Ti(n)sanity!: Jane Porter

As I mentioned way back in August, I'm working on more (and advanced) ideas for this Ti(n)sanity! series, my look at all the various ways you can use tea in a cocktail; for grins and flavor-tracking consistency, Celestial Seasonings Tension Tamer herbal tea/tisane serves as my Macguffin. *points downwards to the Disclaimer*.

This particular iteration backtracks a little bit, back to the syrup-level found in the Lullaby Sangaree and Insufferable Creole Minx (linked below) and is the second part of a "fancy orgeat" exploration that started with Giganta. Tea syrups, be it Earl Grey or Chai or Lapsang Souchong, are quite common anymore amongst the cocktail set. But what prevents them from being more complex entities beyond tea + sweetener? In my experience cocktailing, something herbal like a tisane lends itself quite well as an accent note or flavor enhancer -- so why not enhance a single ingredient as well as its cocktail?

But why orgeat? At first glance, orgeat, a sweetened nut milk syrup with hydrosol accents, already seems to have a lot of complexity going for it. The nut oils lend a pearly opacity to a cocktail, as well as an evanescent rich sweetness enhanced by the traditional rose and/or orange blossom water hydrosols. Really, you could play around with the nuts, the sugars and the hydrosols (why not lavender or mint or any other herbal flavor you can dream up?) to your hearts' content and leave scads of combinations on the table. But if those three components are customizable, then how about the final, most innocuous ingredient, the water?

Enter the tisane, whose delicacy functions much as the hydrosols do, by not overpowering the nuts' subtlety*. Flavoring the water produces more of a shade or tone to the syrup, though, bringing notes which can make themselves felt even while using scant amounts of orgeat in a cocktail.

*conversely, if using a coffee, it's the nuts' richness which gets paired with the water flavoring, as countless international coffee cocktail recipes attest.

Now, to the featured cocktail itself. The initial dreaming was for a more Jane-of-the-Jungle variation on my Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini Punch, which, with the intersection of this orgeat idea blossomed into 3 recipes. You'll have to wait to see JotJ until I can get my rums in order (which'll be soon enough), but for now let's take this other side street back onto Ti(n)sanity Ave. for a look at the lady before she met the jungle (and her Lord Greystroke): Jane Porter.



Jane Porter
1 1/2 oz Tanqueray Malacca
1/2 oz ruby port
1/2 oz lime juice
1/4 oz Tension Tamer orgeat, recipe below
2 dashes Abbott's bitters
3/4 oz egg white
lime zest for garnish


Give all the ingredients a good dry shake (sans ice - I find adding the spring from a Hawthorne strainer to the shaker helps things froth well).

Add ice and shake to chill and dilute.

Double-strain into a chilled cocktail coupe.

Garnish with fine-grated lime zest if desired.


Gin-herbal and bright with almond-berry sweetness, but also dry on the tongue with port/lime acidity and egg white. Regular almond orgeat would stick out like a sore thumb with its brightness, but the herbal-vanilla quality of the Tension Tamer folds that flavor into the Malacca to produce something much more seamless. Abbott's bitters, native to Baltimore as Jane herself was, offer an understated taming note that meshes invisibly with the other ingredients. At first glance, it's a frilly pink drink for a proper young woman, replete with gin and tea and a youthful energetic fortified wine -- but there's Tiki around the edges and in its very soul, right to the tropical notes in the Malacca.

This recipe development was a trial. The ratios settled themselves out easily enough, and I found out that this recipe is quite similar to the Crimson cocktail (not sure if it's named for the color and/or the Harvard newspaper, though it seems classic-styled enough to fit) and the much more modern Anne Bonny (like-minded gal-badass-themed kudos, Rafa!).

[Edited to add, 01-24-2014: Just found on one of my favorite port cocktail recipe pages, natch, the ratios bear much similarity to the Saint Valentine]
[Edited to add, 01-29-2014: And another! The funky Dr. Phibes from Rated R Cocktails.]
[Edited to add, 02-23-2014: The Tiki-compliant Queen's Park Hotel Super Cocktail. Is this the foundational cocktail for the spirit/lime juice/red fortified wine/syrup-or-liqueur model?]
[Edited to add, 03-08-2014: Salvatore Daiquiri, with Cherry Heering and Averna]

But to the point: this cocktail needs the freshest lime and port possible. I'm sure you know how quickly both ingredients can fade and go "off", even when refrigerated, dear reader. Doubly so since they provide "sharp" notes, as they say in punch parlance.

Regular tea and almond-creamed tea.

Stay tuned! Many more ideas yet to come!



Tea/tisane-based orgeat
1 tea bag
1 cup boiling water
2 oz chopped almonds
1/3 cup sugar
3 drops rose water or other hydrosol

1. Brew a strong cup of tea with the tea and water (until the tea is cooled). 
2. Reheat the tea until quite hot, then pour 1/3 cup over the chopped almonds in a mug or other heat-safe container. Cover and let sit for 4 hours.
3. Strain the almond milk-tea through a cheesecloth-lined strainer and use the cheesecloth to wring out every last drop from the nuts.
4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 with the same nuts and liquid to further extract the almond oils. 
5. Add sugar to finished liquid and stir/shake to dissolve. Finish with rose water.
6. Store in the refrigerator and let rest before using. Makes about 1/2 cup, upsize as desired.

I tend to avoid a third "process" (steps 2 & 3) because you start getting a cooked-almond flavor from the applied hot liquid. So long as you give the nuts an adequate soak, you'll get plenty of flavorful almond oil.


Previous Ti(n)sanity recipes:

Wind Whisperer (gin and ouzo)
Eire Light (irish whiskey)
Hit the Road to Dreamland (rum)
Lullaby Sangaree (madeira) and Insufferable Creole Minx (bourbon, gin, madeira)
T. T. Punch (rhum agricole)
Me-tea-orite (single malt scotch)
Introduction and eThéreal Toddy (grappa)

Disclaimer: this is a non-sponsored post. Also, I'm not looking to do sponsored posts. I just really like this tea, is all, and have a policy of happily and independently buying all my ingredients.

