Funny Valentine (Blood Orange Old Fashioned)

 This is a really good cocktail. It has a little more depth than a traditional Old Fashioned, At its best, there are complex flavors that blend well but also stand out at different points, on their own. Also, this is an easy drink to make in bulk, making it a party favorite. 

You will need:

• 4 oz. bourbon
• 1/2 oz. Luxardo Maraschino Liqueur
• blood oranges
  
• Aztec Chocolate Bitters (or a bitters that you prefer)

There are two ways to make this drink. Old school and new school.

I want to go old school:

1. Get a shaker. add some ice.
   
2. Pour in the bourbon. Stir. (You want that bourbon to get cold, so agitate it!)
3. Get an old fashioned glass.
4. Add the Luxardo Marachino Liqueur to the glass.
5. Quarter a blood orange and squeeze the juice of one quarter of blood orange into the glass. Drop the quarter blood orange into the glass.
   
6. Add the bitters.
7. Muddle these ingredients.
8. Stir the bourbon in the shaker. You want it cold!
9. Add ice to the old fashioned glass. Make sure you have good, hard ice. The larger the cube, the better.
10. Add the bourbon to the glass. Stir if you like, but only gently. You want this drink to be a progressive one--it will start boozy and get sweeter as you go down.
11. Garnish with a cherry, or blood orange rind, or blood orange slice. Up to you!

I'm postmodern, thank you very much:

1. Get a shaker. Add some ice. 
2. Pour in bourbon, Luxardo Marachino Liqueur, and bitters.
3. Quarter a blood orange and squeeze the juice of one quarter of the blood orange into the shaker.
4. Stir, baby, stir.
5. Let it sit while you prepare garnish. You want this baby cold!
6. Get an old fashioned glass. Add a big ice cube, or whatever ice you use. You can also serve this drink straight up, but make sure it has plenty of time to chill in that shaker.
   
7. Stir, baby, stir. (the shaker, obviously).
8. Pour the old fashioned into the glass. 
9. Garnish with a cherry, or blood orange rind, or blood orange slice. Up to you!

A word on garnish:

If you are going old school, consider skewering a cherry, an eighth cut of the blood orange (a little triangle), and another cherry on a toothpick and using that as a garnish. 

The rind is by far the most elegant garnish. And blood orange rind can be absolutely beautiful. Just make sure to leave out the pith, express the oils, and then give the rim of the glass a twirl. This works great in either.

Slices of blood orange are gorgeous. And don't feel bad about mixing garnishes. This is a drink that can be elegant or a little noisy.

Blood Orange Margarita

 This is hardly original, but it is the best damn margarita I've ever had. And the proportions are not hard to get right, but easy to mess up.

• 4 oz tequila
• 2 oz lime juice
• 2 oz blood orange
• tsp or so of agave syrup (preferably amber)
  
• pinch salt

The 1:1 ratio of juice to tequila can be altered to 1.5:1 or even 2:1 depending on taste. Blood oranges are only mildly sweet, but definitely not acidic enough without the lime juice.

Agave syrup is to taste. Honestly, I just squeeze in a little, shake the margarita, and then taste. It is easy to adjust the sugar upwards, a little more work to juice some more limes.

The Max Eastman Flip, Part 2

 So, here is the recipe for the holiday alternative to rum and eggnog.

For 2 cocktails (who mixes just one?)

in a Boston shaker, mix

2 oz. bourbon (Bulleit, or Woodford or Maker's)

1 1/2 oz. vermouth (Dolin with Bulleit; Cocchi with Woodford)

1 1/2 oz. half and half (whipping cream if you have it)

2 egg yolks

2 barspoons powdered sugar

ice

While it sits, prepare a small cocktail glass, either a coup or a small roly poly. Place a single cocktail cherry at the bottom. 

 Shake the drink for at least one minute, preferably two. 

Pour out immediately in stages, reserving froth for both glasses.

The Justin Macalroy

 My daughter shows zero interest in drugs or alcohol or tobacco or anything else that would, under most circumstances, terrify me as a father.

