Holiday & New Years Cocktails

Posted on December 27, 2012 by The Professah

The Professah was interviewed by Hawaii Public Radio today for a feature on holiday cocktails. The piece should be airing Friday, 12/18/12 on 89.3 FM.

OHAI SPARKLER
1 oz fresh lemon juice
1 oz dry curacao or triple sec
1 oz lilikoi bitters

Shake with ice; strain into a champagne flute. Top with ~2 oz bubbles. Garnish: ohai petals or lime twist.

Makes a great “opener” drink — easy to enjoy, use as a toast, etc. Also a nice opening line if you have two in your hands — “Oh, hi, nice to meet you!”

PAUSE FOR A FRIEND
1/2 tsp. dry spice mix (1:1:1 whole coffee, cloves, whole allspice; ground fresh in a spice grinder)
2 oz aged Jamaican rum (e.g. Appleton)
1 oz fresh lemon juice
1 oz creme de peche (e.g. Merlet)
1/2 oz cinnamon simple syrup (3:2 sugar:water, crushed cinnamon sticks; steeped & strained)
1 egg white

Dry Shake all ingredients. Add lots of ice to tin and shake hard. Double strain (hawthorne + tea strainer) into a coupe glass.

A drink that encourages reflection on the year’s activities. We forget to slow down and thank our friends for keeping us in good health and spirits!

THE HOLIDAY ABCs (Milk Punch)
2 L light rum (e.g. Matsualem or Cruzan)
20 g crushed allspice
20 g cacao
20 g minced fresh ginger
10 g torched orange peels

Let above ingredients infuse in large plastic container for at least 1 week.

8 oz fresh pressed ginger juice
8 oz burnt orange juice
8 oz fresh lemon juice
8 oz rich simple syrup (2:1 demerara sugar:water)

Add juices & syrup to container and stir well. Then add:

16 oz scalded milk (heat to 180 degrees — just below boiling)

Mix well and let curdle. Curdling will happen immediately but you want it to sit for a while. At least 2 hours, if not 2+ days.

Clarify using a chinois and coffee filters. You might have to do a few passes. The final product should be clear (albeit not colorless) with no curds or residue. Keep the curds in the filter so that they can help to constrict the flow of the liquid.

Bottle and serve chilled or on the rocks. Garnish with grated nutmeg.

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Cocktail-Toa was a Success… TOOOAHH

Posted on October 25, 2012 by The Professah

Here’s the drink menu in case you missed out last night.  We had about 125 guests and were recognized as an official Yelp! event. Many thanks to Bryan at Beam for helping us out with amazing products.

Also a huge mahalo to Tim & Suzanne for their help with garnishes/decor; Greg & Suzanne for help with milk punch clarification; Eric and his amazing MELE interns; Laurien & Terrina at Lemongrass; WAITIKI for the music; and Chandra, Mike, Tanner, Justin, and Nick for everything else.

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Announcing: Cocktail-Toa!

Posted on September 27, 2012 by The Professah

We’re excited to be helping out with Cocktail-Toa, a pop-up tiki party being produced by The Professah, Kyle Reutner (TOWN restaurant) and others in Honolulu. Should be a good time. Poster is below.

Check out the website for more info: www.eruptionmusicfest.com/cocktail-toa/

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Donn Beach’s Plantation Punch

Posted on August 2, 2012 by The Professah

We’ve been drinking a ton of Plantation Punches over at the Royale Lanai lately. Need one? Here’s how we make ours:

2 oz Appleton 12
1 oz Rhum Clement
1/2 oz Pampero Aniversario Reserva
2 oz fresh pineapple juice (clarified)
1 oz fresh lime juice (clarified)
1/2 oz house falernum
1 long draw Bittermens Tiki Bitters
8 drops St. George Absinthe
…

Shake, double strain into a Rum Barrel filled with crushed ice; top with < 2 oz Fentimans Ginger Beer.

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Peach Mai Tai

Posted on July 25, 2012 by The Professah

So… say you’ve got some awesome MERLET Liqueurs & Spirits Creme de Peche. And you want to make a killer tiki drink. Easiest way? Sub out the curacao for Creme de Peche.

Like this:

PEACH MAI-TAI
1 oz Wray & Nephew Overproof Rum
1 oz El Dorado 8 Year Rum
1 oz fresh lime
1/2 oz Merlet Creme de Peche
1/2 oz Macadamia Orgeat
…
Shake with crushed ice; roll into a DOF or tiki mug & garnish with a lime twist.

Congratulations, you’ve got a winner. Hope you’re staying cool this summer, WAITIKI fans!

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Royale Lanai Cosmo

Posted on June 9, 2012 by The Professah

This one doesn’t photograph well (or, at least, I can’t seem to photograph it well)… but in person it’s a work of art!

The Royale Lanai Cosmo is inspired by Todd Maul’s Van Gogh Gimlet, a drink that uses ‘citrus paint’ to introduce those flavors to the glass, and partially by the Spring in the Afternoon he and I made at Clio that used fava leaf-infused white rum.

