Mulled Highland Rogue

Christmastime in the Firewater Water Lounge always calls for family, blood or otherwise. For some of us, blood relation isn’t an option, which means each relationship you craft extends the definition of love. That’s the case for Cindy and I; since we didn’t have brothers from the start, we had to go find some. And, boy, did we ever get lucky that we found the Stoefflers.

Since I was 12, there was always a Stoeffler or two (and likely a Hoffman) to make life easier, more colorful, and just plan better. From pointing the way to Saturn, or joining you in a mosh pit, or putting something broken back together, or taking in a scary flick, or simply tipping back a few cold ones, these brothers are the best sort of guys anyone can hope to call friends- ones that, unquestionably, just give a damn. If you don’t know what I mean here, there’s no way for me to describe it in words; the best way to find out is just to come down and drink with us and the Stoefflers. You’ll just feel it…

This Christmas was extra special because Cindy was able to photograph a number of bottles in Grandpa Stoeffler’s whiskey bottle collection that now adorn Aaron’s bar room. Grandpa Stoeffler was an ardent collector of decanters from the 1950s-to-1980s golden era of molded-theme bottles, mostly from Jim Beam, the distiller who perfected the practice originally as an advertising campaign.

Many of the decanters in Grandpa Stoeffler’s collection are 50 states-themed, animal-shaped, or part of a smaller series like the St. Patrick’s Day bottles. Among our favorites we would like to highlight here in the Lounge are the Bull and Matador, the Castle, and the Black & White whiskey dogs.

Of course, if you are perusing the collection here online, you definitely need a Christmas cocktail to make your holiday viewing bright.

Jumbie Toddy

December is here and the first week of the month already looks cold. That’s fine, though, Lounge Lizards, because we are here for you--with warm alcoholic libations. A few years back, we were gifted a bottle of rum liqueur from the now-defunct Dancing Pines Distillery of Estes Park, Colorado from Cindy’s parents. This rum liqueur, also known as Jumbie, is a mixture of rum, citrus, and spices whose secret blends were entrusted to the legendary spirits of the Caribbean who also share the ‘Jumbie’ appellation. Dancing Pines’ version is lightly spiced with a big bitter orange peel nose and acid-front flavors of both oranges and lemons. Frankly, the citrus overwhelms the rum so much it is difficult to tell its quality.

Given the high lemony acid load of the liqueur, and the cold temperatures outside, we elected to treat the jumbie toddy-style.

Jumbie Toddy
Holly's Original

2 ounces Dancing Pines Rum liqueur
1/4 ounce Xtabentun
4 ounces cinnamon-honey syrup

Combine ½ cup water and ¼  cup honey, and 2 2-inch Indonesian cinnamon sticks in a small pot over medium heat. Heat to just boiling, reduce to simmer. Simmer ten minutes.

In the meantime, boil one cup of water in the microwave. Split the boiling water into two 6-ounce Irish coffee mugs to warm the mugs during the remaining time the syrup is simmering.

Once the syrup is ready, pour the water out of the mugs and discard. Place 2 ounces of rum liqueur in each mug, followed by ¼ ounce of Xtabentun (Mayan liqueur), and top with 4 ounces of the cinnamon-honey syrup. Garnish with a cinnamon stick.

New York City, New York

One of the best things about America is its vastness and the diversity it inspires. My favorite series in the Firewater Lounge is the Around America series because of the uniqueness a particular location and its culture bestows on its drinks- the highbrow sophistication of the East, the no-nonsense alcohol-fronted power of the Midwest, the calm refinement of the Southern long drink, and the untamed whiskey-and-tequila-mixed cowboy history of the West.

We’ve taken in every region’s main drinking abodes- Vegas, Seattle, and San Francisco in the West; Dallas, Austin, and New Orleans in the South; Chicago, Louisville, and Milwaukee in the Midwest. And though Philly and Boston are solid, New York City is the cocktail beast of the East.

And, my friends, to our great dismay, NYC is a place that we have not visited a bar yet. Never sampled Milk & Honey, or Employees Only, or the Pegu Club, or Dead Rabbit or PDT. I know, it’s sad. However, we have had the good fortune to buzz over to the Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn to take in a tasting at Widow Jane Distillery.

Amid the modern murals and historical brick of the port-cum-art district, the Widow Jane tasting room shares space with their sister company, the chocolate maker Cacao Prieto. While the family enjoyed chunks of chocolate, I tried to convince the barkeep to part with as many low-cost tastings as possible, which was a challenge given the stingy nature of the place.

I did not leave the Widow Jane Distillery empty-handed. I brought a bottle of their bloody butcher bourbon, the most expensive alcohol purchase of my lifetime. The whiskey is made with a mash bill containing 85% bloody butcher corn, the blood-red and dark red streaked corn you sometimes see around these parts for Halloween, and 15% heirloom barley.

