Cocktails: A Gin Bramble & A Mississippi Mule

We Remember the Dead!

In New Orleans, we love to celebrate our Dead!  We have gigantic Mausoleums, Memorial Masses, and even Jazz Funeral Parades that march down the streets with large brass bands remembering our Dead!  Why?  Not to wallow in their death but to celebrate in their life.

So thus we were inspired by LSU's race to the BCS championship & their unfortunate demise!  However, in honor of their Purple & Gold colors, we searched for a proper cocktail cocktail that would remind us their great season and exciting run to the top!

In that search, we came accross another great legend called THE FIX.  The Fix Cocktail, as it was listed in Jerry Thomas' bartenders guide (1862),  was a wonderful blend of  Raspberry Syrup, Powdered Sugar, Gin, and the Juice of  several Gold Lemons.  Now this Gin Fix is regarded as being dead, however it would seem that it in fact lives on, as the Bramble & the Mississippi Mule.  

Now if you search for either of these drinks, we came accross an adaptation of the Bramble at Bar Tonique under their Sours menu & have had one at Bar Uncommon made by Mr. Chris McMillan.  However, we have been making the recipe that was created by Dick Bradsell at Fred’s Club in Soho, London, in the mid-80s and find that this recipe is an easy and great one to introduce people who claim they "Hate Gin" because the flavors of the berry Liquer will mellow out any gin prejudices!

So to honor our Boys in Purple & Gold and the great 2011 season they had, we remember you with these 2 tasty cocktails that have a Purple color with a Gold base:

The Gin Bramble

•  1.5 oz of Dry Gin
• .75 oz of Lime or Lemon Juice
• .5 oz of Simple Syrup
• .75 oz Creme' de Mure (Blackberry Liqueur)***
• 3 blackberries

Mix Gin, Lime or Lemon Juice (we prefer Lime), and Simple Syrup in a shaker filled with ice for about 15 seconds.  Strain Mix into a Rocks glass filled with Crushed Ice**.  Drizzle Creme' De Mure on top and Garnish with Blackberries!

**Note: The reason we use Crushed Ice is that the berry-flavoured liqueur should cascade down through the crushed ice, as it is served. When done right it is very pleasing, visually.

 the Mississipi Mule

  ~ 2 oz of Dry Gin

  ~ 0.5 oz of Lemon Juice

  ~ 0.5 oz of Creme de Cassis (black currant Liqueur)***

  ~ Lemon Peel or 3 Raspberries

Shake over ice and strain into a martini glass.  Garnish with Lemon peel or 3 Raspberries!

***NOTE: Most Recipes out there say that if you cant find your Berry Liqueur you can substitue it with Chambord if you cant find your Liqueur.  Chambord is a Raspberry Brandy Based Liqueur with honey.  SOO you can definately replace any of the above if you so feel lazy, however, we have had no problem finding Creme de Cassis or Creme de Mure.  In New Orleans, you can find almost anything at Dorignacs in their immense yet beautiful wine & liqueur section!!

So we hope you enjoy these two recipes.  We Salute you LSU Tiger Season of 2011 for a great run!!

Did you like our cocktail suggestions or did you make any of these? Let us know what you think by leaving us a comment below.

  

King Cakes, Carnival, & Cocktails...Oh My!!

HAPPY 12TH NIGHT EVERYONE!!!

We often find it funny how during Advent, people are all about the Christmas Spirit & even pontificate to us about the reason for the season or how it should be year round.  What a great concept, yet as soon as Christmas Day passes, its all over. Well, here in New Orleans we know differently and keep the celebration going.  That is right, Happy 12th Day of Christmas Everyone!!! We hope you spent the past 12 days preparing for the Epiphany and Carnival Season.

So what does 12th Night mean?  Is it just a day for 12 Drummers to be Drumming?  Not for us in New Orleans.  It is the first official day for King Cakes and Carnival, a time to get together with friends and celebrate faith, friendship, and a little release from stress brought on by all that Christmas shopping.  To help, the New Orleans Modern Drunkards have 3 wonderful cocktails to get you in the spirit of Carnival and to bring to your King Cake Parties or out to the 12th Night parade at 7pm on January 6th on St. Charles, with the Phunny Phorty Phellows!!

Our first cocktail was created by Rachael Gray from Storyville Bar on Bourbon Street and our friends at Absolut Vodka and incorporates the traditional colors of Mardi Gras and King Cakes: Purple, Green, & Gold.

          King Cake Martini

• 1 1/2 oz of Absolut Citron
• 3 oz of Pineapple Juice
• 1/4 oz of Agave Nectar
• 1/2 oz Chambord
• Green Confectionary Sprinkles or Green Sugar

Combine Absolut Citron, Pineapple Juice and Agave Nectar in an ice filled mixing glass. Shake and Strain into a cocktail glass rimmed with green sprinkles. Take a bar spoon and drizzle ½ oz Chambord so that it settles at the bottom of the cocktail glass.

