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It seems a lot of people feel the way about orange in an Old-Fashioned that many martini drinkers feel about the vermouth--just pass it over top of the glass and pretend or something.
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Sep 19, 2012 22:24
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| # ? Apr 26, 2024 18:37 |
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Except that when people do that with Martinis they're being retarded, since vermouth is a necessary component of the drink, given that it's all that turns what would otherwise be a glass of cold gin into a cocktail. The orange in an Old Fashioned, on the other hand, is an uncouth innovation and ought be roundly condemned.
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Sep 20, 2012 00:52
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Kenning posted:The orange in an Old Fashioned, on the other hand, is an uncouth innovation
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Sep 20, 2012 01:10
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I was mostly exaggerating for effect. I do think that the crisp potency of an old fashioned is its greatest virtue, though, and while expressing the oils from an orange peel is a nice addition to that, the juice and pulp from muddling or squeezing muddies the flavor and adds a sweet/acid component that doesn't integrate very well.
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Sep 20, 2012 01:51
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A good classic Old Fashioned tastes like good booze and history. Adding an orange and a cherry and all that nonsense makes it taste like some fruity cruise ship thing. Knock it off.
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Sep 20, 2012 06:54
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Halloween Jack posted:Oh, please. Calling any deviation from American 19th century drinking culture "uncouth" is pretty ridiculous. counterpoint: a mountain of blended ice, drowned in sugar and called a belini
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Sep 20, 2012 08:44
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nrr posted:counterpoint: a mountain of blended ice, drowned in sugar and called a belini Amicus Curae: sangria martinis.
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Sep 20, 2012 09:34
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Speaking of ancient cocktails with many different recipes, how do you all make a Planter's Punch?
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Sep 20, 2012 19:01
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With whatever rum brand is sponsoring the punch event.
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Sep 20, 2012 19:18
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Kenning posted:Except that when people do that with Martinis they're being retarded, since vermouth is a necessary component of the drink, given that it's all that turns what would otherwise be a glass of cold gin into a cocktail. The orange in an Old Fashioned, on the other hand, is an uncouth innovation and ought be roundly condemned. I'm not one of those people who pulverizes half of an orange and a pile or maraschino cherries into my Old Fashioned. I muddle one sugar cube, a couple of dashes of Angostura, and a tiny bit of soda in the bottom of a glass. I then add 3oz of Bourbon and stir, and pour it into an Old Fashioned glass with ice. The orange comes last, a thin slice twisted over the finished product.
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Sep 21, 2012 08:21
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Ditch the hell out of the soda, and I'd soak that sugar cube in bitters. Also, no marachino cherries. Ever. That goes for everyone in this thread. Don't ask me to source it, but everyone I know talks about a study that lists Marachino cherries as being a cause of cancer. Regardless of whether that study is worth anything or not, they're full of sugar, not real cherries, and taste like poo poo. gently caress marachino cherries - unless you're making actual marachino cherries ie. Real cherries soaked in marachino liqueur. Other acceptaple alternatives are soaking them in brandy or bourbon. It's super simple, and it's super worth it. Please though, do me (and yourself!) a favour and don't ever use those lovely loving bullshit sugar bombs, soaked in colour and preservatives, in any drink you make. Ever. Thanks.
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Sep 21, 2012 10:44
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nrr posted:Ditch the hell out of the soda, and I'd soak that sugar cube in bitters. My mother's old boyfriend told me he toured a plant once and will never again eat one, but I've watched a couple videos and the process doesn't seem as bad as what he described. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ombBsECUY7o The only suspect thing for me is how much corn syrup goes into them and, at about 1:15 or so in this video, they just refer to a "brine" into which the cherries go to get them all a uniform pale yellow color. Anything could be in a brine. A bunch of weird salts, maybe bleach? I have them occasionally anyway. I have a question. Should I get these stemless cocktail glasses that sit in a tumbler of ice?? The price is pretty good, but, I had a Martini years ago in a bar that used them and loved it, went back recently and they no longer used them. The current bartender said something like, "they were more trouble than they were worth," but didn't really go into too much detail. I can imagine that tipsy patrons might be inclined to set them down outside the base occasionally. I really like my straight ups to be ice cold. Hell, I even like some of my neats to be cold, though that seems weird to say...
