A Better 'Nog

I'm personally not a huge fan of eggnog. It's easily the most acclaimed yet controversial holiday beverage. Most of the 'nog I tend to see comes in the form of a pre-made grocery store blend that is just plain the wrong way to do things. This season, try the recipe below from Poste Moderne Brasserie. It's a rather daunting collection of ingredients, but good things take effort. And the end result is a recipe that even a 'nog hater can appreciate. Below is a how-to video straight from the creator himself, and be sure to check out the full post with recipe at Washingtonian.com






Thanks to Eric for passing this one along

Happy Holidays!
Foggy

When the Weather Outside is Frightful...

It's getting very very cold outside in my neighborhood these days. Very cold. If you're anything like me, one of the best things about winter weather is getting cozy next to a fire and sipping from a steaming mug of hot cocoa. What's better than hot cocoa? Try some cocoa filled with booze. Below is the once-secret recipe for my favorite wintertyme drink - The Fireside. It's got all the minty chocolaty goodness you crave on a cold December night, with a little bit of kick to keep it interesting.

The Fireside

Ingredients:

Mint Version

1 oz Southern Comfort (bourbon works as well)

1 oz Creme de Menthe

1 oz Peppermint schnapps

1 oz Creme de Cacao

1 packet of instant hot cocoa (I use Land O' Lakes or Swiss Miss)

Peppermint stick or candy cane for garnish


Cinnamon Version                             

1 oz Southern Comfort
1.5 oz Cinnamon Schnapps

1 oz Creme de Cacao

1 packet of instant hot cocoa

Cinnamon stick for garnish                                                     

Instructions:


Mix liquors in the bottom of a mug and add cocoa mix. Add hot milk or water as preferred to make the cocoa and stir all ingredients. Layer on top with whipped cream or marshmallows and drizzle a small amount of creme de menthe or cinnamon schnapps to add a red or green flair. Garnish with a peppermint or cinnamon stick to complete the festive look. Serve hot.

Enjoy!

Foggy

My Favorite Drink - The Sidecar

I think everyone needs a signature "go-to" drink when out at a bar or restaurant- whether it's a cheap beer, a standard gin and tonic or some fancy top shelf scotch. My current signature drink is a simple, classy affair known as The Sidecar. If you've spent any time around me lately you've probably already heard my favorite origin story for it - named after an eccentric patron of Harry's Bar in Paris in the early 1900's who showed up every night chauffeured in the sidecar of his motorcyle. The drink was a classic during the WWII era, and then kind of stepped out of the limelight for awhile. If you've never had one then it's about time to give it a try - simple, classy, and delicious. There isn't too much wiggle-room in the recipe, but below is my version which I think brings out every flavor in just the right amount. 


Foggy's Sidecar


Ingredients:

2 oz Cognac (Courvoisier or Remy Martin VS, I prefer the latter)

1 oz Cointreau 

1 oz fresh squeezed lime or lemon juice

.5 oz simple syrup

Instructions:

Wet the rim of a frosted martini glass with lime juice and sugar. Combine all ingredients in a shaker with ice and mix until ice cold. Serve in martini glass with a slice of lemon or orange to garnish.



- Foggy

Some Like It Hot

I'm currently finishing off the last vestiges of the fall season and getting pumped for winter, which is arguably my favorite drinking season. But before the cold weather starts calling for more and more concoctions sipped from mugs and mixed with seasonal flavors like peppermints and egg nogs, I wanted to revisit one of the trickier recipes I've tried to pull off this fall and add a few tweaks that I think give it much more credibility.

The drink in question is the pumpkin spice martini. I really struggled with this one the first time around as I have not run across too many pumpkin flavored anythings that really pique my interest, and it just seems so fitting for the October/November moths. I think I've come up with the solution - heat it up. The mix of ingredients in this one can be enjoyed cold, but served warm the flavors of the pumpkin and whiskey/rum just start to make more sense. Try this alternative recipe below and I think you'll agree (It also needs a better name, suggestions welcome).