But she does love food, and she has a remarkable palate for someone her age. Such proclivities do not mean that she lacks the fascination, normal for children her age, with sugar, and as such usually wants to crack open a root beer during tippling time so that she can join in the festivities. So, I have taken to making her her own little softdrink cocktail:

2 lemon cubes

3 parts orange juice (1 1/4 oz. jigger)

1/2 oz. grenadine. 

It's a lot of fresh juice and only a tad of added sugar, which certainly beats 12 oz. of cane sugar fueled mess. Gotta keep the vitamin c going...

She named it the Justin Macalroy, after a favorite comic of hers. I'm deliberately misspelling the name because I don't know how to spell it. Also, I don't want him to sue me. 

For those who are keeping score, this is more or less the same recipe for a Montana Sour, and I haven't yet tried the big batch, in part because we won't be attending parties or having dinner guests for some time.

Montana Sours

Sours are an easy go to during quarantine. They are light, not too boozy, and more or less are a vitamin C delivery system after one's normal intake of vitamin C during the day has passed. I've been working on a recipe that is somewhat idiosyncratic, as we will see, but not hard to replicate, season to season or otherwise.

(For 2, I use a 1 1/4 inch jigger)

3 parts orange juice (fresh squeezed, usually two oranges, although three will make 6 parts for refills)

3 lemon ice cubes

2 parts amaretto

1 part Bulleit bourbon

mix all ingredients in a Boston shaker with no ice cubes. serve in a roly poly or old fashioned glass over ice. garnish with orange peel.

The lemon cubes are a staple for us because we have, it would seem, always had a lemon tree in the family, somewhere. It used to be my mom's, and now it is my wife's mom's, and once the lemons drop, there is nothing to do but juice them and freeze them. I'm not sure how much volume is in the cube, but no matter. The sour mix can be adjusted however one likes.

The oranges come from the Santa Monica farmers market. The valencias are in season in December, really juicy and sweet. 

To make this drink, I start by putting out the glasses and the shaker. Before juicing the oranges, I use a mandoline to separate a pith-less bit of peel from the orange. Do it over the cocktail glasses, and it mists them with a nice citrus perfume. Then juice the oranges.

I drop the lemon cube into the shaker, add the orange juice, and then add the amaretto and bourbon. If I need to do anything else, I do. It gives the lemon cube a moment to dissolve. Then I shake it down, until the lemon cube is all but gone. I wait until the last minute to put ice in the glasses, then I pour out the drink (sans strainer!), reserving the froth to garnish both glasses. Then I express the orange peel and drop it on the top. 

I prefer Bulleit Bourbon because it is less oaky and sweet than Woodford or Maker's Mark. Buffalo Trace would work well in this. Definitely steer clear of rye. I prefer Disaronno because the bottle looks pretty, and I haven't yet found a cheap Amaretto that didn't somehow taste cheap. Fresh orange juice is a must, but that goes without saying.

The drink takes its name from the street we live on, where we are spending a good amount of our time these days, or at least crossing, on our walks, during the great pandemic of 2020.

Blueberry Shrub

We had frozen blueberries, needed to make a cocktail to take to someone's house, and in a panic tried to make a blueberry syrup. The result was pedestrian and unbalanced, something akin to cobbler. But my hosts were, or pretended to be, delighted. They called it a shrub.

So I made a shrub the next time around.

3 cups of frozen blueberries
2 cups of apple cider vinegar
1/2 tsp. (scant) chile flakes
3 cinnamon sticks
2 bay leaves

First up, take the blueberries to a food processor with enough apple cider vinegar to keep it moving. Then drop it into a saucepan along with everything else, and bring to a simmer. Cover and cook for one hour, with the occasional stir.

Take it off heat, put it in a water bath to cool it down. Remove the cinnamon sticks and bay leaves.

Put it in the Vitamix.

This part is tricky. The heat from the shrub will make blending it hard. You have to do it with the top off, and you can't turn it up too much. I would really have preferred to put it on high for ten minutes, but we ended up on a middle speed. Oh well.

