Happy Leif Erikson Day!

Posted on October 5, 2014 by BoozeNerds

vinland-closeOctober 9th is Leif Erikson day, and despite the fact that neither of us are of Scandinavian heritage, we nonetheless feel obliged to acknowledge it. You have to admire someone who would take a handful of men in what would now be considered a small boat and cross an ocean, not even knowing if there was any land awaiting them there.

To honor his achievements, we pulled out a few bottles of aquavit and architected a couple of drinks. Most likely, Leif and company didn’t drink aquavit or anything like it, but it is the quintessential Scandinavian spirit these days, and we didn’t have time to brew mead 😉 We like to think he would approve.

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Posted in aquavit, averna, curacao, lemon juice, punt e mes | Tagged , | Leave a comment

An American Whiskey that Begins with a B

Posted on September 28, 2014 by BoozeNerds

o-pioneer-closeIt’s September, and it is Bourbon Heritage Month again. We’re big fans, so we thought we’d do our patriotic duty and drink some bourbon.

Bourbon actually has a fair range of styles and flavors these days, especially given the craft products that are now on the market. While the mash bill and making must meet strict criteria in order to be bourbon, there are still many things that the distiller can choose to vary that will make the spirit distinct. To celebrate this variety, we decided to pull four quite different bottles out of the liquor cabinet (out of the many :)) and see what they had to offer. Read on to see which bourbons we chose.

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Posted in bourbon, cherry liqueur, lemon juice, Original Cocktail, peychauds bitters, Tasting Notes | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

MxMo: Around the Block & First Frost

Posted on September 21, 2014 by BoozeNerds

It’s time again for Mixology Monday. This month’s theme comes from Chris over at A Bar Above, one of our favorite professional bartender blogs. The theme this month is Unknown, where one of the options was to use an ingredient you’ve never used before. As if we ever need an excuse to add some new item to the bar. 😀 Of course that does mean it takes us a while to find something new. Read on to see what we picked.

around-the-block-close

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Posted in aged rum, blackberry liqueur, creole shrubb, Mixology Monday, Original Cocktail, peychauds bitters, st. germain, suze, vodka | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Timing

Posted on September 14, 2014 by BoozeNerds

robert-burns-closeThis week we investigate the effect of temperature and oxidation on cocktails. We had noticed that some cocktails seem to change in flavor, often for the better, after sitting a short while (on those rare occasions where we don’t just gulp them down ;)). We were curious as to whether this was due to the drink warming up, oxidizing, or both. So we went back to our notes to find a couple of drinks where we had noted this phenomenon, and started our experiment. Read on to see what we found.

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Posted in absinthe, Cocktail Comparisons, Cointreau, Deconstructed, fernet, lime juice, scotch, sweet vermouth, Tasting Notes | Tagged , | Leave a comment

2nd Anniversary: Cognac

Posted on September 7, 2014 by BoozeNerds

blue-blood-closeThis week marks our 2nd anniversary and our 104th post. Go us! To celebrate, we decided to pull some of our nicer cognacs out of the liquor cabinet to enjoy, and do some side by side comparisons of them. We also threw in a mixed drink and some champagne. ‘Cause hey, it’s a celebration 🙂

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Posted in cognac, punt e mes | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Labor day cocktails

Posted on August 31, 2014 by BoozeNerds

workhouse-closeIt’s Labor Day weekend! Which is traditionally the last day where you can wear white, which is very important for us. Well, ok, not really. We wear whatever the fuck we want ;). We do love the spirit of the day though, a nod to everyone (including us!) who has to work for their living. We decided to come up with a couple of cocktails to celebrate the holiday as well as the transition from summer into autumn. With that in mind, we decided to do one gin cocktail and one aged spirit cocktail. Read on to find out what we came up with.

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Posted in black walnut liqueur, cognac, gin, mint liqueur, peach liqueur, scotch | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

MxMo: Nothing to Declare & Persuasion

Posted on August 24, 2014 by BoozeNerds

It’s Mixology Monday again! This month’s theme is Coconut from JFL over at the wonderful Rated R Cocktails blog. With that theme in mind, we wanted to see if we could make a less sweet cocktail with coconut. We often see fairly sugary coconut cocktails on offer, could we depart the text? Also, is it possible to make a great coconut drink without adding citrus (mmm, lime and coconut :))? Read on to see if we succeeded or failed.

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Posted in aperol, barrel aged gin, coconut cream - unsweetened, Mixology Monday, Original Cocktail, rhum agricole, yellow chartreuse | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Juicer redux

Posted on August 17, 2014 by BoozeNerds

Last week we looked into whether using juice from a squeeze juicer vs. a twist juicer made a difference for oranges and grapefruit. Turns out it did. We then became curious if the same held true for lime and lemon juice. We’ve always used the squeeze juicer because that’s the utensil that fits that size of citrus. Was our cocktail world about to be shaken to the very foundations? 😉

backrub

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Posted in campari, Cointreau, lemon juice, lime juice, peach liqueur, sweet vermouth, whiskey | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Squeeze juicer vs twist juicer

Posted on August 10, 2014 by BoozeNerds

Christa’s twist juicer is rather pathetic. It clogs with pulp in seconds, and strongly makes us suspect nobody tried to juice anything with it before putting it on the market. Hmph :S. Due to that, she sometimes uses her squeeze juicer to juice even large citrus like oranges and grapefruit. She’s noticed that doing that adds more peel flavors and bitterness to the cocktail, and that for some drinks she prefers it.

twist-juicer

Twist juicer

This made us curious to compare juicing citrus with a twist juicer vs. a squeeze juicer and how that affects a cocktail’s flavor. Being the Booze Nerds that we are, we decided to take an analytic approach and compare apples to apples. We made two versions of a given drink, one with juice from a twist juicer and one with juice from a squeeze juicer. Read on to find out what difference (if any) that made.

squeeze-juicer

Squeeze juicer

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Posted in bourbon, gold rum, grapefruit juice, lime juice, maraschino, orange juice | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Cobbler Weather

Posted on August 3, 2014 by BoozeNerds

summer-time-cobbler-closeIt’s high summer here in Seattle, which means it’s cobbler weather. Fortunately, we’re going to make the kind of cobbler that does not require the use of an oven.

It’s hot, well hot for us :), and it seemed like a good day to make something with lots of ice. We also have lots of lovely fresh fruit in season. What to do? We leafed through various cocktail recipe books and eventually came across the cobbler, a rather simple drink dating back to at least the 1830’s. It consists of a base spirit, a sweetener, fresh fruit and ice. That sounded like a perfect summer time drink for the Pacific Northwest. So we decided to try a couple or three and see if our hunch proved correct.

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Posted in bourbon, brandy | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment