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.

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.

Kill Devil 17 Rum

Roughly two and a half years ago, we were happy as a clam in the FWL that the Cuban Embargo was lifted on limited amounts of alcohol. Immediately, we grabbed bottles of classic Havana Club and one of my favorite rums ever, Santiago de Cuba. This Christmas, I snared a bottle of Kill Devil 17 Year for Cindy, our third and maybe last bottle of Cuban rum for sometime. This week, President Trump plans to limit American freedoms in regards to Cuba for no known reason other than because Obama relaxed the embargo. No matter what you think of President Trump, and we don’t get too much into politics here in the FWL, the only thing that Trump has accomplished thus far is to attempt to erase Obama’s legacy through executive order, even if it means that you do the most unAmerican thing you can- attack the American freedom to drink. I am hoping like hell that Trump leaves the cigar and rum provisions alone, otherwise, true blue Lizards of the Lounge will remember the slight. Any changes we hear about, we will throw it in the comments of this article below.

In the meantime, here’s a rum that you may stand to lose in the re-embargo- the Kill Devil 17 Year (actually you probably won’t be able to find our 1998 expression, period, because the bottles of its single cask are sold out, but the 1999 expression is still around). Distilled in Sancti Spiritus Distillery in Cuba, the Kill Devil 17 pours out straw in color and delivers a nose-worth of vanilla and black pepper. It’s a hefty 92 proof, so it’s a bit hot to drink straight, but its long, slightly tobacco finish can withstand a splash of water. We mixed ours with Montenegro to a welcome effect, though a myriad of amari would let this dry Cuban sing.

Derry, New Hampshire

On our way up to Manchester, New Hampshire, we took a quick detour to a meadery that we were interested in outside Derry. For those of you that have never had mead, essentially it is honey wine. Basic mead, obviously, lacks the characteristic grape tannins found in tradition red wine, which dry out the wine (make it much less sweet). Specialty meads, then, often balance the meads out using the bitter tannins in other flavors to great effect such as tea, dark chocolate, cloves, pomegranates, oak and coffee. Moonlight Meadery, the small meadery we tracked down, specializes in mind-blowing mead concoctions that have to be tasted to be believed.

Moonlight Meadery, like wineries and breweries, offers a number of tastings and tours; we elected the ‘Queen Bee’ Sample flight of seven meads. The seven we tried were the blackberry semi-sweet Mischief, the cranberry sweet Au Naturel, the cinnamon Kurt’s Apple Pie, the barrel-aged Virtue, the vanilla Madagascar, the gingery Deviant, and coffee-chocolate Seduction.
We ended up purchasing three meads: Madagascar, Deviant and Seduction, the last two, we pictured here. The Deviant is a lively combination of apple and ginger, which is a great palate cleanser and would make for a wonderful summer brunch mead. On the other hand, the Seduction is a smooth mix of chocolate, vanilla, and Sumatra coffee. On the palate, it's chocolatey-blunted acidity melts into mellow coffee notes which makes for a great dessert mead. Both meads, as you see, are absolutely beautiful in a glass.

Creepy

As we endure the last cold snap of spring and look toward a new season of Showtime’s Penny Dreadful, it’s time we finished off some of our late winter/early spring brews. In this post, we’ll take a look at some beers with creepy, unsettling, and downright nasty labels and taste what kinds of sudsy goodness is inside. Let’s start with downright nasty. Indiana’s Three Floyds Brewing Company brewed a limited overhopped amber ale called Amber Smashed Face whose label prominently displays a dozen ghouls in different stages of decomposition based of the visuals of the metal band Cannibal Corpse. I’m not really sure who this is marketed to, but I guess Wisconsin metalheads with spending money reserved for craft beer and a Halloween vice like us will buy something like this, but we are probably a limited audience. The Amber Smashed Face (which is a wordplay off of Cannibal Corpse’s much-loved song Hammer Smashed Face for the uninitiated) is solidly carbonated and pours out a orange butter color with a loose, but lingering foamy head. Can’t say this is a beautiful beer. The nose is suddenly hoppy with a touch of pine. There’s no doubt that it is, as the bottle says, ‘aggressively hopped’ since it smells and tastes like an IPA. The lacing held down the pilsner glass as I drank in the way I really like, but if you are looking to drink an amber, this isn’t it. It’s worth a try, though, especially if you like IPAs.