Mixology Monday, August 2013: FIRE! part 2

'Cause it wouldn't be a MxMo if I weren't up late finishing a recipe..

Our announcement post with our theme: FIRE! Our round-up post, once live.

Lesson re-learned on this cocktail: if you can't taste all the flavors, it's probably too sweet.

So I learned the hard way that ouzo is best regarded as a liqueur instead of a liquor, despite its proof. Still, while not a pure split-(down-the-middle)-spirit cocktail as originally intended, the final result was quite a happy one. I ended up borrowing the structure from The PDT Cocktail Book's Pearl Button, a dry-edged revelation whose overall tone I felt would be right for the impression I wanted to create.

Now why would that be, when the Pearl Button doesn't utilize anything fire-related? Well, this is something I've been noodling for awhile, it just needed the right opportunity to avail itself. Which is to say, I'm starting my Ti(n)sanity series, my exploration of all the different applications of tea in cocktails, back up after a long summer hiatus. Class is back in session with more advanced topics developing as schedules permit. Good old Professor MacGuffin, Celestial Seasoning's Tension Tamer tea, is back at the head of the class.

But how does this relate to fire?

Simple.

We're smoking the tea tisane.




Wind Whisperer
2 oz Bombay Sapphire gin
3/4 oz Metaxa ouzo
1/2 oz lime juice
1/4 oz hazelnut orgeat
1 dash Teapot bitters
1 1/2 oz seltzer

1 Tension Tamer tea bag for smoking

Step 1: The Smoke

Start by smoking your serving glass, preferably a rocks/double old-fashioned for its wide mouth which will encourage the aromatics. One thing I found out quickly was that lighting a tea bag on fire won't actually set the herbs alight (for long enough to create vapors anyway) -- and for what vapors you got, they were masked by a burnt smell (*weak shrug* such is the delicacy of this tisane). Instead, you want to employ an indirect method of heating the tisane to create the right kind of vapors: those consisting primarily of essential oils and distinctly lacking char. You can probably use this for any kind of tea or dried herb of which you wish to get a clean expression, though it should be noted that char does emerge the more heat you apply and the longer it's applied.

I came across this method while researching how to burn frankincense for a recipe down the line. A specialty briquette would be nice to use, but a method a little closer to home worked in a pinch for me: I grabbed an aluminum take-out container (a tin pie plate would also work well) and went to work on the stove. Be careful with this, though: the aluminum conducts heat in a near-literal flash. With the tin on the burner (could be a hot plate also), rip open your tea bag and pour it slightly thick into the center of the tin and set the burner to the lowest temperature possible. Since you want to rest your serving glass over the tea bag contents being smoked, you should use some kind of non-conductive rests between the aluminum and the glass to protect from heat damage: in this case, a broken in half wooden chopstick.

Even on the lowest heat setting, you should soon notice light vapors filling the glass and delighting your nose as they slip out from underneath the sides. Let it go gently for a couple of minutes to make sure the scent sticks: you should be getting roughly the same scent as a fresh-brewed cup of tea, but obviously drier and denser. (and don't forget to turn off the burner when you're done!)

Step 2: Make the cocktail

In the meantime, shake all your ingredients (except seltzer) on ice. When your serving glass is ready, add large ice and your shaken drink, double-strained. Add the seltzer and gently stir to incorporate.

No garnish. Any kind of garnish would only detract from the other aromatics going on.


The tisane smoke greets you on the nose, with its base of lemon cake and vanilla-emergent herbals, undergirded by Bombay Sapphire's floral aromatics, a hint of anise, and...is that hazelnut? is that rose? The palate does what I had hoped it would do, by being evanescent. Sure, there's a bit of tongue-pucker from the lime and a touch of anise emerging on the finish and lips...but oft-abrasive juniper here glides across the tongue and the experience is nose-focused.

On the ingredients:

• Bombay Sapphire has tended to be my gin-nemesis. I prefer a straight, classy, no-nonsense gin like Tanqueray, but here the floral curves and restraints meshed perfectly with the spirit of the cocktail.
• After starting with lemon, I switched to lime because I realized I had already done a lemon juice Sour in Hit the Road to Dreamland, so a lime Sour would add some variety to this series. The lime also adds a delicate green tint, reminiscent of spring (and frankly, the lemon juice-color looked like it was trying too hard).
• What can I say? I do love what a delicate anise can do. But the sneaky thing in the Metaxa ouzo isn't its most prominent aromatic: it's the hazelnut. Connected to and brought out by the orgeat and the Teapot bitters, it's a thread that invisibly ties the cocktail together.

Deep and many thanks to Fred Yarm for cat-herding and Paul Clarke for founding. It's been a blast and I'll see you all at the round-up post!



Previous Ti(n)sanity recipes:

Eire Light (irish whiskey)
Hit the Road to Dreamland (rum)
Lullaby Sangaree (madeira) and Insufferable Creole Minx (bourbon, gin, madeira)
T. T. Punch (rhum agricole)
Me-tea-orite (single malt scotch)
Introduction and eThéreal Toddy (grappa)

Disclaimer: this is a non-sponsored post. Also, I'm not looking to do sponsored posts. I just really like this tea, is all, and have a policy of happily and independently buying all my ingredients.

Mixology Monday, March 2013: From Crass to Craft

Once again it's Mixology Monday! (on a Sunday. Yeah, um.. it'll still be here on Monday.)

Our host this month is Scott Diaz of the quite snazzy Shake, Strain & Sip blog, who gives us the theme From Crass to Craft:

"The evolution of the cocktail has been a wondrous, and sometimes, frightful journey.  From its humble beginning, to the "Dark Ages" of most of the later 20th century, to the now herald "Platinum Age" of the cocktail,  master mixologists and enthusiasts alike have elevated its grandeur using the best skills, freshest ingredients and craft spirits & liqueurs available.  But with all this focus on "craft" ingredients and classic tools & form, it seems we have become somewhat pretentious.  The focus on bitter Italian amari, revived and lost ingredients such as Batavia Arrack or Creme de Violette, the snickering at a guest ordering a Cosmopolitan or a Midori Sour; has propelled us into the dark realm of snobbery. Many scratch bars and Speakeasies have gone as far as to remove all vodka and most flavored liqueurs from their shelves.  Some even go as far as to post "rules" that may alienate most potential imbibers.  Remember, the bar was created with pleasing one particular group in mind: the guest.  As such, this month's MxMo LXXI theme, From Crass to Craft,  will focus on concocting a craft cocktail worthy of not only MxMo but any trendy bar, using dubious and otherwise shunned ingredients to sprout forth a craft cocktail that no one could deny is anything less.  There are a plethora of spirits, liqueurs and non-alcoholic libations that are just waiting for someone to showcase that they too are worthy of being featured on our home and bar shelves.  So grab that bottle of flavored vodka, Jagermeister, cranberry juice, soda, neon colored liqueur, sour mix or anything else deemed unworthy of a craft cocktail, and get mixin'!

When active, this link will send you to the summary post of this month's festivities.


Uh....fellas? (ladies?) I never got the memo on prohibited ingredients. Granted, I understand how high quality ingredients simply taste better and produce more interesting harmonies and contrasts between themselves, but if I need a precise certain ingredient for a recipe I've never seen why I shouldn't use it. It's why I've never considered myself "Craft" to begin with. Cocktailian, yes; Craft, no.

For instance, I've worked with Rumple Minze, and Black Haus and Cask & Cream liqueur before (and have a healthy love of Galliano). Given all that, I figure I ought to pull out one of the lesser schnapps in my girly-girl cabinet and go to work. Buttershots, you're up!


I first tried the Buttershots out in a Scotch sour, but that seemed a bit too on the nose as far as obviousness. However, fresh off of making the T. T. Punch in the past week with a new fascination for the form, plus staring at a cooling mug of Tension Tamer tea as I was making the sour, a punch seemed like a more interesting drink. At that, a punch would need less Sharp citrus and instead use its hefty Weak part to keep the Sweet Buttershots in check.

May David Wondrich have mercy on my soul.

Butterscotch Punch
1/2 oz lemon juice
1/2 oz Buttershots schnapps
1/4 oz simple syrup
2 oz blended scotch (Famous Grouse)
1 oz Tension Tamer tea
1 oz ginger beer (Fever Tree)
fresh ground black pepper

Shake the first four ingredients then double strain into a chilled serving glass.

Top with ginger beer.

Garnish with a faint grind of black pepper.



Quite frankly, this works AMAZEBALLS. The schnapps has an over-eager puppy way of being out front wherever it's used (typically). But here you get the butterscotch flavor without a dominant sweetness, as all the other ingredients do an excellent job of drying the punch out and achieving a balance (the simple syrup was a late addition: it helps with the body and balance while managing the combined astringency of some of the other ingredients). The schnapps is still prominent, but there's a lot of interesting flavors happening around it. The Scotch holds its own and (of course) works with the schnapps. The Tension Tamer tea is a good flavor complement, and including it works better than an all-ginger beer Weak component, as 1 oz ginger beer is pretty spicy already. The black pepper seems a natural fit, better even than the darkest baking spices (clove, cardamom) or punch-traditional nutmeg.


The sour cocktail worked rather nicely as well, so here's the recipe for those interested:

Butters' Sour
1 1/2 oz blended scotch (Famous Grouse)
1/2 oz Buttershots schnapps
1/2 oz lemon juice

1 tsp Averna
orange twist

Shake on ice and double strain into Professor Chaos' chilled chalice of choice. Twist an orange zest over top and drop in. Mwa ha ha ha ha ha!

Ti(n)sanity!: Eire Light

Welcome back to Ti(n)sanity's week of March Madness! And what a week it has been. Using our common denominator/Maguffin tisane, Celestial Seasonings' Tension Tamer, we've seen the last of the straight-water tisane infusions, the cooled brew an ingredient in a rhum agricole punch. Beyond that, we've grown the types of applications into a syrup, a straight spirit infusion, and then finally today, a combination syrup/spirit-infusion for when you want a sweet element to pair with the intensity of flavor that alcohol draws out. You might know this combination as simply a liqueur. Said liqueur is a little something special for St. Patrick's Day, the idea in development for nearly a year but made a finished reality just last night.

Imagine, if you will, a dark forest with black-boled trees. And then a small glade lit from above by straw-golden light, growing to engulf the lawn in pale spring green and extending out to the forest floor in sprightly, misty mint blue. You walk through this glade and the trees begin to thin into a grassy dale: the wind sings through the light-air, carrying motes of citrus orange and yellow bouncing like beachballs. Ireland may be an earthy country, verdant amid its browns and grey skies, but the idea of Eire always takes me to this sort of mystic imagery.

This final liqueur recipe came about with a lot more failed testing than you might imagine. Budding cocktailian that I was last year, when it came to St. Patrick's Day drink recipes I had a vision of an Irish flavor variation on a Sazerac, with Irish whiskey, lighter-than-Peychaud's bitters and an appropriate herbal liqueur as a rinse. Naturally, one does some research on this last point.