Strain it back into the saucepan. Simmer and reduce. It took me at least an hour to do this, and in the end I reduced it by 1/3. This gives you, almost a glaze.

Cocktails to try with a shrub:

• Shrub and bourbon. Top with soda water.
• Gin and Shrub. Top with soda water.
• Blueberry soda (just soda water!)
• Tom Collins, just substitute the shrub. 

Those are remarkably uninspired...

Max Eastman Flip

Max Eastman Flip

1 oz. bourbon
3/4 ounce vermouth
3/4 ounce half and half
1/4 ounce sugar syrup
1 egg yolk.

shake stoutly. with ice. serve up in a champagne coupe and sprinkle with nutmeg.

A nice holiday drink. I used sugar syrup from my cocktail cherries, so it was a little cognac tinged.

Derived from the New York Flip recipe:

1 oz. bourbon
3/4 ounce tawny port
3/4 ounce cream
1/4 ounce sugar syrup
1 egg yolk

Spicy Tarts (Cardamom, Cinnamon Cognac Cherries)

So here's the recipe for the Spicy Tart

1 1/4 cup water
scant 1 cup sugar
(this sugar water hits the spot. A 1 to 1 ratio is too dense. This ratio produced a beautiful syrup, but my guess is that an even thinner syrup will do just as well)

Dissolve sugar in water. Add:

2 cinnamon sticks
5 green cardamom pods
3 cloves

bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer. Simmer for 5 minutes.

Then, add

1/2 cup cognac (and a little more cognac...)

Stir in, turn off heat, let cool.

Prepare eight four ounce jars with dried tart cherries, leaving room for the cognac mixture. Then, pour into the jars.

UPDATE

New recipe features heavy use of spices.

  2 cinnamon sticks
12 green cardamom pods
  8 cloves

Will check back and see, but I think I nailed this one.

Cocktail cherries

Here's a new recipe for quick cherries for cocktails.

1 cup sugar
1 cup water
(bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer)
add 2 cinnamon sticks and a few cloves (six, about, depending on size and strength).
Simmer 5 minutes
Add
1/2 cup Cognac

Pour over dried cherries, cap, let cool, then refrigerate.

I filled one pint jar and two half-pint jars with cherries. Lots of cherries.

It is not overly spiced. I did not have cardamom pods, so I obviously couldn't include them. I did have star anise, but didn't want to go that heavy. Cinnamon and cloves seemed enough.

Cognac Cherries

Cherry season is upon us. Because the window is so limited, I almost always miss out on the ability to turn fresh cherries into cocktail components. But not this year.

I looked up a variety of recipes and found an unremarkable amount of consistency in proportions. In the end, I followed this formula:

for a quart of cherries

1 cup sugar
1 cup water
1/2 cup cognac
2 cloves
1 cinnamon stick
8 cardamom pods

Pitting the cherries was tedious, but not overly so. I found that a paperclip did the job well.

I heated the water and sugar, added the spices, and let it come to a simmer. Once the sugar was dissolved, I let the mixture simmer for about five minutes, turned off the heat, then added the cognac. Then I poured the mixture over the cherries. Then I put them in small jars, lidded them, and put them in the fridge. We'll see how they turn out!

The Elderflower collins

A simple cocktail, for complex times.

1.5 oz. St. Germain's
1 oz. Gin
1/2 oz. lemon juice.
Shaken
Poured into a tall glass
Over ice
And topped with soda water
Then stirred vigorously.

The Endless Aperol Apertif

Aperol and Tonic for the Masses

In the summer months, I struggle often with what to have when I come home. The six o'clock hour is a mild one in my garden. The daytime warmth is enveloping, but the sun has set behind the big oak across the way, making the heat more comfortable than overbearing. It is during these times that I want a drink both refreshing and stimulating. I tend toward an acidic white or rosé, but it tends to leave me parched. A gin and tonic is also refreshing, but can often knock me out.