Now, for those of you out there who are not whiskey people, this whiskey is not red-colored, because the color of whiskey comes from the oak it’s aged in, not the mash. Widow Jane’s bloody butcher bourbon is only aged a single year, so it’s amber-colored and smells of graham crackers. Its taste is of fine quality for such a young whiskey, vanilla dry in the front and sharp with lingering tobacco in the back. A good summer’s day tipple for the rich, but probably not worth its cost generally for us Lounge Lizards. A good part of me would like to be super obnoxious enough to mix the now $300 a 375 ml bottle with Carpano and Campari to make it red-colored and enjoy it Warren Buffet-style.

By the way, that’s actually a classic cocktail, here’s the recipe!

Boulevardier

1 ½ ounce bourbon

1 ounce sweet vermouth (use Carpano)

1 ounce Campari

Stir all ingredients on ice in a mixing glass. Strain into a chilled Nick and Nora glass or coupe. Garnish with a bourbon cherry or swath of orange peel.

Smoked Pineapple Shrub

American history is replete with alcohol lore. Sea-going pilgrims needed their beer for the trip across the ocean to protect from microbes in their freshwater stores. Before they became (in)famous for disappearing completely, Roanoke colony was brewing with corn by 1584. Our founding fathers and mothers, including Benjamin Franklin, preserved their fruit supplies by converting them to vinegars and alcohols (and combining them!). It is said that John Adams drank a tankard-full of hard cider nearly daily; he lived to the ripe age of 90!

Aperol Spritz

Unusual heat has hit in the Firewater Lounge, so we have already traded our spring cocktails for our summer ones. We picked up some cans of Bollicini, sparkling wine in aluminum, obviously marketed toward the picnicking or convenience-conscious American. We bought two kinds, the cuvée and rosé. The cuvée’s nose out of the can is full of sweaty-gym shoe, the flavor is sour apple and pear. Not exactly something that I’d drink from the can. The rosé’s nose is much more pleasing, like light grapes and berries. The rosé is sharply sour. It goes without saying these little wines were meant to be chilled cold in a cooler for a backyard game of bags.

I’d much rather cocktail the Bollicinis with an inexpensive improvement to develop their flavor. Aperol, given its cost-effectiveness and availability, will fill the bill. One of the world’s best late afternoon drinks is the Aperol Spritz, considered one of Italy’s most popular aperitivos. Since the Spritz calls for sparking wine, it is just the drink I’m looking for. The classic recipe is easy to remember because its a 3-2-1.

Aperol Spritz
3 parts Bollicini sparkling wine (or prosecco)
2 parts Aperol
1 part soda water


Chill your Aperol in freezer for several hours. Refrigerate your Bollicinis and a can of soda water. Mix all ingredients in the proper proportion in a wine glass. If you like, you can build the ingredients on ice in a double-old fashioned glass and garnish with a orange wheel. This classic presentation is known specifically as a Spritz Veneziano

Green House Gin

Madison has never been the best place to buy liquor. Wisconsin is a beer-dominated place for so long, domestic and otherwise, that typically, if a Lounge Lizard wanted to get his booze on, he or she would have two main options for variety- Woodman’s or the internet. That has changed with the grand opening of Total Wines at West Towne Mall. Now, this liquor store is not quite on par with the southern Mecca that is Specs, but its selection is still impressive. Madison’s Total Wines shines most in its whiskey offerings, doubling Woodman’s stock of both bourbon and scotch. It’s thinnest at rum, however it is the only place in the area that carries Diplomatico, the Lounge’s favorite mid-priced rum. 

Since we are approaching the warmer months, we are still drinking gin in the Lounge, waiting for the mint to cast its broadest leaves. Our first purchase from Total Wines-West Towne was Green House Artisan Gin from Dallas, Texas. Right out of the bottle, this gin is elegantly perfumed with juniper, rose, and red berries. It makes a great sipper; the flavor is very sweet, with acai and raspberry coming out strong, followed by citrus with cucumber and a late kiss of juniper in the background.

If you would like to try Green House in a cocktail, our recommendation is to amplify its bergamot with a curacao or triple sec. Here is how we did it-

Green House Spiced Cocktail

2 ounces of Green House Gin

Juice of one medium blood orange

½ ounce of dry curacao (we used Pierre Fernand)

1 dropper of Bittercube Jamaican #2 bitters

Place all ingredients in an iced stirring vessel. Stir vigorously until chilled. Strain into a coupe. Garnish with mint if desired.