I flash-infused Boomsma Jonge Genever with green peppercorns and Sumida Farms’ fresh watercress. Interestingly, while the genever definitely takes on peppery, high notes, the infusion also brings out some of the natural sweetness of the genever. The infused spirit gains a bit of yellowish tinge, not unlike Old Raj 110.

In terms of ‘paint,’ I made a cranberry-clove reduction and thickened it with Ultratex 8.

The rest of the ingredients are what you’d normally expect from a Pegu Club: fresh lime juice, triple-sec, orange bitters. In other words, this drink starts off as a somewhat peppery Pegu Club, and as the cranberry-clove paint slides into the drink, it transforms into a complex interpretation of the Cosmopolitan. If you let it sit long enough, the paint will turn the drink from its initial color to a marvelous off-crimson, like what a “normal” Cosmo looks like.

2 oz peppercorn/watercress-infused Boomsa Jonge Genever
3/4 oz fresh (clarified) lime
1/2 oz house Ka’u orange triple sec
1 dash orange bitters
3-4 stripes of cranberry-clove ‘paint’

Prepare the glass (coupe or martini) by painting stripes up the sides.
Shake other ingredients with ice and double strain.

Describe this drink to your guests!

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Nor’Eastah Mai Tai

Posted on April 8, 2012 by The Professah

We picked up a bottle recently of Virginia Lightning Corn Whiskey, a white whiskey made in Culpeper, VA by the folks over at Belmont Farms. SWAM Wine & Spirits carries it. It’s a good basic whiskey, made in an antique copper pot still, less than 30 days old when bottled. There is a touch of sweetness … actually I think it makes a good white rum substitute. It also pairs well with Wray & Nephew Overproof. Hence this drink.

As for the name… Yes, I was facing Southwest when making & drinking this, but after a couple of them, it feels like a Nor’Eastah hit ya. (If anyone reading this doesn’t know what a Nor’Eastah is, find your local Masshole.)

Anyways, who doesn’t want (or need) a Mai Tai on Easter Sunday?

1 oz Virginia Lightning Corn Whiskey
1 oz Wray & Nephew Overproof Rum
1 oz clarified lime juice
1/2 oz house triple-sec
1/2 oz macadamia orgeat
1/4 oz Elemakule Tiki Bitters (float)

I made so many of these I was out of Virginia Lightning in like a weekend. Have to go back to SWAM and get a few more bottles for sure.

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When Life Gives You Pimm’s…

Posted on March 25, 2012 by The Professah

Make a Pimm’s N Lemon. (Also works for when life gives you lemons.)

Tweaked a bit from the way Todd makes it at Clio. The pair shown below were for some English friends visiting while working for the Hawaii Symphony.

1.5 oz Pimm’s
1.5 oz Lemon
1.0 oz Simple Syrup
0.5 oz fresh sugar cane juice
Assortment of fruits (ideally strawberries, blueberries, etc.)
2 oz soda water

Roll back & forth with ice and then into a Collins glass. Top with an orange slice & a cucumber wheel or spear as shown.

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Paddlers Milk Punch

Posted on December 28, 2011 by The Professah

Heard through the grapevine (and from the horse’s mouth) about a new milk punch being done at Clio for the holiday season — one that tastes like gingerbread, but without using any of the ingredients/flavor agents usually used to make gingerbread.

That got me thinking. When we lived in Boston, we created a milk punch reminiscent of Polynesia (see: the Tahitian Milk Punch). So now that we’re in Hawaii, why not do one reminiscent of New England?

Hence, the Paddlers Milk Punch. Basically a cranberry-flavored milk punch, with no actual cranberries. We made a tea using hibiscus, loomi, burnt orange zest, ceylon cinnamon and anise. Steeped it in shochu and Wray & Nephew Overproof for a week, then curdled with buttermilk and the juices of seared oranges and lemons. After meticulous straining/clarifying, the Paddlers Milk Punch was ready to go. In comparison to the Tahitian MP (with which many of you are familiar), the Paddlers MP is somewhat less sweet but with a rich flavor and much more velvety mouthfeel. We served it in sherry glasses, supra-chilled, with a light grate of dried loomi to amuse the senses.


Why, might you ask, is it called the Paddlers MP? Kind of a roundabout name, but basically as a nod to a Hawaiian-style outrigger canoe club on Nantucket Island. Shout outs to Teryl Chapel for bringing WAITIKI out there, so many years ago. Good memories.

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Starman’s Delight

Posted on December 27, 2011 by The Professah

We led a workshop at SWAM Wine & Spirits, featuring 2 original drinks and 2 milk punches. This one, Starman’s Delight, featured Pinnacle Gin and fresh starfruit sourced from the yard.

Muddle:
1 Tbsp. sugar
Thick slice star fruit
1 tsp green cardamom pods

Add:
2 oz dry gin (Pinnacle)
1 1/2 oz fresh lemon
1 draw grapefruit bitters (Bittermens)
1 bar spoon aged Jamaican rum (Appleton 12)

Add ice to shaker; Shake hard.
Double Strain into a DOF glass with a big ice cube.

Float 1/2 oz soda

Garnish: thick sliced star fruit in glass

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