Hot Pumpkin



Ingredients:

2 oz bourbon or spiced rum

1 oz pumpkin schnapps

.5 oz cointreau or triple sec

.5 oz vanilla schnapps

3 oz ginger ale

whipped cream, cinnamon, nutmug to garnish

Instructions:

Mix liquor ingredients in a mug (the glass in the picture is just for show) and heat till its just below boiling. Add   ginger ale to fill, then heat in a microwave for a few seconds to make sure it doesn't cool too much. Garnish the top with whipped cream and sprinkle fresh cinnamon and nutmeg over the cream. Serve while still warm (obviously).

- Foggy

Plum and Green Tea Martini

My delightful girlfriend just stumbled upon this recipe, which turned out to be not only delicious, but also one of the only drinks I've seen to feature Carambola (starfruit) other than The Lady Liberty designed by your's truly. This one requires a bit of effort mainly from gathering ingredients, but the end result is pretty impressive.

Plum and Green Tea Martini

Bobbing For Apples

I love apple cider. Love it. Few things do the trick on a cold autumn/winter's eve as well as a steaming mug of this stuff. In a perfect world you'd be smashing up your own apples and creating recipes like the one below from scratch, but when you need something quick to serve a room full of guests you just don't have time to go bobbing for apples. The recipe below uses those easy-to-find jugs of apple cider as its base (make sure to get apple CIDER and not apple cocktail or apple juice) and can be whipped up in 30-40 minutes if you're pressed for time. There's no rushing deliciousness.

There a host of secret family recipes out there for getting a perfectly balanced apple cider; if you care to share yours feel free to comment below.

Foggy's Mulled Apple Cider

Ingredients:

1 gallon fresh/bottled apple cider

16 oz spiced rum (Captain Morgan's is perfect)

1/2 cup brown sugar

3 oz sour apple schnapps

3 oz cinnamon schnapps

1 tsp whole cloves (about 6-7)

1 tsp allspice

3 cinnamon sticks

1 red delicious or granny smith apple

Instructions:

In a large pot (a friend of mine, who lived in the apartment below me in college, suggests a slow-cooker or crock pot rather than heating over the stove), pour the cider, schnapps, half the spiced rum, and brown sugar and heat to a boil while stirring to incorporate all ingredients. Add the spices, either by dropping them in or wrapping them in cheesecloth or mesh bag if you don't want them floating around in the cider. Slice the apple and add those as well, then continue stirring until the mixture reaches a boil. At this point, lower the heat to a simmer and add the rest of the spiced rum, continue stirring and let sit on low to medium heat for an additional 10-15 minutes.

Serve warm with a ladle into mugs and garnish with a cinnamon stick or apple slice. Serves at least 12-15 people.

Stay warm,

Foggy

Foggy's Has a New Home. Maybe?

I'm testing out Blogspot as a domain this week and I could use some help deciding where the final home of this blog will be. I've imported the posts from the old domain so it's easy to compare. If this is your first time here, do me a quick favor and check out foggyspub.tumblr.com and let me know which set up you like better - this one or that one. Post any comments below and while you're here it would be awesome to help me get started filling up that followers box on the right hand side of the page as well *sly internet wink*

Testing out the new lightbox

If you visited this blog before this past weekend you may have noticed that all the drink pics I add with the posts were dark, grainy and mostly unappealing. A co-worker opened my eyes to the world of DIY photography gear and I've now updated most of the photos on here using a lightbox. I think it's much better. If you want to try this yourself check out Strobist for a cheap alternative to a fancy camera and studio.

Drunk by Chocolate

The perfect chocolate martini should taste as much like a cocktail as it does like a milkshake. It’s easy to sway too much in either direction and wind up with either a drink that’s too sweet to finish, or something that lacks any distinguishing flavor at all. The recipe below is thankfully pretty easy to get right and the end result should impress both purists and chocolate lovers alike.

