Cocktail Hour: Noggin

Merry Christmas, Hosers!

This is a great time for drinkers of all faiths. The short days near the solstice give way to early evenings, when a meaningful nighttime cocktail hour can be had without pushing dinner back to midnight. Families get together and drink away the awkward silence. Otherwise puritan offices suddenly become lubricated with good cheer. It’s the most wonderful time of the year.

The most famous and maligned Christmas cocktail is, of course, spiked egg nog. I personally do not hate store-bought egg nog, but I understand why so many people do. The consumption experience can be eerily similar to drinking paint. But real, home made egg nog is a delicious annual treat and one of my favorite seasonal cocktails. The eggs and cream create a rich, textured base. The bourbon and brandy add a touch of heat and oaky smoothness. The nutmeg adds a spicey kick. I try to find occasion to make a batch every year. Catjjy and I brought some to a dinner party last weekend, with great results.

Some folks make egg nog with raw eggs, but I always use cooked egg. It tastes just as good, and it will not give you or your guests salmonella. The recipe below yields one large pitcher or one small punch bowl worth of nog. For the record, I didn’t make up the recipe, but I do use it every year.

3 cups whole milk
7 eggs

1 cup sugar
1/3 cup bourbon
1/3 cup brandy
2 cups cream
1 tbsp vanilla
Nutmeg (fresh or store-bought ground nutmeg)

Bring the milk just to a boil while you beat the eggs and sugar together. Add the hot milk to the eggs-sugar mix and stir. Put the mixture back on low heat until a thermometer reads 170 (about 5 minutes for the thermometerless), stirring continuously. Strain the mix into a large bowl (or skip the straining for the strainerless). Add cream, bourbon, brandy and vanilla. Stir in nutmeg until the nog is a bit speckled.

The nog should cool to room temperature, then be refrigerated. Your nog will be cold and delicious in a few hours, and will be outstanding the following day. Serve with a bit of grated nutmeg on top.

That will serve the masses, but for you the bartender, I recommend one glass of my favorite holiday treat: warm egg nog. Scoop a mug full out of your bowl before you let it cool. The booze will not yet have evaporated, giving the nog a strong bite. The warm cream, eggs, and vanilla feel like a drinkable crème brule. You’ll wonder why anyone ever drinks it cold.

Cheers.

Melons

Cocktail Hour

It was not uncommon this time of year where I grew up for a hillbilly to cut a 1-inch diameter hole in a watermelon, drain a bottle of Everclear into it, let the fruit run the booze through its webby veins overnight, then serve slices of the tanked-up melon to children. This practice explains a lot about Arkansas’ teen pregnancy rate and love of watermelon.

That memory struck me this week as I stole pieces of a beautiful dark orange juicy cantaloupe from the Cha. I put him to bed that night and began tinkering on a cocktail that would celebrate that delicious melon flavor without resorting to disgusting melon-flavored liqueurs. Four nights of R&D later, the result was the Cantaloupe Martini, pictured above. Dump one handful of cubed, ripe cantaloupe into your shaker. Pour one half tablespoon granulated sugar over it. Muddle like crazy. Pour three to four jiggers vodka. Stir like crazy. Add a handful of ice cubes. Shake like crazy. Strain into your martini glass. Go crazy.

That will give you a martini-strength drink. Catjjy prefers a sweeter mix and so for her I substitute the fourth jigger of vodka for a jigger of triple sec. If you are looking to tone it down a bit more, use two jiggers of vodka, one jigger of triple sec, and serve over ice with a third again as much club soda.

Cocktail Hour

Vol 2: The Dieters Drinking Companion

“The first, indeed the only, requirement of a diet is that it should lose you weight without reducing your alcohol intake by the smallest degree.”
- Sir Kingsley Amis

A laudable goal, but there are two rubs here.

First, alcohol by itself has a rather high caloric energy density. This is why you can run a car on the stuff in its pure, ethanol state. There are approximately 160 calories per ounce of pure alcohol, which equates to 95 calories of alcohol per NIAAA “drink,” e.g., a jigger of 80 proof liquor, a can of beer, a glass of wine. Mercifully, a pure distilled spirit has no other caloric value aside from the alcohol, so vodka, gin, Scotch, bourbon, rum, etc. all have about 95 calories per shot. Thus a good four-shot martini will cost you nearly 400 calories. Breakfast of champions. Beer, wine, and liqueurs have added starches and sugars that increase the calories per unit of alcohol.

Second, most people don’t much care for the taste of straight liquor. Mixers range from Coke to tonic to fruit juice, with stops at tomato juice and milk. Nearly all of these are non-starters for the dieting set. The oft-referred-to cosmopolitan I make for Catjjy has a staggering 350 calories between the vodka, triple sec, and cran-ras juice. She hasn’t asked for one since that discovery. Actually, she hasn’t had much alcohol at all since we learned all this. What happened to my drinking buddy? This is just like Flowers for Algernon.

Anyway, after a week of diligent consumer-oriented research, I give you these five tips for the dieting tippler:

1. Stick to mixed drinks for all non-eating occasions. Beer and wine can be delicious with meals, but they contain more calories per unit of alcohol than liquor. Best avoid them at bars and receptions.

2. Be smart about your mixers. Tonic is practically pure sugar while club soda has no calories; try gin and soda with a squeeze of lime instead of gin and tonic. Or try Sprite Zero instead of tonic (diet tonic tastes horrible and is rarely available at bars or on airplanes). Diet Coke mixes with bourbon and rum just as well as Coke does, and is readily available as an airplane drink. All store-bought mixes are evil. Try fresh lime and your favorite sugar substitute instead. A Splenda margarita, anyone?

3. Avoid liqueurs altogether. They combine the bad qualities of liquor with those of mixers. You can tuck into the Sambuca once you hit your ideal weight.

