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 …

— 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 …

— 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 …

— 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.