Irish Mist, Celtic Crossing, Celtic Honey, Drambuie: these are all classic British Isle herbal and honey liqueurs. A sticking point for me, however, is that they're all whisk(e)y-based. That's like making a cognac Sazerac with a Grand Marnier rinse: maybe just a little too close to the base spirit, which diminishes the herbal contrast. Something more strictly herbal would make more sense here. Based on that, many herbal liqueurs that one finds tend to be monastic in origin, and as luck would have it, Glenstal Abbey in County Limerick in the southwest of Ireland makes a lemon verbena liqueur (any imagery being prompted in your mind?). Alas, it's limited to usage in chocolates and local venues (perhaps not a bad thing, given the humble philosophy behind it). But, it's enough of an idea to get started.

Back in November I set myself up with a variety of dried and fresh herbs, including dried lemon verbena, and got to work infusing. Neither of my tester mixes turned out near to what I was looking for, though: dried herbs generally have a darker flavor to them at odds with the concept of a light sprightly green liqueur glowing with mystic dawn. Lemon verbena, at that, apparently loses most of its lemony perfume once dried.

So, the idea was backburnered, until Ti(n)sanity that is. It made a lot of sense to build on that old concept with an agreeable and appropriate herbal blend, plus some fresh ingredients to round out the flavor just-right (those with long memories might note the details I pulled from La Primavera nella Campagna). Given fresh lemon verbena can be difficult to find unless you grow your own, the below liqueur includes a variety of citrus zests to make up for that flavor; I imagine adding some fresh verbena leaves would only enhance the liqueur that much more, though.


Note: as with all infusions, they should be kept in a cool dark area as sunlight and heat will impact the final quality.

Sunlit only for the pics.

Eire Light Liqueur
Part 1:
1/2 cup pear eau-de-vie
strips of zest from lemon, lime, Meyer lemon and/or sweet lime*
1 inch fresh lemongrass, chopped
1 sprig tarragon leaves, and stem (use 17 leaves for St. Paddy's Day)
1/2 sprig fresh spearmint, stem but not leaves crushed

*1/2 inch wide, taken lengthwise from the fruit. Mix 'n match fruits based on availability and preference. Roughly 1-2 strips from each kind of fruit.

Add all to a glass mason jar and infuse for 3 hours. Remove tarragon and mint, then continue infusing to complete a full 24 hours, shaking occaisionally.

Part 2:
1/2 cup 100pf vodka
1 Tension Tamer teabag

Infuse in a separate mason jar for 45 minutes, shaking occasionally. Remove and wring out teabag. Let rest until Part 1 is complete.

Part 3:
Combine parts 1 and 2 once part 1 has infused for 24 hours. Keep the zests and lemongrass in the mix for another 6 hours to help combine flavors, then fine strain off the solid bits before giving the liquid a good coffee filter straining. Once that's done, add 1/4 cup mild honey and shake to dissolve. Skim off the foam once it's settled a few minutes. Let rest at least a few hours before using, and don't feel you have to use it up all at once. If you can, let it rest a good month or three before using (again): the maturation and bottle-aging will improve the flavor all that much more.


[Update, 03-14-2013, 11:00pm: It's come to my attention this evening that the liqueur has turned a bit cloudy with some sediment. If you encounter this, my recommendation is to let the liqueur rest as-is a few more days at room temperature. If there will be sediment, the worst of it should happen early: it may be wax from the honey or simply an infusion by-product, which is natural. Either way, it's best to let it clump, all the better for decanting and/or straining off through coffee filters (a time- and filter-consuming process, yes, but an effective clarifier). Normally with infusions I would recommend a good chill-in-the-fridge before straining, but with a honey sweetener this is liable to cause crystallization which could affect the quality.]

I highly recommend using linden flower (aka lime blossom, aka tilia flower, aka basswood) honey. Not only is it delicate with a flower scent somewhere between green honeysuckle and gardenia, but it matches with the tilia flowers in the Tension Tamer tea. Linden also has a pure, sacred quality in Germanic folklore as a tree of lovers and jurisprudence -- not far off at all from the original mental imagery. Given linden honey might be difficult to find, a minimally-pungent ambrosia or clover flower honey would do well in a pinch.

Designing this liqueur for this particular Sazerac take, knowing that it would substitute for a potent and higher-proof absinthe or pastis, I found it worth it to use straight honey instead of a honey syrup with added water. Lack of water means an increased viscosity and less dilution of flavor, perfect for rinsing a glass. With precisely 1/4 cup of honey moreover, there remains a bit of pungency and astringency from the herbal ingredients. Aging will mellow these aspects while retaining the intricacy of the flavor, whereas extra honey will only mask it, regardless of time.


But now to make that Irish Sazerac...

Eire Light

2 1/2 oz Irish whiskey

1 cube or 1 tsp white sugar

3 dashes Branca Menta (or impromptu Branca Menta)

rinse of Eire Light Liqueur

lime zest

Muddle the sugar and bitters until the sugar is dissolved, then add ice and your Irish whiskey of choice. Stir to dilute and chill. Strain over one large ice cube in a chilled rocks glass rinsed with Eire Light liqueur. Twist a piece of lime zest over the drink then drop into the glass.

Impromptu Branca Menta: 1 tsp Fernet Branca to 1/2 tsp crème de menthe to 1 dash Fee Bros Mint Bitters. (going roughly by Dr. Henderson's suggestion here, but with a touch more bitterness)


The cocktail does just what I was hoping it would. You're greeted on the nose by something soft, ineffably-herbed, honeyed, intermingled with rolling verdant lime hills and valleys. On the sip: earth and grain. But then you're transported beyond such rigid sensory categories: there's light-filled minty mist, juicy green pastures, and a sense of home ideal and elevated.


At some point I'd like to try the Branca Menta version, having used the substitute because Branca Menta's a bit difficult to obtain in PA. I wanted something a bit earthy, mintiness being a bonus. Fernet Branca on its own up against Irish whiskey seemed an unfair fight, but tempered with a bit of mint became more palatable in the context of the cocktail, if maybe a little too scotch-peaty. From the specs, Bittermens' Boston Bittahs could also be interesting here, though it seems like it wouldn't quite have the earthiness or command you would expect for a Sazerac variation.



