Tonight's Negroni #12: Why Do We Hobby?

FYI: This is an archive of my Tonight's Negroni email newsletter.

I've been thinking a lot about what it means to be an enthusiast or a hobbyist.

My friend Andrew coined the term "stay at home bartender", and I've taken that and run with it quite a bit. To the point that a few people use the term when they introduce me to strangers. Thanks to my aptitude as a (as some of my friends call it) Twitter whore, I get recognized by genuine professional cocktail experts (you know, actual bartenders) as something close to a peer despite having never been "behind the stick" in a professional capacity.

How did that happen? And perhaps more interestingly, why?

How did I go from making "dry" Martinis by proudly waving a bottle of vermouth near the shaker full of gin, to crafting (cringe) a "Classic Martini" with a solid pour of upscale dry vermouth and orange bitters? I once made "Mojitos" for my mother and my Special Lady Friend in pint glasses and forgot to top them with soda water, so we were drinking PINTS OF RUM...

Point being, I've made the journey from novice (aka: "enthusiastic ignoramus") to something near expert with the passing of time.

Of course, that's nothing unique to me. Lots of us do this. There's the home woodworker (another hobby I claim, but one at which I am much less skilled) making cabinets or furniture for his own household and for no other reason, but with great, carefully developed ability. Home cooks are the classic example of non-professionally skillful practitioners - everyone had a Nana who cooked food better than anyone and never went to school for it.

But she kind of did. She read cookbooks (or recipe cards handed down from her family) and actually performed the skill of cooking over and over until she got good at it.

This is getting close to the Galdwell 10,000 hours thing, but I think that idea (like many Gladwellisms) is oversimplified. It also offers a path to the trope of "following your passion", which is another one that I have grown to distrust. I definitely don't think hobbies are all potential new careers. Nor should they be! Why ruin your joy by making it your job?

(Now I'm oversimplifying. It's an easy trap to fall into.)

Hobbies (at least a certain category of them that challenge you in certain ways) are about the willful acquisition of skill outside of your profession. You have to purposefully educate yourself (reading, taking classes, repeated practice). Maybe this is obvious, but it seems like a really important realization to me. Why would we work so hard to learn something that doesn't affect our professional performance?

The primary answer I keep coming to is quality of life. Some people love their hobbies because they are loads of fun, especially as they become more skillful. They also offer the opportunity to "disconnect from" or "forget about" the 9-to-5 drag. The mental challenge is a useful distraction from the at-work mental challenges we don't have a choice about facing. (This moves us into "check your privilege" territory, I'm aware. Your ability to actually have a hobby reflects a certain amount of slack in your life. A single parent working three jobs to feed the kids is probably pretty sure anyone who talks about "disconnecting from the day to day" is an asshole with too much free time.)

Secondarily, though, I wonder if practicing a hobby keeps your "learning muscles" limber and therefore maybe do end up helping professional life. It's not a thesis I would argue too fervently to defend, but it feels like it's got at least a little truth to it.

Obviously it's something I'm thinking about lately. Let me know if you have thoughts either way. I'd be curious to hear them.

Now, how about a good Grampa drink?

Rob Roy

There's a part of me that resists making cocktails based on Scotch whisky. I prefer drinking the peaty stuff neat or with a tiny splash of cool water. That said, I would never turn my nose up at a well-made Blood & Sand. I also own Blue Blazer mugs, so I have to do that once in a while (no fires yet!).

The Rob Roy falls into this category, too.

  • 1.5oz Scotch (I went with Great King St. Artist's Blend from Compass Box)
  • 1.5oz Sweet vermouth (Cocchi di Torino)
  • 2 droppers Homemade Blood Orange Whiskey bitters (or Cocktailpunk smoked orange)
  1. Stir with ice
  2. Strain into a chilled coupe or cocktail glass
  3. Garnish with an orange (or lemon) twist

This one also tugs some nostalgia string for me because it shares the name of a motel in Destin, FL that was owned by family friends who let my grandparents and me use their pool whenever we wanted. (The only slightly recognizable photo I can find is this one of a random family from ~1989 that mostly shows the marina in back.)

Tonight's Negroni #11: Ratios Are Golden

FYI: This is an archive of my Tonight's Negroni email newsletter.

Something a lot of people don't seem to realize about mixing drinks it that it's all about ratios. Maybe I'm just old enough to remember people talking about cocktail recipes in terms of "parts"? (e.g. One part gin, one part Campari, one part sweet vermouth == Negroni!) It doesn't seem like that's as common now as it once was, but it was clever practice.

The beauty of thinking about drink recipes as a ratio of ingredients is many fold. You can mix a drink with any sort of measuring device, be it a jigger, a shot glass, or a soup spoon. You you will also be more readily able scale the recipe or even convert units of measurement.

