EMBURY COCKTAILS

Happy Birthday Eau de Vie, & Some Experimentations from Philip Gandevia

Here at Embury our affection for Sydney's Eau de Vie is well documented, both here and in The New York Times. (The really smashing Sydney-centric cocktail blog Everyday Drinking confirms our high opinion of the team's  mad skills in a series of posts here.) On the eve of the stellar bar's one-year anniversary soon-to-be lead barman Philip Gandevia sent along "several experimentations" that employ our Brooklyn Hemispherical Bitters. We were inpired to finally bottle the bitters to share with Team Eau de Vie, and their very name alludes to a trans-hempispherical bitters exchange with this bar on the other side of the world. So we're incredly pleased to see them put to such high level use by Gandevia.


SMOKEY 'Ol SEOUL LOVE

50ml Reposado (Ocho works well, DJ just fine)
12.5 Grenadine (the good stuff... Pomegranate juice and all 15 kills it in sweetness, but 10ml is not quite enough)
3 dashes Peychauds (the drink's gotta be pink)
Liberal with Brooklyn Hemispherical Sriracha Bitters
10ml (or so - barspoons a bit shy, but dont let it dominate) smokey single malt goodness (or something illegal...)

Stir with love. Garnish with a lemon twist - but discard and donate to some lacklusture gin drink. Add a cherry if you feel it needs it, but the drinks pretty enough as is.

THE CONTENDER

50ml Tanqueray (or solid London Dry)
3 Fresh strawberries
20ml Lemon
20ml Apple juice (go cloudy if possible)
2 Chunks mandarin
Srig of rosemarry (no stem just leaves)
Dash egg white
15ml honey water (organic)
Tspn corriander seed

Crush then shakey shakey (Can infuse strawberrys in gin ala tequila por mi amante) and Brooklyn Hempispherical Strawberry Bitters to top.

THAI LADY BOY MEETS THE SCOTTISH GENT

45ml Reposado
30ml Aperol
20ml Cinzano Rosso
2 Thai Basil leaves
Brooklyn Hemispherical Rhubarb Bitters (go nuts)
Smokey rinse.

Stir, orange twist

WAITING ON THE WORLD

50ml Finlandia Grapefruit
25ml Lemon juice
20ml Honey
Egg white
Brooklyn Hemispherical Meyer Lemon Bitters on top....


Eau de Vie

Everyday Drinking

Brooklyn Hemipsherical Bitters

 

Key West Literary Seminar Cocktails 2011: Avocado Jalapeno Margarita

 
This one sprang from the fecund mind of Mark Buettler, but I revamped and refined a bit for the purposes of serving 300 at a pop, rather than just one. I made some other aethetic shifts as well. Where Mark added a dash of kosher salt to the top of the drink, I went with Murray River Pink Flake Salt, which brings a certain exotic flavor that's hard to describe--this Australian salt tastes like, well, this salt. I purchased mine at The Filling Station in New York's Chelsea Market, an excellent resource for salts and olive oils.  Mark's technique (see his video where he walks you through the process) involves muddling and straining; I opted to get the infusion of avocado and jalapeno going by throwing it all in a big blender and hitting "puree", then straining out the remaining bits of fruit. Very important to remove the seeds and the pith, or white stuff, in the jalapeno, leaving you with only the flavor and the suggestion, the evocation of heat, rather than the fire itself. And where Mark went with Anejo, I opted for  the more supple, almost honey-kissed Don Julio Reposado, for a softer, sweeter experience.

AVOCADO JALAPENO MARGARITA

8 Parts avocado & jalapeno infused Don Julio Reposado Tequila

(-) 4 Parts Lime Juice (to taste)

1 1/2 Part Dark Agave Nectar

1 1/2 Part Grand Marnier

Shake, Strain into a double rocks glass add fresh ice

Garnish with a lime wheel dropped into the glass. and
Finish with a healthy pinch of Murray River Pink Flake Salt on top.

AVO-JALA TEQUILA

The Avo-Jala Tequila is simply avocado & jalapeno infused and strained tequila. Use not-too ripe avocado, taking care to cut out any brown spots, cut up slices. Puree, let sit for a couple hours. For the Seminar I opted for a less spicy approach and removed seeds altogether, and let the peppers macerate for only a short while. To make hotter, leave seeds in and let the potion sit for 12-24 hours before straining. 
   

Team Embury at the Audubon House in Key West. Far right is Patrick Symmes who was recounting his unsusessful attempt to make whiskey. Courage, Symmes! Don't give up! Trial and error is the name of this game.