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Sep 21, 2012 16:26
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You'd like to think a guy who runs a company mass-producing "maraschino" cherries would at least have the courtesy to learn how to pronounce "maraschino" correctly.
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Sep 22, 2012 07:35
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Dale DeGroff argues that an Old Fashioned without muddled fruit is just sweetened whiskey. I agree with him, and think that a small amount of muddled fruit (one cherry, and one half-wheel of orange) adds complexity and flavor and is what really brings the drink together as a cocktail. If I wanted to savor the taste of the whiskey, I would just drink it with an ice cube. Also, if history is a criterion, people have been mixing sugar, fruit, and whiskey since 1862's Whiskey Cobbler. As for cherries, Tillen Farms makes some pretty good ones with pretty clean ingredients, though these are probably the holy grail.
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Sep 27, 2012 05:41
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Being snooty about Old Fashioneds is pretty silly as pretty much every classic cocktail was invented to class up the act of drinking obscene amounts of hard liquor. That being said, while I think that Angostura pairs really well with citrus oils, I don't actually want orange pulp in my glass, nor do I want to detract from the whiskey by mixing maraschino flavour into it, even good genuine maraschino cherries. I also prefer mine with rye in case that's a cardinal sin I need to confess.
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Sep 27, 2012 06:13
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Halloween Jack posted:Being snooty about Old Fashioneds is pretty silly as pretty much every classic cocktail was invented to class up the act of drinking obscene amounts of hard liquor.
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Sep 27, 2012 06:32
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Does anyone have any good suggestions about to make with orange bitters? I remember reading that they are a must buy after angostura, but now I don't know what to do with them.
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Sep 27, 2012 20:07
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An Astoria. It's a 50/50 (gin/dry vermouth) with two dashes orange bitters, stirred, served up.
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Sep 27, 2012 20:25
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Vegetable Melange posted:An Astoria. It's a 50/50 (gin/dry vermouth) with two dashes orange bitters, stirred, served up. Is there a good way to tell if vermouth has gone off? We have had a bottle of dry vermouth sitting on the shelf for months now.
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Sep 27, 2012 21:52
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Demon_Corsair posted:Is there a good way to tell if vermouth has gone off? We have had a bottle of dry vermouth sitting on the shelf for months now. It's off. Shelf life is around a month, refrigeration can help. Do a fun experiment: go buy a fresh bottle of the same brand and do a side by side. I bet you can immediately tell the difference.
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Sep 27, 2012 21:57
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DasNeonLicht posted:Dale DeGroff argues that an Old Fashioned without muddled fruit is just sweetened whiskey. I agree with him, and think that a small amount of muddled fruit (one cherry, and one half-wheel of orange) adds complexity and flavor and is what really brings the drink together as a cocktail. If I wanted to savor the taste of the whiskey, I would just drink it with an ice cube. Also, if history is a criterion, people have been mixing sugar, fruit, and whiskey since 1862's Whiskey Cobbler. Gonna be a complete tool and get all crotchety as hell about a drink, because that drink itself is old and crotchety by nature and I'm sure it would approve  First off, that's very nice of Mr DeGroff to share his opinion with us, but you don't just get to screw with a classic because you think without a bunch of dumb bullshit it's "just sweetened whiskey." A martini without an ounce of banana syrup, a dash of grenadine and a kinder surprise toy is "just some gin and a bit of vermouth." For a lot of classic drinks, their brilliance lies in their simplicity. Trying to justify the bastardization of those drinks because they're "just" something is complete bullshit. Speaking of bullshit, we come to muddled fruit being needed to create complexity and flavor to "bring the drink together as a cocktail." If you think an old fashioned made with whiskey, sugar, bitters and the zest of an orange twist needs the kind of "complexity" that a muddled cherry and slice of orange brings, then I don't know what to tell you. I sure do know what to tell you about needing those extra things to really bring it together as a cocktail though, and that is literally one million metric tonnes of loving  . You are trying to argue that THE ORIGINAL COCKTAIL needs to be altered to make it more like a cocktail!  If you want to drink a whiskey cobbler or something like it, then go nuts. Just don't try to pass it off as an old fashioned is all. If you're not down with "sweetened whiskey" then add whatever you want to it for complexity or whatever else you feel it needs, but if someone orders a classic drink from you, then they deserve to get the drink they ordered, not a drink made differently because you think it needs something added to it. If you're not behind a bar, then none of this really matters, but my problem lies with bartenders that do this because it creates these exact kind of problems where classic (and really good) drinks get confused and changed up over time. I don't want to lose these classic drinks because I think a lot of them are really cool and need to be preserved.