Thank you for reading this week and have a happy (and alcoholically-responsible) St. Paddy's Day! Just a reminder: Ti(n)sanity slows down from here on out for at least four further, more complex applications. I'm planning on doing one a month from here through July, so please check back in from time to time if it interests you. Sláinte!



Previous Ti(n)sanity recipes:

Hit the Road to Dreamland (rum)
Lullaby Sangaree (madeira) and Insufferable Creole Minx (bourbon, gin, madeira)
T. T. Punch (rhum agricole)
Me-tea-orite (single malt scotch)
Introduction and eThéreal Toddy (grappa)

Disclaimer: this is a non-sponsored post. Also, I'm not looking to do sponsored posts. I just really like this tea, is all, and have a policy of happily and independently buying all my ingredients.

Ti(n)sanity!: Hit the Road to Dreamland

Wasn't that a lovely musical interlude for halftime? We're into the second half of Ti(n)sanity's March Madness week, here on Feu de Vie. Our friendly neighborhood Maguffin, Celestial Seasonings Tension Tamer tea, is about to take the big plunge into waters yet-unknown: namely because it's not water, it's rum!

That's right, after four dreary posts of build-up, we've finally hit our first alcohol-infusion. Let's go to the tape, and see just how this infusion came to be:

Tension Tamer Rum: In a mason jar or similar, add one Tension Tamer teabag to one cup of white rum (or more, keeping the same ratio). Infuse for 60 minutes. Remove the bag(s), wringing out the final richly-infused drops. Seal the jar and store in the fridge overnight or longer until ready to use. The flavors will clarify as the excess infusion oils sink to the bottom of the jar.

Wasn't that exciting? All that drama watching the clock so it doesn't overdo! But what'll happen now as we get to see how this infusion defines greatness. Let's go live to the court:

Hit the Road to Dreamland
2 oz Tension Tamer Rum
1/2 oz fresh lemon juice
1/2 oz triple sec
1/4 oz simple syrup
3/4 oz egg white
nutmeg


Dry shake (i.e. without ice) the first four ingredients until foam is started, then add ice and shake to dilute and chill.

Double-strain into a chilled cocktail glass and garnish with a faint hint of fresh-grated nutmeg.





Oh! MoD's run a classic Sidecar play, with an egg white option. There's very little that can bust that structure as it moves down the field. Though to be technical, this play is more Cable Car. No no no, that's not right, or wait, let's check that. All right, we can call it a Difford's Guide Cable Car play. There's definitely something British with the use of tea. But wait, what's this? Nutmeg! MoD unleashes the nutmeg! Ho-lee cow!

This may well be the strongest application of our Maguffin yet. Though dense and dry like gin when the infusion is tasted neat, when applied to a cocktail it's permitted room to breathe and the flavor comes through exactly as if you had just brewed a cup. Moreover, the cinnamon spice in the herb mix especially comes through: dry like gin, but spiced like rum. Whereas the nutmeg would have drowned out the Lullaby Sangaree, here it's a pleasant touch for the nose, mixed with hints of lemongrass from the Tension Tamer.

Stay tuned for your local news, and one final post tomorrow, with a special recipe for St. Paddy's Day.

(and don't be shy about playing around with base spirits! If the below-linked recipes indicate anything, it's that our Maguffin works well with a great number of base spirits. Vodka would be the least-interesting option, to be sure.)


Previous Ti(n)sanity recipes:

Lullaby Sangaree (madeira) and Insufferable Creole Minx (bourbon, gin, madeira)
T. T. Punch (rhum agricole)
Me-tea-orite (single malt scotch)
Introduction and eThéreal Toddy (grappa)

Disclaimer: this is a non-sponsored post. Also, I'm not looking to do sponsored posts. I just really like this tea, is all, and have a policy of happily and independently buying all my ingredients.

Ti(n)sanity!: Lullaby Sangaree and Insufferable Creole Minx

Welcome back to the March Madness portion of Ti(n)sanity!, the series exploring all the unique ways you can use herbal tea in cocktails, featuring Celestial Seasonings Tension Tamer tea (tisane, natch) as the Maguffin/common denominator.

As you might expect when it comes to teas or tisanes in cocktails, they're primarily utilized in various forms of infusions. Our previous three entries explore straight water infusions (that is, how you'd normally brew tea or tisane). The first baby step beyond that is to brew the tisane as normal, but then add a sweetener: a tisane syrup.

Syrups in cocktails tend to be restrained in usage: a quarter to half an ounce is generally considered plenty of sweetening for one drink, unless the syrup is to be the star of the cocktail (overmuch sweetness has a tendency to mask flavors too - and what's the point of putting something in a drink if you're not going to get a sense that it's in there?). Syrups also have the inherent problem of diminishing the alcohol level of the cocktail, so too much will limit the kick of the drink.

Let's start by making the syrup, and then getting to its applications:

Tension Tamer syrup
1 cup (8 oz) strong-brewed Tension Tamer tea (2 teabags)
1/4 cup mild honey

Pour the boiling water over the teabags and let steep until cool. Remove and squeeze out the tea bags, then combine the tea and honey in a sauce pot on the stove, stirring and heating gently until reduced to 1/2 - 3/4 cup. Let cool, bottle, then store in the refrigerator until ready to use.


To shake things up a bit for this series, I'm going to offer two different recipes to highlight different syrup usages. Now, before I really got started mixing in earnest, the first thing I did was follow a hunch by pairing the syrup with some Rainwater Madeira I had on hand. Match. Made. In. Heaven. It's like the Madeira rejoiced at evolving into a slight vermouth.

