Some Experiments of Note

Been working on a few different drinks this week. Some of this was for fun, some of it was for a mission (I’ll write about that in the next entry). Anyway, here are my three most recent drinks I’ve made:

That pretty rosey one on the left is a Pomme en Croute, a complex and citrusy drink. The sugar is supposed to be applied to the rim of a cup — since I had to mass produce that sucker, I put a half tablespoon of sugar into the mix. It’s good but very strong — the sugar does well overcoming the bitterness of the Campari but it was still a little unpleasant for my taste. Not bad though, and I thought the orange juice added an interesting flavor and hue to it.

2 tablespoons sugar
1 1/2 ounces Laird’s Applejack (80 proof)
1/2 ounce Campari
1/2 ounce freshly squeezed juice from 1 orange
1/2 ounce juice from 1 lemon

Next to it is a Southside cocktail, an easy, light gin-based cocktail and a natural fit for summer. I loooved this drink, extremely refreshing and the cucumber works perfectly. I downed a few of these recently in one sitting and was all the better for it. I found a few different variations on the recipe, this is the one I went with (the cucumber and leaves were muddled).

1.5 Gin
.75 Lemon juice
.75 Simple syrup
3 cucumber wheels
3 mint leaves

The last I made this evening — I’m trying to use a bottle of pineapple gum syrup that I have waiting impatiently on my counter. One the bottle it had a recipe for the Jungle Bird – this drink grew on me, at first the Campari bitterness rubbed me the wrong way, but as I went through it I liked it more and more. Not a home run by any means, but worth giving it a whirl, especially when you’re looking for ways to get rid of a big bottle of pineapple syrup.