Great Chieftain O' The Puddin Race!

As many of you may know tomorrow is an important date for all Scots as we celebrate the life of one of our nations greatest sons. His poetry is synonymous with the Scottish people so to honour him we created a cocktail menu using an array of Scottish ingredients. We sampled the list at Corpse and Cocktail yesterday evening and received a lot of positive feed back. The cocktails featured a Blackwood’s Shetland Gin Martini with a dash of Elderflower, the classic Rusty Nail and a Manhattan with a dot of Irn Bru syrup to sweeten it. Obviously a menu designed to catch your attention as Burns himself often intended in his works. There is one drink that I want to share with you and because of its obscurity it is definitely worth a try. It is our twist on a Whisky Sour made with Chivas Regal 12 Year Old, fresh lemon juice, sugar, a dash of egg white and a Tonic Wine float. Yes that’s right a Buckfast float on our Scottish sour. As Glasgow’s largest import we felt it was a fitting finish to this drink and the cocktail menu. So come along to 99 to celebrate Burns night with us and try one of our cocktails dedicated to The Bard. Hopefully you’ll have as good a night as Tam O’Shanter.

Despondency, an Ode

50ml Chivas Regal 12 Year Old
25ml Fresh Lemon Juice
12.5ml Sugar Syrup
12.5ml Fresh Egg White
12.5ml Buckfast Float

Dry shake and the wet shake. Single strain over ice in a rocks glass and serve with a lemon twist.

Hallelujah! The Mojito's Are On Me...!

Ladies and gentlemen, remember this day.  Bacardi have somersaulted into my good books.  Bacardi was a brand who's stylish ad campaigns (see "True Originals") always impressed me, but the product never did.  Not that it is not a good product, I wasn't sure where it fitted in cocktail-wise as the rum category is amazingly diverse and top-heavy with great brands.

Now, I get it.  The Bacardi Mojito (in a bottle) is the answer to my (and your) prayers.  Next time a chump comes up and asks for 4 mojitos, I'm going whip my bar blade out my pocket and whack off the lids on four of these bad boys.  "There you go.  £24 please."

Now before you start calling me pretentious and a snob, that is not the case at all.  I'll actually enjoy making one of these for the first time in a long-time when someone asks for an Appleton's Mojito, or a Rhum Acricole Mojito.  That shows that someone is drinking something that they didn't just see on a billboard, but can appreciate the fact that the Mojito is indeed a great classic cocktail.  The chump that asks for "4 fajitas" wouldn't know the difference between the contents of this bottle and a finely-balanced labour of love.  I'm going to rep these big-time!  Bacardi, you are back in the circle of trust.

More here: http://barmagazine.wordpress.com/2011/01/21/bacardi-unveils-mojito-and-cuba-libre-in-a-bottle/

Salt and Lime Please!

After a busy festive period I have finally been able to start experimenting and have a bit of a play around in the bar again. I was rather randomly approached by a customer to create a “green” cocktail for his wives birthday. Refusing to settle for crème de menthe or green food dye I began to think about how I could colour the cocktail. I must admit it was a strange request but I’m never one to turn down a challenge. The solution to this obscure problem was a Green Tea Daiquiri which featured on our Rumour menu for the Japanese themed weekend. This inspired me to start trying different spirits with a home made green tea syrup. I used the zest of one and a half limes and four green tea bags and added them to 300ml of stock syrup. I left this to stew on a hot plate heating it thoroughly for a number of hours before passing it through a fine strainer to remove any bits. The colour differed greatly from that of Monin Green Tea Syrup which I have used in the past. However, I am led to believe that they use artificial colourings to produce such vibrancy in their syrup.

