Grow Your Own: The Mixologist Simple Syrup Collection
My cocktail-loving friends at Log House Plants have put together a collection of plants that are particularly worth growing for infusing in simple syrups and for making infused vodkas and liqueurs. They’re a wholesale nursery, so they’re growing the plants for sale at retail garden centers and gourmet grocery stores on the West Coast. Look for them in your local indie garden center/grocery store, or order them online from the Territorial Seed Company, who has joined in this effort and put together a great collection of cocktail-friendly plants and seeds. Here’s what we...
Read MoreLavandula Intoxicataea
1 – 1.5 oz Dry Fly Gin, Aviation Gin, or Hendricks’ Gin. (see note) 1 quarter fresh lemon 4 oz DRY Soda, lavender flavor A dash of Scrappy’s Lavender Bitters or Bar Keep Lavender Spice bitters Garnish options: Fresh lavender sprig, Johnny jump-up (viola), pansy, borage blossom, or lemon twist Ice In a tall, skinny Collins glass or a short tumbler filled with ice, pour gin over ice. Squeeze one lemon wedge over ice and drop into glass. Top with Dry Lavender Soda and a dash of Scrappy’s Lavender Bitters. Garnish. Note: 1.5 oz is a serving of gin, but if you’d like to...
Read MoreLavender
The best way to get a little lavender flavor in a cocktail is to make a simple syrup with it. Be sure to start with an English lavender (Lavandula angustifolia) like the strongly fragrant ‘Violet Intrigue’ or ‘Munstead’—they’re the ones most often used in cooking or perfumes. The next best choice would be L. x intermedia like ‘Grosso’ or ‘Provence.’ Both require sun, fast-draining soil, minimal water, and winter temperatures above 0F to survive. Mulch is unnecessary, and in fact, wood mulch can cause rot at the base of the plant. Use grey pea gravel if...
Read MoreBlooming Cocktails
Last month I looked at flowers that can be used to decorate cocktails—borage and pansies and the like—but this month, we’ll consider a few flowers that actually flavor drinks. Some of these have been used for centuries to make not just liqueurs, but boozy medicinal potions as well. Elderflower. Cordials and sodas flavored with elderflowers are a very British thing, but it took an American distiller to recognize their potential. Rob Cooper, a third-generation distiller, tasted homemade elderflower syrup in a London bar and decided to create a liqueur from the flowers. The result is...
Read MoreBooks by Amy Stewart
The Drunken Botanist
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