tea berry-blue

Scott Harris of Catoctin Creek Distillery came up to New York City this week to celebrate the New York launch of Catoctin Creek’s spirits line, and I tagged along with him to a bunch of his events!

One of my oldest friends, Emily, has been working for them, and introduced me to their liquor about a year ago– she poured a little bit of gin into a metal thermos for me to take home with me after a lovely brunch. I started experimenting with it right away– their gin is very friendly to folks who aren’t crazy about strong juniper flavors, with a really nice mix of different herbs that gives it a unique profile. In November, Scott and Emily invited me to go out for a drink with them, and then Scott did an impromptu tasting of the rest of their line– and sent me home with a bottle of each of their flagship spirits– Mosby’s Spirit, a white whiskey, Roundstone Rye, and the Watershed Gin I mentioned above.

Then I went down to the distillery in January and met Scott’s wife, Becky, and got to sit in on a special session where they taught us about the distillation process. I already knew a little bit about distilling, but this really improved my knowledge. I also got to play with their bottling line, which was INCREDIBLY AWESOME, and reminded me a lot of playing whack-a-mole, but with gin!

So I was delighted when Scott told me he was going to be in town and asked if I could come to come of his tastings. I met up with him first at the Rum House on Tuesday– but there was a bit of a miscommunication, so no tasting, but we got a drink and some deviled eggs and then went over to Noorman’s Kil, where we got delicious grilled cheeses and beer, and I got to meet Scott’s New York brand ambassador, Kirsten, who was super nice. They had a huge crowd show up to taste the rye. I don’t have photos from that, because it was super dark, but there were loads of very enthusiastic whiskey aficionados. It was getting close to my bedtime, though, so I headed home, and met up again the next day at the Brandy Library.

At the Brandy Library, we had all three of the spirits, and that was really fun– I actually tasted along with the crowd, sort of, except that I got caught up chatting with folks from Scott’s distributor a bit in the process so it took me a while between the rye and the gin, but I eventually got through all three of them. I had a couple really nice cocktails, and then Mayur, who teaches the classes I sometimes take at Amor Y Amargo and who is spearheading the spirits division at Scott’s distributor, showed up, and it was cool to chat with him when he wasn’t behind the bar. I took a whole bunch of photos of that tasting, and one of them ran in Scott’s local paper!

After the Brandy Library, Scott and Kirsten and I went over to Ward III to grab a drink, and then I went home because it was my bedtime!

Then, on Friday, Scott had a tasting at The Whiskey Shop. I’d never been there before– largely because it’s in Brooklyn and a touch out of the way for me to go to buy spirits, but this place is awesome and if you live nearby, I highly recommend going in. I spent most of the time chatting with Jon, the shopkeeper, who is incredibly knowledgeable and incredibly fun, and let me taste a couple of samples of different things.

The people who came into The Whiskey Shop were all really interesting people who wanted to converse about spirits, which was fun. I talked to a whole bunch of different people there about different things. Once that was over, Jon suggested we go to Kinfolk’s Yuji Ramen around the corner, which was a perfect, delicious little meal. It was a great end to the week. I had so much fun getting to see all these different tastings, how different people taste spirits, and the kinds of questions people asked.

If you live in New York, or any of the other states where it is available make sure to try Catoctin Creek’s spirits!

Mirrored from Nommable!.

Lately, I’ve developed a fondness for homemade marshmallows. I’ve been making marshmallows on and off for a few years now, but never really started experimenting with them, although I Had Ideas.

Let me start with a secret: making marshmallows is easy. It is so ridiculously easy, and fairly reasonably-priced, and the results are so good, that if you have forty minutes to make them and don’t mind waiting overnight to have marshmallows, you might never buy store-bought marshmallows again.

I’m serious.

Basically, marshmallows are simple: you boil a mixture of 1 cup sugar, 1 cup corn syrup, 1/2 cup water, until it reaches about 250 degrees Fahrenheit on a candy thermometer. You pour the sugar solution into a blender where you have .75 oz of gelatin in another 1/2 cup water. The solution will foam up; you will turn the mixer on to its highest speed and mix for ten to fifteen minutes, at which point you will feel like Bartholomew Cubbins fighting off the Oobleck. You will coat a rubber spatula in margarine, which will make the Oobleck miraculously slide off the spatula, as you scrape it into a greased baking sheet lined with a mixture of 1/2 cornstarch, 1/2 confectioners’ sugar. You will let it sit overnight. In the morning, there are marshmallows. You can cut them apart with scissors, and then toss them in more sugar-cornstarch.

