While this is a topic that has been covered by pretty much every cocktail blog under the sun, I haven’t yet written about it. Why? Well, for one, I’m lazy and never got around to it. But after having made various versions of grenadine for years at my bars and after doing a little research on the web recently, I’ve wondered if the topic of homemade grenadine couldn’t use a little revisit.

There are a few key problems with a lot of the house-made grenadines out there. The first issue you can see immediately: the color is all wrong. Grenadine isn’t brown, and the good stuff, the real grenadine won’t make your El Presidente look like mud. Grenadine also isn’t pale pink, and it shouldn’t turn your Jack Rose grey. Grenadine is a vibrant shade of magenta, a rich syrup that brightens every cocktail it touches with its sweet, slightly tart, beautifully bright, rich, deep and lightly floral flavors.

A lot of grenadines call for an inordinate amount of work for very little payoff. This recipe is going to take you all of five minutes to prepare and – I promise you – will taste better than anything else you can buy in the stores. Because if there are two things you really need to know about me, it’s the following: I’m lazy and I like stuff that tastes good.

Some recipes are going to tell you you need to remove each individual seed from the pomegranate (a long, painful and finger-stainingly messy process) and either simmer them in water over heat or steep them in water overnight to extract the juice. I’ll tell you what, you want to extract the juice from a pomegranate? Do what I do: cut that puppy open like a grapefruit and press it with your juicer. Done and done. And the resulting juice is far more intense and flavorful than anything you’re going to get from those other methods that employ a bunch of water, believe me.

So now that you’ve got a bunch of fresh pomegranate juice – each full fruit should yield approximately one cup of juice – it’s time to turn it into grenadine. Many of the recipes you’ll see out there are going to tell you to boil the juice until it’s reduced by half, under the guise of concentrating the rich, fresh flavor of the pomegranate. I find this to be an unnecessary, time-consuming process that results in an end product that’s about as delicious as boiled orange juice. My solution is to heat the juice just enough to melt sugar, well below the point of boiling. You’ll still retain the fresh flavor of the pomegranate without having to do all the work of a cold-process grenadine, an ordeal that requires ten minutes of shaking until the sugar is dissolved.

You can do this in a small saucepan, but I just throw it in the microwave for a minute or two, because that’s exactly what microwaves are good for.

Heat your juice up and stir in an equal amount of unbleached sugar. I start with two cups of juice and dissolve two cups of sugar into it, stirring until the mixture is clear. Now what you’ve got is a pomegranate syrup, but not quite yet grenadine. The next step will add the depth of flavor you’re looking for, and for this you’re going to need to make a trip to your local Mediterranean or Latin American market for pomegranate molasses and orange blossom water. I add two ounces of the molasses and a teaspoon of the orange blossom water to my warm mix and stir again until everything is dissolved.

The only step left is to add one ounce of vodka – if you like – this is an optional preservative. If you’re not planning on using your grenadine pretty quickly, like over the span of a month, then add it. But if you’re serving it in a bar and plan on going through it pretty quickly, like I do, then you can just skip it.

Grenadine

2 cups fresh pomegranate juice (approximately two large pomegranates) or POM Wonderful 100% pomegranate juice
2 cups unbleached sugar
2 oz pomegranate molasses
1 tsp orange blossom water

Heat juice slightly, just enough to allow other ingredients to dissolve easily. Stir in remaining ingredients, allow to cool, and bottle.

Post from: Jeffrey Morgenthaler. Follow me on Twitter.

How to Make Your Own Grenadine

I love to cook, but sometimes after a long weekend it can feel like work to me. After a begrudged visit to the grocery store last night, I came home with a beautiful head of butter lettuce, some Oregon gorgonzola cheese, locally-grown Evonuk hazelnuts and two Tombo tuna steaks. I knew what would put a smile back on my face: a nice dinner and a glass of absinthe.

Tonight’s Menu:
Pan-Seared Tombo Tuna with Wasabi Cream
Butterleaf Salad with Oregonzola Dressing and Roasted Hazelnuts
Lucid Absinthe in the Traditional Preparation

Absinthe has a nice way of pairing well with a wide variety of foods. It has enough acidity to cut through the fats in my dressing, yet it provides a nice, clean palate on which to balance a piece of tuna crusted in black peppercorns. All this magic in one glass, yet in order to make absinthe truly sing, you need to pay attention to preparation.

Properly-prepared absinthe is cold, a little sweet, and bitter enough to stand up to some hearty flavors. It is never consumed straight, and there is never a burning cube of molten sugar involved. So I set about filling a small pitcher with ice water, and let it rest to ensure it was nice and cold. Next I poured an ounce of absinthe into a glass, and capped the mouth of the glass with a slotted spoon upon which rested a single cube of sugar.

