Chicago bartender Todd Appel puts forward a good case for why we should stop using 1:1 simple syrup.

For years I have wondered why my taste buds seemed to be at odds with many of the classic and new cocktails being offered around the country in our modern cocktail world.

I realized something important many years ago

Syrup in cocktails should be sugar heavy, period.

He reminds us of David Embury as well -- we may have thought his ratios a bit wonky, but it's easy to gloss over the ratio of syrup to water in the simple syrup he made, which was basically liquid sugar.  The key idea:

The problem here is twofold. 1-1 syrup offers more water and less sugar. This leads to more dilution and/or overly acidic drinks.

Read the whole post -- it's something to think about.  Are we over-diluting and off-balancing our drinks?  If you're a regular user of 1:1 simple syrup, I think some experimentation is called for.  For the record, it's 2:1 at our house, but after Todd's reminder of what Embury used, there'll be some experimentation for me too.

Our local bartenders keep popping up in the local media more and more, and this is a very good thing.

The "Cocktail Confidential" column of the Los Angeles Times Magazine features Matt Biancaniello of The Library Bar at the Roosevelt this week, offering a new cocktail he's prepared for an upcoming event at the Henry Fonda Theatre.  I love three-ingredient cocktails, and can't wait to try this one out.  I might just have to break down and get an espresso maker at home.

          UN CAFÉ VA BENE
          by Matthew Biancaniello

          2 ounces Cynar
          3/4 ounce crème de cassis
          1 ounce espresso

          Combine all ingredients, shake vigorously for 20 seconds and strain into a glass without ice.

Follow the link for more details and a pretty photo.

Last weekend the LA Times also featured a good list of where to drink in town -- as if we didn't already know, but it included a couple of new places and a few others I haven't tried yet.  Follow that link and pass it on!

Fully recovered as we all are (ahem) from Tales, and me from my own recent travels, it's time to get back to posting in earnest.  Onward!

The ever-amazing blog Cooking Issues, which has a ton of great information for mixologists and bartenders as well as cooks and chefs, is written by Dave Arnold and Nils Norén of the French Culinary Institute in New York, and their latest article entitled "Infusion Profusion: Game-Changing Fast ‘N Cheap Technique" may likely be of interest to our readership:

Put room-temperature booze into the cream whipper. Add herbs, seeds, whatever. Close the whipper and charge it with nitrous oxide (N2O –the regular whipped cream chargers). Swirl gently 30 seconds and let stand 30 seconds more. Quickly vent the N2O out of the whipper, open it, and strain out the infusion. Done.

They go into a fair amount of detail as to the science ("what we think is happening") and several flavor experiments.  You're going to want to read the rest.

Check out these images from the July Sporting Life event at Caña!

Gayot.com, the renowned restaurant and travel guide, recently published their list of the Top Ten Cocktails in the United States, all from craft cocktail bars .  Unsurprisingly, our city -- called the most exciting place to drink in the country by more and more of the cocktail, spirits and bartending industry's best -- has landed a place on that list.

The Last Tango in Modena from the Library Bar at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel comes in at number 3! (It's unclear whether the list is in any particular order.)  You may know it well, as it's one of the drinks we enjoyed at The Sporting Life gathering there four months ago -- it topped our poll as the favorite drink of that gathering.  Congratulations to Matt Biancaniello and the whole crew at the Library Bar!

LAST TANGO IN MODENA

2 ounces Hendrick's gin
1 ounce 25-year-old aged balsamic vinegar
3-4 medium strawberries
St. Germain foam *

Muddle strawberries with balsamic vinegar. Add gin and shake. Strain over ice and top with St. Germain foam.

* To make foam: Add 1 cup St. Germain, 1 cup egg whites and 1 oz. fresh lime juice into an iSi charger and charge it twice with N2O and shake well.

Check out these images from the Grand Marnier Flag Football and June Sporting Life at 320 Main events!

"I'll tell you the secret to avoiding hangovers.  Don't stop drinking."