Our next beer is Stillwater Artisanal’s Folklore untraditional stout with its label adorned with a satyr-like harlequin bedecked with two stark-faced sisters playing violins. Trollway Liquors touted this beer at checkout and they are not wrong. This is my favorite beer since Lake Louie’s Twins maibock last year at this time. It pours out black with a finger’s worth of tan head like a stout would. The aroma is even, roasted malt and pleasing. On the palate, Folklore is a wonderfully-balanced blend of coffee, dark chocolate, and roasted malt with a touch of smoke in the background. Stillwater did such a great job balancing this beer, I triple-dog dare you to guess the ABV. You won’t be close. This beer is so great with hard cheese.

The last of the trio of creepy labels feature a hooded and skeletonized dark angel raising a chalice to the heavens (or hells). The beer is O’so Brewing’s Liquid Soul Imperial Stout and it fits this beer style nicely. In the glass, Liquid Soul sits in pitch black stillness capped with a frothy dark beige head with little lacing. The nose is slight, with roasty malt and raisins. The taste echoes its nose, dates and other dark fruit, roasted malt, and coffee melting away with bittersweet smoked chocolate. I love O’so. It’s hard to argue that they aren’t the best craft brewery in Wisconsin right now.

Greenbush Bar

Anyone who knows bourbon knows that the best place to drink it in Madison is in the bowels of the Italian Workmen’s Club on Regent. Said cozy domain is the home of the Greenbush Bar, a proud, but common sort of place, illuminated all year long by Christmas lights and densely-filled with the heavenly aromas of pizza which feed the hungry Greenbush denizens in a near constant stream from open to close. 

Cindy and I had been out a bit early in the evening and knowing the Greenbush closes long before Wisconsin bartime, we quickly headed down to the bar. There we started on a bourbon flight that bordered on fantastic.

The first bourbon we picked was the Buffalo Trace 1997 Experimental Double-Barrelled. This bad boy was given the traditional Buffalo Trace treatment for four years and then re-barreled in 2001 for more oak punch. The result is a success, in our opinion- a bourbon full of caramel and cinnamon (notes of the natural spice, not Fireball fake syrup) with a whole lot of oak sweetness on the finish. At 90 proof, this is a bourbon aching to be opened up with water, especially for those who may chafe at its over-woodiness.

The second bourbon we tried was Jefferson’s Ocean, a different kind of bourbon which is aged on boats in a tropical climate thereby accelerating the aging process. The bourbon enters the wood easier during the heat of the day and the motion of the ship. At night the barrel contracts, expressing more of the now-wooded whiskey. The result is an interesting savory bourbon that isn’t exactly salty, but has a brine-like character that is hard to describe. I wanted to say it had some vegetal flavor, but Cindy disagreed; the finish was full of oak, sweet and hints of brown sugar. At $200 dollars a bottle, I doubt I’d spend that kind of money on this bourbon.

The last bourbon we had was the Elmer T. Lee Single Barrel Sour Mash. It delivered the yeast on the nose and, on first sip, brings the toasted oak and vanilla-caramel that Buffalo Trace is known for. The finish trails off pleasantly to bread sours, wood, and a hint of tobacco. I would be hard pressed to find three bourbons as distinct as these for the value that the Greenbush provides. Shhh, though! It’s hard enough to get a place at the bar now!

Chocolate Brew Face-Off

As the weather gets cooler again, we will shift gears and highlight a four brew face-off between chocolate stouts. Of craft beers, chocolate stouts and ales are some of the best beers to make great beer cocktails. Chocolate stouts and ales play well with coffee liqueur, cream liqueurs like Amarula, dark and navy rums and many amari like Averna. Bitters like Angostura, Bokers, and Aphrodite bitters can add more depth and interest to your beer cocktail. So which one should you try? How about these-

Bell’s Brewery Beers

Bell's Brewery Porter and
Bell's Brewery Kalamazoo Stout

One good thing about a big warehouse liquor store like Woodman’s is that you can readily buy great beers a bottle at a time without the fear that your 99 rated porter smells and tastes like a skunk’s butt because it has been sitting on the shelf since 1987. Woodman’s also pulls out some of the highest-rated brews especially for impulse buying; it works because we occasionally snag some of these brews to see what the fuss is about.

Fox Barrel Pear Cider

We haven’t reviewed hard cider in a few years so we grabbed a Fox Barrel from Viking Liquor up in Reedsburg. I was intrigued by the label since it declared that it was flavored similarly to a Belgian ale. Fermented by Belgian Wit yeast which is fed honey, Fox Barrel is also mixed with orange peel and coriander for complexity.