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Sep 28, 2012 01:22
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No one will even make me a Jack Rose anymore, so everyone else has to suffer too.
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Sep 28, 2012 05:09
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I'm glad nrr made that post so I didn't have to.
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Sep 28, 2012 09:27
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Halloween Jack posted:No one will even make me a Jack Rose anymore, so everyone else has to suffer too. Come to Brooklyn, I'll fix that.
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Sep 28, 2012 17:22
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You indict the bastardization of classic cocktails, but cocktail culture would not be what it is today if it weren't for "screwing with the classics." For example, the Martini's origins date back to 1887's Martinez (Old Tom gin/sweet vermouth/Maraschino), which itself was probably a spin on 1874's Manhattan. But that "classic" recipe should not delegitimize Martini di Arma di Taggia's 1911 dry Martini (dry gin/dry vermouth/orange bitters), Winston Churchill's "skip the vermouth" Martini, Franklin Roosevelt's Dirty Martini, or the Cold War's Vodka Martini. So, I appreciate your conservative philosophy, and I'm sorry if I disparaged it. Indeed, I tend to agree that less is more, and I agree that a bartender should always strive to give the customer what he or she wants, and not what they think the customer should have. I just wanted to make the point that fresh, wholesome ingredients are not "bunch of dumb bullshit", and that just because a recipe or variation postdates 1900, that doesn't mean it's garbage.
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Sep 28, 2012 19:03
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All I know is that I put just a tiny splash of Pomegranate/Pineapple-flavored seltzer in my Old fashioned last night, on a whim, and it loving ruuuined it. We've been using blood orange bitters and cranberry bitters on white sugar cubes, muddled with a maraschino cherry and one clementine segment between two drinks. I really think I'm going to back it off a bit on the sweet fruit though; I'm sure the bitters impart more than enough flavor for me, without taking away from the Bourbon. What I would like to try now is brown sugar instead of white. Does anyone do that?
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Sep 28, 2012 19:13
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DasNeonLicht posted:But that "classic" recipe should not delegitimize Martini di Arma di Taggia's 1911 dry Martini (dry gin/dry vermouth/orange bitters), Winston Churchill's "skip the vermouth" Martini, Franklin Roosevelt's Dirty Martini, or the Cold War's Vodka Martini. No vermouth martini = you have 1 year old vermouth and/or bad taste Dirty martini = you have bad taste Vodka martini = you don't like flavor That's how I see it at least. I need to get a new bottle of orange bitters, someone took mine from the last party I threw. Any recommendations? I was using Regan's previously.
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Sep 28, 2012 19:16
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nrr posted:Please though, do me (and yourself!) a favour and don't ever use those lovely loving bullshit sugar bombs, soaked in colour and preservatives, in any drink you make. Ever. Thanks. I try to stockpile these when I find them. They work for desserts too obviously. http://www.tillenfarms.com/Merry-Maraschino-Cherries/p/TIL-00018&c=TillenFarms@Cherries  "cherries WITHOUT using artificial colors, artificial flavors, sulfites and preservatives" Their pickled carrots and beans are tasty as well. EDIT: just ordered some cherries, pickled beans and tomatoes. $6.95 shipping to California. Keyser_Soze fucked around with this message at 20:40 on Sep 28, 2012 |
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Sep 28, 2012 20:23
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You can also just make your own maraschino cherries by macerating a pile of sour cherries in maraschino liqueur for a few weeks/forever. I was going to do that this summer but the sour cherry crop was literally wiped out in Michigan. I mean like, trail mixes were subbing out their sour cherries for cranberries wiped out. They never arrived at my grocery store at all. I guess there's always next year 
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Sep 28, 2012 20:34
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DasNeonLicht posted:You indict the bastardization of classic cocktails, but cocktail culture would not be what it is today if it weren't for "screwing with the classics." For example, the Martini's origins date back to 1887's Martinez (Old Tom gin/sweet vermouth/Maraschino), which itself was probably a spin on 1874's Manhattan. But that "classic" recipe should not delegitimize Martini di Arma di Taggia's 1911 dry Martini (dry gin/dry vermouth/orange bitters), Winston Churchill's "skip the vermouth" Martini, Franklin Roosevelt's Dirty Martini, or the Cold War's Vodka Martini. I think you're missing the point a bit, bud. Trust me, I'm all down for screwing with the classics and taking ideas from the past and giving them new life to create a whole new culture of drinks and even