From the BourbonGuy Archives: Making Bitters Using a Sous Vide Cooker

Hello Friends! Sorry about the lack of posts last week, I injured my back a few weeks ago, and it had flared up to the point where I spent the week on Prednisone and muscle relaxers. So, no drinking and, by extension, no tastings. I know. Bourbon is much more fun than the nausea that muscle relaxers gave me. So I’m reaching into the archives for this week and pulling out an article from 2020 that has been on my mind lately. Mostly because I need to make more bitters here soon. Anyway, enjoy!

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A long time ago, I found a set of instructions online that detailed how you could make infused vodka in an afternoon instead of in weeks. It was written by a bartender at what seemed to be a high-end bar. Now you might wonder why anyone, much less a skilled bartender, would want to make an infused vodka. Today, that might be a good question, but flavored vodka was a big thing at the time. And, hopefully, there will always be a certain kind of establishment that will take pride in offering a house-made product to discerning patrons.

But back to those instructions. I found these so long ago that they are no longer available online. But they were so stupidly simple that I never had to go back to look for them again. Now, I didn’t know this at the time, but the instructions were describing a large industrial-grade Sous Vide cooker. I didn’t know what Sous Vide was, but I could understand the concept behind it. Keep a water bath at a precise temperature for a determined length of time. Easy peasy. Using a very large stockpot, a thermometer, and a quick hand on the stove controls, I used those instructions to make a lot of infusions. I was mostly just playing around, but the lemon peel infusions were the first step in some mighty tasty limoncello.

Now, being the kind of guy who likes to make things for myself, I’ve been making orange bitters at home for years. I even wrote about it way back in 2014. Originally, I used the Orange bitters recipe in Brad Thomas Parsons’ book Bitters: A Spirited History of a Classic Cure-All. But these days, I’ve modified the recipe some.

A couple of years ago, I bought my first Sous Vide cooker. I love to cook, I’m a gadget guy, and heck, Sous Vide cookers were finally available for less than $100. I’ve made the best steaks I’ve ever tasted using that thing.

This year, I finally realized that I could put these two things together. Instead of waiting for three weeks for my bitters to be done, I could use the Sous Vide cooker to easily make warm-infused bitters. Now, the warm infusion method doesn’t work for everything. Just like a cold brew tea and coffee taste different than a warm brew, using the warm infusion method will change the flavor. If you are infusing fruits, the result will taste more like cooked fruit than it will fresh fruit. But in some cases, this is actually beneficial, so just keep that in mind.

And since this experiment worked so nicely, I thought I’d share my recipe with you.

Spicy Blood Orange & Tangerine Bitters

Ingredients

• 2 Cups Old Grand-Dad 114

• 2 oranges

• 2 tangerines

• 2 Blood oranges

• 4 Whole cloves

• 1/2 star anise

• 8 green cardamom pods, cracked

• 1/2 tsp cassia chunks (or broken cinnamon stick)

• 1/2 tsp gentian root

• 1/4 tsp Black peppercorns

• 1/4 tsp coriander seeds

• 1/4 tsp whole allspice

• 1 cup of water

• 1 ounce rich (2 to 1) simple syrup

Equipment 

• Sous Vide Cooker 

• Food Dehydrator (optional)

• Y-shaped fruit peeler

• 2 mason jars

• Measuring spoons

Instructions

1. Read all the directions and gather your equipment. 

2. With a Y-peeler, zest 1 orange, 1 blood orange, and 1 tangerine. Make them a nice, thick zest and don't be afraid to get some pith on them. Give the zest a rough chop with a large knife. Keep the pieces kinda big as they will shrink.

3. Dry your chopped zest. I use a food dehydrator, but you can also use a baking sheet in a 200° oven.

4. After your dried zest is finished, zest your other three citrus fruits. I avoid the pith on this step, but it won't hurt if some comes along for the ride, you are making “bitters” after all. A little extra bitterness isn’t the end of the world.

5. Place your fresh zest, 1/4 cup of dried zest, and all your spices in a quart-sized Mason jar. Add 2 cups of Old Grand-Dad 114. Close the jar and give it a shake. Make sure all the ingredients are covered, if not add more bourbon and close tightly.

6. Fill your stockpot (or whatever you use for sous vide cooking) with water, set your cooker to 160° F and float your mason jar in the stockpot. There should have been enough headspace in the jar to allow it to float upright. Once the water comes to temperature let it cook for an hour and a half, shaking occasionally. After the cook is complete, do not empty your water bath unless you are finished for the day. You will need it again. 

7. Strain the solids out through a piece of cheesecloth. Set the infused bourbon aside. 

8. Place the solids and one cup of water in a second Mason jar and float in your water bath. Set temp to 160° F and let infuse for 45 minutes. 

9. Strain the solids out through a piece of cheesecloth. Give the solids a squeeze to remove as much liquid as possible. Discard solids.

