Flower Power

Posted on July 26, 2015 by BoozeNerds

IMG_4335After recovering from Tales of the Cocktail, we’re back this week to talk about using flower waters in cocktails. The two most common flower waters are rose water and orange blossom water. To be honest, we don’t know that we’ve seen any others, though we’re thinking of making violet and/or lavender water, because why not. In any case, if you’re unfamiliar with these ingredients, they’re both incredibly strong floral potions and must be used sparingly so as not to overwhelm other ingredients. Since they must be used in such small amounts,we were very curious to quantify exactly what effect they had in a drink, so we decided to try a couple of drinks that call for them, and try them both with and without the flower water. If you’ve ever wondered about using flower waters as a cocktail ingredient, read on.

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Posted in bourbon, calvados, grenadine, lime juice, orange flower water, passionfruit puree, rose flower water, simple syrup, vodka, watermelon | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Substitution

Posted on July 12, 2015 by BoozeNerds

IMG_4281Sometimes you’re in the mood for one of your favorite cocktails and then, to your horror, you discover that you don’t have a key ingredient. What to do? You try a substitution and see what happens. 🙂
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Posted in allspice dram, basil, cachaca, lime juice, mint, pineapple juice, simple syrup | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Spritzes to the Rescue

Posted on July 5, 2015 by BoozeNerds

IMG_4253It’s hot, way too damn hot here in Seattle. Since that’s the case, we’ve been having more light, refreshing, club soda-heavy drinks after dinner rather than our usual practice of having a splash of brandy or whiskey. Actually, we’ve been having them before dinner too, come to think of it ;). The Germans call them spritzers, the Italians call them spritzes, and we call them delicious. Read on to find out what fizzy drinks we’ve been mixing up.
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Posted in aperol, club soda, Cointreau, sparkling wine, suze | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Fizzes

Posted on June 28, 2015 by BoozeNerds

IMG_4239This week, we play around with fizzes, a versatile style of drink that lends itself to hot weather quite well. We were inspired when we came across our bottle of sloe gin while searching the cupboard for a different ingredient, and thought “Hey, we haven’t used that for a while. What should we do with it?”. Well, a sloe gin fizz, duh 😉 Though good sloe gin is a very nice thing and there should be more drink recipes for it. Something to put on the to-do list. Anyway, we did a bit of research and poked through Embury, and decided to make three types of fizzes – a “regular” fizz with no egg white, a silver fizz that does have egg white and is very like a traditional sour, and a New Orleans fizz that includes cream in addition to the egg white. Read on to see how the fizz experiment went.

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Posted in aged rum, cream, egg white, gin, lemon juice, lime juice, orange flower water, simple syrup | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Sage

Posted on June 21, 2015 by BoozeNerds

IMG_4194High summer has come early in Seattle this year, which means we’re seeing lots of sun and very little rain. The sage, thyme, rosemary and other dry-season herbs are loving it, so we have plenty to harvest from the garden. Since the sage in particular has been exploding, we decided to see how we can use it in drinks. Read on to see what we paired it with.

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Posted in absinthe, cachaca, grapefruit bitters, lemon juice, lime juice, sage, simple syrup, vodka | Tagged , | Leave a comment

MxMo: Local

Posted on June 14, 2015 by BoozeNerds

It’s Mixology Monday time again. This month’s theme comes from Stuart over at Putney Farm, one of our favorite food and booze blogs. The theme is Hometown Hooch. In Stuart’s words:

Your quest is simple. Create a new cocktail, or refashion a classic, using your favorite “hometown hooch” (and we can expand the definition of “hooch” to include spirits, liqueurs, aperitifs and beer).

For those of you who’ve followed us for a while, you know that this is a far from a simple request for us. We are fortunate to have many, and we do mean many local distillers, bitters makers, tonic makers, brewers, you name it here in Washington State. And heaven help us if we include Oregon and British Columbia. 😉 How can we choose just one?

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Posted in chocolate bitters, Mixology Monday, raspberry liqueur, whiskey, yellow chartreuse | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Fresh Juice Substitutes

Posted on June 7, 2015 by BoozeNerds

squeeze-juicerThis week we’re both busy with real life intruding on our fabulous lives of being jet-setting booze bloggers. 😉 So we decided to throw up a quick post on some fresh juice substitutes that we occasionally use to get from thirsty to cocktail as quickly as possible. Read on to find out how we sometimes fake it to make it.

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Cider Sangria

Posted on May 31, 2015 by BoozeNerds

IMG_4138-closeWith the weather being unseasonably warm here in Seattle this year, we’ve been drinking more warm weather drinks – coolers, Collins, and sangrias – than usual for May. We especially love sangria for picnics or barbecues, but with such a great selection of ciders here in the Pacific Northwest, we thought maybe we could expand on that theme a little and try a cider sangria (or ci-gria as Christa likes to call them ;)). Read on to see how our “ci-grias” turned out.

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Posted in cider, cognac, gin, simple syrup | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Choosing a Dilution Strategy

Posted on May 24, 2015 by BoozeNerds

IMG_4134As we move towards summer, we decided this week to experiment with dilution strategies. You have a dilution strategy planned, don’t you? If not, read on to see what we found out.

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Posted in lime juice, maraschino, simple syrup, white rum | Tagged | 2 Comments

MxMo: Ten Paces at Dawn & Park View

Posted on May 17, 2015 by BoozeNerds

It’s Mixology Monday time again! This month’s theme comes from Fred Yarm at Cocktail Virgin Slut, our inestimable torch bearer for Mixology Monday. The theme this month is I’ll Take Manhattan. On the surface, the theme seems somewhat limiting. The Manhattan is one of the primeval cocktails: spirit, mixer, bitters. But from such humble ingredients deliciousness can be found. Read on to see where we ended up.

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Posted in aged rum, amaro, amaro montenegro, angostura bitters, cherry bitters, malt whiskey, Mixology Monday, nocino, yellow chartreuse | Tagged | 2 Comments