I was kicking back the other night drinking an Improved Whiskey Cocktail out of my 1887 Jerry Thomas reprint when I saw that Filip was hosting a Mixology Monday. It sounded fun so I considered jumping in. Before we go any farther let me be clear that I have no idea what I’m doing. I’m just a guy who likes booze. While I am quite pleased with my cocktails in the privacy of my own home this blog was a place for me to experiment, and document the experiments, more than come out in public. But the idea grabbed me and here I am.
With that Whiskey Cocktail in hand I knew immediately what I would want to play with. My go to drink of late has been the Trilogy, an Old Fashioned variant with a 50/50 split of Whiskey and Applejack, orange bitters, sugar. The Laird’s bonded is fantastic in that little bevy and I began to wonder what it would be like in this drink I had right there in my own hand.
The Thomas recipe calls for a couple dashes each of Boker’s Bitters, gum syrup, Maraschino, Absinthe and a hefty dose of booze. Stir, garnish with lemon peel, and serve.
Fantastic base. Now let’s play.
The Whiskey was traded for Applejack which led me to want to shift the other flavors as well. I swapped the Maraschino for some of the Ginger Liqueur I had made a few months back. I figured the ginger and apple would taste nice together. Not having a vintage bottle of Boker’s I went with Bitter Truth Old Fashioned Aromatic. All else the same.
Verdict: Too much absinthe. I almost couldn’t taste anything else.
A second test went with an Absinthe rinse all else the same.
Verdict: Too Sweet and a lack of complexity in the flavor. The Applejack just didn’t have the same depth as the Knobb Creek I used in the whiskey version. I could have gone the route of trying various apple spirits but that’s just not in the budget this month.
Third test pulled the syrup and upped the bitters adding a couple dashes of Bitter Truth Chocolate Bitters and swapped the garnish for a flamed orange peel. Now we’re getting somewhere.
Verdict: The absinthe feels out of place. Not terrible, but certainly not fantastic. OK, perhaps it was bordering on terrible.
I thought something herbal might play better with the apple/ginger combo and resonate nicely against the sweet smokey notes of the garnish. So the Absinthe rinse was replaced with a Green Chartreuse rinse.
Verdict: Similar problem as the Absinthe. Nice idea but way overpowering.
Time for a new direction. The absinthe gave a sharpness to the drink that was delightful but the flavor was all wrong now. Looking around the kitchen I spotted my bottle of Acid Phosphate I bought on a whim to try out. Here is a route to give crispness to the drink without altering the flavor. I did want a flavor change but that would be done via ratios of existing ingredients. I bumped up the ginger from one to two barspoons (1/4 oz.), added a barspoon (1/8 oz.) of acid phosphate and arrived at ambrosia.
Here we had our main flavor of apple and ginger, spiced up with the cloves and chocolate from the bitters, a touch of acid, and the smokey citrus of the flamed orange peel. Utter delight.
The final recipe is as follows:
- 2 oz. Laird’s Bonded Applejack
- 1/4 oz. Ginger Liqueur
- 1 barspoon Acid Phosphate
- 2 Dashes Bitter Truth Aromatic Bitters
- 2 Dashes Bitter Truth Xocolotl Bitters
- Stir and strain into a cocktail glass
- Garnish with a flamed orange peel.
By the time I was done with this my “niche spirit” of the applejack was the most mainstream thing about the beverage. But sometimes the circuitous routes are the most fun.
Cheers!
Tags: acid phosphate, applejack, bitter truth aromatic bitters, bitter truth chocolate bitters, ginger liqueur, whiskey