But one of the flaws of Tension Tamer tea as an ingredient is its delicacy: cocktails need to be kept simple and on the light side in order to best highlight it. And the first cocktail I worked on here didn't do such a good job. So, I retreated back to that basic Madeira/syrup combination and pushed it just a little further into a Sangaree.

No! Not the Bronze Age Batman pirate rogue. A Sangaree, which isn't too far etymologically or ingredient-wise from Sangria, tends to use fortified wine (or ale, or porter, or regular wine) plus a small amount of fine sugar, crushed ice, and a couple of citrus wheels or zest all shaken together then poured into a serving glass. Some classic, but more modern recipes will use a liquor as the base, though generally a fortified wine will be included in the mix too.

For this Sangaree, I figured soft and simple was best, not to mention it would make a fitting toast to my newborn nephew, barely one day old today.

Lullaby Sangaree

3 oz rainwater madeira

1/2 oz Tension Tamer syrup

1 or 2 red grapefruit wheel halves

strawberry fan

Shake the first three ingredients with crushed ice and pour mix and ice into a chilled tumbler. Taking Mr. Ellestad's suggestion to include fresh berries, garnish with a strawberry fan.

Nutmeg is the traditional garnish for a Sangaree, but the Tension Tamer serves as the spice in this case -- nutmeg would only overpower anyhow. Madeira is the first set of flavors you taste, with the herbs sneaking in in bouts of sweetness, counterpointed by glancing sour and bitter grapefruit notes and tart strawberry on the nose.


For the first cocktail I developed, with the Tension Tamer syrup meshing so well with Madeira I wondered how a take on the Creole Lady would work. The Creole Lady was a recipe I saw while researching Madeira back in January, which happened to use a syrup, albeit grenadine. For some reason when researching, though, I swore I saw two different versions of the Creole Lady, one with bourbon and one with gin; it probably didn't help that I conflated the Creole Contentment --and the notion of unfixed base spirits-- into the same family, either. Turns out, both versions of the Creole Lady exist on the Internet but the gin variant appears to be an aberration of mysterious provenance while the bourbon (or whiskey, generally) variant has roots back to 1937 (at least).

The clarification on that point didn't happen until well after the recipe development, however, and when mixing, neither the gin nor the bourbon were just right. I also happened to have the Suffering Bastard, no doubt prompted by Dagreb's recent inversion, the Flourishing Heir, floating around in my head -- the bourbon and gin an intriguing combination I had never tried before, until now of course. 

Insufferable Creole Minx

1 oz bourbon (Elijah Craig 12)

1 oz gin (Citadelle)

1 oz rainwater madeira

1/2 oz Tension Tamer syrup

1 dash cherry bitters 

grapefruit zest

Stir all on ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass, garnishing with a grapefruit twist.

You'd think gin might not be a good match for other herbal notes (though that never stopped the Martini), but here the gin and syrup work on different levels, all while sharing a couple of botanicals so as not to be completely disjointed. The bracing dry gin is out at the fore, leaving the sweet herbal syrup to linger as an undertone revealed on the finish. Further, the bourbon, Madeira and syrup do blur into one another with shared cinnamon, wood, nut and sweet notes, but the dry gin helps to break that up, all the better to appreciate the mix.

The cherry bitters are a nod to the Creole Lady's dual-cherry garnish and single dash of bitters - one dash should be all that's necessary, before you start drowning out the other flavors. The grapefruit zest bridges many of the disparate ingredients, while punching them up to a new level, plus adds a little extra bitterness in case you need it (somewhat reminiscent of a Brown Derby).

In all: malty, rich, bitter, with a surprise around every turn.

Stay tuned dear readers! Tomorrow our Maguffin makes the big leap to alcohol infusions!

[Update: Hi, dear readers! I couldn't help but notice how popular this post has been. If you'd care to leave a comment, I'd be curious to know which of the recipes you like or what drew you to follow the link. Best, MoD]

Previous Ti(n)sanity recipes:

T. T. Punch (rhum agricole)
Me-tea-orite (single malt scotch)
Introduction and eThéreal Toddy (grappa)

Disclaimer: this is a non-sponsored post. Also, I'm not looking to do sponsored posts. I just really like this tea, is all, and have a policy of happily and independently buying all my ingredients.

Ti(n)sanity!: T. T. Punch

Disclaimer: this is a non-sponsored post. Also, I'm not looking to do sponsored posts. I just really like this tea, is all, and have a policy of happily and independently buying all my ingredients.

To coin a phrase: ACK! Funny how life, a fridge in terrible need of total defrostment, and the need for a crash course in punch can get in the way of cocktailing. My intent was to get this punch recipe out at the end February (ideally while still in the month of Aquarius, the libation-bearer). But, we are still in the watery Neptune-ruled month of Pisces and that has to count for something.

Anywho, welcome back to Ti(n)sanity!, a series exploring all the unique potential applications for herbal tea (that is to say, tisanes), with our friendly Maguffin common denominator, Celestial Seasonings Tension Tamer tea. This is the third post, of at least ten, and the first post for our mad month of March!

Now, I say "mad" because, aside from the basketball and the airhorns I hear outside from Villanova students, for this next week we're going to go a little more crazy than usual by exploring four different though related applications, leading up to a special do-it-yourself homemade liqueur for St. Patty's Day that only takes a day or two to put together. After all that, we're going to reduce the Ti(n)sanity scheduling to about once a month for slightly more complex applications.

As with our previous two entries, today's recipe works with strong-brewed tisane -- all the better to mix and permit the flavor to come through. This time, instead of boiling hot tisane for a Toddy or tisane ice for an Old Fashioned, we have room temperature or chilled tisane for use in that classic mixed drink form known as Punch.