So I made up this. 2 oz. Aperol, 1 oz. tonic syrup, 2 oz. soda water. Stir. Add ice. Top with soda water. Garnish with lemon peel that is broken and expressed so that citrus hits the nose immediately.

The first few sips are all soda water. Then you start to catch the Aperol and tonic misture. Just as you do, top off with soda water.

Standing up

What one ends up with is a constantly refreshing drink that allows for ups and downs in intensity. I can usually get 24 oz. of water into this mixture before I have to make another. It's a different take on the cocktail/water back combination.

Getting the Mojito Right

Peppermint and Applemint Mojito, with Candymint Garnish

Maybe two summers ago, I confidently proclaimed the summer of the Mojito. I'm sure it was. But this simple drink always seems to elude me. The proportions are difficult to fix. Standard recipes use vaguely different recipes. I am usually left adjusting recipes every time I make the drink. Perhaps this is fine--an experimental mojito of sorts--but it gets me down. I'd rather be able, like with almost every other drink I make, to lay out the correct jigger and mix it down fast and accurate and consistent-like.

Alas, it is not to be. The mojito will always be an experiment. Lay out the proportions--3 oz. gin, 2 oz. lime juice, 2 tbsp. sugar syrup--in a boston shaker. Muddle with mint. Good mint is a must. This might seem obvious, but I'm sure that mint comes down to whatever is handy for most, or whatever the store was stocking. This is why I have now planted four kinds of mint in my garden. My mainstay is peppermint. I also have apple mint and candy mint, both of which are spearmint varieties and more sweet than spicy. I prefer the latter in my juleps. Peppermint stands out more in the mojito, which is not a subtle drink and does not showcase the rum the way a good julep showcases the whiskey. Don't over-muddle. The sugar syrup, I find, tends to eat up the mint oils. I add a half dozen cubes of ice to the boston shaker and give it a good hard shake, sixteen or so worth. Then start testing. I use the straw method to avoid any contamination. Adjustments can then be reshaken or stirred in.

Rival this

Once shaken, the mojito can sit in the Boston shaker while the ice is prepared. This is a laborious process, at least for me.  Crushed ice is a must. I have found that the ice must be durable and thick, with as little air content as possible. Even crushed ice must have a backbone or the drink will become flaccid. My Rival Ice-O-Matic Electric Ice Crusher does a nice job, even if it is a little messy.

I prepare the glasses with ice, add an appropriate amount of soda water to the mojito mixture, and stir that up. Then I pour out the mojitos, adding ice if necessary so that it touches the rim. Pop a straw in and serve.

This summer will be beyond the mojito--beyond any one drink, actually--but it is nice to start here and feel utterly comfortable mixing down a classic.

Adventures in Coconut Land

coconut purée

My daughter went nuts at the DeKalb Farmers' Market today, insisting we buy a coconut. At a dollar a coconut I was in no mood to argue. One learns to pick one's battles in the eternal death struggle that is parenting. So we came home with a coconut.

I cracked it open, drained it, and we cut out the flesh. I was sure a seven year old child who had never had fresh coconut would find it disconcerting, or perhaps just "not what she was expecting," but instead she quite liked it. She insisted we buy more, and immediately wanted to make a drink from it.

Which immediately fired my interest. If there is anything that fresh ingredients demand, it is a proper glass to be put in with the proper libation. For coconut, the most obvious place to start would be a piña colada. But the proper recipe calls for coconut cream. How to make that?

coconut boil

None of my cookbooks were helpful. Turns out the Italians, French, Julia Child, and those Brooklyn hipsters do not work with fresh coconuts too often. I turned to mr. google, who turned up a mass of dispiritingly dissimilar information. According to several recipes, one needed to puree the flesh and bring to a boil with 1 1/2 cups water, let sit for thirty minutes, strain, then chill. This makes coconut milk, but chilling will separate the cream. Well, okay. But Alton Brown wants you to grate and then cook it up with a certain amount of 2% milk to make either cream or milk (less for the cream, obviously).

coconut sieve

I opted for the former recipe. With some slight modifications.

