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• 1 oz brandy
• 1 oz Red Hibiscus Vermouth
• 0.5 oz Sons of Vancouver amaretto
• 1 oz apple cider
• 0.25 oz freshly squeezed lemon juice
• Garnish: Cinnamon stick
• 1.5 oz dry gin
• 1.5 oz White Chamomile Vermouth
• 2 dashes orange bitters
• Garnish: Lemon twist
Let’s talk about the often-misunderstood aperitif vermouth. What is it? Where does it come from?
Vermouth is fortified wine with herbs, roots, spices and sometimes sugar added. There are a handful of different styles to choose from: the most common offerings are sweet red, traditionally from Italy; and dry white wormwood-infused from France. The word vermouth is the French pronunciation for “wermut,” which is German for wormwood, the mystical herb that gives absinthe its reputation and provides the distinctive dry, bitter note found in vermouth.
Just when you thought bitters companies had created every flavour imaginable for your cocktail-drinking enjoyment, The Japanese Bitters comes along to wake up your palate with something completely new.
• 1.5 oz gin
• 0.5 oz dry vermouth
• 2 dashes The Japanese Bitters Umami Bitters (or to taste)
• Garnish: cocktail olives or pickled mushroom (optional)
The Roof is on Fire! That was the name of a dangerous-drinks seminar that San Francisco writer Camper English (of alcademics.com fame) and Bittermens co-founder Avery Glasser gave in 2016 at Tales of the Cocktail. Their warnings on potentially dangerous bartending ingredients, equipment and techniques were so eye-opening, English later nabbed a grant to develop cocktailsafe.org, a geekily helpful website packed with deeply researched information and resources.
“Bartenders on Facebook were chatting a lot about potentially dangerous drinks … and I thought it would be useful to put all this information, and a lot more, in one place as a reference to bartenders everywhere,” he says.
Here are his top 10 red flags for home mixologists—and pros, too.
Warm, bright and pleasantly spicy—when the weather turns cool, we crave the flavour of ginger. Luckily, Fever-Tree has our holiday-spice cravings covered with a range of ginger mixers.
“People love it,” says Alexis Green, the national brand engagement manager for Fever-Tree. “People are slowly starting to discover the ginger ale range and they really love it. People are going crazy for the smoky and the spicy.”
This year could be peak Sober Curious: just check out the new booze-free vending machine at Larry’s Market in the Shipyards, featuring mickeys of Solbru booze-free spirit and cans of Sober Carpenter and Partake near-beer in slots that recently held healthy salads and takeout—proof that Dry-uary is a full-blown lifestyle trend.
• 10 oz Seedlip Grove 42
• 6 Tbsp agave syrup
• 4 oz fresh lime juice
• Ice
• Salt
• Lime wheel (for garnish)
Salt glasses in advance by running lime around the rim, followed by rolling in salt. Garnish each glass with a lime wheel. Pour all ingredients in a jug, stir, add ice and stir again before serving. Makes 4 drinks.
For most issues of The Alchemist, we gather our tasting panel and sit in a room somewhere sampling our way through a dozen or so bottles of, say, rye whisky or vermouth. But with a pandemic upending everything, we couldn’t do that this time around. At the same time, since we’ve all been spending so much time chez nous, we wondered what our panelists were drinking at their own homes. So we asked them to recommend a bottle they consider essential for a home bartender, and what cocktail they’d make with it. This issue, our team comprises bartenders Sabrine Dhaliwal, Adam Domet, J-S Dupuis, Robyn Gray, Jay Jones, Trevor Kallies, Jeff Savage and Kaitlyn Stewart. Here’s what they had to say. Sip and shop accordingly.