Mixology Monday - In Which I Actually Enjoy A Drink For A Change

This month's Mixology Monday (hosted at Southern Ash) was Highballs. Aka a "_____ & Soda". I drink quite a lot of high balls. I think this stems from the fact that I am a Drinker first, and someone that gives a shit about fancy drinks second. As a Drinker, it is quite helpful to have something that is moderate enough in alcohol that I can still face tomorrow after 4-to-10 drinks on a Tuesday. I make soda water in 5 gallon kegs and blow through about one a fortnight. Margarett likes me to make the soda water with around 5 volumes of pressure, which I think is double what commercial soda water is. I find that to be on the threshold of painfully fizzy, but it is worth enduring for the times when guests attempt to serve themselves, and the soda water rockets into their glass and sprays their drink all over them.

One of my favorite highballs is the Grapefruit Chuhai served at Tanuki, a weird bar place in Portland. Tanuki is the only place I've ever been close to a regular at, and it's a great place to go if you are able to slam 4 beers during happy hour and then eat 15 different ocean creatures while a giant tv plays videos of tentacle horror softcore. A Chuhai was originally a shochu highball, which through the Japanese love of packaging became a canned Mike's Harder-equse alcoholic soda / premium malt beverage. Tanuki serves theirs with a big whack of bitters in it, which is nice.

While shochu would be a great choice, I selected Taiwanese cooking 'wine' to stay truer to the canned Chuhai experience. Michiu is something like a kome shochu, a spirit distilled from rice. I say something like, because I really don't know much about it except what the label tells me and what light googling yields. I DO know that it costs $5/bottle and is 19.5% abv, and tastes pretty good. This version has no salt added which is HIGHLY IMPORTANT. Is there shame in drinking cooking wine? I say no. Good enough for teens good enough for me.

If you have grapefruit soda I bet that would work. I had a Florida grapefruit that someone mailed me for Christmas because they aren't aware that we have grocery stores in Oregon now. This was great, and I expect the first one will pair well in my stomach with the four that will be following it over the course of Robo Vampire.

WAN AN FARM & PASTORAL CO. LTD

1 half grapefruit
3 oz Wan An Farm & Pastoral Co LTD Taiwan Michiu
1/2 oz Palm Sugar Simple Syrup
Soda
Angostura

Slice grapefruit in half, place on pan and sprinkle on brown sugar. Broil in your oven for like 5 or 10 minutes, until it looks good and broiled. Juice the grapefruit, which should yield about 3 oz juice. Mix together juice, michiu, and simple syrup, shake with ice and strain into a relatively clean glass (a dirty glass will work if you can't find a clean one). Blast in some ultra carbonated fizzy water and top with a float of angostura.

In Which Suffering Is Touted As Pancea to Modern Ills

I often hear a lot of horseshit from people about being a misanthrope. I think they just misunderstand the dreamy glint in my eye when Deathpanels are mentioned. Also, I am frequently quoted to have said that I can't stand music which "features the sound of the human voice". Fine. While I'm not, as far as I know, in the running for next Ghandi, I'm not an inveterate hater of man. I think that people, deep at their core, probably have some worth of some kind or another. If pressed I'd say that were you to gather a group of fifty people at random, at least a handful of them leave the world in a maybe not better but perhaps not dramatically worse position for not being dead.

I am constantly radiating such magnanimity about the fundamental goodness of the human spirit, so I feel it's slightly unfair to label me a misanthrope. I AM, however, a strong advocate for Suffering. It seems obvious to me that one cannot achieve any meaningful measure of happiness without also experiencing a bracing dose of suffering to provide a frame of reference. How can you enjoy the warmth of the hearth without the chill of the elements? Or appreciate a finely made Negroni if you've never had one made with everclear and lingonberry syrup?

But how to make people embrace suffering? I've found the best way is to trick them into suffering against their will.

People Person
10 oz Carl Jeppson's Malort Liqueur (chilled)
12 oz Fresh Grapefruit Juice
2 oz Yuzu Simple Syrup*
2 packets Knox's Unflavored Gelatin
3-4 Grapefruits


Begin by taking a moment to consider how much of your morning you are willing to waste on a dumb gag that no one will really think is funny. In a rousing show of spirit, decide that you will spend all goddamn day if that is what it takes.

Put Malort in freezer. Halve the grapefruits. There was definitely a good way and a bad way to halve them, but I forget which was which. Scrape out the pulp, strain the juice out, and remove as much pith without piercing the outer peel. Heat up the juice and simple syrup, add the gelatin and stir to dissolve it. Remove from heat, add the malort and pour into the grapefruit halves. Put in the fridge for a long time, then cut up. Whammo!Feel good knowing that you will help people appreciate their next jello shot a lot more.