10. Combine the infused bourbon and infused water together. Add rich simple syrup. Let run through a coffee filter to remove any sediment. Let cool.

11. Decant into small bottles. It is natural for more sediment to settle out, just give it a shake before using. If something starts to grow in the bottle, please discard it. For best flavor, use bitters within a year or so. 

So, right after I finished this, I realized that I didn’t have any bottles. I’d been reusing the same old Angostura bottles for years and had finally tossed them, thinking that I’d easily have emptied more when the time came to need them. Well, I did. But then I tossed them too, not remembering that I needed to save them. After some searching online, I found out that they were called Woozy Bottles and are the same bottles used in hot sauce. The smallest amount that I could get from Amazon was a case of twelve. Needing only four, I wondered to my wife what I would do with the other eight. It was then that she said the most mind-blowing thing: “You know, you could always make other kinds.”

I’m going to be honest with you, that thought had never crossed my mind. So I set out to think of what other kinds of bitters I might want to make. Well, my wife likes cherry bitters in her Old-Fashioneds, so that was a no-brainer. And I knew just the thing to base it on: my Orange-Spiced Cocktail Cherries. These have been a big hit with everyone who has tried them ever since I developed the recipe. And, since I already had many jars of these cherries in storage, I could even use them to make the bitters. Once again I got out my trusty food dehydrator and got to work sucking the moisture out of them.

Spiced Cherry Bitters

Ingredients

• 2 Cups Old Grand-Dad 114

• 1/2 Cup Dried Orange-Spiced Cherries

• 1/4 cup Orange-Spiced Cherries

• 1 TBSP Dried Orange Peel

• 1 TBSP Gentian Root

• 1 TBSP Cassia Chunks (or broken cinnamon stick)

• 1 TBSP Whole Allspice Berries

• 1 TBSP Juniper Berries

• 1 Star Anise (broken up slightly)

• 1 cup of water

• 1 ounce rich (2 to 1) simple syrup

Equipment 

• Sous Vide Cooker 

• Food Dehydrator

• Small knife

• 2 mason jars

• Measuring spoons

Instructions

1. Read all the directions and gather your equipment. 

2. With a small knife, cut about a cup of Orange-Spiced Cherries in half. Dry your cherries in a food dehydrator (I got impatient and pulled mine out when they were about three-quarters dry, they still worked great).

3. Place your dried cherries, 1/4 cup of non-dried cherries, and all your spices in a quart-sized Mason jar. Add 2 cups of Old Grand-Dad 114. Close the jar and give it a shake. Make sure all the ingredients are covered, if not add more bourbon and close tightly.

4. Fill your stockpot (or whatever you use for sous vide cooking) with water, set your cooker to 160° F and float your mason jar in the stockpot. There should have been enough headspace in the jar to allow it to float upright. Once the water comes to temperature let it cook for an hour and a half, shaking occasionally. After the cook is complete, do not empty your water bath unless you are finished for the day. You will need it again. 

5. Strain the solids out through a piece of cheesecloth. Set the infused bourbon aside. 

6. Place the solids and one cup of water in a second Mason jar and float in your water bath. Set temp to 160° F and let infuse for 45 minutes. 

7. Strain the solids out through a piece of cheesecloth. Give the solids a squeeze to remove as much liquid as possible. Discard solids.

8. Combine the infused bourbon and infused water together. Add rich simple syrup. Let run through a coffee filter to remove any sediment. Let cool.

9. Decant into small bottles. It is natural for more sediment to settle out, just give it a shake before using. If something starts to grow in the bottle, please discard it. For best flavor, use bitters within a year or so. 

Of course, since I’d gone this far, it’d be silly not to do an Aromatic Bitters as well, right?

Arok’s Aromatic Bitters

Ingredients

• 2 Cups Old Grand-Dad 114

• 1 TBSP Molasses

• 1 TBSP Gentian Root

• 1 TBSP Cassia Chunks (or broken cinnamon stick)

• 1 TBSP Blade Mace

• 1 TBSP Whole Allspice Berries

• 1 TBSP Dried Orange Peel

• 1 tsp Green Cardamom Pods (cracked)

• 1 tsp Whole cloves

• 1 Star Anise (broken up slightly)

• 1/2 tsp black peppercorns

• 4 pieces Dried, Sliced Ginger Root

• 4 Orange-Spiced Cherries

• 1 cup of water

• 1 ounce rich (2 to 1) simple syrup

Equipment 

• Sous Vide Cooker 

• 2 mason jars

• Measuring spoons

Instructions

1. Read all the directions and gather your equipment. 

2. Place your molasses, cherries, and all your spices in a quart-sized Mason jar. Add 2 cups of Old Grand-Dad 114. Close the jar and give it a shake. Make sure the molasses is dissolved and all the ingredients are covered, if not add more bourbon and close tightly.

