Time to check out a new to me, bartender focused canned cocktail brand, LiveWire.
I started with Golden God who looks like a Doctor Who villain and has apricot, green tea and elderflower on top of Rye Whiskey and Brandy. GG pours white with a hint of taupe to it. Sweetened green tea hits the nose first. Both sweet and tart in flavor. Apricot reigns supreme here which leads me to believe that the brandy is a bigger player than rye. The brandy does show up after the apricot plays out. Not bad if a touch too sweet.
Tropipop is big, big on that candied coconut flavor. The pineapple comes in behind but is a clear second fiddle to the coconut. Coming in third is the rum. Which makes sense when you find out that Casa Magdelena from Guatemala is a blanco / light rum. I might have added a third flavor to tone down the coconut.
The winner is Golden God but both were a little too light on the abv and too sweet overall.
I have never been one of those Christmas in July people or Christmas in November person either. But this Anchor adjacent 12-year California Whiskey has certainly turned my head based just on that nostalgic Our Special Ale style label. Bet it tastes good to if the quality is near their gin.
A few years back, I was instructing at a summer school on the culinary history of the Caribbean. During the interactive workshop, students devised food rituals, summoned significant food memories, and crafted a Caribbean cocktail. They chose to make a Guinness Punch—a favorite on several British-colonized islands. This mixture of strong stout beer, creamy, sweet condensed milk, and a hint of cinnamon and nutmeg is a delightful fusion of flavors.
Guinness was known to me through both sides of my family. The Irish connection was apparent since Guinness was founded in Dublin, but why was it also known from the Caribbean side? As it turns out, in the seventeenth century, the Irish were engaged as contract laborers on plantations in the Caribbean. Due to their substantial presence in the area, Guinness decided to export beer there—with more alcohol and hops, ensuring it stayed good during the transatlantic journey. When I learned this, I felt a strong sense of connection: the unlikely merging of two clashing cultures had given rise to something beautiful and tasty and no, I’m not referring to myself!
Ingredients
1 bottle (500 ml or roughly 2 cups) of Guinness West Indies Porter
1 cup (250 ml) (oat) milk
1/2 cup (120 ml) of condensed milk
⅛ teaspoon ground cinnamon
⅛ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg, plus extra
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons overproof rum (high-alcohol rum; optional)
ice cubes, to serve
Instructions
Place all ingredients, except the ice cubes, into a blender and pulse several times. Serve in glasses with ice cubes and a sprinkle of freshly grated nutmeg on top.
Heard this on the Good Food podcast. Which I highly suggest listening to.
I have never been a “shots” type of drinker. I prefer to analyze and enjoy the first few sips of beer or a spirit before then relaxing into it. The whole down the gullet thing never appealed. Candy-fying it with jello seems even weirder still but for those that love their gelatin and alcohol mixed, there is…..THIS.
I will be heading north to Portland in July and one spot that is on the must stop list is the new Portland location of Salem-based craft cider producer La Familia Cider Company The Hawthorne location, formerly the Portland Cider House, opened on June 5th.
There will be 29 taps that will pour 15 ciders from La Familia and other producers, and the remaining 14 taps will serve craft beers. There will also be Cider cocktails plus a small menu featuring Mexican food made from locally sourced ingredients.
Back to the world of two favorite C’s of mine, cider and charity as 2 Towns Ciderhouse has announced the release return of its F*Cancer branded cider which is in collaboration with fellow Oregonians Silver Moon Brewing and Crux Fermentation Project. This years label design brings some names into the frame which is a cool way to honor and applaud.
As, maybe?, promised. Here is my review of Aaron Goldfarb’s Dusty Booze.
By the time you reach the end of Dusty Booze, you will not at all be surprised that there are people who collect famous distillery water. Not a rare spirit, no, but vintage waters.
This fascinating look into one corner of the collectors niche has two things going for it. One is the through spine about a collection of liquor from an old Howard Hughes office that had sat untouched for years. Second is the inclusion of a how to or what to collect if you wanted to start “dusty hunting”.
Now I should go back and explain what that term means. It is the art of finding old and therefore probably dusty bottles of vintage spirits. And some of these are old. From different eras of distillery ownership to grains grown using older agricultural methods to the type of heat source used.
It is about connecting a liquid time capsule of the time that the bottle was filled and the years preceding that it was aging.
This book is filled with characters. But the one drawback of the book was that most of them were of the same ilk. A person with a collectors mentality, who had time and money to be able to spend thousands of dollars to buy, for example, eight thousand miniature liquor bottles and then pick out the five hundred that interested them and selling the rest. Each individual dusty hunter seemed, well not at all individualistic.
But on other hand the diversity in the spirits was wide. Cognac, gin and even creme de menthe were covered. And the world was covered too. Scotland to Japan to Germany and the U.S. all played a part in this craze.
Goldfarb is funny and personal and sarcastic throughout the book and that side-eye style works really well to puncture the fact that this is a book about booze.
And that Howard Hughes office. Well, it was in the same building as the long gone Hollywood Brewery.
Here in Los Angeles, we get our fair share of Prairie Artisan Ales, mostly the big stouts which leaves me hopeful that I will see this new release from the aforementioned Prairie Artisan Ales with American Solera, and the third member bourbon maker Pursuit United Spirits drop a 3 Way Beer Collaboration called Not Subtle. “an Imperial Stout aged in Pursuit United Bourbon barrels.”
I have listened to the Bourbon Pursuit podcast and hope to get my hands on a Pursuit bourbon since my visit to Louisville was too early to see their tasting room on Bourbon Row but this beer might be the first I get.
Tree House is known for some buzzworthy beers that back in the day would generate long buying lines. Now they have two gins that I would stand in line for.
First up is their Hildegard Von Bingen New England Gin which “balances the sweet flavor of malt with a potent dose of resinous hops and juniper.”
Then there is the lower proof variant Bee’s Knees made with the above gin but layering in Lemon, Honey and Natural Flavors.
Both sound quite tasty to this gin fan especially the use of hops.
When it comes to special edition spirits, I am not usually inclined to think twice about them if the label is the only difference between it and a lower priced standard version.
And as much as Ryan Reynolds is associated with Aviation Gin (whose space in Portland is really cool and should be on your gin bucket list), I don’t know if a Deadpool Gin is cool, now if it was a Sloe Gin, mind changed.