*There are two basic approaches to make Yuzu Simple Syrup -
1. Cut 3 or 4 Yuzu into sections, removing the pulp and seeds. Press the peel sections flat and using a very sharp knife, slice off as much of the white pith as possible. Mix 500 ml water with 500 gram sugar and heat in a sauce pan til melted. Add the trimmed yuzu peels and simmer on low heat for 15-20 minutes. Strain out peels and put on wax paper, allow to dry over night and you'll have candied yuzu peels for a fancy garnish. Allow syrup to cool before sealing, and keep perfumed syrup in fridge. This makes approx 750 ml syrup, but it's useful in Gin drinks which I know you like.
2. Don't bother, just make regular simple syrup with equal parts sugar and water. These are Malort Jello shots you're making, your not the next Jerry Thomas and no body cares if you used fancy sugar water...

If you aren't familiar with Jeppson's Malort, it is a wormwood flavored spirit that only exists in Chicago. It tastes like a grapefruit that a car peeled out on top of. It's sort of famous. Just google it so I don't have to insult your intelligence by rehashing things thousands of people have already written about.

The Royal We

A few nights ago we spent about 4 hours creating baijiu cocktails. We as in the plural 'we' of 'Margarett and myself', rather than the singular 'we' of 'We Demand Obedience!'. It turns out 4 hours of baijiu cocktails takes us from an aperitif drink to awaken the palate before dinner all the way to something to clutch with while I lay on the floor and loudly moan until Margarett agrees to make me a quesadilla. The purpose of all this SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH was to select a cocktail to accompany Mar's upcoming piece on Vinn Distillery, a Portland distillery making a traditional rice spirit called Baijiu. If you aren't familiar with Baijiu stay tuned for a pedantic future update where I regurgitate 30 minutes of Wikipedia research in such a way as to make it seem like I've been drinking baijiu for years and am actually one of the world's premier experts on it.

Rice Baijiu seems to taste a fair bit like a Japanese Kome Shochu or Taiwanese Michiu, which makes sense because they are all similar things made in somewhat similar ways. Below are our tasting notes:

Mar - combines the vegetal qualities of tequila with the earthiness of sake. Notes of unsweetened chocolate, mushroom, black pepper, and rain-soaked soil are supported by a backbone of toasty brown rice and a slight sour-sweetness.
Me - tastes like vodka but like you are also licking an unwashed potato.

 I still had a bad cold at the time. It's not as off putting as that sounds, or maybe it is for some people. I don't care about those people. I don't actively wish for bad things to happen to them, but I hope they can't find true happiness.We liked it enough to make about 8 cocktails a piece.

Our Findings....

* If Hunger Level surpasses Fatal Hunger Threshold, Patient's death typically occurs within 1 22-min episode of 'How It's Made'

Also  we found that Vinn's baijiu works good-to-great in all vodka cocktails, but gets lost in the mix pretty easily. Like (some) grappa, it has a unique and distinctive taste but is subtle and seems to work best as a shot. At work people ask me all the time for good cocktails to make with grappa. It is a struggle because I desperately want them to buy it but I also think that a grappa cocktail is for someone with more money than taste. I imagine it is how Apple must feel when people say 'I like this iPhone, can you recommend any Swarovski Crystal studded cases?' The simultaneous urge to take their money but also beat them with a lead pipe to prevent them from befouling what you've created with their philistinism. Maybe that is more Steve Job's view than Apple. He seemed like a jerk. Also he is dead. Causation? Correlation? The facts are there, you decide. How about a drink?

  "Contents of a Human Stomach"

1 1/2 oz Vinn Baijiu

1 1/2 oz grapefruit juice
3/4 oz 1:1 simple syrup
1 diced vinegar pepper (hot)
2 oz sparkling water or wine

Rummage in the fridge for the oldest jar of hot peppers you can find. Have you located one that has been in there AND open for at least 6+ months? Is the package mostly illegibly foreign? Perfect. Eat a few to make sure they blazing hot. Your mouth should now be so numb you could drink 4 oz of house paint and think it tastes great. Stem and dice pepper and add to shaker. Add ice, Baijiu, grapefruit juice, simple syrup, shake. Add 2 oz champagne to glass and strain drink into it. Think ruefully about those hot peppers as they begin fomenting acidic despair in your empty, quesadilla-less stomach.