Put simply, the essence of punch is strong and weak, sharp (sour) and sweet, and of course: spice. Tea will often feature as a combination weak/spice ingredient in punch, though it tends to be black or green tea: something astringent, unctuous and flavorful to be used in place of plain water (and potentially something that can hold its own against hogo-filled rum).

So, to start for this punch, I was somewhat limited in my choices for a base spirit. One of my aims for the entire series is to not reuse ingredients wherever possible, to avoid redundancy and boredom on your part and to showcase the range the herbal tea can have. Given my plans for other recipes, I was angling for either cachaça or new-to-me rhum agricole. The cachaças in my cabinet weren't throwing off vibes for this one recipe, so I soon found myself with a new bottle of Neisson Rhum Agricole Blanc: light, delicate, astringent with soft savory funk. Everything I could have hoped for this recipe and beyond.

As to mixing? Sometimes the simplest concoctions are best. Here, I took rhum agricole's signature cocktail, Ti' Punch --which techinically isn't a punch-punch: wrong ratios, no weak, no spice-- and turned it into one.

T. T. Punch

1/2 oz lime juice

3/4 oz sweet lime syrup

1 1/2 oz rhum agricole blanc

2 oz Tension Tamer tea, brewed and cooled

lemongrass

fresh grated cinnamon

Give the four liquid ingredients a quick shake without ice to blend, then strain into your serving cup over a large cube or sphere of ice. Garnish with fresh grated cinnamon and a lemongrass straw.

If making a full-sized punch, multiply your ingredients as needed and serve in a punch bowl with an ice ring or block possibly filled with mint and slices of sweet lime, with lemon grass curls strewn and cinnamon grated over the whole punch.

If your taste runs drier than average, try reducing the syrup to 1/2 oz.


The Tension Tamer isn't as perceptible here as one might want, but when you consider how the punch would taste with water instead of tea, the herbal undercurrent it provides becomes that much more noticeable. In all, though, all the flavors harmonize especially well, making a light, sweet-ish, gently funky punch. It's not the perfection as is this Donn's Gin Punch I discovered while researching punch, but it's more than serviceable.**

The story on the sweet limes? (which are different from regular limes) I never had them before this recipe, but they seemed like a good flavor match for Tension Tamer. As it turns out, there's a lot of sweet and very little acidity to them, so their juice would function as a sweet and not a sour ingredient. However, their zest's scent was incredible and too good to pass up making oleo saccharum (a process where citrus zest oils are extracted by being immersed in sugar, the oily sugar then used to sweeten and flavor the punch).

On the cinnamon and lemongrass, nutmeg tends to be the most common spice grated over punch, but in this case I opted to play up ingredients in the Tension Tamer. You may find this tactic cropping up again and again the further we get into Ti(n)sanity!


Sweet Lime Syrup
2 sweet limes - pithless zests only
1/4 cup demerara sugar
1/4 cup white sugar

Combine zests with the sugars in a sealed plastic bag (as much air squeezed out as possible). Let it oleo saccharuminate anywhere from an hour on the counter to overnight for a day or two in the fridge (probably not good to let it go beyond two days, tops). Once you're satisfied with the amount of oil extracted from the zests, pour 1/2 cup warm water into the bag, seal up, and agitate until all the sugar is dissolved. Strain off the zests and store in a sealed container in the fridge until ready to use. Makes about 3/4 cup.

Given sweet limes tend to be pretty difficult to find, especially as we're moving out of citrus season, feel free to just do a simple syrup using the above-listed sugars and the 1/2 cup of water. Regular lime zest is too bitter to substitute here.


**On the MxMo with which Donn's Gin Punch is associated: you might notice that Hobson's Choice, the host blog, is viewable by invite-only. If interested in exploring punch further, though, here's a list of all the entries to MxMo XLVII that I was able to google up, from the finest cocktail blogging minds out there, natch: Spirited Remix, Fogged in Lounge, Wordsmithing Pantagruel, Cocktail Chronicles, A Mountain of Crushed Ice, Inspired Libations, Science of Drink, Cocktail Virgin Slut, Rum Dood, and Drink of the Week.


Previous Ti(n)sanity recipes:

Me-tea-orite (single malt scotch)
Introduction and eThéreal Toddy (grappa)

Ti(n)sanity!: Me-tea-orite

Disclaimer: this is a non-sponsored post. Also, I'm not looking to do sponsored posts. I just really like this tea, is all, and have a policy of happily and independently buying all my ingredients.

Welcome back to my Ti(n)sanity! series, exploring the many ways one can apply flavor to a cocktail. The Maguffin for the series is Celestial Seasonings' Tension Tamer herbal tea (tisane).

Last time, we began the series with a piping hot tea toddy. Today, we go to the (literal) polar opposite: an ice sphere of strong-brewed tisane. How would you use an ice sphere in a cocktail? Simple: the ur-Cocktail (spirit, sugar, water and bitters), an Old Fashioned. Or, perhaps in this case, an Auld Fashioned.

Me-tea-orite
2 oz single malt scotch
1 tsp mild honey
6-7 drops Bittercube Bolivar bitters
1 Tension Tamer ice sphere
swatch Meyer lemon zest


In a rocks serving glass, mix the honey with a small splash of water (or use 2 tsp 1:1 honey syrup instead) and the bitters. Add the scotch and stir. Add the ice sphere and give it at least a 10 second stir. Garnish with a small swatch Meyer lemon zest, twisted to release the oils over the drink and then added. Best lightly sipped and swirled over time to balance the tea from the ice.

More of a comet, really...

Tension Tamer ice sphere: brew one tea bag in 4 oz boiling water. Let steep until cool. Fill an ice sphere mold with the cooled tea and pop in the freezer until frozen and ready to use.




