Bar Blog: Agent Orange Tamed

Success is mine! As you may recall, I made up a drink recipe called Agent Orange, and it was admittedly a bit too strong. In my original post, I speculated that the alcohole content could be cut by switching bitter red aperitif for a bitter red soda.

Well this weekend, I mixed several batches and can confirm that the drink is now less potent and allows you to drink a few without killing yourself with alcohol poisoning. Even better, Hubby drank this recipe and offered his approval. Hubby dislikes his cocktails to be too sweet, but there’s enough of a bitter red orange taste in this for him to forgive the sweetness.

To make one 14 oz drink you need a few ice cubes, lemon juice, raspberry syrup, tonic, 1 oz of dark rum (I used Pampero Anniversario) and one 10 oz bottle of apertif soda. (Aperol Soda, Campari Soda, AperX Soda, San Bitter, or even a generic will work.)

Add ice and rum to the glass, then add the bitter soda. Squirt in a bit of lemon juice, add a teaspoon of raspberry syrup, and fill the rest of the glass with tonic. This drink is cool and refreshing, and makes a great cocktail before dinner with some cheese and salami or other smoked meats.

I’m relieved that the lighter version worked, because the original recipe WAS tasty. The problem was, by the third sip, I was so drunk that my tongue had gone numb. Then all I could taste was sweet. And I had to bow out before finishing one glass. So…a little too powerful. But this new recipe shouldn’t be quite as intimidating, and it should work for those of you who liked mojitos and my chino and absinthe mixer.

No telling when I’ll come up with a new recipe, but there you go, Agent Orange, now in a more tame and realistic form.

Bar Blogging: Agent Orange

Yes! After a long, long time, I’ve come up with a new drink recipe, and I need to start with a warning: You only need ONE. This drink, when mixed my way, results in a recipe that’s roughly 25% alcohol by volume per glass. I have had HALF a glass, and I can confirm, this has some kick. It is also tasty, but by the third sip, I really have a hard time noticing anything besides the kick, which is strange because I can’t taste ANY alcohol.

The combination of ingredients is short: Bitter apertif, dark rum, tonic, lemon juice, and raspberry syrup.The bitter appertif is a bitter orange liquor with a reddish appearance. You can use Aperol or Campari Red, or even a generic brand. It has 11% alcohol by volume, so you could cut the booziness of this by substituting Campari Soda or Aperol Soda. In any case, this is what gives the drink its sweet and bitter base, and the other ingredients all play second fiddle in complementary ways.

In a 14 oz glass, I added ice, 1 oz of apertif, 1 oz of dark rum, a few drops of lemon juice, and a small splash of raspberry syrup. The raspberry sweetness blends with the bitter apertif and the sour lemon, and the rum and tonic lends this a citrus flavor similar to an orange Popsicle.

I’ve only mixed this once, and I imagine I’ll have to drink these REAL slow. I don’t advise chugging this, that’s for sure.

Thanks to Andrew Wolter for giving this drink recipe its name. You’ve been a secondary muse lately. =^)

Will the real Martini please stand up?

Martini…the name alone for me conjures a flared cocktail glass in a dark Jazz nightclub, lit by white lights under the frosted glass bar surface. A clear drink, the mixed alcohols swirl around a magnified green olive skewered on a black plastic toothpick.

This is funny, because up until I chose to start bar blogging, I’ve never had a Martini. They always struck me as a rich drink, ad I preferred po’ drinks like beer or long drinks like Jack and Coke, gin and tonic or vodka screwdrivers.

But even if I never drank them, I always had a special reverence for the Martini. The drink first became the height of cool for me because of James Bond, who was actually ordering a popular variant of the drink. Everyone knows his order, of course: vodka Martini, shaken, not stirred.

Making me Dark and Horny

After much time searching for ginger beer, I was able to find Old Jamaica in a local Asian food market not far from our place that just opened. So, finally having the ginger beer connection I needed, I was just about ready to make a dark and stormy.

Of course you can see the appeal for me, right? A dark fiction writer whose favorite drink is dark and stormies? It would be perfect! ^_^

I have returned…sorta…

Yes, I’m already back to work on one of my WIPs. That’s the good news, but the bad news is, I’m not yet ready to start posting up new serial fiction yet. Between the 3 WIP projects and the backlog of stories to edit, I can’t do all this work while I’m also editing chapters to post online. Something has to give, and for now, I’m letting the posting schedule go. From what I’ve heard from readers, most are still catching up anyway, so I can afford to take a break.

I’ve got plans to look at my site and decide on a full upgrade with a new interface, or just a minor change with some extra sidebar buttons that would go on certain pages. (But not on the whole site) I was gung ho for the new interface, but in thinking about most of the changes, I can’t see a reason why I’d need to make buttons in the overhead interface for them. Eh, I might update the picture on the main page, maybe. Oh, and add a link to this journal from the main page. Don’t mind me. I’m just thinking in text.

Bar Blog: Attack of the Killer Teas

Last night, I decided to research a recipe for a Long Island Iced Tea, but I had plans to modify this recipe from the beginning. Instead of a splash of cola, I planned to use Chinò, which is a cola-like drink. However, where colas use lemon juice to give them their crisp tastes on the back of your tongue, Chinò uses the chinotto orange. This result is a slightly more bitter taste, something I’ve come to love the longer I’ve lived in Milan. So, my idea for a variant tea would use Sanpellegrino Chinò, and I call my concoction a Milan Iced Tea.

Should I bar blog here?

In my search to provide you with more interesting posts, I want to pitch an idea and see if it flies with you folks. If you think the idea stinks, feel free to say so.

The thing is, a few nights ago, I was on Twitter, waxing poetically about the taste of a great mojito. I got a few people in the mood for mojitos, and someone asked for the recipe. So I tweeted it, and another follower suggested that I ought to start up a section on my web site for drink recipes. Not just a stock recipe from a book, but a mixture that I believe will achieve the best flavor results.

In addition to the recipe, I would also write about my experience with the drink in other places. Or perhaps I might detail some of my own experiments. Let me give you an example with a drink I made up on the fly last night. I’m not sure if someone else already made up the combination, so I’m labeling this “new” on the provision that if I find a similar recipe later, I’ll concede defeat to the older version.