Patience is key here, but I knew that the payoff would be worth my time as I slowly, s-l-o-w-l-y, dripped ice cold water over the sugar cube and into the waiting shot of absinthe. The liquid gradually formed an opalescent louche (the milkiness that is the hallmark of proper absinthe) and once the glass was half-full I knew I was ready.

The tanginess of the vinegar and Gorgonzola flirted with sweetness of the drink, and the cold from the ice water tamed the heat rising from the black peppercorn crust. Wormwood’s bitterness teased the wasabi into revealing its sweeter side, and the lush savory aromas of fennel mingled with the roasted hazelnuts for a flavor that lingered well after it was gone.

I’ve tried pairing absinthe with everything from rare hamburgers to grilled pizzettas with caramelized onions and smoked trout, and I’m constantly amazed at how well it works with the curve-balls I throw at it. What foods have you tried with absinthe? Fresh country-style pork ribs, anyone?

Photos and text by Jeffrey Morgenthaler. Thanks for reading.

Post from: Jeffrey Morgenthaler. Follow me on Twitter.

Food Pairings: Dinner and Absinthe

I’d fill a tall glass with ice and a generous dose of Gosling’s Black Seal rum from Bermuda, then reach into a wooden crate and withdraw a chilly little bottle of homemade ginger beer. I’d sip the cloudy mixture of liquid sunshine and sweet, dark nectar while I mindlessly squeezed a fresh lime into the glass. Feet: Up.

The problem with living in Oregon when this mood strikes is the absence of little wooden shacks that sell cases of fresh ginger beer stacked on back porches. But with some readily-available ingredients, a recipe I’ve been revising for several years – and a few free minutes – I can easily transport myself to that little fishing boat on the sea.

You’re going to need a little bit of equipment to make ginger beer. It’s nothing too tricky (save for one tool) and most of it will last you a lifetime. So follow along, and remember: I promise you that this will be easy.

You have two options for carbonating your ginger beer: you can ferment it in the bottle, or you can carbonate on-the-fly with an iSi soda siphon. While the soda siphon is easier to use, for the sake of authenticity you might want your ginger beer fermented in the bottle.

If you’re going to go the iSi route, pick up a soda siphon and meet me at the next step. The rest of you, follow me.

The first thing on your list if you’re going to be brewing in the bottle is any number of 16-ounce “EZ” flip-top bottles. You can find these on the internet, at a craft store, or at any homebrewing supply place. Pick up a few to start.

Next, find some wine yeast. I use Red Star Premier Cuvee champagne yeast. It’s sturdy, it hasn’t failed me yet, and it’s inexpensive. I pay about a buck for a packet that will make five gallons of this stuff.

Okay, on to making the actual ginger beer.

The only tricky piece of equipment I’m going to suggest is a Juiceman Juice Extractor. Sure, you can use a grater, but you’re going to need to fine-strain your grated ginger to avoid any chunks in the final product. For the occasional home user, a Microplaner and some cheesecloth will be fine. But when making this by the case at work, I always turn to my juice extractor. The money is worth it if you want to make a lot of this stuff.

Peel and juice your ginger. I find that 1½ ounces of fresh ginger tends to work out to roughly an ounce of ginger juice.

This base recipe will make one 16-ounce bottle of ginger beer, so multiply the proportions by the number of bottles you will be using. If you’re going the siphon route, note that the canister will hold 32 ounces of ginger beer. So double the batch, duh.

1 ounce ginger juice
2 ounces fresh lemon juice, finely strained
3 ounces simple syrup
10 ounces warm water (cold if using the soda siphon)

Mix ingredients together. If using a soda siphon, pour ingredients into canister, screw on lid, charge with CO2, shake once, and refrigerate. You’re done.

If you’re using bottles, fill each bottle with 16 ounces of your mixture and add roughly 25 granules of champagne yeast. Seal the cap securely, shake well, and store for 48 hours – no more, no less – in a warm, dark place. After 48 hours have passed, refrigerate immediately to halt the process.

After your bottled ginger beer is well chilled, mix up a Dark and Stormy, sit back, and imagine you’re drifting along with me on that creaky little boat.

Cheers, friends. Have a beautiful weekend.

Post from: Jeffrey Morgenthaler. Follow me on Twitter.

How To Make Your Own Ginger Beer

There aren’t many spirits that inspire such passionate opinions as gin does. I know vodka drinkers who recoil in horror when confronted with a bottle of Tanqueray, and gin drinkers who would rather abstain completely than suffer through a Grey Goose martini.