-- Col. Saul Tigh, Executive Officer, Battlestar Galactica BSG-75

(By the way, if you like the Colonel's flask, you can have one of your very own.)

There was a fair bit of buzz in our community yesterday as the latest issue of Imbibe Magazine hit the newsstands and mailboxes.  Paul Clarke's long-awaited article "A Star is Re-Born" about the Los Angeles cocktail renaissance is featured in the current issue, and it's a mighty fine one. In our fair city, writes Paul, "there’s a cocktail renaissance underway that could make the City of Angels one of the world’s most exciting drinking cities."

Many of our finest drinking establishments are featured, including Seven Grand, The Varnish, Caña Rum Bar, Copa d'Oro, The Library Bar, Cole's Red Car Bar, Las Perlas, The Edison and cocktail-friendly restaurants like Rivera, Providence and Comme Ça.  Several prominent members of our community were featured as well.

Be sure to pick up this month's Imbibe if you haven't already.  If it's not already showing up in your mailbox, you really should be subscribing.  Twenty bucks a year?  C'mon, that's less than you'll spend for two drinks at a really good bar.

Speaking of really good bars, three of ours offered some outstanding local cocktail recipes to the readers of Imbibe.  I'll share them with you here, but you have to promise to pick up the magazine or, better still, subscribe.

RABO DE GALO
by John Coltharp, Caña Rum Bar

2 ounces aged cachaça (Sagatiba Velha)
1/2 ounce sweet vermouth (Carpano Antica)
1/2 ounce Cynar

Combine with ice in mixing glass, stir for 20 seconds and strain into a chilled coupe. Orange peel twist and garnish.


AMARO AMORE
by Vincenzo Marianella, Copa d'Oro

2 ounces Plymouth gin
1/2 ounce Aperol
2 barspoons maraschino liqueur
1 dash Bitter Truth Jerry Thomas Decanter Bitters

Combine with ice in mixing glass, stir for 20 seconds and strain into a chilled cocktail or rocks glass. Grapefruit peel twist and garnish.

If you don't have the Jerry Thomas bitters, substitute one dash each of Regans' orange bitters and Fee's grapefruit bitters.


A WALK IN THE GARDEN
by Matthew Biancaniello, The Library Bar, Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel

2 ounces fennel-infused gin
3/4 ounce fresh lime juice
3/4 ounce agave nectar
1 ounce fresh celery juice

Combine with ice in a shaker and shake for 10-12 seconds. Double-strain into a chilled cocktail glass and garnish with a slice of starfruit.

For the fennel-infused gin: Combine 3 sliced fennel bulbs in a jar with 750ml gin.  Allow to infuse for 2 weeks, then strain and rebottle.

For the celery juice: Purchase at a juice bar, or make at home with a juicer. If you don't have a juicer, purée celery in a food processor, then strain the juice through a fine-mesh sieve.

Cheers, L.A.!

First of all, if you haven’t seen the site Liquor.com, and if you’re not subscribing to their daily email newsletter, you should go see it and subscribe now. It’s all about cocktails and spirits, and you’ll see many familiar names go by in the bylines: David Wondrich, Dale DeGroff, Audrey Saunders, Jim Meehan of PDT, H. Joseph Ehrmann of Elixir, and many more. The website is still relatively new and not quite all there yet, but the newsletter is particularly nice; it’s a great little boozy tidbit in your mailbox every day.

To entice you (and as a useful li’l list for us all), here’s an excerpt from a recent non-byline Liquor.com post about how to choose a Bourbon based on ones you already like, with the help of Knob Creek’s “whiskey professor,” Bernie Lubbers:

From how long the spirit ages to the proof, there are a number of key factors that contribute to the flavor of bourbon. But today we’re focusing on the most basic: the three grains used to make the whiskey. While all bourbons must be at least 51 percent corn and usually contain some barley, the third grain can vary from brand to brand. Using that so-called “flavoring grain,” Lubbers divides the whole bourbon category into three main groups. “I try to find the common dominator,” he says.