drinkers. It's what cocktailing is all about. I'm down with people appropriating something and trying to make it their own too, just like I'm perfectly fine with Churchill and Roosevelt's own martini styles and the thousands of other variations of classics that are out there. Why? Because no one tries to pass their variation off as the drink they're "screwing" with, and when they change the drink, they also change the name accordingly. Even subtle changes can make all the difference and I think it's important to make those distinctions. It doesn't matter when the recipe dates to, what I think is important, that if you're making a classic, it is made the way it was originally intended and the drink's integrity is preserved. Sure, maybe I got a little out of hand with my comment that fresh, wholesome ingredients are "a bunch of dumb bullshit" and I completely agree that they are super important. But I want to clarify that it becomes dumb bullshit in that kind of context where the recipe doesn't call for it and doesn't need it. The finiest of ingredients in the wrong place are still bullshit and I'll stand by that no matter how much of a douche that makes me look like. But hey... I did tell you I was gonna get all crotchety v  vAs for cherries, Kenning is on the money. If you can, buy your own fresh and then steep them in your own batch of maraschino liqueur, brandy, bourbon... whatever you like. Coming up with your own badass boozy cherries is half the fun and I think it's one of those legit ways that you can make a classic a little bit your own by adding that little signature finish to it.
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Sep 28, 2012 23:56
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The Hebug posted:No vermouth martini = you have 1 year old vermouth and/or bad taste Angostura makes orange bitters. Edit: And no matter how bad their tastes, we might all be speaking German if it weren't for those Martinis! DasNeonLicht fucked around with this message at 20:19 on Sep 29, 2012 |
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Sep 29, 2012 20:15
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Nothing wrong with a dirty martini, I mean, you're not allowed to drink olive brine any other way
The General fucked around with this message at 20:24 on Sep 29, 2012 |
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Sep 29, 2012 20:20
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The General posted:Nothing wrong with a dirty martini, I mean, you're not allowed to drink olive brine any other way Pickleback, sucker. Also, Regan's #4 for orange bitters. I worked somewhere that mixed them 50/50 with the fee bros, but I dislike the glycerin base on the fee.
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Sep 29, 2012 22:29
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I haven't tried Regan's, but Fee Brothers have a gin barrel aged orange bitters that's wayy better than their regular.
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Sep 30, 2012 00:04
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Vegetable Melange posted:Pickleback, sucker. I'm assuming you mean #6 unless you personally know Gary Regan and he gave you a bottle of an old recipe? The gin barrel-aged sounds quite intriguing. Also has anyone heard of or tried these artichoke buckwheat bitters? My friend picked some up for me when he was in Boston and I don't really know what to do with them. All I was able to come up with was to throw them into a Vesper, but I'm sure there's something better to use them in. http://store.thebostonshaker.com/index.php?product=CIBO-ARTI-001
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Sep 30, 2012 17:29
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nrr posted:I haven't tried Regan's, but Fee Brothers have a gin barrel aged orange bitters that's wayy better than their regular. The Fee Brothers Cherry bitters is fantastic as well as just a compliment to soda or with soda/vodka. I'm out of Gin and I made a Vodka Martini on Friday night and it made me want to go buy more Gin.  I like vodka in many things but for some reason a vodka martini makes me gag.
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Sep 30, 2012 17:45
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Keyser S0ze posted:The Fee Brothers Cherry bitters is fantastic as well as just a compliment to soda or with soda/vodka. Vodka goes in things, vodka itself isn't a thing.
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Sep 30, 2012 18:12
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The General posted:Vodka goes in things, vodka itself isn't a thing. More like vodka and vermouth are a vile combination that tastes of suffering and despair.
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Sep 30, 2012 23:10
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My roomate got me a bottle of this http://scottesrum.com/category/all-rum-reviews/pyrat-cask-23/. I love the taste of it. I have no desire to mix it but I wonder if I am doing it a disservice by doing so. Anyone know of any good drinks this would mix with?
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Oct 1, 2012 03:33
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gently caress everyone, vermouth is delicious.
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Oct 1, 2012 08:47
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