Bourbon Special

Beachbum Berry describes the Bourbon Special as one of “three exotics for bourbon drinkers, all circa 1950s.” Opinions might vary as to how exotic it really seems, though it has classic tiki elements, and it certainly would’ve gone well enough with the atmosphere of fantasy and escape in one of Steve Crane’s Kon-Tiki restaurants for which it was created.



Bourbon Special

• 1/2 oz lime juice
• 1/4 oz simple syrup
• 1/4 oz falernum
• 3/4 oz ginger beer
• 1 1/2 oz bourbon
• dash Angostura bitters

Shake with ice cubes. Pour unstrained into an old-fashioned glass.
SOURCE: JEFF “BEACHBUM” BERRY, BEACHBUM BERRY REMIXED

The Circus

Keep the circus going inside you, keep it going, don't take anything too seriously, it’ll all work out in the end.
—David Niven

The last time I made this, other than the one pictured below, was for a small party for my birthday. It’s the sort of drink that hints at its lethality by way of what you don’t taste. You don’t know where the bottom of the pool is; only that your feet aren’t on it. Normally, I don’t expose my guests to that sort of thing, but it was a special occasion and my friends are such good sports.



The Circus

• 1 1/2 oz gin
• 1 oz vanilla rum (Charbay)
• 3/4 oz Galliano (84.6 proof)
• 1/2 oz brandy
• 2 1/2 oz apricot nectar (Looza)
• 1 oz passion fruit syrup (Trader Tiki)
• 1/2 oz lemon juice
• 1 dash Angostura bitters

Stir with ice and strain into a chimney glass. Add fresh ice. Garnish with such small fruits as are available: cherry, kumquat, lemon wedge, etc.
SOURCE: ROWEN, FOGGED IN LOUNGE

The Black Manhattan

The famous San Francisco summer fog has me in the mood for amaro cocktails. I half-remembered reading somewhere about a Manhattan variation with Averna. While I never did find the article I was thinking of, Paul Clarke mentions having had this cocktail at Bourbon & Branch, where it was made with Eagle Rare bourbon and called the Black Manhattan. I had Eagle Rare around so that was easily settled on, and I used Angostura for the bitters. There’s a Washington Post article that suggests Regans’ orange bitters as well as aromatic bitters, which seemed a nice touch.



Black Manhattan

• 2 oz bourbon
• 1 oz Averna
• 1 dash Angostura bitters
• 1 dash Regans' orange bitters

Stir with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with a cocktail cherry.
SOURCE: COMPOSITE, ADAPTED FROM BOURBON & BRANCH

The Averna made for an attractively dark drink. This was a little heavy for me, though the housemate and I enjoyed it. We tried it 2:1 first, but it was more to my taste with 2 ounces bourbon to about 2/3 of an ounce of Averna. And maybe the bitters got lost under the weight of the Averna and I should’ve found something with more contrast. The cherry garnish was unobjectionable, but my next try will be with a twist—maybe a even a flamed orange peel would be good for this one.

QUESTIONS FROM THE BEFOGGED: Anybody have a preference for bitters for the Black Manhattan? Do you have a favorite Averna cocktail?

Philadelphia Fish-House Punch

There’s old magic in the legend of Philadelphia Fish-House Punch and the Colony in Schuylkill. It is woods and water and smoke. It is the Fourth of July, and canoes, wet bathing suits and homemade pies. It conjures the spirit of the old republic.

The first time I made this, I used the adjusted recipe from David Wondrich that calls for brandy-based peach liqueur in place of peach brandy from peaches. Since then, a great artisanal Indian blood peach eau-de-vie by Kuchan has come on the market. Either way, the effect is quite similar: sweet and heady, subtly perfumed. This is the taste of the past. The flavors are rich and very old fashioned, though the water helps keep it light. My friends and I find that we can drink it all afternoon long in a pleasant haze.

I pretty much stuck to the proportions of the old recipe, rounding only slightly down on the sugar and up on the water for easy multiplication.



Philadelphia Fish House Punch

• 1 pint lemon juice
• 4 cups sugar
• 3 pints mixture (1 1/2 cups peach eau-de-vie, 3 cups cognac, 1 1/2 cups Jamaica rum)
• 1 gallon water

Make a block of ice for the punch bowl by freezing water in a metal or cardboard container overnight. (Do not use glass, which will break with the expansion of the ice.) Now for the lemons. Squeezing a pint of lemon juice with a small hand press takes some patience and about 3 pounds of lemons. Before you squeeze, take off only the yellow part of the peel of 3 lemons with a sharp vegetable peeler. Muddle the peels well with the sugar.



Start squeezing lemons into a strainer over a measuring cup. Heat a quart of the water to the boiling point and pour over the sugar, stirring to dissolve. Fish out the lemon peels. Wondrich says to add the rest of the ingredients at this point and chill the whole thing, but I find that making a great vat of the stuff for a barbecue means competition with other comestibles for real estate in the refrigerator.