Our second cocktail we are sharing is the King Cake Cocktail developed last year by Mike Genard & Ralph Brennan.  Last year, Ralph's on the Park had developed a Charity Cocktail of the Month and Mike had developed this Tasty treat to help raise money for "Bayou District Foundation."  & "Live Strong Foundation".

KING CAKE COCKTAIL


1 1/2oz New Orleans Spiced Rum
1/2oz Butter Scotch Schnapps
1/2oz Vanilla Schnapps
1 1/2oz Cream
Purple,Yellow and Green sugar
King Cake Baby. You can get Plastic King Cake Babies 6ct here.
**Mike also had an optional "secret ingredient" which was a splash orange & cinnamon infused simple syrup

Mix all ingredients in shaker over ice and shake vigorously.  Then take martini glass and coat lip in simple sugar or the "secret Ingredient" and rub in 3 colored sugar.  Strain cocktail into glass and attach Baby to lip.

For our final concotion, we asked Eric Gamble, our resident New Orleans Modern Drunkard to come up with a fun tasting toddy that would warm up your soul on those cold parade nights or for breakfast with a slice of your favorite King Cake.

12th Night Toddy

~ 1 1/4 oz Old New Orleans Cajun Spiced rum

~ 6 oz hot apple cider
~ 1 tsp Domino brown sugar
~ 1 tsp cinnamon
~ Cinnamon Stick

 Sprinkle brown sugar and cinnamon on a plate. Moisten the rim of a glass with water. Then turn the glass upside down onto the plate to rim the glass with the cinnamon and sugar mixture. Turn the glass over. Add the hot cider and rum and stir with Cinnamon Stick.

So Happy 12th Night to all of our New Orleans Modern Drunkards.  Don't forget to Herald the Arrival of Mardi Gras with the Phunny Phorty Phellows this thursday Night on St. Charles at 7pm!! 

Did you like our cocktail suggestions or did you make any of these?  Let us know what you think by leaving us a comment below.

Get the Real Church Key and Have Some Class!!

Now we have all had the issue from time to time where we realized that our ice cold beer was not a screw top but in actuality, a pop top.  This I am sure happened to a lot of New Orleans Modern Drunkards in April of 2009 when the Abita Brewery Changed from their easy to open screw tops to the PRY-OFF CROWN, which they declared would "ensure that discerning Abita Beer drinkers will taste the full range of flavor in every bottle" as they declared a War on Oxygen!! (Press Release: NEW PRY-OFF CROWN KEEPS ABITA BEER FRESHER)

Now there are countless horrible methods to deal with the problem at hand. 

We have all seen the intense cigarrette smoker offering his services in exchange for the freedom to smoke around his friends.  To justify his habit, you watch him struggling for hours with a lighter.  This can take precious time from our beverage drinking, not to mention can ruin a perfectly good cheap piece of crap lighter and prevent our hero from smoking packs of menthol all over your crawfish boil.

 Then there is always that goofy looking college prep who is the perfect doppelganger of Jeff Spicoli in Fast Times at Ridgemont High.  This knucklehead is more than happy to assist in opening your frosty light mexican beer with his flip flops.  As he takes the section of the bottle where you are about to put your mouth, he lackadaisically hooks it in right next to the wad of gum and fragrant residue of Bourbon street that he collected earlier.  Ironically this is the same guy who won't eat any foods tainted with chemicals yet he pollutes our beer with scum of the streets.  Our Saviour!! 

And then there is always your Teeth??  Although there may be something truly animalistic and savage about this method...the New Orleans Modern Drunkards strongly recommends that you DO NOT open bottles with your teeth! You will chip your teeth! Many molars have been  rounded off from being chipped by beer caps.

Not to mention, many a dumbass friend went to open a beer with his teeth and ended up swallowing the bottle cap and having to be rushed to the emergency room. So you don't end up with a $2,800 medical bill for being an idiot.

So how does a New Orleans Modern Drunkard handle this situation?  Well, we finally got the keys to the church.  That's right, SuckUK has made a beautiful Church Key Bottle Opener that not only takes care of the situation of a freeing your frosty beverage, but does it in a safe, socially acceptible, and classic method..

According to SuckUK, the Church Key Bottle Opener is the coolest bottle opener you could hang from your key chain! Made from tough nickel steel. This key shape bottle opener will impress and bemuse everywhere you go. Ships in an attractive gift pack. The key measures approximately 3 in x 1 in.

So how do you obtain the Church Key Bottle Opener from SuckUK, well you have two options:

1) You can pick up one here

2) You can conveniently get one for $10.00 + tax at 2026 Magazine Street at locally owned & operated Aidan Gill For Men. 