3. Fill your stockpot (or whatever you use for sous vide cooking) with water, set your cooker to 160° F and float your mason jar in the stockpot. There should have been enough headspace in the jar to allow it to float upright. Once the water comes to temperature let it cook for an hour and a half, shaking occasionally. After the cook is complete, do not empty your water bath unless you are finished for the day. You will need it again. 

4. Strain the solids out through a piece of cheesecloth. Set the infused bourbon aside. 

5. Place the solids and one cup of water in a second Mason jar and float in your water bath. Set temp to 160° F and let infuse for 45 minutes. 

6. Strain the solids out through a piece of cheesecloth. Give the solids a squeeze to remove as much liquid as possible. Discard solids.

7. Combine the infused bourbon and infused water together. Add rich simple syrup. Let run through a coffee filter to remove any sediment. Let cool.

8. Decant into small bottles. It is natural for more sediment to settle out, just give it a shake before using. If something starts to grow in the bottle, please discard it. For best flavor, use bitters within a year or so. 

So there you have it. Four bottles each of three different kinds of bitters, all in one afternoon. Not too shabby. If you’re curious, I sourced all my spices from my local Penzey’s Spices location, except for the Gentian Root, which I ordered from Mountain Rose Herbs. Neither of them is a sponsor, I don’t take sponsors, I just like these stores. Oh, and the labels above are original Eric Burke designs cut out using a Cricut. I told you I like making things myself.

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Char & Stave Coffee Liqueurs, Classic Coffee and Cafe Amaro

I’d like to thank Char & Stave and Bluebird Distilling, along with their PR team, for sending these with no strings attached.

Busy day today. I had some work to do, plus I needed to change the light bulbs in my microwave. You’d think that would be easy enough, right? Bulbs burn out. Manufacturers should probably give you easy access to them and maybe even tell you what replacement bulbs to buy. Sounds reasonable, doesn’t it?

Well, not so much. I spent the entire morning trying to figure out the correct parts on the manufacturer’s website. They were willing to sell the bulbs to me (though they were out of stock), but they weren’t willing to just tell me what bulbs I needed so I could buy them elsewhere. Naturally, I ended up taking the burned-out bulbs to Home Depot, comparing them to what was on the shelf, and picking out a couple that looked like they’d work. Luckily for me, they did. I’m not very happy with GE Appliances right now—it shouldn’t take all day to change two light bulbs—but whatever. Let’s just say I’ll be having a cocktail later.

Speaking of cocktails, I’m taking a closer look at a couple of cocktail ingredients tonight. These were sent to me by the producers for review purposes a couple of months ago. I’ve been sitting on them for a while, waiting for their turn to come up in the queue. Well, today their turn arrived…just in time to soothe away a frustrating day.

So, what are these ingredients? Two takes on a coffee liqueur. The Classic Coffee is exactly as it sounds—essentially a sweet cup of alcoholic cold brew. The Cafe Amaro, on the other hand, is more like a cross between the Classic Coffee and a traditional amaro. It’s nuttier and more coffee-forward than the Amaros I have in my cocktail stand, but it offers more depth of flavor than a standard coffee liqueur. Before I dive into my tasting notes, let’s see what the producer has to say about them.

Char & Stave Classic Coffee Liqueur is crafted using Char & Stave Arabica Coffee and Bluebird Distilling Vodka, one batch at a time with no artificial flavors. The spirit presents a velvety smooth mouthfeel, with savory chocolate notes up front followed by tinges of citrus, and a finish of slightly sweet dried fruits. Shines in an Espresso Martini, White Russian, or “Night Cap” (3 oz. on the rocks).

Char & Stave Cafe Amaro Coffee Liqueur is a bittersweet coffee liqueur blended with a balance of citrus and botanicals spanning Oris root, angelica, cardamom, chamomile, lemon peel, gtrapefruit peel and gentian root – made one batch at a time with no artificial flavors. Shines in a Coffee Negroni, Char n’ Tonic, and more.

All Char & Stave coffee beans are roasted in-house, with beans sourced from small farmers and microplots worldwide. Both spirits are made with Char & Stave Arabica Coffee (62% Peru Cajamarca, 20% Costa Rica Central Valley, 18% Natural Papua New Guina Wahgi Valley). After the beans are roasted, a two-day Cold Brew method is employed to ensure maximum flavor and velvety smoothness.

Let’s see how they taste, shall we?

Char & Stave Classic Coffee Coffee Liqueur

Purchase Info: This bottle was sent to me at no cost for review purposes. The suggested retail price is $34.99 for a 750 mL bottle.

Price per Drink (50 mL): $2.33

Details: 30% ABV

Nose: Rich and roasty coffee notes (think a medium to dark roast, not a bright acidic light roast)

Mouth: Sweet and chocolaty coffee notes with a hint of a burn from the alcohol.

Finish: Gentle and of medium length with notes of caramel and chocolate lingering.

Char & Stave Cafe Amaro Coffee Liqueur

Purchase Info: This bottle was sent to me at no cost for review purposes. The suggested retail price is $39.99 for a 750 mL bottle.