There’s the “traditional bourbon recipe,” which calls for about 70 percent corn and then roughly equal amounts of rye and barley. [...] Then there’s the spicy “high-rye recipe,” which includes a higher percentage of, you guessed it, rye. [...] The last group is the “traditional wheat recipe,” which, according to Lubbers, has a “sweeter and softer” taste since it’s made from corn, barley and wheat.

While the bourbons in each group will taste different, there’s a good chance that if you like one you’ll like the rest. With Lubbers’ assistance we created a cheat sheet that breaks down the most popular brands into these three categories. Now it’s time to go back to the liquor store.

For the bartenders of our community, this is old hat.  However, to some of the enthusiast community, developing their knowledge of and appreciation for whiskey and perhaps attending the monthly meetings of the Seven Grand Whiskey Society, this might be somewhat new.  Here's their cheat sheet -- if you favor one of the whiskeys in one of the categories, chances are you'll like the others as well:

TRADITIONAL BOURBON RECIPE:
Baker’s
Booker’s
Elijah Craig
Evan Williams
Jim Beam
Jim Beam Black
Knob Creek
Old Crow
Wild Turkey

HIGH-RYE RECIPE:
Basil Hayden’s
Buffalo Trace
Bulleit
Eagle Rare
Four Roses
George T. Stagg
Old Forester
Old Grand-Dad
Woodford Reserve

TRADITIONAL WHEAT RECIPE:
Maker’s Mark
Old Fitzgerald
Rebel Yell
Van Winkle
W.L. Weller

This was nicely enlightening, and I was unsurprised to see most of my favorite Bourbons in the high-rye category, being the lover of rye that I am. I was also pleased to see Old Forester in there, which was my first Bourbon — it was the only one Dad kept in his bar when I was a kid. (That, and the super-mild blended Seagram’s V.O. were the two whiskies he kept around.)

Then again, I really love Booker’s, which is in the “traditional” category; that beautiful caramelly sweetness with nuts and vanilla (and the ass-kicking proof) really does it for me. I’m also a longtime fan of Maker’s, which we still keep around primarily for sipping; these days Buffalo Trace has replaced it as our default mixing Bourbon at home.

As is, I suspect, the case with most of y'all, I’m always happy to buy more Bourbon!

(Oh, and subscribe to the liquor.com newsletter. *nudge*)

One of our very favorite local bars, The Varnish, has been popping up in the news of late.

The annual cocktail bacchanalia, seminar and drinking festival in New Orleans that we all know and love, Tales of the Cocktail, recently announced this year's nominees for their Spirit Awards.  Two of the award categories are particularly noteworthy:

Best American Cocktail Bar

The Clover Club, Brooklyn
Death & Co, NYC
Rickhouse, San Francisco
The Varnish, Los Angeles

American Bartender of the Year

Eric Alperin, The Varnish
Kenta Goto, The Pegu Club
Murray Stenson, Zig Zag
Sam Ross, Milk & Honey

Yes!  Congratulations to Eric and the whole crew at The Varnish for an honor very well deserved. Whether you're going to Tales or not this year, make sure you root for the home team.

And speaking of the excellent liquor.com, today they had the good taste to feature Eric in their daily email as well as in the featured article on their front page.  They delve into some background and how the bar came to be and offer a couple of cocktail recipes -- here's one:

SKID ROW
by Eric Alperin

1 dash Fee's West Indian Orange Bitters
1 dash Regans' Orange Bitters No. 6
1/2 oz apricot liqueur (Rothman & Winter's Orchard Apricot)
1/2 oz Amaro Ramazzotti
2 oz Bols Genever
Garnish: Flamed orange peel

Add all of the ingredients to a mixing glass and fill with ice. Stir and strain into a chilled coupe glass. Garnish with a flamed orange peel.

See you soon at The Varnish, yes?  And congratulations again to Eric and The Varnish's crew.