Remember, friends don't let friends open beer in a douchbag manner! 

So do you have one of these great skeleton key bottle openers?  What do you think about it?  Leave us comments below on this or other ways you open your favorite beer!!

Fun with Jack Daniels

"Basically I am for anything that gets you through the night - be it Prayer, Tranquilizers, or a bottle of Jack Daniels" ~Frank Sinatra

FUN FACTS ABOUT JACK DANIELS

• In 1904, Jack Daniels' "Old No. 7" was one of 20 Whiskeys from around the world to compete in a contest at the Worlds Fair. It won the Gold Medal as the "World's Best Whiskey"!!


• When Visiting the Jack Daniels distillery, enjoy the aromas because that is as close as you will get to any whiskey. You can't sample any whiskey nor buy any. Why? Well, Lynchburg, Tennessee where the Distillery lies, is a dry county.


• The First batches of Jack Daniels were sold in large ceramic jugs with big XXs printed on the side


• The old wives tale that if you drink too much Jack Daniels you will go blind has been disproven. The only way to go blind is to break the bottle and Jab it into your face.


• Historically Jack Daniels was registered at 90 Proof (45% by Volume) but in 2004, they lowered the proof to 80 (40%by Volume) proving once again that the terrorists had won!!

Try a Hot Chocolate Toddy: the Happy Holidaze

There are many different toddys out there from your basic Hot Toddy to the ever popular Hot Buttered Rum. Then there are many excellent Hot Coffee Cocktails, including the famous Cafe' Brulot Diabolique which is an Antoine's creation of hot spiced coffee set aflame with brandy at your table. So when the New Orleans Modern Drunkards came accross a recipe for a Hot Chocolate Toddy....we knew a tasting was in order.


The recipe is that of the Happy Holidaze, a concoction developed by Abigail Gullo a bartender at Fort Defiance in Red Hook, Brooklyn, New York. In Abigail's interview with the New York Times, it was said that this drink was "designed to warm the pipes and buoy the nerves" in order to help Christmas singers announce bodly the coming of Jesus!!

So with that description and the idea of a Hot Chocolate cocktail, who were we to turn down this cocktail testing.


The Happy Holidaze
Makes 1 serving

Ingredients:

- 1 cup of Hot Chocolate

- 3/4 oz of Green Chartreuse

- 3/4 oz of Cointreu

- Marshmellows or Whipped Cream***

Preperation:

Add Chartreuse & Cointreau to Hot Chocolate, stir & serve in mug.

Now we give you honest feedbacks and we made several batches. It was an interesting cocktail that definately warmed up our cockles. The Chartreuse often gave us the impression that parts of our Christmas tree had fell into our Hot Chocolate which I suppose was the purpose. It was noted that several people did have the urge to sing from the tingle the Chartreuse gave us. One person also recommended that adding Whipped Cream or Marshmellows would prove we love Jesus.

So try it out and tell us what you think. Have a fun variation on this Hot Chocolate cocktail that you think people will enjoy? Leave a comment below.

***Whipped Cream or Marshmellows are OPTIONAL. The New Orleans Modern Drunkards can not confirm nor deny that Marshmellows nor Whipped Cream will add to this cocktail's flavor nor can we confirm nor deny that it will prove that you love Jesus.

Beer Warning: Beer contains Female Hormones!!

Alert to all Men Everywhere!! Alert to all Men Everywhere!!!

Last Month, Montreal University & Canadian Scientists released the results of a recent analysis conducted in their labs. This analysis revealed the prescence of a female hormone in beer that can have adverse & potentially harmful affects on men. A theory, derived from their head researcher, is that beer contains female hormones due to hops. Hops contains phytoestrogens! The researcher went on to declare that by drinking enough Beer, men can potentially turn into women!!


To test the theory, the Research team of scientists developed a Randomized, Drunken Blind, location study of 100 males. Each male was told to consume 8 schooners of beer within a 1 hour period of time, followed by a 10 minute pee break, before observation.



It was observed that adverse affects occurred in 100% of the male participants. THAT'S RIGHT!! 100% of Men were affected by the female hormones!!

The Results were as follows in 100% of the Males:


1) Argued over absolutely nothing
2) Refused to apologize when obviously wrong
3) Gained weight
4) Talked excessively without making any sense at all
5) Became overly emotional
6) Couldn't Drive
7) Failed to think Rationally
8) Had to pee sitting down

The Researchers felt that No Futher Testing was considered Necessary!

New Orleans Bar Guide

Need to grab a drink in New Orleans but don't know exactly where to go? Then this easy to follow flow chart can definately offer you a funny idea of where to obtain your next libation. So tonight, rather than going to the same old same old, follow this handy yet insane guide and let us know where you ended up. Leave a comment below and tell us where you went.