The pour is a pale yellow and noses a bit of yeast and a bit of honey, but mostly pear. I was expecting a sweet pear flavor, which I got upfront, but was surprised on the heavy tide of coriander on the finish. Honey is present throughout, although the finish almost makes Fox Barrel savory. The orange peel bitterness is lost; in fact, there isn’t much pf a trace of orange in it at all, which isn't a detriment since the lack of bitterness and acid allows for summer day-drinking last all day long without gut rot.

Now, it looks like Fox Barrel themselves are no longer. They have sold out to Crispin, so to try their version of this pear hard cider, you have to look for Lion Belge pear cider under the Crispin label.

As for a cocktail using this pear cider, try a shandy made with your favorite lager 1 to 1 with pear cider (known as a Snakebite). Or replace the pineapple juice with pear cider in a modified Pepper Pot. Recipe below.


Pepper Pot
Drinking Notes

5 ounces chilled pear hard cider
1 ounce amaretto
3-5 dashes Tabasco (or muddled Jalapeno)
splash freshly-squeezed lemon juice
pinch cayenne pepper
pinch curry powder

Pour all ingredients, except curry, into an iced highball glass. Stir gently. Top with curry if desired.

D.O.R.I.S. the Destroyer Double Imperial Stout

We don't normally buy anything because of the label, but you have to love a beer named after a frog called D.O.R.I.S. the Destroyer. This 22 ouncer is a huge beer - a strong meaty aroma and long complex savory taste. From Akron, Ohio's, Hoppin' Frog Brewery, Doris pours out like motor oil. Like a lot of the aspects of this stout, we are not altogether sure if this is a good or a bad thing. When pouring, the label urges you to 'pour carefully to avoid disturbing the natural yeast sediment in the bottom of the bottle.' For us at the Lounge, we didn't like this advice. First, it left us a lousy head, thin and laceless. Second, we didn't have the breadiness that would help Doris' savory balance. Luckily, since Doris comes in 22 ouncers, you can pour it both ways to see which way you like it.

Karben4 Block Party

Finally Karben4 has a second beer in a bottle. The best young Madison brewery has been wowing restaurant goers for a couple of years now with its little beauties like Lady Luck and NightCall on tap but had resisted bottling until last years offering Fantasy Factory IPA. While Fantasy Factory is good, we at the Firewater Lounge had been waiting for what Karben4 is known for: a big malted draught. Look no further because Block Party is here (although you may have to wait a bit since we took the last six-pack from Woodman’s and left a huge hole in the rack labelled ‘Karben4’).

Block Party is a medium-bodied American Amber Ale. It pours out a hazy, dark amber-red with a finger-and-a-half head that dies quickly. It smells full of bread with hops underneath with a bit of citrus. Drinking Block Party is easy. Smooth and clean, less hoppy than even its muted aroma, this beer is all about biscuity malts and a tint of floral citrus. On hot days, you’ll drink a growler in no time and look for more. It’s wonderful clean flavor makes it a great partner to food, but not cocktails, since it would become lost quickly. Our recommendation is to enjoy it with pretzels, pizza, and tacos.

Lake Louie's The Twins

If there’s one thing that completely irritates us in the Firewater Lounge about greenhorn bandwagon beer snobs in the popular craft beer scene, it’s the idea that the hoppier the beer the more sophisticated and good it is. So these so-called connoisseurs choke down an extra Indian, extra pale ale with extra, super-modified hoppy hops and proclaim how awesome it is, while holding back bitter tears and a gag reflex that would impress Katie Morgan. It would be akin to us handing a Firewater Lounge Lizard a cocktail composed of Angostura and Peychaud bitters alone, promise its tastiness, and promptly watch said Lizard spew it back over our virtual bar, screaming, ‘What is that crap!'

Bitterness is a characteristic that is rarely the star; to get it to intelligently perform in your beverage, you need to know your craft. To drink bitterness intelligently, you need to understand what balance in a drink means. That means you must drink more than IPAs to understand and appreciate good beers. So let’s point you in a good direction.

Texas Beers - Drinking Notes

This summer we went south. That we would bring back liquid treats was a given. And with stops in
Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas, we ended up with a lot of treats! To start with, let's expose you to two of the tastier beers we came across in Texas. First up is Real Ale Brewing's Devil's Backbone Belgian-style tripel from Blanco, Texas.

