19th May, 2010 | Tags: , | 8 Comments
 

My recent posts were about whisky, bourbon and gin. As is known, all these ones aren’t native to Russia. So now I’m about to revert to ingredients which are widespread and favorite in Russia. I’m talking about vodka and apple juice.

Not long ago I’ve been given three bottles of homemade apple juice. It was pressed, then sterilized and bottled immediately without adding sugar. It was in autumn, and now after six months in dark cellar the juice became clear.

Tasted, it has no differences with freshly pressed apple juice and seems slightly more concentrated.

Red Apple Cocktail

Sipping the juice, I was browsing and trying to find some proper cocktails with apple juice. My search was successful, and below is one of that recipes. It’s called Red Apple.

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14th May, 2010 | Tags: , | 2 Comments
 

I continue with my stories about attempts to enrich my home bar with various homemade components.

The first one was my experiment with grapefruit bitters. Only the third batch has been found satisfactory, and then I thought about proper recipes where this bitters can be used in.

Almost a liter of bitters from two failed batches has been utilized in usual drink for my wife and her friends – orange juice with dry vermouth. Grapefruit bitters made it a bit dry and aromatic.

The third batch’s result, 400 ml of brown/amber liquid with unique flavour was ready to be used in something more complex.

I couldn’t find any proper drink recipe and decided to create my own one.

GH Cooler

My recipe was based on two simple cocktails: Tex Collins и Pink Pussycat. It was not first attempt to create own recipe, and I was quite surprised with this one – my new cocktail was not bad as opposed to previous ones.

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12th May, 2010 | Tags: , | 9 Comments
 

For a long time I was going to tell about a couple of premium bourbons I love very much. But it turned out otherwise, and now I write about one little known bourbon which is always within easy reach of my hand. It’s called Old Virginia Kentucky Straight Bourbon, and I’m used to choosing it when I make cocktails with bourbon.

Old Virginia Kentucky Straight Bourbon

I can’t find enough information concerning this whiskey. It’s known that Old Virginia brand is owned by French company Le Martiniquaise which also owns several little known whisky, vodka and gin brands. It seems like these ones as well as Old Virginia Bourbon are distributed mainly in France.

In Russia these brands are available through French retailer Auchan. And Auchan hypermarket was the place where I’ve bought a bottle of Old Virginia Kentucky Straight Bourbon aged for six years.

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5th May, 2010 | Tags: , | 13 Comments
 

As I previously said, I love whisky very much. I prefer it to all other alcohols when I want something to drink straight.

Also I’m keen on modern cocktail recipes with whisky – blended as well as single malt. Sometimes they look very complex and require expensive or handmade ingredients but it just increases my desire to make them.

Lately I take my time to look for new recipes with whisky, and Penicillin by Sam Ross became the first one I was interested in.

Penicillin Cocktail

Getting ahead of myself, I should tell that for me Penicillin isn’t a breathtaking cocktail but definitely good one. And I think my opinion could be wrong because of tricky components such as blended whisky and honey-ginger syrup needed there.

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