Yea… where have I been?  The holidays were MUCH busier than I expected.  I don’t have a lot of relatives that need visits or anything like that… it was just a lot of social obligation and continued “home project” activities – that I’m still in the throws of getting ready for 2010.

I also went back on my bi-annual low carb diet so for a couple weeks I have no alcohol at all (and when booze is your muse, no alcohol means a lack of creative thinking) and then I’ll be sticking with straight stuff most of the time.  Which is actually good because it will give me more opportunity to try new versions of everything basic – and that is more useful information than getting off onto a cocktail tangent.

I had a good Christmas as usual.  I still have not had time to go through all my toys (lots of video games and such), and I’m giving inordinate amounts of time to some of them (i.e., Lego Rock Band which turns out to be as fun as RB2 lacking only the online play).  I’m old enough (notice I did not say “mature” enough) that most of my Christmases are now focused on my daughter and her holiday experience – and she really gets a lot of it.  I thought I had a lot of toys.  My wife feels completely crushed under the perception of our mounds of toys and electronics, which is why I’m doing all these house projects to give back some living space to my wife who I love; and I like remodeling work – it’s rewarding.  Plus it’s an opportunity to dig through boxes of accumulated stuff to find out what I have forgotten over the years – and there is a lot of that so it’s almost like a second Christmas

That will be more fun in another week when I can again indulge in some booze.

cheers

Egg Nog is easily one of the most recognizable winter holiday drinks (maybe the most recognizable).  A great egg nog is hard to beat – something for everyone.  First off you can adjust the sweetness and spices to taste and then you can add almost any alcoholic beverage you want to the virgin nog.  The New England standard is rum and the southern standard is often bourbon. Because my grandfather always drank egg nog with bourbon at Christmas I grew up thinking that bourbon WAS the way to make a true egg nog.  Not until I went to college did I learn that a nog is traditionally rum based.  I like both a lot.  In college we drank a lot of our egg nog with Courvoisier (way before Courvoisier became the popular drink it is today in certain circles) – it’s a good cognac and makes a great complement to egg nog.  Branching out from the southern tradition, any number of Kentucky and Tennessee whiskeys work great as well, including rye whiskey.  The trick is balancing your personal preferences of sweetness, spiciness and booze taste.

I like my egg nog only medium sweet – the flavor and texture are more important to me.  Too much sugar isn’t necessary.  My favorite basic recipe is as follows:

6 X-Large Eggs
scant 1/2 Cup white sugar
scant 1/4 Cup demerara sugar
22 oz Whole Milk
10 oz Heavy Cream
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground nutmeg
12 oz Booze

Blend eggs and sugars together thoroughly.  Add milk, cream and spices – blend well.  Stir or whisk in booze.  For the serious blending I like to use one of those hand blender/chopper tools with a fast blade – does a great job of homogenizing the egg, cream and spices. Chill for an hour or more to let the flavors meld. Once you start drinking this stuff it won’t last – even if you are drinking alone (in which case just consider it a meal).

This recipe makes enough nog for a round with several friends.  Once you add the booze this is a medium body nog – plenty of weight on the tongue from the cream but not super thick like some store brands that are artificially thickened.  The demerara adds a bit of richness, but the total sugar is not as high as many other recipes.  The egg content is substantial as well. You can cut back on the egg size if you want to cut cholesterol and you can substitute small amounts of artificial sweetner if you are desperate to avoid sugar (but be careful doing so; it’s a shame to spoil a wonderful drink by getting too artificial).

Booze preferences by taste:

• Light with a traditional but not at all strong alcohol flavor – Cruzan Aged Rum (your New England friends will be impressed)
• Heavy traditional – Sailor Jerry’s or any of several “Navy” rums (most are good)
• Extra spicy – Captain Morgans original spiced rum
• Southern – Literally any good bourbon. If you really like the friends/guests you are serving go ahead and use a top-shelf bourbon (see previous posts on whiskey)
• Sweet Southern – Dickle No. 12
• Plantation Southern – Southern Comfort
• Irish Nog – Old Bushmills with a chaser of Black Bush
• Nouveau – Courvoisier – seriously, it’s good

Beyond that feel free to experiment and even combine a few things together.  The biggest mistake is adding too much booze.  The 12 oz in the recipe is the perfect amount for a light or aged rum.  Booze with more distinct flavor has to be metered according to taste because they can quickly swamp the goodness of the virgin nog.  If you need an extra kick, just go light on the booze added directly to the nog and provide self-pour for chasers

Cheers.