I cut the flesh up and put it in the blender with a little water. Once it was ... grated, or whatever one might call its state after being pulverized, I combined it with one cup of water and heated it to boiling over the stove. It took almost no time at all. I let it sit for half an hour, and then strained it. This yielded 1 1/4 cups of coconut milk, or cream, or whatever the substance was. I chilled it, and an hour or so later, we made piña coloda. The recipe for that was pretty standard:

2 oz. coconut cream
3 oz. pineapple juice
2 oz. rum
1 tsp confectioner's sugar
a heap of ice.

And blend.

coconut borracho

And enjoy.

A Nameless Campari Cocktail--"Once Upon a Time in the (Old South)West"

So we were invited to a party, a kind of high-end potluck that involved dramatic food creations by a variety of amateur foodies. And as usual, the email that came to me was ignored too long, until my pleading partner provoked me to reply. With virtually everything already selected, I promised to make the cocktails. No problem, I figured, with but a week to go. I have a half dozen crowd pleasers in my repertoire.

Or I could come up with one. I was harboring at the time a deep longing for Campari, which was absent from my cabinet and had been for some time. Why not make a Campari cocktail? Were there not a hundred easy variations on the Negroni? No problem.

But, of course, the eternal war between reason and experimentation raged in my brain. Reason always loses, and so I began mixing up various concoctions, trying to come up with some kind of Campari cocktail that would break the mold a little. But after a week, virtually nothing had come to mind.

But the best spur for invention is last-minute panic. Countless artists would  attest to the power of deadlines to inspire creation, although one might legitimately wonder how often this might result in genius rather than simply desperation. Given the difficulties involved in any act of creation, I suspect that genius is elusive enough to defy systematic analysis as to its prompts, let alone causes. But I digress. The point is that at the last minute, I mixed together the following:

1 part Campari
1 part lemon juice
1 part tonic syrup (lemongrass and cloves)
1 part sugar syrup
2 parts gin
club soda
garnish: lemon peel

It worked brilliantly. A bitter apértif balanced upon a fresh citrus sour mix. Sophisticated and playful, as if Renee Fleming chose to attend the party in a pink fur coat.

I was nonetheless apprehensive, and took several bottles of liqueurs to fall back on (Aviation, anyone?). But in the end, I shook up nearly 2 cocktails for everyone. It was a hit, and I was spared the embarrassment that comes from bringing the one dish no one touches.

Countdown to 40: beyond the margarita

Notwithstanding the classic beauty of the margarita, it is time to invent a new cocktail with tequila. Tanteo's jalapeño infused tequila presents an intriguing opportunity. Smooth and spicy. A favorite of ours is this riff on an old fashioned:

1 1/2 oz. Tanteo jalapeño infused tequila
squirt of agave syrup. I would guess 1/2 tsp.
two stopper-fulls of chocolate bitters

shake with ice. Then splash some pineapple syrup in and shake again. Pour over a single big ice cube and serve.

The next stage is to substitute fresh pineapple for the canned juice, and to treat the drink essentially like an old fashioned. muddle the sugar and pineapple and chocolate bitters, add the tequila, shake, serve up or on a single cube. I would also consider muddling the pineapple without agave syrup, depending on relative sweetness of using fresh juice along with pieces.

Countdown to 40: stirred, not shaken

In a series of posts, I plan to reflect on aging, the distinctive possibilities of midlife crisis, and the existential angst that either rises or dissipates with the approach of a significant landmark.

We start with expectations. There are distinct memories that everyone has, a reservoir upon which we draw as we move down the uni-linear path towards the final resting point. These memories, for me, have been about expectations that I had, at one point, and expectations that I have now. It occurred to me tonight that the expectations I had in my twenties, approaching thirty, are so distant that they feel a lifetime away.