I fell across the idea of a Green Tea Tequila Old Fashioned but never found a specific recipe for it. The idea intrigued me. I thought, like tea, that green tea would be over powered by dark spirits but when mixed with aged tequila the result is rather surprising. Firstly, I tried a combination of 50ml Don Julio Anejo, 10ml Cointreau and 20ml Green Tea Syrup. It is a very unusually fresh flavour and the Green Tea works well with Tequila. The drink was unfortunately lacking that killer punch I was hoping for, something that would truly compliment the green tea and not over shadow the tequila. I decided on Yellow Chartreuse as my substitute for Cointreau and slightly reduced the volume of syrup otherwise it would have been far too sweet. This herbaceous cocktail is well worth a try. It will help erase any negative connotations that you have of tequila This drink along with almost every tequila cocktail will have you questioning what tequila is. Great time and care is attentively put into making an Anejo (Aged) or Resposado (Rested) Tequila like that of a beautifully aged Rum or Whisky. So I beg of you to throw away the salt and lime, and please take the same attention that the creator of a good tequila does when you serve or drink this misunderstood spirit. Seriously what’s the worst that can happen? You might even enjoy it.

Green Tea Tequila Old Fashioned:

50ml Don Julio Anejo
10ml Yellow Chartreuse
12.5ml Green Tea Syrup

Stir and serve over ice with a Lime twist

Velvet Falernum & The Swizzle

Velvet Falernum is a liqueur from Barbados used in the Swizzle-style of drinks (so-called because of the swizzle stick used to swizzle them).

Due to a lack of availability from Ninety-Nine's suppliers, we've decided to make our own. The liqueur has notes of ginger, lime, almond and cloves - all readily available ingredients - backed up by some Wray & Nephew Overproof rum (if you're making the alcoholic version which we are...obviously).

Keep an eye out on the backbar at the Corpse & Cocktail for the Falernum's arrival. We also have another homemade liqueur in the pipeline...

In the meantime, check out this recipe for one of the most well-known swizzle drinks, the Queen's Park Swizzle from the Queen's Park Hotel in Trinidad.

Queen's Park Swizzle

40ml Mount Gay Extra Old rum

15ml Velvet Falernum

25ml fresh lime juice

10ml demerara sugar syrup

10 mint leaves
Dash of Angostura Bitters

Add ingredients to a sling glass and top up with crushed ice to the 3/4 mark.  Swizzle the ingredients and finish off with more crushed ice and a mint sprig.  Leave the swizzle in and serve with a straw.

Guest Bartender: Andy Stewart.

Name: Andy Stewart

Year’s bartending: Coming on for 8 years now.

Favourite tool (behind a bar): A decent bar spoon where the spiral is just right and the spoon bowl fits beautifully. Having said that, I do love my PUG muddler.

Most useless tool (behind a bar): Those pointless little citrus presses, especially if they're shaped like a fish! I have opposable thumbs you know, even if I am from the NE of Scotland

Your secret ingredient: Bitters. I fricking love them. They can add so much more to a drink or they can blend disparate ingredients together seamlessly.

Mojito or NO-jito? That's a toughy. It's a much maligned drink, but at the end of the day it's pretty basic and no more time consuming than say a Bramble, yet we, as bar tenders, hate them. Guess it's because it's a fashion drink: "Aye min, gies 10 Modge-Eetos, like". I'm going say No-jito for this.

Preferred spirit/drink: Rum. That is all. :) Something like a Matusalem Gran Reserva is ideal - if you're offering? Cocktail-wise: I'll gladly live on Sazeracs.

Most disgusting find at the end of a shift: Christ, where to begin. Any night of the week regards the toilets in Cafe Drummonds? The humping couple down the backstairs where she had more facial hair than him? Funniest would be coming in one morning to (unnamed venue) to find one of the staff had left her bra and pants behind after an intimate tête-à-tête the night before after locking up.

Thanks Andy!  I've had the pleasure of working with Andy twice now (Snafu and Rumour), and aside from his weird greetings ("alright *sweetheart/sugarcup/sweet-cheeks" - *delete as appropriate), there isn't anyone more passionate about good drinks.  You guys are in for a treat!

Andy will be guest bartending and presenting his cocktail list this Sunday 9th Jan at the Corpse & Cocktail.  Expect the expected (Sazerac) and the unexpected (any cocktail other than a Sazerac).

Hogmanay 2010 @ 99.