But what many people don’t realize is that gin and vodka begin life in the exact same way. You could even say that gin is nothing more than infused vodka. In fact, I’ve used this exact line on so many customers trying gin for the first time that I’ve decided to prove it to myself! What a better way to waste a bunch of time and ingredients while getting an opportunity to learn more about my favorite mixable spirit, right?

In his book The Complete Guide to Spirits (HarperCollins, 2004), Anthony Dias Blue describes cold compounding as a legitimate method for producing gin.  He even provides a rough recipe for infusing a monster 2,000 liter batch. Not having access to a tanker truck of vodka or a hundred pounds of juniper, I did a little math and came up with something more workable.

That first batch was a drinkable, yet super-perfumed gin that I felt could be improved with a little trial-and-error. I won’t bore you with the details of my many failures before honing in on the recipe you’re about to see, but I will say that I’ve now got a liquor cabinet full of funky gins that may or may not ever be consumed.

I’ve tried to limit the ingredients for this very basic gin for two reasons. First, I wanted to use only ingredients available in the bulk spice section of my local grocery store. Second, I wanted to provide you with a basic gin that would be easily expanded upon by you, my three readers.

I got fancy and bought a digital scale for this project, so use one for maximum accuracy if you own one, or just follow my crude conversions if you don’t.

1 750mL bottle 100-proof vodka
1 750mL bottle 80-proof vodka

20 grams dried juniper berries (about ¼ cup)
8 grams whole coriander, crushed (about 2 tbsp.)
2 grams dried orange peel (about 1½ tsp.)
2 grams dried lemon peel (about 1 tsp.)
3 grams whole cinnamon (about 1 stick)
1 whole cardamom pod, crushed

Use a mortar and pestle – or a food processor pulsed in five one-second increments – to break up the coriander and cardamom before adding them to the other dry ingredients.

Once you’re certain that everything has been measured correctly, place the herbs into a large resealable jar and add the whole bottle of 100-proof vodka. I’m using Stoli 100 here, but there are a few options out there; just take a tour of your local liquor store and see what else you can come up with. Hang on to that bottle of 80-proof vodka, we won’t be using it until the very end.

Place the jar in a dark, room-temperature spot for one week, and be sure to give the jar a good shake at least once a day. When the mixture is mature, it will look something like this:

Yes, it’s got some color to it, and that’s okay. In fact, this is exactly what many commercial gins look like before they’re distilled a final time. You don’t have a still at home, so you’re going to have to put up with a little tint to your gin. You’ll be fine.

Taste it. It burns a little, right? Don’t forget that you’re running at 100 proof here. This is when we want to add that bottle of 80-proof vodka you’ve (hopefully) been saving. Taste it again. Better? Yeah.

Next we’re going to take all that macerated fruit and herbs out of there, so we’re going to have to strain the mixture through cheesecloth.

Wrest all the liquid you can from the wet ingredients, there’s going to be some vodka that just won’t want to let go. When you’re done you should be left with a mixture that’s free from solids but, (as we say here in the Pacific Northwest) still party cloudy. Enter the Brita pitcher. Get yourself a $20 Brita, or if you already have one, just a brand new filter. We’re about to put your filter through the wringer.

Note: be sure to follow the directions the fine folks at Brita have provided you. Soak the new filter for fifteen minutes, and then run several pitchers of water through it to activate that charcoal.

You’re going to see a lot of sediment in that filter bowl, and that’s a good thing. Keep running your gin through the Brita, say, five times, and don’t forget to rinse out the bowl between every pass. Soon you will have a crystal-clear spirit ready for mixing.

When you’re done, bottle your gin and start experimenting. Why not add some dried grapefruit peel to pair with a Negroni? Adding a single Kaffir lime leaf could be a nice way to add some more depth to a Pegu. Throw in a couple more cinnamon sticks this winter and try an Alexander Cocktail. I wonder how lavender would fare in Paul Harrington’s fabulous Jasmine. A double-dose of dried lemon peel in your gin for a souped-up Aviation Cocktail, anyone?

Here are some more suggestions for ingredients to add – in small quantities (think 1-2 grams per addition) – to flavor your next batch:

Thai basil
Cherry bark
Whole nutmeg
Cilantro leaf
Arbol chile
Star anise
Whole cloves
Indian sarsaparilla bark

Have fun, and if you get a chance to try the recipe, leave a comment below and let us know how it turns out!

Post from: Jeffrey Morgenthaler. Follow me on Twitter.