Suppose you want to barrel age a batch of Boulevardiers? The ounce-based recipe reads as:

  • 1.5oz Bourbon
  • 1oz Campari
  • 1oz Sweet vermouth

Well, that's interesting... A typical bottle of bourbon is 750ml, which I have come to recognize as 1.5 x 500ml. So if I think of 1 ounce from the recipe and translate that to 500ml, that means I can mix a full bottle of bourbon with 500ml (2/3 of a full bottle) of each Campari and sweet vermouth, and just like that I've got a 2.25l batch of Boulevardier cocktails. It so happens that I use barrels that are around two liters in volume for aging cocktails, so I end up with just the right amount left for a couple rounds with my Special Lady Friend.

It's a good thing.

At first, trying to think of recipes as ratios can seem a little distracting, like it's slowing you down. It's really only a slight shift in perception, though. Pay less attention to units and more attention to the amounts as they relate to each other.

It helps if you regularly make cocktails for two (or more advanced, three!) people at a time. The next time you are entertaining friends and need to make four cocktails at once, grab that little juice glass in your cabinet and pretend it is the proverbial "ounce" referenced by the recipe you are following. PROTIP: If you end up with extra, you can always take a swig from your own glass and top it off!

("Dashes" for ingredients aren't much of an issue until you get to a much larger scale, like a two liter barrel. If the drink calls for two dashes and you are making a batch of four, you give it eight dashes, obviously.)

If you want to read someone smarter than me talk about cooking with ratios, you really should pick up Michael Ruhlman's book titled, simply Ratio (there's also an app). It is excellent and definitely started me down the path of looking at all types of recipes in these terms.

Martinez

If you actually happend to click the second link above, you'll already know I've also barrel aged a batch of a cocktail called theMartinez.

My favorite recipe is from 1884 and is reproduced in the PDT Cocktail Book:

(Rephrased in the light of tonight's topic, that's: 1 part Old Tom, 1 part vermouth, 1/6 part Luxardo. Or 6:6:1 if you're making a pitcher of the things. Who am I to judge?)

  1. Stir with ice
  2. Strain into a chilled coupe or cocktail glass
  3. Garnish with an orange (or lemon) twist

I've seen a lot of suspect history for this drink. Some say it was a progenitor of the Martini. Others refer to it as a "gin Manhattan". More likely, it was just one of many cocktails that followed the same formula of a spirit, a vermouth, and something bitter (consider the classic Manhattan or the Boulevardier we already discussed). It is certainly a very old recipe.

More interesting is the use of a particular kind of gin called "Old Tom". Old Tom Gin fits somewhere between London Dry gin and Genever on the juniper-infused spirit spectrum. Ransom makes one - based on consultation from David Wondrich - that will knock your socks off.

Tonight's Negroni #10: Tour di Negroni

FYI: This is an archive of my Tonight's Negroni email newsletter.

There's an organization here in my hometown that calls itself Industry Denver. While I'm not 100% sure what it is that they do as a business entity, I do know that they organize (and gather sponsorships for) friendly, themed cocktail competitions amongst the many excellent bars and restaurants in town.

Obviously, this is meant to drive some extra traffic to the participating establishments. Who knows, maybe there's some sponsor payola as well. Doesn't really matter to me.

The point being, as of April Fools Day (which is tomorrow, as I hunt and peck this now), twelve Denver drink slingers (a few among my very favorites) will be in the heat of "battle" of the Tour di Negroni

Seriously, be still my heart! I mean, you realize the name of this newsletter, right? I'm considering printing cards and stickers all of a sudden...

How it works is: each establishment offers one traditional Negroni, following the classic 1:1:1 recipe of gin:Campari:sweet vermouth. Along side that, each will offer something a bit more fanciful inspired in someway by the Negroni.

The former offering takes us straight back to TN#9 and the notion of varying your variables. Everybody is using different gins and different vermouths. Twelve different Negronis just by changing the labels on the bottles!

The fancied-up versions range a spectrum of:

  • Something made similarly with just three ingredients (but not the classic 1:1:1 ratio), but with ingredients with which most of us are totally unfamiliar.
  • cocktail with an ingredients list that looks like a dictionary and features ONE FULL OUNCE of Peychaud's bitters!
  • Another one that has not only Basque cidre, but a bit of beer as well!

(If it's not obvious, I plan to try each of those I mentioned. I'm a big fan of all of those spots.)

This all so goes to show the infinite room there is for creativity in the world of cocktails. I recently read a great piece about naming cocktails. I big part of it was the idea that you might "invent" something and then find that someone else (maybe two hundred years ago) did pretty much the same thing. The anointed expert in the article held the position that one should surrender to the original, in terms of naming.

I agree with that... to a point.

If your "invented" ratio is an exact match, then I suggest you introduce your cocktail like so: "This is a Something Old, but I personally like to call it a Sex Panther*." You can then optionally tell the story how you came up with the recipe yourself, but then found out that it has existed since before your grandparents. At the very least this demonstrates you study and care for the cocktail craft.

(To you. Nobody else cares, really.)

If your recipe differs even a little bit (in ratio, not brand of ingredient), I believe you are safe serving your drink with "This is a Sex Panther*. It's really close to a Something Old, but I've tweaked it a bit with extra root beer schnapps." This demonstrates your creativity, but still shows you know where you're coming from, historically.