Bartending guides and cocktail recipe books are getting to be a dime a dozen these days.  Although some magnificent books have come out in the last few years, many more gimmicky (and easily dismissable) ones have piled up on bookstore shelves as well.  Of the ones full of standard recipes with which we're all familar this one looks to be one of the more interesting: Hemingway & Bailey's Bartending Guide to Great American Writers, in which 43 of our most well-known authors' favored tipples are described, with recipes, stories and anecdotes. 

It was published in late 2006, but I'd only come across it recently thanks to an email correspondent. A dozen pages are previewed here via Google Books, and I was at once pleased to see that the recipe offered for the Old Fashioned -- a favorite of Winesburg, Ohio author Sherwood Anderson -- directs that an orange slice and cherry be used for garnish only, and not for grinding into an unappetizing paste as is done in so many less enlightened establishments.

The aforementioned correspondent also offered an article briefly previewing 20 of the authors' cocktail choices, starting off with "Papa" Hemingway and the Mojito (although I would have thought his gigantic maraschino-spiked Daiquiris might have been a bit more appropriate).  So crack open some classic books and accompany them with some cocktails!

No doubt all of you in the Sporting Life community have become fans of the wonderful Caña Rum Bar (formerly known as The Doheny).  It's one of my favorite bar spaces in the city -- cozy, warm and welcoming.  Oh, and the drinks are fantastic, too, unsurprisingly, given who's behind the stick.

It's nice to see our local bartenders get a nice shout out in the local media, and this past weekend's Los Angeles Times Magazine featured four Caña bartenders -- John Coltharp, Joel Black, Allen Katz and Brian Summers -- and four of their recipes as well.  Some of them might be a bit ambitious for a civilian, but surely there are regular readers of our site who'll want to tack a crack at them. Here are the two that I happened to quaff (and quite enjoy) when I was at Caña last week:

BELLEVUE
by John Coltharp

2 ounces Ypióca Ouro Cachaça
A little less than 1/2 ounce Amaro Nonino
A little less than 1/2 ounce Amaro CioCiaro
Rinse of Smith & Cross Traditional Jamaica rum (Navy Strength)
1 lime peel

Combine ingredients in a pint glass and stir. Rinse a chilled cocktail glass with rum then pour out the rum. Add mix and garnish with lime peel.

RUM KHA GAI
by Brian Summers

2 ounces Matusalem Platino rum
1/2 ounce fresh lime juice
3/4 ounce ginger syrup*
1/2 ounce fresh coconut water
1 ounce sweetened condensed milk
1/4 barspoon Sriracha hot sauce
1 kiefer lime leaf

Muddle all ingredients lightly. Dry shake without ice, then shake with ice. Pour into a chilled glass over fresh ice and top with 2 ounces club soda. Garnish with lime leaf.

*Mix 1 liter strained fresh ginger juice with about 1 liter demerara sugar, depending on level of spice desired.

For the other two recipes, follow the link to the Times piece ... and for all four drinks, go to Caña and see these guys!

I'm sure many of you attended (and enjoyed!) the first Manhattan Cocktail Classic a couple of weeks ago, and many of you (myself included) weren't able to attend.  Here's a brief recap of MCC on "Inspired Sips," from the Small Screen Network, with a feature on Balvenie Scotch Whisky.

What's your cocktail shaking style?  One handed?  Two handed?  In/out plus up/down?  Hard shake?  How's your shaker face?  Smiling, scrunched, intent?

Last year StarChefs featured an article about shaking styles that ended up with them having three dozen videos of bartenders and their shaking technique, "a compendium of shaking styles that reflects work histories, philosophies, personalities—even blood alcohol levels at the time of shooting."

There are three physical factors at work in a well-made cocktail: water content, ingredient distribution and temperature. While some spirits require only a stir to achieve a balance of these factors, others can only attain true cocktail Nirvana with a shake. And, as we learned, a mixologist's shake is like a thumbprint—no two shakes are the same.

According to Joaquin Simo of New York City’s Death & Company, “A shake should wake up a cocktail. Its function is to make it greater than the sum of its parts.” For Simo, shaking is necessary to combine different textures into one.

