DIY

— No. 136 —

Aperol Falernum

A while back I saw an arti­cle in “Art Culi­naire Mag­a­zine” with a few Aperol cock­tails and an Aperol faler­num recipe. The recipe came from Jane Lopez, Bev­er­age Direc­tor at The Cat­bird Seat, in Nashville, Ten­nessee. I thought this was a great idea and decided to make my own twist. I used my go to faler­num recipe as a start­ing point, but omit­ted the fresh juice to help pro­long the liqueur’s shelf life. I also cut back on the cloves because my original …

— No. 133 —

Grapefruit Hop Syrup

Inspired by my recent hobby of home brew­ing, I cre­ated a unique grape­fruit hop syrup to exper­i­ment with. IPAs that have a strong grape­fruit palette are my favorite. I’ve found that cas­cade and amar­illo hops have a nice grape­fruit and cit­rus pro­file to them and I wanted to try this fla­vor com­bi­na­tion in cock­tail recipes.

— No. 127 —

Red Bell Pepper Infused Rum

It never hurts to think ahead. Warmer months are just around the cor­ner. If you’re any­thing like me you’ve prob­a­bly had your fair share of bour­bon. Not that bour­bon will ever be replaced, but it’s about time to start think­ing rum drinks. This red bell pep­per infused rum is quite pos­si­bly the eas­i­est and one of the most reward­ing infu­sions you can make. It’ll only take 24 hours to infuse and the result is a culi­nary epiphany that’ll have your guests pleas­antly surprised. …

— No. 113 —

Cherry Gastrique

A gas­trique is a caramelized sugar, deglazed with vine­gar that is often used by gourmet chefs as a thick, sweet-and-sour sauce. But what’s good for the goose is good for the gan­der. A gas­trique can help you brighten the fla­vor and color palette of your favorite cock­tail recipes. The recipe for my cherry gas­trique is below, but feel free to exper­i­ment with dif­fer­ent vine­gars such as red wine, cham­pagne or cider vine­gars. Try pair­ing these vine­gars with other accent flavors …

— No. 102 —

Barrel Aged Negroni

You may have heard of Jef­frey Mor­gen­thaler. You may have even heard about his exper­tise in bar­rel aging cock­tails. I had, and he was one of the major inspi­ra­tions for my trip out to Port­land. I vis­ited his bar at Clyde Com­mon to get on a first name basis with one of his bar­rel aged Negro­nis. Well worth the trip and well worth the effort to recre­ate it in my own bar. As a cock­tail enthu­si­ast, it’s hard not to …

— No. 93 —

Blueberry Liqueur

I usu­ally make a blue­berry infused spirit, but it seemed time to expand my blue­berry hori­zons by mak­ing a liqueur. I’m glad I did. It wasn’t hard at all and only took a lit­tle patience. A lot of the blue­berry liqueur recipes I’ve seen use lemon zest and clove. I chose to bypass those ingre­di­ents. I wanted to iso­late the blue­berry fla­vor for my cock­tails and didn’t want to be mar­ried to the clove and cit­rus tones. You may want to give …

— No. 80 —

Orgeat Syrup

Orgeat is a sweet almond syrup with a lovely touch of orange and rose flower water. If you’re lucky you might be able to find a bot­tle at your local liquor store, but quite frankly noth­ing beats the home­made stuff. It’s a lot eas­ier to make than you might think too.

— No. 67 —

Baltimore Egg Nogg

I didn’t have to rack my nog­gin’ to select this years hol­i­day cock­tail. It was a no brainer, Hon. I call Bal­ti­more home so nat­u­rally I chose a clas­sic recipe for Bal­ti­more Egg Nogg. The Bal­ti­more Egg Nogg recipe was first pub­lished in a Bal­ti­more cook­book in the 1940’s and incor­po­rated a unique ingre­di­ent in Madeira wine. I adapted this recipe from Jerry Thomas’ Bar-Tenders Guide, pub­lished in 1887. Yeah, I’m going way back. Recipe 6 eggs 5 oz Madeira wine …

— No. 61 —

Regan’s Orange Bitters No. 5

So you prob­a­bly already know Post Pro­hi­bi­tion is all about hand­crafted liba­tions. We are cur­rently in the process of mak­ing cus­tom bit­ters, tak­ing the craft of the cock­tail to the next level. We started with a basic orange bit­ters recipe from The Joy of Mixol­ogy by Gary Regan. You might ask, “What are bit­ters?” Bit­ters are cock­tail sea­son­ing, like salt for a soup. Back in the 1800’s, bit­ters where used for med­i­c­i­nal pur­poses. They were a potion of healthy herbs and botanicals. …

— No. 50 —

Simple Syrups

Simple or not? Well, hope­fully after read­ing this you can say that’s sim­ple. Sim­ple syrup is basi­cally just two ingre­di­ents, sugar and water. Start with a basic 1:1 ratio. That’s 1 cup of water to every cup of sugar. If you’re mak­ing a tra­di­tional sim­ple syrup all you’ll need is water hot enough to melt your sugar. That’s it.

— No. 3 —

Falernum #9

Falernum #9

Making hand­made Faler­num is a real treat and is eas­ier than one might think. House made Faler­num smells and taste won­der­ful. With a fresh Faler­num you can taste all the com­plex­i­ties and it’ll add a deep fla­vor com­po­nent to your cock­tails. Com­mer­cial grade Faler­num can­not com­pare as it is flat and dull. Go the extra mile and your cock­tails and taste buds will thank you. You’ll have your guest “Wow­ing” your cre­ations. Recipe from Jeff Berry’s Beach­bum Berry Remixed 6oz …

— No. 2 —

Handmade Grenadine

So why make grena­dine? Your com­mon run of the mill grena­dine is chock full of arti­fi­cial fla­vors and tastes noth­ing like pome­gran­ate. This sim­ply isn’t going to cut it. When you take the time to hand make a batch of grena­dine it greatly improves the fla­vor pro­file of your cock­tails. A lot of your older, more clas­sic cock­tail recipes call for grena­dine and my mother always told me to respect my elders. So lets pay proper homage to the art …