Foggy’s Chocolate Martini

Ingredients:

1.5 oz vanilla vodka

1.5 oz creme de cacao

.5 oz Godiva white chocolate liqueur

Hershey’s chocolate syrup, sugar for rim, and maraschino cherry for garnish

Instructions:

Wet the rim of a chilled martini glass with ice or a thin layer of chocolate syrup and coat lightly with granulated sugar. Drizzle a very thin stream of chocolate syrup around the inside of the glass (I let the first bead hit the bottom of the glass and then turn it without moving the syrup bottle so that it creates a swirl pattern like a candy cane). Shake liquid ingredients over ice and strain into glass to mix with the syrup. Slice a cherry to garnish the rim or drop it into the glass and it will sink to the bottom. I occasionally top this with whipped cream for that “sundae” feel, but the drink will be more visually appealing without it since the cream will quickly melt even with a cold drink.

Cheers,

Foggy

God Bless America

The first drink I ever invented was inspired after a cookout at the home of my good friend Emily. Her sister brought to my attention an amazingly unique piece of produce known as starfruit. If you’ve never seen one, it’s a tropical fruit that comes from the Carambola tree native to East Asia. It tastes similar to a grape and forms a five (sometimes six) pointed star when sliced. As a result, starfruit is one of the coolest easy-to-impress things with which to garnish a cocktail.

The recipe below is indeed the first one I ever came up with and as such is very near and dear to my heart; it’s a pretty simple, easy drinking cocktail with a lot of citrus flavor (I really like citrus). Good for sitting around on a sunny afternoon or impressing your friends at your next nerdy political debate party.

The Lady Liberty

Ingredients:

1.5 oz gin

1 oz blue curacao

1 oz sour mix

ginger ale

tonic water

Instructions:

Fill a rocks glass with ice and add the liquors and sour mix. With the remaining half of the glass, fill with equal parts ginger ale and tonic water. Stir and garnish with a slice of starfruit.

For the full effect, try soaking the starfruit in grenadine for a few minutes while preparing the drink to give it a deep red color that sits on top of the blue liquid. Drop in a white stirring straw and you’ve got a nice example of American liquid courage.

Liberty Prevails,

Foggy

Gardening With Booze

I’ve become a huge fan of gin in the last year or so mainly due to its refreshingly distinctive flavor no matter right out of the bottle. A lot of base liquors seem to be used in cocktails to provide a background for for the cordials that cover up its flavor. With gin, adding a few simple ingredients can bring out even more flavor in the base liquor and create something pretty amazing.

My recent discovery of a wide variety of herbs and vegetables growing under a covering of weeds in the backyard of my new house has led me to some gin based experiments in freshness. Below is my favorite so far - a twist on a classic gin and tonic using two insanely under-rated ingredients in the mixology world. I haven’t come up with a good name for it yet so feel free to send me ideas if you think of something good.

Cucumber Tonic

Ingredients:

6 slices cucumber, quartered

3 sprigs fresh dill

2 slices lime, quartered

2 oz gin

.5 oz simple syrup

1 oz tonic water

Instructions:

Combine cucumber, dill, lime, and simple syrup (instructions on how to make this in previous post) in a shaker and muddle to release flavors. Add ice to fill shaker 3/4 of the way to the top and add gin. Shake well, then add tonic and give it a few more shakes. Pour into a martini glass and garnish with a sprig of dill and a slice of cucumber for the rim. If prepared correctly, it should have a slightly green hue. Be careful not to get too many cucumber seeds in the glass.

Cheers,

Foggy

Other Uses for a Jack-o-Lantern

We’re knee-deep into Fall and so I wanted to try my hand today at crafting one of the more elusive fall cocktails - the pumpkin martini. These are elusive mainly because pumpkin liquor is seasonal and almost impossible to find outside of a few months of the year. It also, in my opinion, isn’t all that good on its own and is pretty hard to mix with anything to create something worth drinking. However, I’ve come across a few drinkable recipes and have recreated below my variation of what I consider the best to sip while you scare little kids with your werewolf mask or slice up a pumpkin pie.