Price per Drink (50 mL): $2.67

Details: 30% ABV

Nose: Coffee, nutty, gentian root, and a touch of citrus.

Mouth: Coffee, caramel, and gentian root.

Finish: On the longer side of medium and bitter with notes of coffee, cardamom, and bitter citrus peel.

Thoughts:

Both of these are very nice. Super tasty. I LOVE coffee. I love it even more than bourbon. And the Classic Coffee is just like drinking an alcoholic glass of cold brew. I could easily see myself having a pour of it one lazy afternoon. The Cafe Amaro would make a good sipper if you like to sip Amaros. Not many do. I like to have an Amaro and Soda now and then but I get that I’m an unusual person in my love for bitter drinks.

But where these will shine for people that are not as weird as I am is as a cocktail ingredient. I didn’t know a recipe for a cocktail that used both coffee liqueur and bourbon so I asked ChatGPT for a couple of recipes. They are as follows:

Coffee Old Fashioned

2 oz bourbon
1 oz brewed or espresso coffee (chilled) or coffee liqueur
1 tsp maple syrup
A few dashes of bitters (optional: coffee or chocolate bitters)

The Revolver

2 oz bourbon (preferably a rye-heavy one)
0.5 oz coffee liqueur
2 dashes of orange bitters
Orange peel for garnish

The Coffee Old Fashioned is based on a recipe from Happy Honey Kitchen. The Revolver is from Serious Eats.

Both of these liqueurs work great in both of these recipes. I’m extremely happy with both. The Old Fashioned is pretty basic when using the Classic Coffee, but that’s to its benefit. The Cafe Amaro has just a little too much going on for me when used here. The Revolver is amazing with either, and I am completely floored by how well bourbon, coffee, and orange flavors pair with one another. So good. That’s the one I’m having tonight to round the rough edges off of a frustrating day.

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Soul Boxer Brandy Old Fashioned, ready-to-drink-cocktail

Before we get started, I have a severe case of Covid-Brain brought on by a relatively minor bout of Covid…please excuse, well, everything.

Last month, my wife and I decided that we were going to participate in Dry January this year. Not for any real reason, it just seemed like something to kick us out of our rut. Because of that, I needed to look ahead and see what I could find that I could taste ahead of time. I had a couple of things hanging around that I hadn’t gotten around to writing about yet, but that wasn’t enough for an entire month. So I went to the liquor store, set myself a price limit of $150, and bought everything I was going to taste for the coming month. What follows is one of those purchases.

Although I now claim Minnesota as my home state, I spent the first thirty years or so of my life in Wisconsin. I was born there, grew to adulthood there, got married, graduated college and started my career there. I also learned to drink there. Which is especially relevant to tonight’s discussion mostly because somehow, I managed to miss out on one of the state's iconic libations—the Brandy Old-Fashioned. In fact, I’d never even heard of it until I started getting into spirits and cocktails about fifteen years ago.

It's a tad perplexing, since it wasn’t like I avoided places that would serve them. I’ve been in Wisconsin bars and taverns that range from dive bar to upscale, small town local joints to places that cater to sophisticated tourists. I just never noticed it. I was a beer drinker, along with the occasional glass of wine, why would I look at the cocktail menu? If the place even had one, most didn’t when I was younger.

So when I went looking for things to taste for this month, I saw this ready-to-drink cocktail at my local liquor store. It is from Soul Boxer, a company specializing in ready-to-drink cocktails from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Honestly, I picked it up, knowing that I have no idea how a properly prepared Brandy Old Fashioned should taste. I just figured that folks in Milwaukee probably would, and I hoped that would be enough.

From my research a properly made Brandy Old-Fashioned is served a number of ways. It starts out much like any other Old Fashioned, with a sugar cube and bitters. To this they add a cherry and an orange slice and muddle those together. So far this is fairly normal though muddled fruit in an Old Fashioned has fallen out of favor in many places…including in my home. Then they add brandy and ice. Still pretty normal, but then things get weird. At this point, you top it with one of a few things. If you want it “sweet,” you add Sprite, if you want it “sour,” you add either sour mix or Squirt, and if you want it “press” you top with either a mixture of club soda and Squirt or just club soda.

All of this info comes second-hand from recipes on the internet, though. As I said, I have never had one of these prepared by anyone who knew what they were doing. If it is wrong, feel free to correct me in the comments. Here is a short video on the subject from the folks at Drink Wisconsinbly.

One day I will order a proper one, but in the meantime, you are probably wondering how the ready-to-drink version tasted. It has all the sugar, bitters, fruit flavors and brandy in it already so let’s dig in, shall we?

Soul Boxer Brandy Old Fashioned

Purchase Info: $19.99 for a 750 mL bottle at Viking Liquor, Prior Lake, MN

Price per Drink (50 mL): $1.33

Details: 31% ABV.

Nose: Orange, cherry, baking spices.