Bitter Sweet Symphony

Photo: Jonathan Kamouris

My piece on cocktail bitters for Out magazine is up at Out.com here with lots of killer recipes from some of my favorite ace bartenders, most of whom we've featured here on Embury before. My original intro for the piece was a bit too long and the bits about the history of bitters were cut for space. Below is the original draft of the piece, but do head over to Out.com for lots of bitters extras, including 9 recipes in which bitters play an integral part.

Along with the global rebirth and reinvention of the craft cocktail over the past twenty years, revivals of classic cocktail bitters and a host of new bitters are amplifying layer to this drinking revolution, one that fuses historical arts with cuisine sophistication. Bitters can add a crucial additional layer, or layers, to a flavor profile of a drink without significantly altering it’s basic make-up, transforming it from flat to dynamic, from plain to bewitchingly complex and lively with just a few dashes; they are a highly effective flavor delivery system. They're often called the salt and pepper of cocktailing, but they can be even more: an incredibly well-stocked spice rack for the bar.

Bitters, essentially, are complex blends of roots and herbs mascerated in high proof spirits and then filtered, leaving a sediment-free (generally) dark distillate, rich with vegetal and herbal flavors and aromas.Their origins date back as the 1600s, when hundreds of varieties of bitters were made and used across Europe as very old school DIY homeopathic remedies, employing the epoch’s profound understanding of roots’ and herbs’ medicinal qualities. They first crossed over from the medicinal to the recreational around 1806, when some clever fellow, in a brilliant bit of re-purposing, realized that the intense flavors of bitters could not only mask the flavor of dubious-tasting spirits, but could make something quite new and delicious, with the addition of just a few dashes of the flavor-rich potions. The earliest definition of a cocktail from 1806 actually describes a combination of spirits, water, sugar and bitters. Over the centuries bitters have ebbed and flowed in cocktailing, falling to the wayside after Prohibition. For decades the old reliable Angostura Bitters were about the only kind you could find, but a new wave of inventive and surprising artisanal bitters are afoot, both commercially and privately, as a wave of mad scientist-style creativity taking place in bartenders’ kitchens and garages across the world. J.R.

And here are a couple videos featuring 2 of the 9 recipes in the article.

Further New Traditionalists & The Debut of the Indian Summer

 

Last Thursday while twin tornadoes ripped across Brooklyn knocking down over 1,000 trees, Team Embury was setting up for its first event of the fall at ne0-retro furniture outfitters The New Traditionalists, in their cozy--and safe--showroom in Soho. Despite a late start due to city-wide apprehension over the intense storm the faithful still made the trek and by 7 p.m. the party was in full swing. I had the chance to demo a new cocktail I'd come up with called "Indian Summer", using Cynar, Beefeater Summer Edition and a puree of equal parts fresh red peppers and pickled sweet and sour mixed peppers--pretty damn tasty, if I do say so myself, and several guests declared its potent foodiness to make it a great alternative to a Bloody Mary. Huge respect to Nic Hirsch of Cellar Bar at Andaz 5th Avenue for his recipe Cynar Rosso (see our post here) that's the source of my original inspiration, and to John Byrd for suggesting the addition of the sweet and sour peppers. Hirch's original recipe calls for Martin Miller's Gin and the crisp, almost biting citrus notes partnered beautifully with the red pepper he muddled it with. But the elderflower, hibiscus flower and blackcurrant notes of the Summer Edition give the sweet and sour vinegared peppers something complex and earthy to work with, and the Indian Summer feels like a great late harvest drink.

 
INDIAN SUMMER

3/4 ounce Cynar
2 ounce Beefeater Summer Edition Gin
1.5 ounce puree of fresh red peppers and sweet & sour peppers*
3/4 ounce fresh lemon juice
1/4 ounce turbinado syrup

I made a punch with the recipe and shook individual servings. As a combination garnish and ice cube I froze some colorful habaneros in a take-out container.
*I used "Peperoni in Agrodolce" from Il Mongetto-can be purchased at BuonItalia in Chelsea Market--they don't seem to be on the website yet but can be ordered by phone at 212-633-9717, and they're about $12.

Amy McNally of Brooklyn's Camp bar and Embury's main man Mark Buettler were on hand. Mark was mixing up something we'd worked on together, a spicy riff on a Paloma, using our still-in-development sriracha bitters.

Clicking on the recipe cards below should give you a nice big printable file.

 
Jaime Salas of Milagro manned a station, serving up the Mora y Sylvia  with blackberries and Fee Brothers Whiskey Barrel Aged Bitters.