So I cooled it with another quart of the water, added the lemon juice, and chilled the booze mixture and remaining water separately. Assemble the punch in a large bowl over the ice block.
SOURCE: DAVID WONDRICH, IMBIBE!, AFTER A RECIPE IN THE POSSESSION OF CHARLES G. LELAND, ESQ. PUBLISHED BY JERRY THOMAS, 1862

Summer Pub Crawling: Smuggler’s Cove

Good bars and bartenders are surprise, excitement, inspiration. Early Saturday evening, I dropped in on Reza Esmaili, a gentleman and a scholar at Smuggler’s Cove, to taste something I wouldn’t have thought to have at home. It’s good for the thoughtful drinker to get there early. Not only is it generally true of going out in the Age of the Bimbo that the later it gets, the thicker the douches, but also that there may be a wait to get in where the drinking’s good. And at 5:30, the place was already buzzing.



I squeezed up to the downstairs bar, finger-hooked a menu, and sat by the waterfall where I could decide from the 80 or so drinks on the list. Smuggler’s Cove isn’t just about Traders and Beachcombers but represents the gamut of rum, from the days of the flip iron to the present.



With that in mind, I picked the oddest-sounding one: the Calibogus. A modern rendering of a Colonial-era head-pounder of spruce beer, molasses and rum, it featured an interesting item, Zirbenz Stone Pine liqueur. I wondered if it would have a Retsina-like hint of turpentine, but the actual effect was of a distant cousin to root beer and quite mellow.



For the next drink, I was ready to ask Reza what I needed to try, and he made me the contemporary Pampanito, a long drink with Venezuelan rum, molasses, lemon and allspice dram. This had the elegance, balance and vitality of a classic drink. It was a perfect choice. I put myself completely in Reza’s hands.



While we had a bit of off-list fun, I watched the crowd: tourists, hipsters, bachelorette partiers, middle-aged locals on a lark, overflow from Pride. It was fun listening to the orders. Most of them were cocktails from the list, but a few people ordered beer. Someone wanted a rum cocktail that would appeal to people who like Manhattans. One young woman, a little ditzy, was at a complete loss as to how to ask for what she wanted, though it was clear that her drink, whatever it was, would be quite sweet.



Amused and puzzled, I asked Reza for his thoughts, to which he replied that people often tell him what they don’t want in a drink when they would be better served if they were taught to describe taste. Sweet, for example, isn’t as useful a descriptor as rich and tropical or citrus. I listen to his questions for the customers: More like this or more like that?



Reza, by the way, will be starting a place of his own soon. I hope to stay in touch and see him there. An interesting fellow. Wish him luck.

Singapore Sling

Every time time you see an article about the Singapore Sling, they gotta tell you at length how nobody knows what the original recipe was. It could be a scenario out of Somerset Maugham or something. Say there could be a sane, respectable, happy cocktailian traveling from England to Malaysia in search of the true Singapore Sling, who would then become seduced and confused by each succeeding variation of the recipe until he ended in a town on a modest island, haunting a harbor bar in the afternoon, zombie-like, to the puzzlement and sorrow of the locals, and bedeviled at night by a melancholy madness ending in a violent and inexplicable death in tropical-weight trousers.

Luckily, nobody has to go through all that because Beachbum Berry offers this version which he thinks tastes the best. Me too.



Singapore Sling (1950s)

• 1 oz fresh lime juice
• 1 oz Cherry Heering
• 1/2 oz Bénédictine
• 1/2 oz brandy
• 2 oz gin
• 1 1/2 oz club soda (or more to taste)

Shake everything—except soda—with ice cubes. Stir in soda. Strain into a tall glass. Add fresh ice to fill. Garnish with an orange wheel and mint sprig.
SOURCE: JEFF “BEACHBUM” BERRY, BEACHBUM BERRY REMIXED

I add the soda after I strain the drink, and stir it gently. It seems odd to strain something with bubbles.

Fanciulli Cocktail

STANLEY: Liquor goes fast in hot weather. Have a shot?
BLANCHE: No—I—rarely touch it.
STANLEY: Some people rarely touch it, but it touches them often.

—Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire

By 7 o’clock this morning, it was already unusually warm in San Francisco. A hot day here is something of an occasion, whether you like it or you don’t. Streets and sidewalk cafés fill with semi-clad people. For the thirsty who would prefer an unsweetened iced coffee to a soda in such weather, there is the Fanciulli. It’s a refreshingly bitter frappé of bourbon, sweet vermouth and Fernet-Branca, and a potent aid in reviving the wilted. This drink is named for an Italian-American band leader and composer of marches and operas. You can read more about him and the Fanciulli in the WSJ and from Kevin Patterson. The version of the drink here is from the CocktailDB.



Fanciulli
In a glass packed with crushed ice, build:

• 1 oz bourbon (Wild Turkey 101)
• 1/2 oz sweet vermouth (Punt e Mes)
• 1/4 oz Fernet-Branca

Serve in a cocktail glass. (Used a 4.5 oz old fashioned.)
SOURCE: COCKTAILDB