The basic trick to marshmallows is just to have a really good mixer. I destroyed two hand mixers making marshmallows, which had a lot to do with why I didn’t make them very often– but then, for Christmas this year, my parents gave me a standing mixer. And it makes a huge difference in the marshmallow-making process.

The thing with marshmallows is that they required heavy whipping for an extended period of time. So if you have a hand mixer, you had better have a book in the other hand or a television in the same room as your mixer. Or something. This is why having the standing mixer makes such a difference.

So once I got the mixer, I really started spending a lot of time playing with flavors. I started logically– infusing herbs in the sugar syrup, peppermint once, and lavender and tarragon another time. Then I moved on, realizing I could substitute some of the unflavored gelatin for Jell-o, and get day-glo marshmallows with delicious artificial candy flavors. Lately, I’ve been playing with boozemallows, and I’ve done three flavors that are all quite good: Angostura, Fernet-Branca, and Sazerac.

The Sazerac marshmallows were the first ones I made that actually approximate a cocktail instead of just having a bit of a specific ingredient flavoring the marshmallow. They’re very mild, but if you eat them alone, you can taste all the subtle flavors you expect from a Sazerac: whiskey, absinthe, and Peychaud’s, and they even have the tiniest tinge of pink to them (though it doesn’t come across much in the photo).

To the recipe I related above, I added about 1/4 cup Catoctin Creek Roundstone Rye, about 1/8 cup Tenneyson Absinthe, and about ten dashes of Peychaud’s bitters– I added these right at the beginning of the whipping process, into the mixer. Use a splash guard for your mixer if you have one. You can taste the marshmallow to see if you want more or less of any ingredient, and it’s easy to add a little bit more later on– as long as it’s not too much, it mixes in well.

Of course, once the marshmallows are done, I recommend popping a couple of them into a glass of whiskey.

Mirrored from Nommable!.

I went to my friend Rina’s house on Thursday, planning on just helping her out with some stuff and then going out to dinner, but when I walked in, she asked if I’d make her a drink. Now, of COURSE I will make her a drink, all the time, as she’s one of my favorite cocktail guinea pigs, but I had all these neat little ingredients I had wanted to show off and I hadn’t brought any of them over. So I worked with what she had in the house. Which is not an unimpressive collection.

Her husband, Brendan, recently acquired a full set of syrups from the new syrup company, Royal Rose, which is in nearby Brooklyn. I had been itching to try them. They also had a bottle of Solerno Blood Orange Liqueur, which I ‘d heard good things about, but never had, and Cocktail Kingdom’s Wormwood Bitters. (Note: Cocktail Kingdom is one of my favorite places to buy bitters. They have lots of awesome small batch stuff that I haven’t found anywhere else).

We tried a little of the Solerno neat, and it was very, very sweet, sweeter than I expected. It tasted kind of like a melted popsicle, but with more depth to it. I’m not so sure I got ‘blood orange’ so much as a brighter orange-tangeriney flavor.

Here’s what I ended up making:

Mirrored from Nommable!.

I don’t often mix aperitif cocktails, but I thought it would be nice to do something that would go well with a pecan or pumpkin pie. This is a very simple drink, sweet, and spicy, meant to be sipped at room temperature.

Ingredients for six drinks
4 1/2 oz Sortilege Maple Whiskey
4 1/2 oz Averna Amaro
4 dashes per drink Fee Brothers Whiskey Barrel Bitters

Instructions
1) Mix the Sortilege and the Averna in a small pitcher with a wooden spoon
2) Pour into small aperitif glasses
3) Add bitters to each drink

Mirrored from Antagonia.net.

For my birthday, my parents took me on a tour of the Tuthilltown Distillery in Gardiner, New York.

The story of whiskey in New York is a funny one. You know what a Manhattan cocktail is, right? The Manhattan was called a Manhattan for a reason– because New York state was known for their abundant rye whiskey.

But then Prohibition came along, and the distilleries closed. When Prohibition ended, in many other parts of the country, the stills went back to work, but in New York, they stayed shuttered. Tuthilltown Distillery didn’t open until…I think 2005? I might be wrong on the year, but around then, and that was the first distillery in New York to produce whiskey since Prohibition ended. It is a tiny microdistillery inside an old mill granary on an 8-acre farm (which appropriately grows hops), but they make some of the best whiskey I’ve ever tasted. So when we found out they gave tours, I was really excited.

Click the link for massive awesome pictures of the distillery!

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Mirrored from Antagonia.net.