  

Wednesday's Cocktail: The Lovely Rita

Embury Cocktails Presents: The Lovely Rita from Embury Cocktails on Vimeo.

iPhone & iPad friendly version here.

Literary Cocktails: Molé Margarita Punch

For the final party at the Key West Literary Seminar we decided to pull out the stops and make a really dazzling, seemingly improbable cocktail as the grand finale. Over the 3 days of the Seminar our little cocktail table had gained something of a faithful following, with repeat visitors who sought us out and even one group that referred to themselves as our "groupies", which was flattering. I was struck by how this sophisticated, literate crowd of (as I like to refer to them) lifetime New Yorker subscription holders found the notion of specialty cocktails to be quite novel. It's easy living in New York and being within this whole cocktail scene to forget that this boozy renaissance has not quite hit outside of urban centers--there are certainly exceptions around the country, little bars and restaurants that take the craft of the cocktail seriously, but there's plenty of room for education and better libations.

So when we began serving the molé margarita minds were promptly blown.

It's gone by different names since Mark Buettler created it in the fall at Dressler, after challenging himself to find a way to use Ovaltine in a cocktail. When German bitters outfit Bittermans came out with their Xocolatl Molé Bitters, he saw a way to crack the code. The resulting neo-margarita was called Puebla on the Dressler menu, but I called it Y Tu Molé Tambien when I first wrote about it. We re-dubbed it the  Tarnished Halo at a party for James Rosenquist where Mark did the cocktail catering and renamed the drink after one of the artist's pieces. But for for the purposes of the party I simply referred to it as a "molé margarita"....and the crowd went wild. I'd batched it by sense rather than measurements---I had the luxury of having had many, many of the originals from Mark's hands. And in lieu of using store bought Orgeat Chris Otten of Bad Boy Burrito made a batch from scratch, toasting almonds for a couple hours, then cooking them down with a quite a lot of dark agave nectar--he did it using his considerable cuisine kung fu, dispensing with anything resembling a recipe, so I can't tell you what he did. But Torani makes a perfectly fine Orgeat (here). Like with the Bennett punch we made a big batch, shook individual drinks with ice and strained into glasses, topping with the bitters as a final touch. These glasses were rimmed with the crowning touch--a combination of Ovaltine, almond flour and Murray River Flake Salt. I'd recommend starting small and making individual drinks before jumping up to the punch version--get to know the flavor and you'll be able to tweak the big version to your taste. Here is the original recipe:

Y TU MOLE TAMBIEN/TARNISHED HALO

1 1/2 oz blanco tequila

1/2 oz fresh lime juice

1/3 oz dark agave nectar

1/3 oz Orgeat

Shake Strain into a Double Rocks Glass rimmed with Ovaltine/Almond Flour/Sea Salt

Add Fresh Ice

Top with 4 Dashes of Bittermans Xocolatl Molé Bitters

Give a Slight Stir to Incorporate the Bitters and Serve....

Rim Mixture:

2 parts Ovaltine
2 parts almond flour
1 part sea salt (Mark used  Fleur de Sel de Guerande, we used Murray River Pink Flake Salt)

Happy literati, suffused in a molé and tequila glow.

Torani Orgeat

Bittermans Bitters

All Mark Buettler posts and videos 

One Bag To Rule Them All

The current VMan features a piece I wrote a piece about the this supremely useful and narcotically good looking bartender bag that Jim Meehan of PDT designed in collaboration with luxury leather goods outfit Moore & Giles. The above image is a pre-publication version of the page that featured my beloved Beefeater 24, some toasty Krug champagne and a French 75 adapted from the version found in Judge Jnr.'s 1927 cocktail book "Here’s How", updated and tailored to 24's subtle flavor profile by Meehan himself. Embury's homeboy Mark Buettler styled the drink for the shoot but, sadly, the drink and Buettler's first 'Cocktail Stylist' credit didn't make it into the final version of the page. This is a common scenario with the arc of magazine story production: copy and images mutate and evolve past the writer's original intent. Here's the original version of the page with the cocktail and the credit intact. Thanks, fellas. J.R.