I’m pretty much done “researching” holiday drinks/cocktails.  I was overall disappointed… the vast lists of holiday cocktails in books and online are mostly nothing special.  Many of the drinks listed are average at best and many are just classic cocktails assigned to a particular season of the year.  On top of that there was little to entice me to find and try any new booze for my cabinet.  I did test out a couple new Gins and St. Germain (an elderflower liqueur well known to cocktail makers but something I had never had need of).  None of the “new” stuff was impressive enough to mention on their own.

Long story short… I came to the conclusion that there are 5 categories of holiday drinks that I care about and everything else is just a cocktail for the sake of something different – but nothing that will become a regular indulgence.  I was already familiar with all of these categories and many of the drinks in them, so the end result is a reaffirmation of my long-standing ideals for seasonality in drinking.

My 5 categories (in no particular order) are as follows:

1. Champagne cocktails – mostly what I drink between Christmas and New Years (not as much room for experimentation here)
2. Nogs – especially a good classic egg nog (home made of course) – plenty of room for trying new booze in the basic recipe… my Grandfather preferred bourbon
3. Toddies – warm drinks for those of use who get real winter – another great category for trying basic booze and spice combinations
4. Cream drinks – drinks with a lot of milk, cream or creamy liqueurs in them (I don’t include egg nog here because it’s special)
5. Layered drinks (i.e., pousse cafe style shooters) – a great place for experimenting with new liqueurs and layering technique… also a great way to get totally plastered if, like me, you are not willing to waste the booze in your failed attempts at a new layering (e.g., knock it back and try again until you can’t)

Since this is not a cocktail but rather a booze site, my primary concern here are the raw alcoholic ingredients in these drinks, and that is where I will be conducting further exploration between now and New Years.

Cheers.

At this moment I happen to be drinking Bernheim Wheat Whiskey – on the rocks – which is what prompted me to post something about whiskey (remember, it’s Sake month for me plus I’m doing my research into holiday cocktails in preparation for… the holidays… so this is just an aside of sorts).  Any really good whiskey can be enjoyed straight or on the rocks, but there are not as many American whiskeys that really deserve that status as compared to single malt scotch which is specifically to be enjoyed straight with a little water or ice.

Bernheim is in my top few of American whiskey’s for sippin’ – it has all the great characteristics of a Kentucky whiskey with the added smooth and sweet of their unique wheat-based recipe.  My all-around favorite bourbon is Elijah Craig 18 yr (more expensive than many, but if you are going to drink it straight or in a very bourbon-heavy drink it’s worth it).  In the summer I have ample amounts of mint that grows right outside my front door in a more-or-less volunteer herb garden, and I make good use of it in mojitos and mint juleps for many months of the year.  Elijah Craig 18 goes in most of my mint juleps, but during derby days I often use Woodford Reserve (note: you can often see Charlie Sheen drinking WR in his role as Charlie Harper on Two and a Half Men).

In the category of Tennessee whiskey there really are only 2 contenders (for anyone) – Dickel and Jack Daniels.  Everyone has heard of JD – it’s mass produced and their marketing is well financed.  But I am NOT a JD fan at all.  When I first started drinking Tennessee whiskey (whisky), I chose Dickel #12 and every other Tennessee whiskey I’ve tried since pales in comparison (and JD can have a tendency toward “stinky” – don’t know how else to describe it).  No offense if you are a hard-core JD fan – you’re in good company.  But if you have never tried Dickel you owe it to yourself to give #12 a try.  Even if you don’t like it better than Jack, I suspect you will find that you do like it and probably prefer it for some drinks (a classic whiskey sour comes to mind).

That’s it for the aside… I’ll get back to whiskey in the future no doubt since I drink a lot of it in any given year

Cheers.

If you like smooth tequila you will love Corzo.

In preparation for the holidays I’ve been going through holiday cocktail/drink recipes looking for new things to try.  One of those recipes that looked promising required a good silver tequila… which believe it or not I did not have in the liquor cabinet (plenty of others, though).  So I went looking and found Corzo.  I had not tried Corzo before, but I’m glad I picked it up this time rather than going with something I knew.

