime wedge. Now using your thumb (or any finger that'll fit and make the bottle airtight), stick in inside the bottle and slowly turn the bottle upside down so the ingredients mix up properly.

That's it!

I couldn't taste the vodka at all! Then again it is no big surprise since as I have stated many previous times, grenadine has a nasty habit of overwhelming most flavors with great ease. In this case too, it tasted slightly like beer, more like fizzy grenadine with a little bite. I could imagine having a bunch of these with good friends. Actually, a Red Corona would be perfect with friends. Since this drink still has that deviously  hidden vodka kick, just watch not to have too many. Drink responsibly!

Caipiroska

THE CAIPIROSKA

How everything started! I can't remember it like yesterday, but I do know it was the 23rd of June, 2009. I specially prepared four caipiroskas for me & my friends. At the time I didn't have Cachaça to make a caipirinha so I used regular vodka. In my opinion I made a pretty good job for a first timer!

So the caipiroska contains:

• ½ a lime cut in 4 wedges
• 2 teaspoons of (brown) sugar
• 5cl vodka

Put the lime wedges in a tumbler, add the sugar and muddle. Add the vodka, stir gently and pour crushed ice on it. Stir again. Done!

This cocktail is easy to make and tastes brilliant! As mentioned, the caipirinha is the "original" cocktail and like many other cocktails, this masterpiece can be easily modified as well by changing the alcohol to something else. But if you ever happen to get your hands to some Pitú, totally try to make one of these babies!

A true classic this cocktail is.

Jamaican Mule

The Jamaican Mule

Here's the Jamaican Mule. As you might or might not know, there are several versions of the mule. For example the Moscow, the London or the Mexican, to name a few. Here's the Jamaican version using:

• 4cl of Spiced Rum (in its essence, any rum is okay except white)
• ½ a lime cut half
• ginger ale

In a high ball glass filled with ice, squeeze in the lime wedges, add the rum and top it off with ginger ale. Garnish with a lime wedge.

I must say this drink was a huge disappointment. Why? Because Schweppes "ginger ale" is utter shit. Never...never use it if all possible! I can't express in words how furious I am when describing how horrible this commercial piece of garbage Schweppes somehow managed to produce. If and when I get over this huge tragedy I barely can call a cocktail, what I suggest with deepest sincerety, for the love of God, use this brand of ginger beer instead next time:

Nuff' said.