A Tale of Two Daiquiris.

The good folks at Brugal Rum were kind enough to send me a bottle of their Brugal Especial Extra Dry, which, it turns out, makes a really lovely, balanced Hemingway Daiquiri.

The Hemingway Daiquiri
2 oz white rum
3/4 oz fresh lime juice
1/2 oz fresh grapefruit juice
1/2 oz maraschino liqueur

And as luck would have it, Texas ruby red grapefruit is just back in season, so get you some of that. To make the drink: shake over ice and then strain into a chilled coupe. Garnish with lime.

So how does it taste? Just like it looks. If you've been used to daiquiris of the kind dispensed by slushee machines on Bourbon street late at night, you may be in for a bit of a surprise. This daiquiri is very light, and delicate, and pink. 
This particular recipe for a Hemingway Daiquiri comes from Jim Meehan (the PDT guy) by way of Food & Wine magazine. The other recipes I stumbled across did not quite agree on the proportions, but they did agree on the four basic ingredients: white rum, lime, grapefruit, and maraschino liqueur. Interestingly enough, according to Paul Clarke, the original Hemingway Daiquiri (which Hemingway invented and dubbed the 'Papa Doble', since I guess he was too modest to name a drink after himself), was composed thusly:
"...two and a half jiggers [or 3 3/4 ounces] of Bacardi White Label Rum, the juice of two limes and half a grapefruit, and six drops of maraschino, all placed in an electric mixer over shaved ice, whirled vigorously and served foaming in large goblets."

So of course I had to try that too. This wasn't the first time I had followed in the boozy footsteps of Ernest Hemingway, but I'll admit, I was a little intimidated. because you know, that's a whole lot of rum. Like a whole whole lot.

The Hemingway Daiquiri (ORIGINAL FOR REAL ERNEST HEMINGWAY VERSION)
3 3/4 oz white rum
juice of two limes (I wound up with a little more than 2 oz, but I swear I have terrible luck with limes and always end up with the non-juicy ones, despite my best efforts)
juice of half a grapefruit (about 2.5 oz)
6 drops maraschino liqueur (I used an eye dropper to be extra super sure to be faithful to the original recipe. Okay, I might've gotten 7 drops.)

Then I put all those things in the blender, and kept adding ice, running the blender occasionally, until I got to the desired consistency.

So here are some things you should know about the original, for real, super-authentic Hemingway Daiquiri. For one thing, this recipe makes a drink that is truly massive. I had trouble finding a glass that would fit the whole thing. It's also quite tart, although not in a bad way - I found it to be light and incredibly drinkable, like a limeade with a little extra kick. This might help explain how Hemingway supposedly consumed 16 of them at one sitting. Actually, according to Paul Clarke (who got his info from Papa Hemingway, a memoir about the author written by longtime friend A.E. Hotchner), the recipe above was the formula for the drink served by Havana's La Floridita bar to tourists who wanted to drink what the legendary author drank. The drinks served to Hemingway, Hotchner indicated, came in glasses approximately twice the size of those used for the 'tourist' version. Let's do a little math, shall we?

3.75 oz rum x 2 x 16 = 120 oz

Um. Dang. 

So just to put that into perspective, a 'fifth' of rum (ie, a traditional 750 mL bottle) contains about 25 oz of liquor. 120 oz of rum = almost FIVE BOTTLES of liquor. Even if we assume that Hemingway's record was for the 'tourist' daiquiri, that's still an impressive two and a half bottles of rum consumed in one sitting. From this we can draw one of two conclusions:

A. This story is exaggerated a wee bit, or

B. Ernest Hemingway was a BEAST. 

Believe what you will. 

Whatever your thoughts on this, though, it's true that both Hemingway's original and the modern version are a surprisingly delicious, and remarkably efficient, alcohol delivery system. Cheers. 

The His & Hers Gin & Tonics

I've discovered that I love making drinks on the fly. People tell me what they like, and I try to make a drink that will suit their tastes. Here are a couple of cocktails, cooked up by yours truly at a few different holiday parties, that were especially well received. You can think of these two GnT (that's Gin & Tonic, for the uninitiated) variations as "his" and "hers" Gin & Tonics. I bet you'll be able to guess which is which. But don't let yourself be limited - I like them both.


The Hemingway Gin & Tonic
It's the GnT meets the Hemingway Reviver: refreshing, savory, challenging.

2 oz gin
juice and peels of 1/4 lime
2 dashes Angostura Bitters
tonic water (or soda water)*

Add 2 dashes of bitters and the juice and peels of 1/4 of a lime to an old-fashioned glass. Fill the glass with ice, add the gin, and top with tonic water. Stir once and serve.


and then there's...
The Very Special Gin n' Tonic
A little twist on the St. Germain Gin & Tonic. The lime balances out the St. Germain nicely for a drink that is sweet but complex.

2 oz gin
1.25 oz St. Germain
juice of 1/4 lime
tonic (or soda) water*

Fill an old-fashioned glass with ice. Add the gin, lime, St. Germain, and fill with tonic water. Stir once and serve.


*In the interest of full disclosure, I feel obliged to point out that these drinks were originally made with soda water, not tonic water, since I think tonic water is nasty and bitter and don't usually keep it around. So technically, to start out with, they were gin & soda variations, not gin & tonic variations. For the purposes of this experiment, I purchased some tonic water, and it was every bit as terrible as I remembered, but somehow it made the drinks taste better. Confused? I sure was. Anyway, feel free to substitute as you please.

Cheers.

