EMBURY COCKTAILS

Hot Toddy Quartet From Houston Eaves (In Austin)

 

While visiting Austin I was lucky enough to be invited to the local branch of the USBG's holiday party where I met a whole slew of local bartending talent. The evening was held at Franklin's BBQ, recently rated best BBQ in the country by Bon Apetit, and thus I was able to neatly bypass the daunting lines that one must brave to get in to sample the justly lauded food. There was also some pretty balls-out karaoke (Neil Diamond sounds somehow better when sung by a woman, I learned), a Makers punch with beet juice served in a water cooler (hot or cold option) and plenty of laconic Texas charm. Coupled with the herculean partying stamina of bartenders, this all made for a great night and a treat for this visitor. 

Met Houston Eaves of Contigo at the party amd found myself perched at his bar the next night, along with Bill Norris of The Alamo Drafthouse (and the unofficial ringleader of the Austin cocktail scene.) We sampled most of Eaves' toddy menu--toddies were on offer at lots of bars around town, as the weather was cool and damp, but these were on different level. Complex like a proper cocktail, and created with an ingenious heating method using a short weighted tin (only $7.95 from Cocktail Kingdom) propped on top of hot water in a pint glass to warm the elements gradually. 

MEXICAN MONK

Fill your mug and half-fill a pint glass with hot water. Place a short metal tin in the pint glass. In the metal tin, add:

1 oz añejo tequila

.5 oz chartreuse

.5 oz honey syrup

.5 oz lemon juice

1 dash housemade ginger/citrus bitters*

Stir to blend ingredients, dump hot water from mug, add contents from tin, and top with 4 oz hot water. Express oil from wide lemon swath, and drop in the drink. 

(*From H.E.: It's just a blend of dried ginger,  lemon, tangerine, bitter orange, & gentian. It's pretty good without the bitters as well, but they add a little extra depth.)

ESPADIN TEA

Fill your mug and half-fill a pint glass with hot water. Place a short metal tin in the pint glass. In the metal tin, add:

1.25oz Wahaka Espadín Mezcal

.75oz Licor 43

.5oz lemon juice

Stir to blend ingredients, dump hot water from mug, add contents from tin, and top with 4 oz strong-brewed black tea. Garnish with lemon wheel on mug. 

WINTER AT WIMBLEDON

Fill your mug and half-fill a pint glass with hot water. Place a short metal tin in the pint glass. In the metal tin, add

1.5oz Pimm's No. 1

.5oz London dry gin

.5oz Domaine de Canton

.5oz lemon juice

.25oz mint simple syrup

Stir to blend ingredients, dump hot water from mug, add contents from tin, and top with 4 oz hot water. Express oil from wide lemon swath, and discard. Garnish with mint sprig. 

BRANCA-MENTA HOT CHOCOLATE

Warm a mug with hot water. Discard the water. Build in mug

1.5oz Branca-Menta

5oz Salted Almond hot chocolate

Top with a couple of barspoons Fernet-Branca whipped cream. Garnish with 1 mint leaf. Enjoy!

Houston behind the stick.  

Cocktail World Cup: Team Scotland's "The Wandering Chai"

For the punch competition at the Cocktail World Cup Team Scotland ( L-R, Aaron Jones, Ben McFarlane and Nick Reed) may not have won (Team U.S.A. took it home that night) but they did come up with a winner. A delicious milk-style punch, with soy milk taking the place of milk milk, some homemade chai, Appleton's 8 Year Old Rum and the 42Below Manuka Honey. When explaining their thinking behind the drink to the judges (including "Punch: The Delights (And Dangers) Of The Holiday Bowl" author David Wondrich, which made it a bit nerve-wracking, to be certain) the team talked about the fast pace of modern life and the popularity of coffee drinks on the go--to that end the punch was served warm, and in paper coffee cups, with sippy lids.

The use of soy was ingenious, keeping the mix from becoming too fatty, too savory--and it was one of the best uses of the hard-to-define Manuka in a cocktail that I've ever experienced. It was perfect for a cool fall night--as it was  when we were in New Zealand, and as it's--hopefully--the last few wet, cold weeks of spring here in the North there's still a chance to enjoy this liquid antidote to the chill.

THE WANDERING CHAI

800ml Soy milk
600ml 42 Below Manuka Honey
300ml Appletons 8yo Rum.
300ml Homemade chai syrup (made by boiling down chai tea and 1:1 sugar to water.)
A large knob of butter

Add all ingredients to a saucepan and heat (not boil) until butter is melted and milk warm. Serve in a take away coffee cup with a piece of home made almond and manuka honey praline.

Literary Cocktails: The Beautiful Toddies

Photo: Curt Richter

When the Director of the Key West Literary Seminar, Miles Frieden, asked me to come down to do a little specialty cocktail table for the various parties that follow the days' more sober proceedings I simply reviewed Embury and pulled some of the best recipes we've run over the years (yes, years!) and batched them up. But for the first night's party I pulled a last minute substitution. The same cold snap that descended over the rest of the continent did in fact reach Key West and nighttime temperatures in the low 40s meant that an outdoor partygoers could really use something warm. 

A last minute experimentation with my crack drinking & concocting team from Bad Boy Burrito yielded the below version of a hot toddie. My one bit of advice for serving 300 people a cocktail with hot water as an integral part: make sure you've got working hot water source. And if you get percolators, make sure they don't have a residual coffee aftertaste. My assistant Zeph Allen and I worked with the one acceptable percolator and made it work, shuttling hot water across the garden in air pots. A bank of 3 or 4  instantly heating tea pots would have been nice. I'd named the Toddie after Seminar honoree Richard Wilbur's poem "The Beautiful Changes"

THE BEAUTIFUL TODDIE

(We used 8 ounce paper cups)

1 good slug of dark agave nectar, just enough to fill the bottom of the cup (to about 1/3 inch.)

1 1/2 ounces Maker's Mark

Hot water--fill to about an 3/4 inch from the rim, and stir about 5 times

Squeeze and drop in a substantial lemon wedge

Top with a couple healthy dashes of Fee Bros. Grapefruit Bitters.

The Grapefruit Bitters push the whole flavor equation into a zestier zone, bringing up the citrus and offsetting the sweetness of the agave and the Maker's Mark perfectly. By all accounts this was a home run, warming guests so sucessfully that many were able to brave the chilly night for a couple hours, and a couple rounds.

Helper monkey Zeph Allen taking the wheel. (One uses "helper monkey" in the most affectionate sense, and of course it comes from a Simpsons episode where Homer gets one as a sort of drinking & slacking buddy.) It was cool to watch a non-bartender start to get the whole key notion of balance in cocktails, and play with levels and tweak ingredients, an innate sensibility that probably is rooted in his musicianship. Towards the end of the evening Zeph made a few alternate iterations, subbing some light agave for the dark to refreshing, less knock-out drops effect

 

Jolly Benson, Lighting Director for the KWLS and too-infrequent Embury contributor (here) and myself.

Check out Littoral, the blog for the Seminar, here, and look for podcasts of readings and talks from the Seminar at the Audio Archives.

Tomorrow: The Bennet for 200.

Photos: Ian Rowan