I originally tested this with Irish whiskey, but as I planned on using that spirit in another drink I looked for alternatives to broaden the scope ('cause Irish whiskey is just so darn agreeable a match with the Tension Tamer tea - maybe almost too much in this case because it faded to the background). Cognac wasn't the most friendly with the honey or herbs, but on realizing that I went for the obvious natural match: single malt scotch (heavier blendeds would work against the tea here). And, before you purists start protectively huffing the vapors from your dram-and-a-drops, this project has 8 planned entries: I'm mini-bottling. Which, in PA means The Glenlivet 12 or The Macallan 12. Fine drams, both, but here, in making a slight modification from originally-used Bushmills, I went with the cereal-noted Glenlivet with that wonderful smoke that hits right around the edge of your tongue. Sherry-fruited Macallan will have to wait for some other recipe.

The honey is a natural fit for the tea (you'll be seeing more of it later on) in addition to the scotch. The Bolivar bitters provide a light-medium aromatic quality to work with the similar tones in the cocktail and enhance around the edges only. And the Meyer lemon zest was a last-minute add, just to elevate the cocktail with some brightness and have a more tangible garnish in the Old Fashioned tradition. Overall, the flavors meld well into one another, but with a wisp of smoke here or a rush of herbs or burst of zest there. A wonderful soothing long-sipper that remains balanced throughout.*

*The hidden ingredient in special ice cocktails: time.

On the name? Catch up on your news and google videos out of Chelyabinsk, Russia from today. Sometimes you're struggling for a name right up until the end, and then it just hits you.


So we've gone from piping hot to ice cold tea. The next recipe promises to be positively tepid! Stay tuned, dear readers, the coming recipes promise greater development and complexity as we get these basic building block recipes out of the way.


Previous Ti(n)sanity recipes:

Introduction and eThéreal Toddy (grappa)

Ti(n)sanity!: eThéreal Toddy

Disclaimer: this is a non-sponsored post. Also, I'm not looking to do sponsored posts. I just really like this tea, is all, and have a policy of happily and independently buying all my ingredients.

If given a particular flavor, how many different ways could you use it in a cocktail? What about herbs and spices pre-collected in a particular flavor profile? Could you make your own "Benedictine" with herbal tea?

As I began speculating in my Vanilla Lace Bitters recipe, there are tons of ways to add flavors to a cocktail. The question is: if you like a particular flavor, what are the challenges to using it in certain ways? That's what I'm hoping to explore over the next half year or so, in a series of nine (maybe more) posts beginning with this one. My featured common denominator, or Maguffin if you will: Celestial Seasonings Tension Tamer herbal tea (or that is to say, tisane).

One of the things I'm struggling with right now in my cocktailing is how to combat flatness from single-note ingredients, all the better to keep recipes simple and elegant but still intriguing for the palate. You have your liquors, which by nature tend to have a certain complexity, a certain weight and depth of flavor, due to aging and/or their distillate base. You have fortified/aromatized wines or herbal/amaro liqueurs, all of which are intentionally quite complex. Some bitters also are good for complexity, but only in an accenting capacity. What can be done to broaden the range of complex flavors available for use?

So I'm sitting, or pacing in thought, around my kitchen, noodling and angsting over these questions, wondering if even vermouths could be broadened with new flavors, when my eyes alight on my stack of tea boxes: there's green tea and black, peppermint and chamomile. Even a couple different varieties of chai (but those tend to be particular in their flavor uses..). And then I spy my box of Tension Tamer tea.

It's helped me stop clenching my teeth at night after "those kinds of days" and it has this delicate vanilla-like flavor with lemon undertones: kind of remarkable given its lack of vanilla. If you taste a little deeper you can pick up the cinnamon, peppermint and licorice notes, but faintly. I also find the combination of peppermint, cinnamon, ginger, and lemon remarkable: you generally don't see peppermint and cinnamon, or cinnamon and lemon pairings in culinary usage, for instance.

And then the Wonder Spark happens.



For the month of February we're going to start gently and not add anything to the tea or the tea to anything: we're going to take it as it is, but play around with temperatures.

First up, tea au naturel, in its intended form: hot.  A Hot Tea Toddy to be precise.

eThéreal Toddy

2 oz grappa

4 oz hot Tension Tamer tea

1 tsp orgeat

nutmeg

In a mug or Irish coffee glass, pour 1/2 cup boiling water over a tea bag. Wait a few minutes until desired strength is reached: since it's a more delicate tea, an intensity approaching double-brew strength would be desirable.

Once the tea is deemed ready, remove/wring out/discard the tea bag. Add the orgeat and stir to dissolve, then add the grappa and stir lightly. Grate a little fresh nutmeg on top and enjoy!


I used Alexander Grappa di Cabernet and I would highly recommend tracking down a bottle for this recipe. I'm no grappa expert, but I do know grappa can run the gamut from delicate and refined to pure firewater. The grape-berry rose-floral notes of this particular grappa balance perfectly with the vanilla-honey-spice of the tea, with the orgeat (homemade, with rose and orange blossom waters) supporting the former and the nutmeg the latter. If not this particular bottle, any silky and refined grappa with floral notes would work well here.

Most proper toddy recipes use the above formula of 2 oz spirit, 3-5 oz hot water or tea, and 1 tsp sweetener (per Rhett from And One More For The Road, pulling from Jerry Thomas in his 1862 tome, "How to Mix Drinks or the Bon Vivant's Companion", and also per Gary Regan's The Joy of Mixology). Your mileage and taste may vary, but I have to say, as concerned as I was that the grappa would pack a wallop, it balances perfectly using the recipe above. There's a little heat from the grappa remaining, but it comes off anise-like, another welcome flavor in the cup.

As for the orgeat, its exotic flavor folds right in and probably stands out less than would simple syrup or honey. It's a much different spin than a brown spirit/honey/lemon toddy combination, much more, well, ethereal. This would be good for a chilly day in late February or March when the rain or even snow is coming down, but you can still feel Spring presaging in the air.