Mouth: This tastes like you'd expect. Its got orange, cherry, and bitters at the onset with fruity brandy notes underneath.

Finish: Medium length. Notes have been the same throughout and continue here in the finish.

Thoughts: I'm really digging this. You could pour this over a ball of ice and be very happy. But, of course we need to try it in the more “authentic” way too.

So I tried four variations: Sweet (Sprite), Sour (Squirt), Sour (sour mix), and Club Soda. Out of all of them my wife and I both preferred sweet if we were adding soda to it. Though to be honest, we much preferred the pre-mixed cocktail over ice with a cherry and orange zest garnish over all all of the soda versions. The flavors were already good enough that I didn’t think it needed to be covered up with a favored mixer and adding club soda to give it carbonation just watered it down. All in all, I’m happy with this purchase and am even more determined to try a proper one one day when I’m back visiting family and out for diner.

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Tempus Fugit Spirits and the Wisconsin Grasshopper Cocktail

I think that my appreciation for alcohol started early in my life. In Wisconsin, it is legal for your parents to serve you alcohol, so I was very young when I had my first sip of “Grandpa’s Pop.” I apparently liked it because, well, there is a photo of me as a baby where I was trying to steal a swig from Grandpa’s returnable bottle of Old Milwaukee. I only know this because there was a county directory that was printed shortly after I arrived in this world, and that photo ended up being printed there.

The 1970s were a weird time. Not that I remember much of them. (Because I was young, not because I was drunk…geez.)

My family has never shied away from alcohol at family gatherings. To this day, my stepmother will mix up an ice-cream pail-sized batch of “Grasshoppers” for the family to have as we exchange gifts. Now, unless you are from Wisconsin or deal with folks from there a lot, you might have the wrong idea about what I am talking about.

In most of the country, a Grasshopper cocktail is an after-dinner cocktail made from equal parts Crème de Cacao, Crème de Menthe, and cream. In Wisconsin, they have their own spin on it. Theirs uses ice cream instead of the cream and is basically a boozy milkshake. How boozy is up to the person making it. The “official” Supper Club recipe is a half ounce each of green Crème de Menthe and clear Crème de Cacao mixed with three scoops of ice cream and blended well. While I don’t know for sure what my stepmother’s recipe entails, I do know that she includes vodka if not serving it to the kids.

Rural northern Wisconsin is also super weird.

So, Frozen Grasshopper Cocktails make me think of Christmas. And when I saw a Crème de Cacao and a Crème de Menthe, each for over $30 per bottle, I decided to make some for my own Christmas celebration, even if it is just going to be my wife and I and a bunch of dogs. I’ll be honest as far as I know, I’ve never had a Grasshopper made with anything but Phillips or DeKuyper brand liqueurs. The bottommost-shelf of bottom-shelf brands. I had to know what one using booze that cost more than $12 per bottle tasted like. Hell, I needed to know what the liqueurs themselves, at triple the cost, would taste like. Could I actually drink them on their own? Would I be disappointed? Enraged? Excited? No idea. But it’s Christmas, and I was on a mission to try and make a better version than the one I grew up with.

OK, before we get into the meat of this, let’s take a moment to look at the purveyors of these upscale liqueurs. According to their website, Tempus Fugit Spirits is a California company that started out importing European Absinthes when they became legal in the US again in 2007. Along the way, they expanded…you know what? Let’s just let them tell it:

Along with the world’s finest absinthes, Tempus Fugit Spirits was determined to seek out fine rare liquors that were once staples in classic pre-prohibition cocktails, but have been lost in time. In most cases, we re-create these liquors ourselves, using historic 19th century protocols, many cross-referenced in several languages, to arrive as close in taste to these forgotten spirits as is possible, or surpass them – rare fruit, flower and plant liqueurs, bitters, amari, vermouths and chinati – we pride ourselves in finding out what’s missing from the back-bar that our cocktailian friends are searching for.

Our focus is on what is often called a cocktail ‘modifier’; those spirit-based ingredients used to transform whisky, gin, rum, etc. into a cocktail. We find today this category abused by industrial methods of production, artificial flavors and colors. We know these liqueurs were created in the past to be drunk alone, as aperitifs or digestifs, and were made with great pride and care by the best distilleries and liquorists.

So yeah. That sounds exactly like what I was hoping for when I picked up the bottles for my Christmas Grasshoppers. Here are the tasting notes, and then I’ll get to my own recipe.

Tempus Fugit Crème de Cacao

Purchase Info: $37.99 for a 750 mL bottle at Viking Liquor Barrel, Prior Lake, MN

Price per Drink (50 mL): $2.53

Details: 24% ABV.

Nose: Nutty and chocolatey. Think of the best gourmet chocolate bar you've had.

Mouth: Thick and sweet with a wonderful taste of cocoa nibs.

Finish: Sweet and gentle with the lingering flavor of a good candy bar. Notes of milk chocolate, caramel, and vanilla.