Corzo recommends just sipping the silver or using it in a top-shelf cocktail.  I can now recommend both, but the sipping is a real treat – super smooth and enjoyable.  AND the bottle is great; it has a sweet built in pour spout (of sorts) that actually works.  The simple rectangular bottle is very cool – I’ll have to figure out something to do with it when it’s empty (which will be pretty soon).

Cheers.

Here’s another favorite sake of mine -Tozai Snow Maiden.  When it’s fresh (see caution note below), it’s awesome.

Beyond the fact that this stuff is super tasty, not expensive and comes in a frosted pink bottle… how can you not at least try a product that honors a 200 year old fish?  Actually, the official age of Hanako – a scarlet koi that lived at the foot of Mt. Ontake in Japan – is 226 years.  Hanako died in 1977.  That koi lived longer than the United States has been a country.  Somehow it adds to the fun of drinking this junmai nigori.

One caution: It seems that the majority of this export comes to the U.S. in 300ml bottles, but if you hunt around on the Internet you can often find it in the 720ml (which is a more practical size for sake even if you drink it alone)… unfortunately that means that when you find the 720ml bottles in stock they can be “old”, and nigori does not have a good shelf life.  Anything over 1 year old is definitely “old” and you will notice a serious degradation in quality; ideally you want a nigori less than 6 months old.  Tozai puts the “born on date” right on the label, so you can either check yourself or ask the clerk if you order online (do so by phone).

Cheers.

Good stuff and readily available – another sake available at my local Asian market.  Apparently it rates highly since they are showing some gold awards on their web site.

Sweater than most high quality (non-nigori) sake that I’ve tried, but really good refrigerator cold.

Cheers.

A quick follow-up to my post about Momokawa’s Joy genshu sake… The boldness of Joy made me think it might be good with one of my favorite snack foods – Fritos, cream cheese and caviar (don’t judge until you’ve tried it).  HOWEVER, even this genshu is still too “sweet” to go well with that particular flavor combination.  Or maybe it just has too many flavors going on; either way – it doesn’t work nearly as well as I had hoped.  So for now I’ll stick with dry champagne or vodka with my caviar (and even then, some vodkas can taste too sweet when paired with this combination of salty and tangy).

Cheers.

Without question my favorite Junmai Daiginjo sake is Takasago Ginga Shizuku “Divine Droplets”.  You can read all about it here, and you should. This stuff is fantastic, and you can really feel and taste the difference in how it’s processed (really – go read about it – no need for me to rewrite the story).  This sake also has good shelf life – I’ve had bottles of this that were almost 2 years old (actually, just did ) and were still excellent.

Keep in mind that most of the world’s “best” sake is not readily available outside Japan and certainly not on the Internet – which gives this one a bias because it can be ordered on the Internet from several sources.  So… unless you are fortunate enough to visit Japan frequently, this is one fantastic sake to fill the void.  I’ll be looking for others from the 2009 awards list – an award often prompts better distribution (and greater production which sometimes reduces the quality, so strike while the iron is hot).

Cheers.

Yes… I’m easily distracted from my monthly assigned booze of choice…

I started getting an itchy throat last night and this afternoon it started feeling like a real sore throat (I have to blame my wife who has had some sort of cough for a couple of weeks, and I had avoided catching it until now).  So after my Friday afternoon scotch – which was great but just made me mellow – I decided to switch to something “medicinal”.  I noticed I had some fruit juice in the fridge left over from a Pisco punch binge that followed a Peruvian wedding reception I attended recently, so I decided to get back to the Pisco punch… vitamin C is good for sore throats, right?

Anyway – pisco punch is good stuff.  I’ve tried several pisco brands, and I think for the most part they very similar.  The one I’m drinking now is Barsol, which is one of the better ones I’ve had because it has a bit more bite and character (but still a mild drink). For my palate none of them are great straight, but mixed with your favorite fruit juice you can’t miss.  Mango and passion fruit work really well, but if you’re trying to make something to soothe a sore throat go for the classic high vitamin C drinks – orange juce or something with orange juice as a major component – the acid is good for killing the infection also.

I’ll get back to sake tomorrow… after I buy some Fritos.

Cheers.