What types of cocktails need shaking? “Any drink that contains an element that can cloud up a drink,” says 2007 New York Rising Star Jim Meehan of PDT, citing citrus, egg whites and cream as the most commonly shaken ingredients.

The theory behind the shake holds that the back-and-forth motion drives an ice cube to chip at the corners, breaking off bits that dilute and chill the liquid. The remaining chunks of ice further chill the liquid as the cocktail becomes aerated and blended.

Mixologists agree that different cocktails call for different shakes. Recipes call for varying levels of dilution and temperature, depending on how they are to be consumed.

If you have any interest in the minutiae of shaking, you'll want to watch the videos in the above article, and if you missed the seminar at Tales of the Cocktail last year entitled "The Science of Shaking," check out this excellent recap (Part One and Part Two) from Dave Arnold's "Cooking Issues" weblog.

On the more whimsical side, Combier have been sponsoring a site called Shaker Faces, described thusly:

Face it: you can learn a lot about a bartender by the way they shake a cocktail. And, whether they're hard shakers or more musically inclined, our favorite bartenders all make a face when they shake. So, we set out across this fine nation to capture a few of our favorite Shaker Faces.

They're on week six of their "Face-Off," and I suspect you'll see the faces of a few friends and colleagues within.  Have fun.

UPDATE! The Shaker Faces site has just been updated with a video by our own Joe Brooke, whom you must vote for because ... well, because it's Joe, and because it's ... the best.  Shaking.  EVAR.

VOTE NOW!  VOTE EARLY!  VOTE OFTEN!

There's a lot of crappy tonic water out there.

Look at the label of any major commercial brand and you'll see high-fructose corn syrup -- not something the officers of the British Army were drinking in India when tonic water was first concocted as a malaria preventative (liberally spiked with gin and lime to make it more palatable).  The nadir of supermarket tonic water comes out of the bottle labelled "Diet Tonic Water," with no sugar and with artificial sweeteners.  Unbeknownst to me that was used to make my gin and tonic at a party once, and it took a Herculean effort to keep myself from spitting it out.  (The remainder went into a potted plant. Such a waste of good gin.)

Fortunately we have some really nice small-label brands that are more interested in quality than in cheap ingredients -- Fever Tree, Q Tonic and Stirrings all make fine products.  However, you can get much more of a depth of tonic flavor if you make your own.

Bartender Kevin Ludwig of Beaker & Flask in Portland makes his own tonic syrup from cinchona bark (nature's source of the profoundly bitter quinine), mixing it with plain soda for tonic water in his very flavorful G&Ts.  You can order powdered cinchona bark from Tenzing Momo in Seattle (it's pretty cheap, and powerful; a little goes a long way). Here's the recipe for the tonic syrup, and the G&T is made thusly:

GIN AND HOUSEMADE TONIC

1/2 oz. homemade tonic syrup

1 1/2 oz. hearty, full-flavored gin
Soda water
Lime wedge
Ice cubes

Fill a large rocks glass with ice. Build: pour in the tonic syrup and gin, top with soda water and a squeeze of lime and garnish with either a fresh lime wedge or lime peel.

I'd probably want to throw a dash or three of Peychaud's in there, too.

While you've got your cinchona bark, there's some more playing to be done.

The fortified wine we know as Lillet Blanc, as you probably know, started life as Kina Lillet.  It was a quinquina, which are slightly bitter aperitif wines containing small amounts of quinine (hence the "Kina" in its original name).  In the 1970s Lillet was reformulated, the quinine was removed, and it was rebranded "Lillet Blanc."  It's still a lovely product, but that lack of quinine bite radically changed the flavor profiles of cocktails that were created with Kina Lillet in mind.

One of the more famous ones was the Vesper, or the so-called "James Bond Martini."  He specifically calls for Kina Lillet when he's talking his bartender through it, as that was what was being made at the time.  If you truly want to recreate a Bond-era Vesper, add a tiny pinch of cinchona to your mixing glass or shaker (we're talking 1/16th of a teaspoon or less).  The results may astound out.