October is month two of the revived
Mixology Monday, thanks to Frederic from
Cocktail Virgin Slut for taking the reins from
Paul Clarke, and as you've probably gathered I'm hosting this month. I went with the theme
"Bein' Green", calling for drinks using at least one green ingredient, and people ran with it, often using several and sometimes as many as seven. We got a solid representation from the online cocktail crowd, with 37 participants, including at least 5 first timers. Let me extend welcome to the newcomers.
The green ingredients ranged from the basic lime and mint (and/or dozens of other herbs), to more exotic items from bird's eye chili peppers to hops, and even fresh snap peas! But without further ado, onto the drinks (in order of submission):
First up we have Mark at
Cardiff Cocktails who not only racks 'em up for us with the Paracelsus cocktail, using a nice combo of four green foundation ingredients, he also treats us to a sweeping 2500 year history of the medicinal use of alcohol. A sage way to start us off.
Next up to bat, haresfur posts from Australia a
Hot Green Tea Punch on eGullet, fortifying sweetened green tea with a couple rums, finding it surprisingly refreshing. I'm not sure we get Inner Circle rum, but he says it's for the funk so I'll sub Smith&Cross when I try it out.
Third is Dagreb from
Nihil Utopia who infuses rum with Shiso and uses it in a Mai Tai variation called the
She Sew My Tie (
nice name, btw). It has the honor of being the best tasting new drink submission I tried, but before his head gets too big that's because his was the only one I've made so far, mostly because it was an early submission and I was excited to use some of the copious Shiso I have growing, and then I got slammed travelling so have not been home to try more. But it was a grassy and delicious quaff.
With their first MxMo entry,
Booze Nerds takes up the gauntlet I laid down in my announcement post and try their hand at making a cocktail with Douglas Fir eau de vie, determining that rye is a good match, and they even top their
Rainier Sunset with a bespoke foam. Well done, and nice to have you join us.
Back at eGullet, FrogPrincesse discovers the classic tiki drink
Missionary's Downfall and enjoys the marriage of pineapple and chlorophyll from the blended mint. The downfall is one of my favorites; they do an excellent rendition at
PKNY next time you are in town, I enjoyed it last I was there.
The Pocket Square's Zak gives us the #PepinoSalvia, tequila cocktail hit with the quintuple green blast of lime, cucumber, sage, and green tabasco. Sounds wonderful to me.
Alex the
Malty Puppy writes in from Moscow, lamenting the dismal nature of Russian Octobers, but nonetheless rises to the occasion and gives us another quartet of emerald-hued ingredients to compliment pear eau-de-vie, including rosemary and parsley, to make his
October's Still Green.
(Silly me, I thought it was Red). Of note, even this Russian says that pear eau-de-vie tastes much better than vodka.
EDIT: HE clarifies in the comments, that's it's better in this drink, not in general. Plus he thought my announcement post was poetic.
Dan Chadwick of
Kindred Cocktails, while wearing green socks, serves up the
Bad Word, steering a Last Word away from funk toward a more bitter tack by use of Gran Classico instead of the usual maraschino. His kindred commenters declare it a success. I believe them. If you are unfamiliar, in my mental frame of reference of Gran Classico taste is "negroni-in-a-bottle", thought it also makes a mean Negroni variant replacing Campari.
Tri2Cook swizzles JWray rum with an awesome sounding Thai syrup, and by my counts sets the pace using 7, count 'em 7, green ingredients: lime, mint, lemongrass, hot green chile, kaffir lime leaves, basil & cilantro. I'd pony up to any bar serving his
Patong Swizzle. Now where can I get my hands on some kaffir lime leaves, like, right now?
One of Stew's
901 Very Good Cocktails is
Green Like a Fox, which marries Tequila and Pisco with a Last Word's Green Chartreuse, lime, and maraschino, albeit in altered (and boozier) proportions.
Another first timer, Whitney de
Casa de Milo proffers forth
La Ultima Palabra, along with some serious photography chops, a mezcal version of the Last Word. Whitney also offers a variation dialing back the maraschino, resulting in a drier cocktail that more suits his palate, as it would mine.
Scott at
Shake, Strain & Sip enlightens me to the interesting origin of the chartreuse laden Bijou cocktail's name (
I knew it meant jewel, but didn't know that gin=diamond, vermouth=ruby, and chartreuse=emerald), and adds a lavish original he dubs
Gatsby.
Spirited Remix's DJ HawaiianShirt brightens rye, chartreuse, and dry vermouth with celery bitters in his
Tee Ball cocktail, and may or may not garnish with an olive.
Pardon my French, but as our third new participant in MxMo, Cocktail Alex of
les cocktails d'alexandre verte's it up with basil and grapes in the Floc de Gascogne contest winning
Floc Beauty cocktail, a light and floral apéritif style cocktail. Ask google to translate.
The
September Frost Cocktail from
the Gin is In blog helps us transition from summer to fall, bridging the gap with mint and a burnt honey syrup, in this minty Tom Collins-Bee's Knees mashup.
If you still need help with the transition to autumn, Mixology Monday draws Raff back into blogging at
The Shorter Straw, and the Laphroaig's smoke mixed with summer's green in his
Recycle should do the trick.
All the way from Taiwan,
the Boo Lion infuses green tea into scotch, and fashions it into a chartreuse enhanced Rob Roy to make his
Sucha Rob Roy, relishing the complexity imbued by the tea and chartreuse. He also presents a bonus cocktail mixing Lillet and St. Germain with another tea infused scotch.