FRENCH 75

1 oz. Beefeater 24 Gin

.5 oz. Lemon Juice

.5 oz. Simple Syrup

Krug Champagne 

Shake first 3 ingredients with ice and strain into a

chilled coupe

Top with Champagne

Garnish with a lemon twist

Friday Night Cocktails: Booker's Notion

Naming cocktails after songs is a noble tradition--Jeffrey Morgenthaler regularly mines the 70s rock catalogue for titles. But In an attempt at some reverse engineering mixology, I asked Bartender Of The Month Mark Buettler to make a drink actually inspired by the Booker T. & The M.G.'s song "Booker's Notion." I suggested using prior bar manager Jim Ryan's recipe for the Peter Pan Punch as a jumping off point: elegant Basil Hayden's, Luxardo Maraschino liqueur, lemon juice, simple syrup and pixie mandarins, shaken, strained and poured over  rocks. Mark thought the song was "a little grimy, a little dirty," and set about roughing up the original which was delicious but, like its namesake, a bit precious, a tad jejeune. The first step was leaving out the the Luxardo and muddling two brandied cherries in the glass instead, leaving clumps of the dark fruit to float about in the drink. Ramazattti and Blood Orange Bitters, grown-up tangerines and of course the 121-127 proof power bourbon Booker's completed the transformation from pretty boy cocktail to down-and-dirty man drink.

BOOKER'S NOTION

1 1/2 oz Booker's

3/4 oz Ramozzatti Amaro

1/2 oz Stirrings Blood Orange Bitters

1/4 oz Lemon

4 slices of Mandarin Orange

2 Brandied Cherries

Muddle cherries in bottom of double rocks glass, leave in

Muddle mandarin with lemon

Add rest of liquids, shake with ice, strain over cherries in glass

I like to think that Mark took Peter Pan out to a dive bar on this one, getting him drunk and laid. When Peter wakes up in the morning in a strange bed with no idea where he is and no money, he's nonetheless happy. Everyone's gotta learn sometime.

As I snapped the photo above at Dressler a school bus entered the frame, and I instantly thought of a line a friend likes to drop when he gets up to leave a bar: "That school bus isn't going to drive itself." That seemed fittingly grimy for this drink, and for this song, which you can hear below, and download below that.

Booker's Notion

Download Booker's Notion

Friday Night Cocktails: Party Of Six

As part of his duties as Bartender Of The Month here at Embury, Mark Buettler is required to contribute an original cocktail every week in October. He'd forgotten that fact when I'd stopped by to shoot his entry for the sherry cocktail contest that every bartender with a blog or a Facebook page seems to be entering, and he was put on the spot to come up with something on the fly.  This impromptu number made from spirits in Mark's bar started out life as the Party Of Five, but the last minute addition of Aperol was the sweet but surprisingly complext guest that truly made the party.

PARTY OF SIX

1 oz tawny port (Mark used a 1997 tawny Colheita)

1 oz Beefeater 24

1/2 oz Poire Williams

1/2 oz Aperol

1/4 oz. St. Germain elderflower cordial
1/4 oz. lemon juice

 

Shake and strain into an up glass of your choice, garnish with a lemon twist.

Friday Night Cocktails: Y Tu Mole Tambien

This beguiling number comes from Mark Buettler of Dressler in South Williamsburg, who will be our inaugural Bartender Of The Month for October, or, if you care to go there, Marktober. Mark had been talking about wanting to make a drink that tasted like Ovaltine, spurred by the announcement of a new product, Bittermans Xocolcatl Mole Bitters. These  bitters are a result of a transatlantic collaboration between the Massachusetts based Bittmermans and estimable German bitters makers, The Bitter Truth, something like a DC/Marvel Comics cross brand storyline--and Mark did await their arrival like a kid anxious for a hot new comic book. The drink is essentially an almond and coca margarita which manages to sidestep any of the cloying, cutesy flavors that might bring to mind by using dark agave nectar coupled with the almond syrup Orgeat to bring the sweet, and the mole bitters to bring the muscley, bass-heavy cocoa notes. One of his earlier iterations actually used Ovaltine on the rim all on its own, but a combination of almond flour and sea salt anchored the high cocoa notes with a needed maturity, while preserving the potent comfort food  association from childhood. The resulting cocktail is an adult's sweetest bedtime wish imaginable.

Y TU MOLE TAMBIEN

1 1/2 oz blanco tequila

1/2 oz fresh Lime Juice

1/3 oz dark agave nectar

1/3 oz Orgeat

Shake Strain into a Double Rocks Glass rimmed with Ovaltine/Almond Flour/Sea Salt

Add Fresh Ice

Top with 4 Dashes of Bittermans Mole Bitters

Give a Slight Stir to Incorporate the Bitters and Serve

Rim Mixture:

2 parts Ovaltine
2 parts almond flour
1 part sea salt (Mark used  "Fleur de Sel de Guerande")

Bitterman's bitters

All Mark Buettler posts and videos