Foggy’s Pumpkin Spice Martini

Ingredients:

1.5 oz bourbon or rye whiskey

1 oz pumpkin schnapps

.5 oz cinnamon schnapps

.5 oz triple sec

whipped cream, nutmeg or pumpkin pie spices to garnish

Instructions:

Mix all ingredients into a shaker filled with ice and strain into a martini glass. Top with whipped cream and sprinkle on freshly grated nutmeg or a bit of pumpkin pie spice mix (mostly nutmeg and ginger). Depending on your taste, you might also try adding a bit of vanilla schnapps (no more than .5 oz) to mix in a sweeter flavor. Though I haven’t tried yet, this drink might taste even better poured into a coffee mug and heated up on a cold night.

- Foggy

Cool Trick for Simple Syrup

This actually makes simple syrup a little complicated in my opinion, but its a pretty interesting idea to avoid the huge pain of pouring the hot mixture into a bottle upon completion so its absolutely worth taking note. The traditional way of making this crucial cocktail ingredient is to bring water to a boil and add sugar until mixed completelym, then bottle (keep airtight) and refrigerate. Doesn’t really go bad and a bottle’s worth will last a long time. My preferred recipe is 2 cups sugar and 1 cup water, plus any additions you might want to add a permanent flavor.


Simple Syrup Recipe

Strong Enough for a Man

Story time - right after finishing the original Foggy’s Pub, my roommates and I threw a party which was attended by a certain friend of mine I’ll refer to as “Joe.” While hanging out upstairs before said party, someone delivered a nice box of various beverages for the house-mates to enjoy before our guests started to arrive. One of the bottles in this box was none other than a sampling of the often controversial drink Mike’s Hard Lemonade. I don’t know when it happens exactly, but at some point in a young man’s life it typically becomes unmanly to enjoy a bottle of this very sugary, but also tasty beverage. However, as I suspect is the case for a heck of a lot more guys than would ever admit it, Mike’s was the first bit of alcohol I had ever tasted, and as such it will always hold a never-mentioned-in-public special place in my heart. So needless to say I grabbed the bottle and agreed to be the one to drink it BEFORE the party started so that it wouldn’t go to waste.

I’m not ashamed of this. It was delicious.

Unfortunately, Joe thought otherwise. My friend ridiculed me to no end, questioning my manhood (even though I’m pretty sure it was him who brought the stuff in the first place). Needless to say I had to defend myself. I swore to Joe and all present that I would create a Foggy’s version of a hard lemonade that was strong enough for a man to drink while still being delicious. I promised to name this drink after Joe, not in tribute, but in mockery of his cruel chastising. The drink has remained a favorite of Joe and many others since its creation, as it is indeed a tasty concoction and a “one is all you need” sort of libation. This past weekend, my hard lemonade claimed another hapless victim, and so I think it time to share the recipe.

Joe’s Hard Lemonade




Ingredients:

1.5 oz Grain Alcohol (Everclear is the classic where I come from)

1.5 oz Citrus/Lemon Vodka

.5 oz Triple Sec

1 oz Sour Mix

Lemonade/Club Soda (best if you make your own)

Instructions:

Fill a highball or collins glass half-way to the top with cubed ice. Pour in liquors starting with the grain alcohol, then add the sour mix. Fill the remaining half of the glass with ice cold lemonade. Add a shot of club soda if you prefer a few bubbles in your drink. This simple recipe never fails to produce a strong smelling, but good tasting lemonade that will bring down just about any doubters as the extra sugar will cause the alcohol to react in the system very quickly.

- Foggy

1905's Green Lantern

Most of the drinks I post on here are original recipes as I don't want to steal the spotlight from anyone else's masterpiece. When I stumble upon an awesome drink though I feel obliged to share it. This cocktail from the Washington D.C. restaurant 1905 makes great use of basil to add a unique flavor to an otherwise average gin drink. They call it "The Green Lantern" and you can see how to make it below.