Now we come to out esteemed Executive Producer, frederic, who describes a Stan Jones drink from the 70s called the
H Bomb, named for some combination of the double dose of neon chartreuse liqueurs and the sheer heat of the unadulterated proof of the drink. (
phew, almost half way done, frederic, you didn't warn me about how long it'd take to summarize and link to nearly 40 posts).
Lindsay and her
Alcohol Alchemy, trying to hold on to her adventurous travel filled summer, concocts her
Endless Summer with cucumber, basil, and lime as well as watermelon and a touch of balsamic. We'll score that as four, watermelons look green to me.
JFL goes on an absinthe vert bender at
Rated R Cocktails and brings us two absinthe heavy drinks; the new and complex take on planter's punch called
Deserted Plantation, and also includes the Ectoplasm, which totally nails Slimer's color.
Over at
theSpeakista, KeithP gives us three drinks, the staggering combo of Chartreuse, Rittenhouse, and Bénédictine in the Purgatory, as well as two originals, using either basil or rosemary in his
Two-wide of Bid-Offer and
Greener PAST-erz drinks.
With what are in my opinion the best photos of the month, Ian opines on the state of affairs re cocktail culture and locally produced hooch in his Atlanta home, while I lust after his
Jacques-in-the-Green cocktail, made with Lemon-Thyme, Bay Laurel, tarragon, and absinthe verte to supplement a lime-gin-St. Germain base.
note to self: I've got those plants, I think the tarragon is still going, check tomorrow.
DrinksBurgh's Mike matches Cthulhu's fury with an eerie green glow in his tiki drink
The Cocktail of Cthulhu.
In a drink named after the QB beating Boston's New England Patriots whilst the drink was being created,
Doré's Andrew offers us a wintery take on a julep utilizing the potent Fee's Mint Bitter's (which are VERY green) in his
Damnit Wilson! cocktail.
Thiago's research at his
Bartending Notes pick's up Hidetsugu Ueno's Midori cocktail
City Coral, but then he discovers he can't get his hands on Midori, so he consoles us (and presumably himself) with a Caipirinha.
At
Southern Ash, Joel makes us a
Tequila Gimlet utilizing lime syrup made from fresh limes, as well as garnishing with the (underutilized in my opinion) lime zest.
At
Feu de Vie Muse of Doom goes awesomely and delightfully bonkers with the garnish on her
Fall Carnival, the recipe for which is an only slightly less complicated than the garnish. Suffice it to say that the garnish includes both squash and hazelnuts. And so does the drink, albeit a different squash. Click over to check out the details.
Getting back a bit closer to basics, Anam UK and his
Sybaritic Wanderings offer what I deem to be an ingenious take on the Sazerac with his
Pickled Fennel Sazerac, where instead of the absinthe rinse in the classic, he uses fennel from his garden that he pickled with vinegar and Chartreuse Elixir Végétal. Brilliant!
Joseph from
Measure and Stir revisits Thailand's bounty for his
Bird's Eye Julep, marrying muddled Thai Basil with a Thai Chili and lemongrass infused Soju. Yes please.
Stewart at
Putney Farm discusses two drinks, Hemingway's absinthe fueled
Death in the Afternoon, as well as the 100% green
The Silent Order, which he found in Frederic Yarm's new book on Boston cocktail's, "
Drink and Tell".
Zach
The Venture Mixologist's
Petiolus green of choice is celery, which he pairs with Cynar in both celery-infused vodka and celery bitters form.
Ok, my turn, my turn! I eventually got around to posting something myself. In fact a few times. I experimented with my PolySci smoking gun to make
rosemary-smoked chartreuse. Which I'm still deciding how much I like. Then I tried it in my
Hal Jordan cocktail, paired with aquavit and garnished with a ring of green jalapeño.
For my second drink, I infused aged genever with fresh home grown hops, which I then muddled with lovage and sweetened with two liqueurs to form my
Verdant Hope cocktail.
I love the name Michael at the
liquid culture project used for his drink:
Green Eggs and Ham. Not just the name, the drink sounds great as well. The drink is a take on a Bloody María, but using a
Bloody Green mix, which is tomatillos instead of tomato based. And garnished with Bacon, just to gild the lily. I had thought about mentioning Green Eggs in my announcement, but since it got used anyway I'm now glad I didn't. Unfortunately, no one ended up using Soylent Green in a drink, now that would have been sweet.
Coming into the home stretch,
The Mix Lab brings us two more drinks, the
Hazy Morning using chartreuse and lime with tequila and pineapple gomme, and the
Siren's Song, a lime-in-the-coconut kicked up with lemongrass-infused rum.
Two more first time participants coming up,
Two Sheets in the Wind gives us the little flavor packed cilantro-infused Batavia Arrack ditty he calls
The Herbalist.
For our penultimate entry,
Boozed+Infused offers
Friends of Pea, adding lime and lemon balm to fresh sugarsnap pea infused vodka, which sounds kinda awesome, but I figure I'll have to wait until next spring to try it out.
Last but not least, we have Jordan from
Chemistry of the Cocktail, who brings us the stirred tequila and chartreuse
Texanus, and well as a remixed version of the same leavened with lime and soda to lighten it up a bit.
Once again, thanks to Frederic for his gumption to organize this thing. (As well as my blatant rip-off of the visual design for this roundup post from
his roundup last month.) But most of all, thanks to all the particpants for their thoughtful submissions, hope everyone enjoyed posting, as well as checking out all the other drinks.
Cheers!
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