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