Edited to add: There has been much discussion on my facebook page about what is the best brand of tonic water. I don't really feel qualified to weigh in on this, since I got the store brand, but take note that if you make these drinks properly, in an old-fashioned glass full of ice and with 2 oz of gin, you won't need much tonic water. More like a splash. I know a lot of people make their GnTs half and half, but this is more like a gin and gin and tonic. Yum.

MxMo LII: Forgotten Cocktails...OF DEATH.

Good morning, campers! Time to rise and shine, because...it's Mixology Monday! This time, you get two cocktails for the price of one. This month's theme is "forgotten cocktails", with your host Rock and Rye, and both of my forgotten cocktails have these things in common:

1. Ernest Hemingway
2. The "hair of the dog"
3. DEATH.

That's right. Cocktails that will help you get over a hangover...or maybe just kill you.

Ernest Hemingway as a young hottie.

Ernest Hemingway was a talented and troubled American writer who apparently had a bit of a penchant for drinking. He was known to embark on "alcoholic sprees" with James Joyce, and he gave himself a scar on his forehead by pulling a skylight onto his head in the bathroom of his paris apartment, mistakenly thinking he was pulling on the toilet chain. (Wikipedia won't tell me for sure, but if you have ever been inebriated, you might recognize this as the sort of dumbass thing a drunk person would do.) Two of Ernest Hemingway's favorite hangover cures survive, both, interestingly enough, with the word "death" in the name.

First: Death in the Afternoon. Hemmingway's original directions for the drink are as follows (with thanks to esquire.com): "Pour 1 jigger of absinthe into a champagne glass. Add iced champagne until it attains the proper opalescent milkiness. Drink three to five of these slowly." Obviously, there are some problems here. 1. How much is a jigger? Jiggers come in many different measurements. 2. I am not about to drink three to five of these things. Ernest Hemingway must've had the liver of a champion.

I discovered another recipe for "Death in the Afternoon" in one of my go-to cocktail books, the Art of the Bar. This particular recipe called for a mere 1/4 oz of pastis (pernod preferred) and a full glass of champange. Esquire.com, where I found Earnest Hemingway's directions, called for a full 1.5 oz of absinthe (or the newly legalized absenthe) per flute of champange. What to do? Well, I used absenthe, because I had some on hand, left over from making my Harry Potter extra sinister, and I split the difference and put in 3/4 oz of absenthe for each glass of champagne. I feel this creates a good balance between the champagne and absinthe flavors, but if you'd prefer to add more absinthe, feel free. Earnest is on your side. I did not test out the efficacy of this drink as a hangover cure (although you might need one the morning after one too many Ron Weasleys), but I did drink it right after breakfast, which counts for something. Right?

Death in the Afternoon
3/4 oz absenthe
Fill glass with brut champagne.

So...how's it taste? Some flavors are pretty shy. Absinthe (which, for the unintiated, tastes almost exactly like black licorice) is not. There is definitely something in your champagne. To my surprise, absinthe and champagne actually play pretty well together.* You get the taste of champagne, with a nice licorice-y finish that is interesting without being overwhelming. If you don't like the taste of absinthe, you will probably not like this drink. If you do...well, it may be your new favorite thing.

*I'm continually surprised by how well champagne pairs with bizzarre and sundry flavors. Like, champagne and guiness? Surprisingly not bad.

The second, and far more intimidating, hangover cure I sampled is something called Death in the Gulf Stream. The Art of the Bar book first made me aware of the existence of this Hemingway reviver; I have Seamus Harris, from Tales of the cocktail, to thank for the directions for Hemingway's original formulation:

“Take a tall thin water tumbler and fill it with finely cracked ice. Lace this broken debris with 4 good purple dashes of Angostura, add the juice and crushed peel of 1 green lime, and fill glass almost full with Holland gin. . . . No sugar, no fancying. It’s strong, it’s bitter – but so is English ale strong and bitter, in many cases. We don’t add sugar to ale, and we don’t need sugar in a Death in the Gulf Stream – or at least not more than 1 tsp. Its tartness and its bitterness are its chief charm. It is reviving and refreshing; cools the blood and inspires renewed interest in food, companions and life.“

Seamus interprets "Holland gin" to mean Genever, which is sweeter than the London dry varities; for whatever reason, Art of the Bar called for something called "Extra Dry Holand Gin", which I was unable to find at the trusty downtown Spec's, so instead I used just plain old London dry gin. I am supported in my decision by this article about the boozings of Ernest Hemingway from flavorwire.com, so that's something.

Death in the Gulf Stream (aka The Hemingway Reviver)
Crushed ice
Juice and peels of an entire lime
4 dashes of Angostura bitters
Healthy dose of Holland Gin (or extra dry Holland Gin, or London Dry...I used Broker's, if you're wondering. The bottle came with a little plastic top hat on it.)

I cut the lime into quarters, squeezed them into the glass, threw the peels in, and added the bitters and crushed ice. Then I added the gin (almost all the way to the top) and gave it a little stir.


I was very, very afraid to taste this. Notice the part where there's no sugar? And that is a lot of bitters. And a lot of booze. But: verdict:

You guys...I think I'm a total lush. I was fully prepared to taste this and report back to you that it was absolutely terrible. So certain was I of its terribleness that I almost typed the words in before even trying it. But...but...it's kind of good. The lime is bracing, the gin is refreshing, and all that bitters gives it depth...I feel a renewed interest in food, companions, and life. No, I wasn't hungover to begin with. But this drink? It's like a swift, and not entirely unwelcome, alcoholic kick in the pants.

Ernest...you old rogue.