How to Make Your Own Gin Without a Still

Sometimes living in Eugene, Oregon means that you have a smaller circle of people who share similar interests as yourself. Driving an hour and a half to Portland is always an option, but sometimes you just wish you could play at home.

A select few of us local cocktail enthusiasts gathered today to experiment with obscure seasonal produce, dabble in an enormous library of rare liquors, and eat some wonderful cocktail-hour-inspired bites. It was a reawakening for me in a sense, as I spent the day remembering things that I had forgotten.

For instance, I had forgotten how much I love scallop ceviche. But then our wonderful chef for the day added a grapefruit gelée to the dish and I realized that I’d never tried anything so delicious.

The discussion was spirited (pun totally intended) as we deliberated over bottles and measurements. I really enjoy discussing the merits and differences of bourbon and rye while drinking scotch and holding a bottle of tequila.

We discovered that watermelon juice is much harder to create cocktails with than we could have possibly imagined (Herbsainte and vodka with watermelon juice – what was I thinking??) but we also learned that seaberries are both available to us here and quite versatile to mix cocktails with.

I love endive, smoked salmon, and creme fraiche. I had just neglected to try them all at the same time. Now I like them all three times more. Muthafucka, this palate is clean!

We played with housemade organic blackberry syrup and all smacked our foreheads in shame when we collectively remembered that bourbon loves to be mixed with fruit. We also remembered that ginger beer can take a bourbon and fruit mixture and reinforce the drink’s structure and balance. I’m going to make a point of not forgetting this again.

Pea purée in phyllo cups can make a perfect little nosh. About ten times I was reminded of this.

Ryan reminded us how fun it is to lance a champagne bottle [video, press to play]:

Unfortunately, I remembered that it was getting late and all of this research would have to be continued at another date. Be sure to check out what we found out you can do with seaberries!

Post from: Jeffrey Morgenthaler. Follow me on Twitter.

The Eugene Cocktail Summit

I’m a big fan of Jamie Boudreau’s website Spirits and Cocktails. The writing is engaging, the photography is brilliant, and his techniques push the boundaries of mixology. So when I read about how Jamie would brulée brandied cherries with a Misto filled with 151-proof rum and Angostura bitters, I was inspired.

And I immediately thought: this sounds like a perfect treatment for the Pisco Sour.

You see, a Pisco Sour is made with egg white, and shaking the hell out of the drink creates a thick, foamy head on the cocktail. And while the traditional garnish for a Pisco Sour is a couple of drops of bitters in the foam, but I’ve never been particularly impressed with the way these few paltry drops of bitters sat in their little egg-white mattress and didn’t play along with the rest of the drink.

So when I read about Jamie taking the old Angostura flamethrower to his drinks, I envisioned a Pisco Sour with a uniformly-distributed bitters-scorched foam: slightly crisp as the fire burnt the sugars, and slightly warm as the foam insulated the rest of the frosty cocktail from the heat. A pisco creme brulée in a glass!

Although I had some great test-runs with the 151, I was missing the intensity I was looking for. Jamie wrote and suggested I try Stroh 80, which is 160-proof rum that has a distinct aroma of butterscotch and packs a wallop of alcoholic punch which is well-suited to lighting things on fire (thanks, Jamie!)

Anyway, I won’t bother you with a Pisco Sour recipe at this time, especially since so many others have written about such matters more eloquently than I could hope to do. What I’m going to do is show you how I scorch my Pisco Sour foam. And yes, this is on the menu at El Vaquero.

First off, grab yourself a Misto. You can find them just about anywhere you find kitchen supplies. And don’t get the vermouth sprayer, get yourself the Big Boy.

Next, fill your Misto with two ounces of Angostura bitters and two ounces of Stroh 80 rum. Cap your Misto and shake to mix the two ingredients. Pump your sprayer full of air and get ready to get pyrotechnic.

** Disclaimer: You’re about to spray a stream of flammable liquid toward an open flame. Be careful, and don’t point it at anyone or anything other than the cocktail. You could seriously harm yourself or others, so don’t be a dick.

Light a match or strike up a lighter about 4 inches from the top of your already-prepared Pisco Sour. Carefully spray your Misto toward the drink, through the open flame, burning the top of the drink. Here, watch this:

When you’re done, the foam should look something like this:

The fire will really open up the aromatics in the Anogstura, and when served immediately, the foam will be a real treat for the senses. It’s been a big hit at the bar these past few weeks, so grab a Misto and try it for yourself!

Post from: Jeffrey Morgenthaler. Follow me on Twitter.

How to Make an Angostura-Scorched Pisco Sour