Thoughts: This is the best Crème de Cacao I've ever had. It's nutty like Cacao nibs, obviously chocolatey and sweet. Much better than the cheap stuff I used to buy. If it weren’t so sweet, I’d drink this on its own.

Tempus Fugit Crème de Menthe

Purchase Info: $46.99 for a 750 mL bottle at Curiada.com

Price per Drink (50 mL): $3.13

Details: 28% ABV.

Nose: Straight candy cane peppermint

Mouth: Liquid candy cane.

Finish: Long, very minty, and cool.

Thoughts: Very sweet and minty, just like you'd want from a mint liqueur. It is very tasty even if it is less complicated on the palate than the Crème de Cacao. I’m very happy with this as well. Both of these taste like what you’d want them to taste like, not like there are a bunch of artificial flavors in there.

Ok, now, after all that, here is my base recipe for a Frozen Grasshopper. This is just a base. You can adjust all of the ingredients as you wish and even leave some out, or be like my stepmother and add even more booze to it. This is the most forgiving cocktail recipe you’ll make.

Arok’s Frozen Wisconsin-Style Grasshopper

• 3 small scoops of a good vanilla bean ice cream (about 150-200 grams total)

• 1 fluid ounce Tempus Fugit Crème de Cacao

• 1 fluid ounce Tempus Fugit Crème de Menthe

• a splash of coffee or coffee liqueur

• green food coloring (optional, if you want the traditional Grasshopper color that would usually come from the green-colored Crème de Menthe. I tend to leave it out, but I wanted the picture to be accurate)

Blend the ingredients on low to medium-low to mix well but not melt the ice cream. Pour into a suitably vintage glass. Garnish with a mint sprig and/or a crushed-up York Peppermint Patty. And enjoy!

I’ll be taking next week off to enjoy Christmas with my family, so I hope each and every one of you has a Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year!

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Campari Negroni, Ready-to-Drink Cocktail

I used to scoff at ready-to-drink cocktails. I like making cocktails, so I couldn’t understand why anyone would settle for a sub-par, overly sweet drink from the store when they could just make their own.

Yeah, I was kinda dumb.

Look, I get it. There are plenty of times I really want a cocktail, but I have zero ambition to make it. In such cases, I have three options. Drive to a place that makes cocktails, see if my oh-so-beautiful wife will make one for me, or just settle for a pour of bourbon in a glass. All three options come with their drawbacks.

The first one, obviously, means I need to leave the house, and I’m going to be honest with you here: if I can’t muster the ambition to go make a cocktail, do you think I’m actually up to putting on “real clothes” and leaving the house? Not a chance. The third one is what happens most of the time. I just pour a glass into a pretty cup and call it “good enough.” And it is, but sometimes I really want more than just a pour of bourbon. In such times, I turn to option two: ask my wife to do it for me.

Now, as I said at the beginning, I love making cocktails. My wife, however, does not. If I ask her to do it, I will most likely get an Old Fashioned. One bottle, a couple shakes of bitters, and one squirt of a sweetener such as honey or agave nectar. Which is great. Except sometimes I want something that isn’t an Old Fashioned. Something like a Negroni, for example. In the past, I’d just get up and do it myself. I’m not the kind of person who asks someone to do something for me when I’m feeling lazy and then critiques what they do for me.

Notice the “in the past” in that previous paragraph? Yeah, I found something online that intrigued me as I was trying to spend enough to get free shipping (spending more than shipping would cost in order to qualify for free shipping is totally logical, right?). I was buying a bottle of Wyoming Whiskey’s National Park No. 3 from Reserve Bar when I saw a 375 mL bottle of Campari Negroni, a ready-to-drink version of the Negroni cocktail. And last night, I put it through its paces…which is just a fancy way of saying I drank two cocktails. One ready-to-drink and one that I made fresh using Beefeater 24, Noilly Prat vermouth, and Campari. Here are my notes.

Campari Negroni, Ready-to-Drink Cocktail

Purchase Info: $26.49 for a 375 mL bottle from ReserveBar.com. It sells at Total Wine near me for $23.99 for a 375 mL.

Price per Drink (50 mL): $3.53

Details: 26% ABV

Nose: Chocolate and cherry

Mouth: Oxidized wine notes along with citrus and baking spice.

Finish: Short and deliciously bitter with notes of cherry, citrus, and chocolate.

Comparison to freshly made: The freshly made is brighter, but the bottled is more complex. Both benefit greatly from an expressed orange peel over the glass.

Thoughts: If I have the ingredients and I make the cocktail, I’ll prefer the freshly made version. It allows me to change the gin I'm using to whatever I'm in the mood for on that day. And with the Beefeter that I used, I prefer the brighter, less oxidized taste of the freshly made. That said, I very seldom have vermouth in the house, as a Negroni is the only cocktail I make where I don't swap the vermouth out for an amaro. So, I can totally see a place in my life for the bottled version. This way, I can have a Negroni on nights when I convince my oh-so-beautiful wife (whom I dearly love) to make cocktails, or there is no vermouth in the house. It’s close enough that I wouldn’t have noticed in a non-head-to-head matchup.