It is worth mentioning that I am speaking in small terms. If I had, in my late twenties, asked what a perfect evening might look like, I doubt I would have had the same expectation as I do today. I honestly cannot even posit--or recall--what it might have been at that point. But I don't think I respected food or drink enough to understand what I do today, or to appreciate it.

that's stirred, not shaken, Mr. Bond

So let us begin with the Martini. After tonight, I will never again in my life shake another Martini. A Martini should be served stirred, not shaken. Tonight I took 3 oz. of Greylock Gin, 1 oz. of Noilly Prat dry vermouth, two dashes of hopped grapefruit bitters, and stirred it with one big ice cube. I could have stirred it with several smaller ones for a colder drink. We were short on ice, suffice it to say. But the result was a wonderful martini--a complex and beautiful drink where the flavors might play off of one another in a delicate manner. So, stir the martini.

mesquite laced charcoal

The martini launched an evening of cooking. I grilled a 2 1/2 inch ribeye, properly salted (4 seasons mix of salt-black pepper-garlic salt-cayenne) and basted with a southern concoction--oil and butter, thyme pepper red pepper apple cider vinegar mustard and ketchup. Flipped constantly on a 500 degree mesquite wood grill for nearly 17 minutes. (Quick note: the steak could be rarer, I know. But I'm cooking for the family, including my six year old daughter.)

I cooked with a gin and tonic at my side. The tonic was my honey cinchona syrup blend, which is refreshingly bitter and a wonderful aperitif. We had Grayson Cellars Lot number 10 with dinner, which included potatoes and beets. We followed it with home made ice cream--piña colada--and baklava fresh from the DeKalb Farmers' Market.

the proper color for a gin and tonic

A perfect evening. I am currently finishing it off with redemption rye in a snifter, sitting on my back deck. And reflecting on how at thirty, this would not necessarily have registered as a potential beautiful evening, and certainly not the perfect Saturday evening. Things change.

Simply Manhattan

The Manhattan may well be the perfect cocktail. While not as pure as the Old Fashioned nor as lively as the julep or mojito, it is both solid and stylish, sophisticated yet simple. It showcases a fine whiskey, and the ready availability of fine vermouth and different styles of bitters allow for infinite play.

Look Mom, One Cube!

It does have its limits. While fine whiskey makes a fine Manhattan, the higher you go up on the shelf the more your returns diminish. One loses subtlety any time whiskey is mixed. Save the Pappy's for the bare glass.

Mixing a Manhattan most often takes place in a shaker, but I make the case now for a stirred variety. The colder the cocktail not always the better. What's more, the ice chips that invariably fill the glass melt some flavor away. Stirring and serving over a single ice cube may not blend perfectly, but it gives the cocktail a kind of musky feel. At present, I put bitters into an old fashioned glass, pour whiskey over that, then vermouth (on a 2-1 ratio), stir, add my ice cube, stir again, add a garnish, and serve.

I will offer up some recipes with notes, and will continuously update this post to keep a running tab on the Manhattans I try.

Recipe 1: The Cheapside

Weller's Reserve Wheated Bourbon
Noilly Prat Rouge
Fee Brothers old fashioned aromatic bitters

I prefer Fee Brothers to Angostura because of its enhanced clove nose. I have tried this version with other bitters as well--notably Bolivar and Chocolate Mole bitters. Noilly Prat does not require a whole lot. It is a delicious apertif all its own, so I dumbed down the bourbon in this case to showcase the spice profile.

The Bourbon Flip

It is time to begin the search for a signature holiday drink. The holidays invite tampering with classics, with bold moves and uncertain results. While the colder days of winter call for stiff and unassuming cocktails of no more than three ingredients, and the dog days of summer call for white liquors, fresh herbs and citrus, the holidays invoke a different feel. The weather is transitioning. Warm days give way to colder, although even in the more wintery north, warm days peek out for days at a time, tempting us to return the mitts and hats to the dresser and to shed that extra layer of clothing. The air is crisper. The leaves have turned, and begun their gradual migration to the streets. Ovens heat up. Turkeys and hams and roasts occupy our plates alongside yams and turnips and dressing. The frantic rush of the year closes in. Yet, somehow, this is when we breathe the best.

