(Z. T. Bitzer 2011) The Problem You sit idly on your chateau’s balcony, surveying the work of your master gardner, Rondingus Brungo, former 3rd-level Druid and failed adventurer. A gin and tonic rests on the granite balustrade with a pool of water slicking the surface underneath; the glass is beaded with a carpet of droplets […]

Apparently not updating your blog wins you nominations! I couldn’t think of another two gentlemen I’d rather be crouched in a dark corner with than Jeffrey Morgenthaler and Camper English. I’m also confident no one has ever typed that sentence in the history of the human race… Winning a popularity contest against Morgenblogger is a […]

This series on cheater ingredients started off with grapefruit. Cinnamon is another tool in our veritable MacGyver toolkit for fixing cocktails and one that, unsurprisingly, matches very well with grapefruit. Leafing through one of my treasured reference cookbooks which might as well just be a nerdy spreadsheet of ingredient pairings, I looked for cinnamon. Cilantro […]

Thought the Chartreuse Swizzle couldn’t be improved? The Pineapple Juice Make your own pineapple juice! Canned pineapple juice is a horrific, Reaver-like abomination not worthy of even your tipsiest patron. Bottled, “high-quality” pineapple juice is not much better. Do you use bottled lemon juice? Exactly. The creamy tang and brightness of fresh pineapple juice is […]

Has this ever happened to you? You’ve got friends coming over for cocktails. People like Rick, who will judge you harshly for any lapses in ingredient availability. Then suddenly it hits you: “Oh fiddlesticks!” you think. “I forgot to start falernum two days ago!” Your friends won’t be able to have any Jet Pilots, and […]

Drinking rum is the paragon of happiness. This sugar-blessed potion comes in a prismatic spray of variety that has prompted more grail-like quests to hunt down rare bottles than than any other spirit. There are over 175 different rums available in the U.S. alone, and that’s ignoring all the bubblegum and foie gras-flavored (yes please) […]

Beachcomber’s Gold appears in three separate incarnations in Remixed, this version being a complete departure from the previous with only the light rum and Angostura bitters in each. Donn was a tinkerer, rarely willing to call a recipe his “final” version. And as a Gnomish artisan, he excelled, but he wasn’t without failure… Beachcomber’s Gold […]

It’s de-lurking day! For the fourth year in a row, I hope to drag you bashful, non-commenters out of your havens to introduce yourselves and win something. Each year we add a bunch of little monsters to the comment stream and manage to herd you into our tiny cargo hold of a cocktail community. It’s […]

Riffing on the Aurora Bora Borealis proved to be a challenging quest. And one so fraught with peril I had to dig out my dusty game cocktail genie to grant me more lives. Orange, orgeat, and coconut cream seem to be the best of friends, but push one even the tiniest bit the wrong way, […]

For the newcomer, coconut cream may look like a bad bedroom experiment – each can filled with translucent lard balls suspended in a snot-like fluid. But there’s an easy way to bring these disturbing partners together: empty the whole mess into a tupperware container or mason jar, pop on the lid, and shake vigorously. A […]