(To you. Nobody else cares, really.)

On that note, I'll give you the drink that inspired my Citrine recipe, for which I still haven't found prior art.

* Sex Panther was a real live drink I was served just last night at Bramble & Hare in Boulder. I believe the barkeep said he found the recipe in Seattle. The illustrative bit for the invention/naming conversation is that NONE of the recipes I have found online match the one I drank.

Bijou

  • 1oz Gin (I'm using Ford's because they sell it in liters at the same price point as equally good 750ml gin.)
  • 1oz Green Chartreuse) (I'll be honest, I'm still working on Chartreuse. Talk about acquired tastes!)
  • 1oz Sweet vermouth (Tonight: Gran Lusso.)
  1. Stir with ice.
  2. Strain into a cocktail glass.
  3. Garnish with a cherry and a lemon twist (if you're fancy).

OR

  1. Pour everything into a glass with ice cubes and stir it with your finger, as I did.
  2. Because I'm a grown-ass man, home alone.

This one comes from the previously mentioned PDT Cocktail Book. The recipe apparently dates back to 1895 (aka "Something Old").

It's a doozy, but I recommend you try it. You never know your true boundaries unless you test them occasionally.

Tonight's Negroni #9: Vary your variables!

FYI: This is an archive of my Tonight's Negroni email newsletter.

Variants

Remember how I told you the Negroni is an awesome drink because it's so easy to make? Just 1:1:1 of gin:sweet vermouth:Campari, right?

Well, here's the magic thing about that: the specifics are WIDE OPEN! Gin has so many flavors. Hendrick's tastes like cucumber and roses. Uncle Val's is even crazier, with citrus and botanicals. Tanqueray tastes like everyday gin should taste. Roundhouse has a subtle floral flavor and comes from Boulder, CO. Gin is all over the map, so you get to (or "have to" for the skittish, I suppose...) think about what works best for any given cocktail.

The secret that people who haven't done my kind of deep dive into cocktail mixing, history, and culture don't know is that the same applies to vermouth. 

[STOP THE PRESSES: I was just looking for a link for a cheap vermouth example and instead found vermouth101.com. Holy Mary of Seven Bottles! This is where I'm spending the upcoming weekend...]

Sweet vermouth runs the price gamut for a 750ml bottle from around $8 to $35 and beyond. The whole rainbow is worth investigating. The key to knowing how to combine them is experiencing your ingredients alone, as they are. Try your vermouth (and your gin, and so on) neat. Do the nerdy "wine geek" slurpy, swishy thing with your booze, too. Only when you know the individual flavors can you even come close to imagining the taste of a combination.

And that is the thing with vermouth: as a "fortified wine" it IS a combination! That means the variation of this one ingredient can be pretty vast.

You can get a Carpano Antica Formula or Martini Gran Lusso, which are bold and amazing as sippers, but also make for a vermouth-forward cocktail if you mix them. You can also spend your extra money on a Cocchi di Torino, which is a great sipping aperitif, but fades into the background in a something like a Negroni. You can spend in the teens/twenties and get Dolin Rouge or Vya, which are both mainstays for my bar, and yet are vastly different. 

Or you can get Punt e Mes, which is my jam tonight. It's bold and flavorful and stands out against the Campari in a Negroni. 

The sub-$10 sweet vermouths are all pretty similar in my view. They aren't something you'd want to sip on the porch, but they are typically quite serviceable as mixers.

PROTIP: Unless you are some kind of animal (like me) and you don't consume a bottle of vermouth within a 2 week time span, store your vermouth in the refrigerator. Keep it corked/closed tightly, and don't leave it sitting with a speed pour spout, which doesn't really seal closed. (That's probably not a real concern. Only poseurs (like me, again) use speed pour spouts at home.) Evaporation is your foe with vermouth.

My suggestion to you is this: If you have access to a selection, don't buy the same sweet vermouth twice in a row. In fact, buy a new bottle until you've exhausted the selection. Explore the range and find your favorites in each price level.

As it turns out, I have a few favorites in the ~$20 band of the price rainbow. Dolin is nondescript. Vya is aromatic. Punt e Mes is bold, which is why I went for it tonight.

Someday I might branch out to talk about other variations of fortified wines, which progress from things like Madeira to Port to Vermouth to Quinquina. Plus the whole spectrum of dry vermouth... It's nutso.

Punt e Mes Negroni

I know Negroni recipes might be getting old, but bear with me... I'm playing a long con to teach you about substitution and variation.

  • 1.5oz gin (I used my current fave Half Moon Orchard)
  • 1.5oz Punt e Mes
  • 1.5oz Campari
  1. Stir with ice.
  2. Strain into a rocks glass with a very large ice cube or two.

The Punt e Mes is strong enough to give you a striking illustration of what varying your ingredients can do for a cocktail.
Please compare and contrast as you can. It will serve you well!

(NOTE: I didn't do the linking I might usually do for one of these. It seems like you guys don't click a bunch of links from what I can tell in the reports. If you miss the links, feel free to let me know. I'll just assume we all know how to use Google in the mean time.)