So it needs a cocktail. Actually, not necessarily a cocktail, which, as cocktail 101 informs us, historically requires the addition of bitters to make it such. I prefer the idea of a flip for the holiday. It can stand alone, or follow a decent meal. It feels wholesome and round. It even sounds festive.

So I am searching for a good bourbon flip recipe. I've had two excellent flips, one in Chicago at the Violet Hour, and another at Empire State South in Atlanta.

The Violet Hour served up a libation it called the "Cold & Delicious"

Pierre Ferrand 1840 Cognac, Dow's Ruby Port, Spice Trader Syrup, Nux Alpina Black Walnut Liqueur, Whole Egg, Apple Bitters. 

 It was both cold and delicious. But it felt wrong to me. I had just had the bartender make me an old fashioned, which he did with 12 year old rye and tobacco bitters. After such a simple and aromatic libation, the flip tasted overdone. The spices all came together, but it tasted no different from simpler flips I had had in the past (at least in my mind, this was the case).

The flip at Empire State South was decidedly simpler, and as such carried the unassuming name "bourbon flip." I had it at the end of a meal in lieu of a dessert. It was beautifully crafted, and immediately impressed upon me the fact that we had to anoint the bourbon flip as the libation of choice for the 2012 holiday season.

So I must find a recipe. The most basic seems the following, which appears as a standard recipe almost everywhere and in every book:

2 oz. bourbon
1 egg
1 tsp superfine sugar
1/2 oz cream
1/8 teaspoon grated nutmeg.

Another set of proportions over at Ladies United offers the following, which appears heavier:

3 oz. bourbon
2 oz. heavy cream
1 large egg
1 oz. spiced simple syrup

As for technique, the shaking method seems to be the popular one. To return to the classic How to Mix Drinks, the directions are as follows:

The essential in "flips" of all sorts is, to produce the smoothness by repeated pouring back and forth between two vessels, and beating up the eggs well in the first instance; the sweetening and spices according to taste.

It also calls for heating the beer (the recipe is for a rum and beer flip) to near boiling before mixing it with the rum and egg mixture. I think shaking will do, although I am untutored on the subject.

the peach and the fugitive

I never knew the peach before arriving in East Point. Of course, I had bought peaches before--sad, shriveled creatures picked well before their prime and aged in corporate grocery distribution centers before being stocked in a well-lit produce section. I liked them in pies well enough, but couldn't really stomach them as fruit. They lacked any tartness, any character, and the sweetness never seemed to make up for its mealy texture and lack of balance.

But then I came here, and I hit a peach orchard. The score was a complete bucket full of Elberta Reds, picked mainly by my little traveler. And the bounty was good. The sweetness of these peaches sat inside a firm and meaty texture. Suddenly I was eating peaches every day. Devouring them whole. Taking them with me to work. Sweating for the next score.

Which brings me to peach syrup. I pick my peaches at Gregg Farms, a quaint orchard in Griffin County. In addition to peaches, blueberries, and corn, patrons can buy peach ice cream, peach jelly, peach preserves, jalepeno-peach jelly, and a variety of pickled goods like chow-chow. And, I discovered on the last trip, peach syrup. It sits in a beautiful tabasco-style bottle and sports a rather cozy looking cinnamon stick.

So, for the summer's last fling, I will need to make a peach cocktail. My default would be a rather boring "rum peach": dark and light rum; peach syrup; lemon juice, garnished with a cinnamon stick. I haven't tried this, but I assume it would be good. But I've also found this one on Esquire Magazine: David Brown's Bitter Peach:

• 1 oz Gran Classico Bitter
• 1 oz lemon juice
• 1 oz peach syrup
• 1 small egg white
• Dash Peychaud's Bitters
Combine ingredients, except for Peychaud's Bitters, with ice and shake vigorously. Strain into a chilled cocktail coupe. Top with Peychaud's Bitters.

Results will be forthcoming.