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Russian Tea, the BourbonGuy Way

Well, I’m back. I hope that you folks didn’t mind the content rewind while I recovered from the nasty cold that my wife picked up on an airplane and brought home with her. Now that I’m back, I thought I would share one of the things that helped get me through the coughing fits. Nothing helps coughing or the sore throat that it can bring quite like a hot drink. And if that hot drink has a touch of bourbon in it, well, that just makes things a little nicer, doesn’t it?

According to Southern Living, Russian Tea is a staple hot drink listed in many an old church cookbook down South, though it seems to be virtually unheard of here in the Upper Midwest. The recipe that I grew up drinking used three-quarters of a cup of Lipton Instant Tea, a cup of powdered Tang, a packet of Kool-Aid lemonade, a teaspoon each of cinnamon and cloves, and enough sugar to make you love it. My mom used about a cup and a quarter. I usually cut that down to a cup or less. (Though if unsweetened Kool-Aid packets are as hard to find for you as they are for me, you can leave out the sugar altogether and substitute enough of a presweetened lemonade mix to make two quarts of lemonade into the mix instead.) Then you’d add a few spoonfuls of the powdered mix into a cup of hot water and enjoy.

Now, as I said, my family has been making this instant powdered version of Russian Tea for years (sans bourbon, sadly). And, once I moved out of the trailer court and mixed with folks that had never lived in a house with wheels, I used to get a lot of strange looks from coworkers when I would bring the drink mix out. Apparently, the thought of instant tea, Tang, and Kool-Aid offended their more upper-class sensibilities. But they’d usually come around once they tasted the spicy, sweet concoction.

And so, in the back of my mind, I always had the idea of trying to recreate the recipe from the non-instant forms of the ingredients. The sort of thing you could brew beforehand and then warm up for a family gathering instead of trying to make it a cup at a time. In my experiments, I used the same ratios as the instant version. I didn’t use your usual Lipton teabags for my version. I wanted to eliminate the grit at the bottom of the cup that the spices bring to the instant version, so I thought of using Chai instead. Now my local grocery store didn’t have a chai in their tea section for some reason, so I settled on Good Earth Tea’s Sweet and Spicy teabags instead. And damn if it didn’t turn out even more delicious than the original recipe.

And better yet, it paired great with an ounce of bourbon.

Russian Tea, the BourbonGuy Way

• 6 parts Good Earth Sweet and Spicy tea, brewed according to the instructions

• 2 part lemonade

• 2 part orange juice

• 1 part Wild Turkey 101 bourbon

Mix together the tea and juices. Warm the mixture to about 170° F. Add bourbon and serve in a mug. Garnish with an orange or lemon slice, if you are feeling fancy.

We mixed up a large batch to keep in the fridge and then just reheated it as we went. But you could just as easily do it a cup at a time. The recipe above fits my favorite mug if you define “one part” as one fluid ounce. I think I nailed it with this one. Instead of just being my “oh shit, I’m sick” drink, this recipe will be coming back for the long northern winters as well.

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Apothic Red Winemaker's Blend and Bourbon and Red Wine Cocktails

I will sometimes get tips or Christmas Gifts from my clients. This year, one of the gifts was a super tasty red wine named Apothic Red Winemaker's Blend. It is a delicious red wine from Modesto, California. Now, I wouldn’t normally talk about wine on a bourbon site, but they had more than one Bourbon and Wine Cocktails on their website that I tried and they were good enough that I wanted to share them with you. First though, Let’s go over some quick tasting notes for the wine itself. I like many wines, but I’m by no means a tasting expert on them so forgive me if I use the wrong terms.

Apothic Red: Winemaker’s Blend

Purchase Info: This was a gift, but I can get it locally for about $10.

Nose: Dark cherry and a hint of chocolate

Mouth: Relatively sweet but nicely balanced by tanins. Fruity with notes of dark cherry and cranberry.

Ok, so now that we have that out of the way, let’s get into the cocktails because these were a big surprise to me. I’ve got two to share with you. Both are from the brand website. One is very wine forward, the other is very bourbon forward.

Maple Bourbon Sour Cocktail

• 1.5 oz. bourbon

• 1 oz. fresh lemon juice

• 1 oz. maple syrup

• 0.5 oz. Apothic Red

Directions:

1. In a cocktail shaker filled with ice, combine bourbon, lemon juice and maple syrup.

2. Shake and strain into rocks glass with a large piece of ice.

3. Float the Apothic Red over the drink (pour gently over the bar of a spoon) and serve.

4. Garnish with lemon zest and a cinnamon stick

Thoughts: I’m not normally a bourbon sour sort of person, but the addition of the wine floating on top really took this to another level. I’m honestly shocked at how good this is. The maple adds a nice sweetness too. Just really tasty.

