Mixology Monday - Gin!
It's time for our first Mixology Monday!
tmfiii has already posted his new drink, while I went with a couple of classics. Let's hear it for Jay of Oh Gosh! who is hosting it this week! (And thanks to Cocktail Chronicles who came up with the idea.)
Mmmm, gin. I wasn't a big fan of gin in the past, but recently I've gotten into it with a vengeance. Let's hear it for gins!
I let Marshall rock out with the Hendricks while I started with the Tanqueray 10. My first drink of the evening would be the venerable Income Tax cocktail - a drink mentioned in Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails as well as a few other sites, so I wanted to try the different recipes.
If you're familiar with another classic drink, the Bronx, you'll recognize the Income Tax Cocktail as being a Bronx with bitters.
First we need the ingredients.
I'm reciting the recipe from memory; my copy of the book is floating around somewhere unreachable.
1 1/2 ounces gin
3/4 ounce dry vermouth
3/4 ounce sweet vermouth
2 dashes Angostura bitters
juice of 1/4 of an orange
I garnished it with a thin wheel of orange.
This one I wasn't a huge fan of, to be honest. The vermouth was very strong in it, and I felt that the directions to use "1/4 of an orange" in juice was a bit vague. How big are the oranges? How juicy? Like that. So I switched over to Robert Hess' recipe from Drinkboy.com.
1 1/4 ounce gin
3/4 ounce orange juice
1/4 ounce dry vermouth
1/4 ounce sweet vermouth
1 dash Angostura bitters
No, it's not fresh squeezed, but it's second best.
This one was a lot smoother, and as you might be able to guess, the vermouth was nearly non-existent. I thought about fiddling around with the recipe - those measurements such as "1/4" of an ounce can be a pain in the butt with the measuring cup I had - but then I remembered the whole thing about a Bronx with bitters.
This time I went to Straight Up or On the Rocks by William Grimes. In the back he had a recipe for a Bronx - I'll just add bitters to it, I figured.
1 1/2 ounces gin
1/2 ounce dry vermouth
1/2 ounce sweet vermouth
juice of 1/4 orange (instead, I used 3/4 of an ounce)
and I added a dash or so of Angastora bitters.
(No pic - it looks the same! Trust me!)
This one really hit the spot. You could taste the vermouth, but it wasn't overpowering like the first one, and gave it a bit of depth of taste. I was wondering about trying different bitters - such as the Fee's Orange or Regan's Orange - but decided to leave well enough alone for now.
And next time I'll squeeze the OJ.
But the night was still young! I went ahead and made myself a martini.
A real martini, if you will, in fact. 3 parts Bombay Sapphire gin, 1 part Noilly Prat sweet vermouth, and a twist of lemon.
WOW. I mean...damn. But what I'd forget?
THE ORANGE BITTERS!
I had to make another one. The differences in taste were remarkable, but it was still just so good, I'd had no idea what I'd been missing. I needed another one.
This time I made it with dry vermouth. Also quite tasty.
The lemon made a big difference, too. The next night I went to make a martini at home, and unfortunately for me, my channel knife is nowhere near as good as Marshall's, so it wasn't as good of a drink. I need a better one.
That was about it for me that night, as you can probably guess. Well, actually, I did have a couple of Yuenglings later, but that's neither here nor there. The Income Tax cocktail is definitely going into my little metal notebook where I, uh, keep notes on drinks, and the martini I'm going to have to start doing more often.
(The next trick for a martini? The martini con queso as a friend goes by - Bombay Sapphire, Noilly Prat dry vermouth, and a small cube of stinky blue cheese. I hear it's good - so what the heck.)