Nightly Grind

Seagram’s just came out with a delicious espresso vodka; which has spawned at Foggy’s an equally delicious and easy to make espresso martini. When properly mixed, this one should be reminiscent of an ice cold frappuccino… mixed with vodka. There’s even a bit of caffeine in this one for the after-five coffee lover.

Espresso Martini



Ingredients:

1.5 oz Seagram’s espresso vodka

1 oz amaretto

1 oz coffee liqueur (Kahlua works as well)

whipped cream and edible coffee/cocoa beans for garnish

Instructions:

Mix all ingredients in a shaker filled with ice and shake until it becomes almost too cold to handle. Pour mixture into frosted martini glass and top with dollop of whipped cream. Sprinkle a few beans onto the whipped cream or drizzle a small bit of hazelnut liqueur to finish it off.

- Foggy

Specific Gravity

Check out this link for a good listing of specific gravity across various liquors (a must-see for layering drinks)

Specific Gravity Chart

The Spirit of America

Quick post for today with a recipe for a quick drink that I call “The Spirit of America.” Get it? “Spirit?” This is a shooter utilizing a technique known as layering. Some people have a hard time with this, so it might help to explain the theory behind how it works.

Liquors, cordials, etc vary in Specific Gravity based on the amount of sugar they contain. The more sugar in a liquid, the more dense/heavier it will be. That being the case, if you carefully stack liquids on top of each other in a glass, making sure that they scale in density so that the less dense liquids sit at the top, when they settle they will stay separate and look awesome. The most famous cocktail using this technique is the Pousse Cafe.

Layering a drink is mainly for show since everything will run together as soon as you take a sip, but if you use flavors that go together rather than just focus on making a rainbow in a glass you can easily produce something that will impress visually and still be tasty.

The Spirit of America

Ingredients:

1 oz blue curacao

1 oz orange vodka

.5 oz grenadine

Instructions:

Carefully pour the grenadine in the bottom of a shot glass and make sure that it doesn’t stick to the sides. Do not overdo the grenadine; it has a nice deep red color but is basically just sugar syrup that will dominate an already sweet shot if you use too much. Next add the curacao by placing a soup spoon into the glass so that the back of the spoon is facing up. Very slowly drizzle the curacao over the spoon so that it hits right in the middle and then slides down the sides of the glass. If you do it right, you will see the blue color stack on top of the red. If they begin to mix, you are probably pouring too fast. Do the same thing with the vodka on the top, as it has the least amount of sugar and should sit nicely on the curacao.

Yes, I’ve noticed that the shot is actually red, blue, and white rather than red, white, and blue. If you want a true patriotic shooter, you could switch out the vodka for white creme de cacao. This would give you a shot that tastes like a chocolate covered orange. I usually stick with the vodka because it packs just a bit more of a punch and mixes with the curacao to create complementing orange flavors that work well together, though I’m open to suggestions if you play around and come up with something even better.

Happy bartending,

Foggy

My Hookah Heaven

My fledgling company just launched a website where you can buy everything you might want for the delightfully relaxing pastime of smoking hookah (Hookahs are Arabic water-pipes for smoking flavored molasses tobacco, though if you don’t know what they are already it’s probably not for you). Though not entirely blog related and more on the side of a shameless plug - I’m proud to say we’ve got a huge selection and really good prices. Check it out and let me know what you think! (and then buy something) Hookahs are a great edition to home bars….

My Hookah Heaven

The Frozen Martini Experiment

In my last post I mentioned that I wanted to devote a lot of this blog (read: I can’t think of anything else to write about other than) to test out new drink recipes. In my quest to come up with a line of signature Foggy’s beverages, these recipes will be random and varied, but my promise is that they will mostly likely be delicious and/or at least serve the purpose of any good alcoholic beverage without the pain. So without further ado - below is the current Foggy’s Pub recipe for a…

Homemade Frozen Citrus Martini

Ingredients:

1 cup (usually 6 oz) of lemon-flavored italian ice (any brand, I used Luigi’s)