Herb & Lou's Infused Cubes

Wisconsin’s spring will be dramatically short this season, since we are only a week out from a huge snowfall here and it’s already April 28th. So we quickly hightailed it to the liquor store for gin, our spring go-to. We settled on a new gin to the area, Drumshanbo Gunpowder Irish Gin. The gin is beautifully presented in an azure-ribbed squat bottle adorned with a metallic-blue jackalope, the brand’s inspiration. The gin’s name comes from its signature botanicals- gunpowder tea; it’s also infused with a variety of citrus such as lemon, lime, and grapefruit. On the palate, this gin comes out powerfully with juniper, citrus, spice and then warms over with green tea, leaving tea and piney notes on the tongue.


Now the Drumshanbo is completely fine over ice but we modified

our tasting with one of Herb & Lou’s infused cubes. The cube we added was Herb & Lou’s Cecile cube, a frozen combination of cucumber, watermelon, clove, and honey. Adding a Cecile to the Gunpowder gin made an already complex gin impossibly interesting. The bite of the alcohol dimmed and the sours of the gin itself was tamed by the sweetness of the honey, which allowed fuller expression of the tea, cucumber and watermelon. If you are new to gin, a Cecile cube is the way to go. Other recommendations for a Cecile cube would be tequila, chilled vodka, triple sec, or limoncello.

Here’s our recommend pour-

Gunpowder Gin with a Cecile

1 ½ ounce Gunpowder Gin
1 Cecile ice cube from Herb & Lou

Place a Cecile cube in a coupe or Nick and Nora glass. Slowly pour gin over the cube. Sip. If you prefer to garnish, a cucumber rind would be excellent.

Chicago, The Loop, part 3

After our nightcap at Potter’s, Cindy and I thought that we ought to take in a bit of the blues, so we sauntered down to Buddy Guy’s Legends nightclub to see who was playing in the Jimmy Burns-hosted Jam. Buddy Guy’s no-frills atmosphere sports a wide-open warehouse of a room cluttered with tables and chairs around a broad stage in the center of its south wall and a shot-and-a-beer bar tightly cloistered into a back corner. The people come to Buddy’s for the music, not the drinks and, despite the weekday’s late night, the musicians put on a helluva show, gutting it out for the half-filled venue on their mics, guitars, and washboards.

As we do for all bars of this nature, I ordered double Seven and Sevens, relishing the sweet whiskey as an afterthought between and during sets. Buddy’s servers are as no-frill as the atmosphere and the Sevens came large, cheap and quick by Chicago standards. The Sevens were so good with the blues that I had to order another round.

For those of you that are too young to drink in Wisconsin, here’s how to pour the immortal Seven and Seven-

Drink: Double Seven and Seven 

Establishment: Buddy Guy’s Legends

Location: Chicago, Illinois

First Connoisseur: Every Midwestern ever

4 ounces Seagram’s Seven Crown Whiskey

8 ounces 7up

Get a solo cup. Fill with ice. Put in 7. Put in 7. Drink. Repeat.

Chicago, The Loop, part 2

The Palmer House has a long history. A originally lavish wedding gift of Potter Palmer to his wife Bertha, the Palmer House is so huge that it takes up the larger part of a city block, contains a small mall on its ground floor, and rises 25 floors to house more than 1600 guest rooms. Unfortunately for Potter Palmer, his wedding gift burned in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, just 13 days after its grand opening. Palmer was determined to rebuild; his business magnate reputation guaranteed a quick $1.7 million loan to do it. For the next 140 years, the Palmer House became the longest continually operating hotel in the nation. In the late 2000s, the Palmer House went through another $170 million renovation, just completed prior to our visit.

Beyond the open-room bar in the Palmer’s opulent lobby, the hotel also features a swanky Vegas-like cocktail lounge named Potter’s downstairs. Cindy and I dropped in for a quick round. A smartly-vested barkeep served us up a pair of Potter specialties: for me a Manhattan made from Potter’s own select barrel of Woodford and, for Cindy, Potter’s acclaimed Martinez crafted with the classic Old Tom gin that made this 1800s cocktail stand the test of time.

Drink: Martinez
Establishment: Potter’s at the Palmer House
Location: Chicago, Illinois
First Connoisseur: Cindy

1 ounce Old Tom gin
2 ounces sweet vermouth
Small barspoon of Maraschino
Dash orange bitters

The 1880s Martinez was made with Booker’s bitters which has just appeared on the market once again. Likely the Palmer House had long substituted the Booker’s with orange bitters because of its universal availability. In addition, the Martinez is usually stirred and served up in a coupe or Nick and Nora glass. However, Potter’s builds theirs over ice in an old-fashioned glass- no fuss, Midwestern style.