This next one is a little more involved and it originally made four drinks. I decided to cut it down a bit but feel free to double everything and make the full batch if you prefer.

Apothic Spice Cocktail

• 4 oz Apothic Red

• 0.5 oz Bourbon

• 2 tbsp brown sugar

• 5 cardamom pods

• 0.5 inch fresh ginger, (peeled and sliced)

• 5 whole cloves

• 3 whole star anise

• pinch cayenne pepper

• whipped cream

• cinnamon sticks

• Bourbon Cream (optional)

Directions:

1. Combine wine, brown sugar, cardamom, ginger, cloves, and star anise in a small sauce pan and heat to about 145°F while stirring constantly to dissolve the sugar.

2. Remove from heat and add the cayenne, Bourbon and optional splash of Bourbon Cream.

3. Strain the mixture into 2 glasses and top with whipped cream and a cinnamon stick and serve while still warm.

Thoughts: This is like a glass of Christmas. There was no bourbon cream in the original recipe but I loved the silky mouthfeel that stirring in the whipped cream gave me. The bourbon cream accomplished that while allowing your drink to not look like vomit (as mine did when I stirred in the whipped cream). I enjoyed the wine, but this cocktail is really why I’ll be buying this one again.

I hope that you all had a Merry Christmas and please have a safe and happy New Year.

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Savannah Bee Company Port Bourbon Barrel Aged Orange Blossom Honey

I was first made aware of Savannah Bee Company on my first visit to Savannah, GA about 12 years ago or so. I was looking for somewhere warm to spend my Thanksgiving holiday and in a coin toss, it won out over San Diego. I never would have guessed at the time what a difference that coin toss would have made on my life. For one thing, it was on that trip that I had my first experience with a whiskey that wasn’t Jim Beam or Jack Daniels. I had started to get into spirits but hadn’t found a love of whiskey yet. So when I noticed that we would be driving right past a small distillery named MB Roland on our way there, we made a plan to stop in. It was there that I took my first distillery tour and really got interested in the process of whiskey. So, I guess you can credit that trip with what you are reading right now.

That was also one of the first trips that my wife and I made together after our child grew up and moved out. So Savannah has always had a soft spot in our heart and since honey from the Savannah Bee Company was one of the many souvenirs we brought back, it shares in that fondness.

And as we have discussed in the past, I love honey. I love it. I love it so much that I should have been named Poo Bear. And when my absolute favorite honey producer put out a honey that was aged in Bourbon barrels? Well that was a no brainer for me. I had to give it a try. I’ve looked at two other Bourbon Honeys in the past. Stubbees and Honey Feast. They each had different amount of honey flavor. One had a lot and was great in cocktails. The other had less, but that lent itself to food-based uses.

Here is what the producer has to say about their offering:

A premium harvest of our orange blossom honey has been carefully aged in the port wine barrels that once aged Angel’s Envy™ Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey. The resulting honey is incredible! A sweet citrusy vanilla forward flavor with a hint of Madeira that slowly fades. A sweet collaboration!

So let’s see how it tastes. Will it be bold and boozy? Will it be subtle and sweet? Let’s find out.

Savannah Bee Company Port Bourbon Barrel Aged Orange Blossom Honey

Purchase Info: $27 for a 12 ounce jar at their website.

Thoughts: Less bourbon flavor than other bourbon honeys that I've had. Tastes like a bright, get rich honey flavor. There are hints of vanilla that are not there in the unaged version (of course I already had the unaged Orange Blossom Honey on the shelf), which I assume is from the influence of the Angel's Envy. I like it, but if I was looking for a bourbon flavor, this would not be my first choice of bourbon honeys. But they have offered up a cocktail to use it in.

Honey Bourbon Sour

Taken, and adapted slightly, from the Savannah Bee Company website

• 2 oz Bourbon, Angel’s Envy would probably be best a good choice

• 1 oz honey simple syrup (equal parts honey and water)

• 1 oz fresh lemon juice

• 1 oz fresh apple cider

• Honeycrisp apple slice for a garnish.

Shake and strain into a glass. Garnish with a slice of apple.

Thoughts: Well balanced. The predominant note is from the lemon and apple, but it is very well integrated so that it is more an apple/lemon "essence" than a full on flavor. Add in a wedge of Honeycrisp apple as a garnish and this is a recipe worth keeping, and sharing. Much like the honey though, the bourbon flavor itself isn’t prominent, but instead adds notes of richness underneath.

Verdict: Overall, I really liked it, but would I buy it again? Probably not for the price online. I thought that almost $30 was more than a bit expensive for a 12 oz jar of honey. But I’ve seen their hot honey in my local supermarket for much less than what they have it for on the Savannah Bee website, so maybe there are places that are selling it cheaper. Or maybe not. It is a limited run after all. And we all know what limited edition means in the Bourbon world.

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