1.5 oz citrus vodka

1 oz lime vodka

.5 oz Rose’s mango-flavored syrup

Instructions:

Spoon half of the shaved ice into a martini glass and spread it out evenly. Add lime vodka (doesn’t need to be chilled beforehand thanks to the ice). Spoon out the rest of the shaved ice evenly and then pour over the citrus vodka. Use a spoon or stirring straw to gently mix the ice with the vodkas but don’t overdo it or the ice will start to melt too quickly. Pour over the mango syrup for a little bit of color (the shaved ice will most likely be a very pale off-white, not the most appealing drink) and top it off with a maraschino cherry or a slice of of lime.

The end result will be a tangy martini - similar in taste to a good margarita but without the terrible/wonderful things that tequila brings. For those with a sweet-tooth, wet the rim of the martini glass before starting the drink and spread a thin layer of granulated sugar. Grocery stores usually have a variety of flavored sugars for daiquiris that come in martini-shaped containers made exactly for this.

There you have it - I think this is set up so people can comment - if you try this out and have any feedback for me on what you liked/didn’t like, tweaks that worked out better, etc, I’d love to hear them. Thanks for reading!

Cheers,

Foggy

Some pics of the new setup

       

Welcome to Foggy's Pub and Brewery

Hello interwebs,

As this is my first post, of my first-ever blog, I will take a moment to introduce myself and explain why I plan to (hopefully) steal your attention away from youtube/twitter/facebook/social networking site of the month for a good 5-10 minutes every few days or so.

My real name is Matt; I currently live in Arlington, Va in a 100 year old little white house that most closely resembles a… shack. But only on the outside. On the inside it’s starting to look pretty nice.

The back room of said shack has recently been converted into the 3rd rendition of one of my favorite hobbies - remodeling unused rooms in my residences into speak-easy-style bars within which I practice the dark arts of bartending and throwing kick-ass social gatherings.

I started this pastime back in Charlottesville, Va where I attended the University of Virginia. Most of my reasons for starting a speak-easy were obvious enough that they don’t need repeating. A less common motivator was that I wanted to teach myself the ways of the high-class bartender and the mystical arts of mixology in order to score a job at one of the local established bars. My reasons for wanting that can be summed up a few sentences back(Note: if you don’t consider mixology,the art of creating fine drinks composed of various other drinks and materials, to be “mystical,” then you’re doing it wrong).

I assumed that the best way to learn how to bartend would be to build a bar and the only way I could learn to make all the drinks that a real bartender would be asked to create would be to stock it with every kind of imbibable liquid imaginable. This turned out to be far from necessary, especially in a college town where virtually no one orders anything interesting, other than that one really sleezy guy that exists in every watering hole and insists on drinking only one particular concoction because he saw it in a film and it has a cool name that he thinks will make him appear more suave to the ladies. Nonetheless, that’s exactly what I did.

I dubbed my creation Foggy’s Pub (full story on that in a future post), later to become a brewery as well, and began inviting over anyone and everyone interested in helping me practice my skills. Over time it turned out I had a knack for making drinks and stuck with it. Long story short - fast forward to the present and I now am bursting at the seams with a ridiculous amount of information, both useful and absurd, regarding things like how to make a good cocktail, how to build/stock a killer home bar and what not to do, etc.

Hence this blog.

So in the days/weeks/months? to come I will as often as I can attempt to give back to the internet in one concise place all the bits of information I’ve gathered over the years on this one very specific, but awesome hobby. I will likely also use this as a venue to try out new recipes on which I most certainly hope any readership I get will comment and critique (I have taken lately to crafting drinks based on pop culture phenomenons).

And finally, if anyone reading this is actually in the process or looking to build their own speak-easy, I’d love to hear from you and will be happy to share any useful experience I’ve had thus far. For the moment, it’s 6pm and I’ve been at my desk about 30 minutes longer than I planned as Thursday night is 40’s night at Foggy’s nothing stands in the way of 40’s night.

Until next time,

Foggy