Chicago, The Loop, part 1

I never remember how close Chicago is. When it is only three hours to the heart of the Windy City, it is a real shame that we haven’t drank there (at least for New York City, we have a 1000 mile excuse!). To somewhat remedy this situation, we had a free weekend, though kids were in tow, to explore the Chicago Loop a bit and chart out a second, more adult, adventure in the future. 

Now the Loop is more known for its architecture than its cocktails, most notably the Willis (Sears) Tower, so we made sure to book a suitable hotel with a decent watering hole. We got a good deal off-season on the Palmer House, a historic hotel that has hosted the likes of Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Charles Dickens, Oscar Wilde, Mark Twain, and U.S. Grant. After a shopping trip and a jaunt around Millennium Park’s Cloud Gate and massive playground, the family was hungry and thirsty. A short walk led us to the venerable Exchequer, a pizza and ribs joint which has been a mainstay in the Loop since 1969. We were there for Chicago deep dish pizza- Exchequer’s The Mob pizza in particular, featuring a variety of meat and garlic. 

Now, for those of you not in the know, good Chicago deep dish takes time. Time means beer. So Cindy ordered up a Guinness, and I went to the taps with Exchequer’s ‘own’ Amber Lager. I put the ‘own’ in quotes, because Exchequer Amber is actually brewed in Wisconsin at Stevens Point Brewery, so, yeah, I drove three hours south to get a beer that’s made two hours north of the FWL. Ha!

The Exchequer Amber graced a pint glass well; deep amber, light carbonation, with a creamy half inch of white loose head. It is a clean, very lightly hopped, toffee-malted draught, something that I’d say would be a good intro beer for the novice craft beer drinker. That said, it goes great with pizza, which is it what it was made for.

My second tasting was Great Lakes Brewing’s Eliot Ness Amber, whose namesake was the nemesis of Exchequer’s most notable patron, Al Capone. The Eliot Ness came dark copper in its glass with a finger’s worth of cream-colored head. It has a yeasty aroma with a tinge of green apple. The taste is consistent with its aroma, deeply bready, a slightly grapefruit sour edge, with a bite of noble hops on the backside. Very drinkable in the Chicago cool spring air. 

After our pizza, the day was over. Time for the kids to hit the hay and us to hit the hotel bar...

Lake Louie’s Winter’s Mistress Baltic Porter

This winter Tom Porter’s Lake Louie Brewery offered a boilermaker set, Bulleit bourbon with four bottles of Winter’s Mistress baltic porter. Now, those that know me know that I hate to be a virgin to any liquid, hard or soft, and since I never had a baltic porter, I thought that Tom’s draught would be a good introduction. Plus, it came with my college bourbon, so I wasn’t risking much.

I opened a bottle of Winter’s Mistress and poured into two short 1960s jelly jar glasses for Cindy and I to try. The pour was viscous and smooth, hued of the darkest brown possible. As I raised the glass to my lips, I got a neophyte surprise- a waft of dark fruits like black currants and raspberries, sarsaparilla, anise and caramelized sugars. From the aroma, I was a bit apprehensive, since fruity beers are definitely not my favorite tipple.

I shouldn’t have been worried; the beer is not the artificial-flavored malt beverage nastiness of the domestic Frankenfruitbeer cocktail. Instead it’s flavor is malty upfront, with an immediate trailer of raspberries and currants that lingers on the palate. Its sweetness is pronounced, but even throughout. The bitterness and burnt character of other porters is nonexistent (as is customary of this beer style).

Tom is definitely on to something in selling Winter’s Mistress in a boilermaker set. And even though the Mistress is sold with Bulleit, we mixed it with our very own hand-mixed four-grain bourbon (no, you aren’t getting the recipe, don’t ask). The boilermaker procedure is varied. Some people chase whiskey with their beer. Some alternate the two drinks. Some drop the whiskey right into their beer. There seems to be no wrong way to do it, which works for us laid-back Lounge Lizards.

Cindy and I decided to drink using the alternating method in order to keep our Mistress cold and to lengthen the experience. And an exceptional experience it is for you Lounge Lizards with a sweet tooth. When a mouthful of four-grain is chased with the porter, the short burst of dark fruit is replaced with a wall of dark chocolate and toffee with long whispers of black raspberries and port.

If you want Winter’s Mistress, you better get to Woodman’s pronto before the winter ends. And if you’d like the classic boilermaker proportions, here you go:

Boilermaker

1 shot of whiskey
1 glass of beer

Method varies. Classic American is to shoot the whiskey, chase it with a beer. British-style is to drop the shot into the beer and drink. The former requires speed, the latter creates a warm beer, so if you want to lengthen the experience, alternate swallows of each or chill your whiskey prior to mixing it into your beer. Salut.