4. If you are looking for a bit of flavor without the calories, aim for infused liquor. The infusion process leaves no calories behind, so an Absolut Mandarin has the same caloric profile as regular vodka, but is a bit more palatable. Try with a splash of club soda and an orange wedge for the perfect summer drink.

5. Going in the opposite direction, if you select a particularly fortifying drink, you can substitute it for an entire meal. Two bloody Marys and a few cups of coffee make a remarkably satisfying brunch, and at well under 1,000 calories, much better for the dieter than eggs benedict. Mix a tablespoon of ketchup into the drink and eat the celery for some extra hardiness.

With these great tips under your belt, I expect the pounds to start melting off. And if none of this works, there is always meth. Salut!

Cocktail hour

As previously mentioned, cocktail hour is serious business around our house. Most nights will find us sipping regular straight or mixed drinks - scotch, manhattans, martinis, etc. Catjjy is partial to the cosmopolitan, and I make a mean one. Just because Sex In The City isn't any good doesn't mean the cocktail stopped being delicious.

The drink of this summer is the gimlet. For the uninitiated, a gimlet starts with a martini's worth of gin - 3 to 5 shots depending on the size of your glass. Drop it into a shaker full of ice and add the freshly squeezed juice of one lime (hint: you'll get more juice out of your lime if you soak it in hot water for a few minutes before cutting it open). Throw in sugar or simple syrup (a pre-dissolved mixture of sugar and water in equal parts) to taste. Shake with vigor. Serve strained into an ice-cold martini glass. The result will be a light green, cloudy slice of summer heaven: equal parts sweet, tart, and herby (the picture above was taken after the first few sips). Though not quite as tasty, a vodka gimlet will do for those who don't enjoy gin. Using Hendricks gin instead of a regular gin will give you a cucumber gimlet – also yummy.

With enough sugar, a gimlet won't taste strong at all, and on a warm summer afternoon, it may seem the thing to do to knock back three or four. But proceed with caution. There is a lot of alcohol in these guys.

Weekends are for experimenting. Yesterday I cut open a fresh jalapeno and tossed two slices (with plenty of seeds) into the shaker with my gimlet. Kid duty interfered with my mixing, which allowed the un-iced mixture to stand for 20 minutes before being chilled and poured. The result – a gimlet picante if you insist on naming things – was fantastic. The jalapeno added a nice kick to the front that burned the lips and warmed the esophagus, but it mellowed the tartness of the lime. I highly recommend giving it a try.

Counting is hard

My week of counting drinks is done. Per the NIAAA guidelines, I had a total of 39.8 drinks (I was so close), with an avgerage of 5.7 per day and a standard deviation of 2.7 (though the distribution was not normal). During that time I had 25 cocktails, beers, or glasses of wine, meaning that my average NIAAA drink per glass is 1.6x. I think my experience on that front would be similar for any liquor drinker and most wine drinkers (i.e., that the definition of "drink" is smaller than what people actually pour for themselves or consume at a bar).

I'll note that it was a highly functional week. No blackouts or hangovers, no staying up late or sleeping in or missing work. Seems like the NIAAA drinks/week standard is perhaps a bit off.

A task: Bring a pencil to the bar this week

First, it is an honor to be here. Now a task for you.

I was recently reminded of question on the standard medical questionnaire my doctor had me fill out last time I went in. It asked how many alcoholic drinks I consume per week. I put down something in the high-teens (which I knew was seriously low-balling it), and got chided by my doctor for bingeing like a sorority girl. If I recall correctly, the highest box one could check on this specific form was 21+ drinks per week.

You have probably seen this question too, phrased the same way. The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (“NIAAA”) presents its safety scale on this drinks-per-week metric. For men, 5-6 drinks per day (35 drinks per week) is heavy or problematic. For women, the hurdle is 3-4 drinks per day (a mere 21 drinks per week).

It’s worth noting here that the NIAAA considers a “drink” to be 0.6oz of pure alcohol. You will find this amount in one 12oz can of 5% alcohol beer, or in one 5oz glass of 12% alcohol wine, or one 1.5oz shot of 80 proof liquor (i.e., most any vodka, rum, bourbon, gin, etc.). This definition can lead to a very different answer than just counting the number of glasses you put to your lips. Depending on the size of the glass, there are three to five shots of gin in my martini, thus three to five “drinks.” Same goes for Xtian’s Manhattan and Killer B’s scotch on the rocks. The wine math, too, can get tricky. A generous 8oz pour of your favorite Sonoma Zinfandel (appx. 15% alcohol) is two full drinks, not one. Likewise, a pint of 5.51% Bass is 1.5 drinks.

On a typical evening, my wife and I put the baby down at 7:30pm and then enjoy a cocktail. I might have a small martini, a scotch, or a bourbon and Diet Coke (each between 2 and 4 “drinks”). We then split a bottle or wine with dinner (half a bottle of wine is about 12.7oz, equivalent to three full “drinks” if the wine is 14% alcohol). There’s your problematic 5-6 “drinks” per day, even though I only drank three glasses. My weekly count goes up even further when you account for wine at lunch on Fridays, occasional outings with friends, trips to nearby vineyards, drinking on airplanes, and having a few beers on a hot Saturday afternoon. I’m probably realistically at 40 a week.

It’s my suspicion that the NIAAA survey is grossly underreported, leading to highly skewed hurdles. While I don’t doubt that I’m on the high side for my peer group (mostly because I always drink with dinner), I’m guessing that more than a few regular Hosers would come in above 20 drinks (a few of you came close to that in one night last time I was in town). I plan to actually count my drinks over the next seven days, using the NIAAA math. I encourage you all to do the same and report back to the post next weekend. What do you say La Troisieme? Xtian? Killer B?