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