Cream Soda - Drinking Notes

The Hollenberger’s favorite pop, cream soda, never lasted very long in the domain. My sister and I love it, but we’d also have to fight Dad for them. The very first bottle of liquor I ever bought was Bacardi 151 (yikes, I know) which obviously needed to be mixed. I had an idea of what it would taste like, so I picked up some A&W cream soda as a mixer knowing that I’d drink the A&W regardless. I actually made my first drink that night; a cloying concoction of cream soda, peppermint schnapps and 151 named ‘cream silk’ because it hid the 151 burn quite well.

Milwaukee, Downtown, Part I

When Cindy and I got a chance to break away from the kids for the weekend and everyone knows it's time to try some new establishments and old haunts. We stayed close to home this time, kicking up our heels in Milwaukee, one of my favorite places to imbibe. And imbibe I did, so I will take you through my wonderful tour of downtown, Walker's Point, and Mitchell Street neighborhoods.

Simon Creek Hazelnut Port - Drinking Notes

If we neglect anything in the Firewater Lounge, it is probably wine. The Badger State is known for beer and brandy which sends the Wollersheims and the Door County wineries to the back burner. It's a shame too, since Wisconsin sports some really stunning wines and meads that deserve wider appeal. One of these overlooked vineyards is Sturgeon Bay's Simon Creek Vineyard and Winery. Less commercial than Door Peninsula, Simon Creek offers a number of interesting selections from muscats to merlots, from  Gewurztraminer to their table wine Untouchable Red.

The bottle that we were most interested in was their Hazelnut Port. Port is a favorite cocktail ingredient because its higher proof and bolder flavor holds up to strong spirits. Simon Creek's Hazelnut Port is no exception - its velvety sweetness, deep fruit and moderate spice holds up in bourbon and brandy well while proving itself eminently drinkable in its own right. We are a bit worried here in the FWL that the Hazelnut Port was a limited bottle for Simon Creek since it doesn't seem to be offered on its website (maybe it is seasonal), however, given the quality of this winery, it is worth your while to stop in post-Packer game to taste-test a few bottles yourself. Their Speakeasy Red table wine (pictured) makes for a wine for cheesecake or a replacement for cocktails that call for Dubonnet.

Recreation of Shackleton's 1907 Mackinlay Scotch - Drinking Notes

 My favorite Christmas present this year was a bottle of scotch. Cindy procured a bottle of the recreated 1907 scotch whisky from the ill-fated Shackleton expedition to the South Pole from 1907-1909. The whisky was buried under the hut that Shackleton and his crew built as a staging ground for his expedition. See more here and here. The whisky was then abandoned under ice until their rediscovery nearly 100 years later in 2007. The recovered bottles were analyzed by  Richard ‘The Nose’ Paterson, Master Blender at Whyte & Mackay, the owners of the original Mackinlay brand. They then painstakingly recreated the whisky.

Tallgrass Vanilla Bean Buffalo Sweat - Drinking Notes

We had the K. Family Christmas in Iowa this year, which is a great time to dive into the local liquor stores for some new draughts for the Firewater Lounge. I knew that I had a beer cocktail that I have had on the back-burner for a while from a trip to South Dakota (recipe coming to the FWL soon...) and that it included a topper of Tallgrass Buffalo Sweat Stout. The craft beer revolution plugs the Wisconsin market with a myriad of small state breweries, which is good, but if you want something out-of-state, you often have to go out-of-state.

Tallgrass Brewing resides in Kansas, so I found some Buffalo Sweat in the Hy-Vee in Dubuque, which is a very manageable drive for us southwestern Wisconsites. Their Vanilla Bean version of their best-selling oatmeal cream stout is a mixture of vanilla, chocolate, and coffee. The pour is deep and dark with a frothy mocha head. If you like sweet stouts, this is the sweetest I've had. It starts with all its creaminess up front - a taste akin to a chocolate malted milkshake stirred with a vanilla bean. It finishes with an equally thick espresso note. You can taste nothing of its 5% ABV. Ond of Cindy's and Yukon Cornelius' winter favorites.

Kentucky Bourbon - Drinking Notes

There is nothing better in the world than bourbon whiskey. That said, it follows that if you subscribe to these sentiments and you have time to vacation, Kentucky must be your destination. So, this June we grabbed up Heidi and the kids, threw them into the rusty van, and headed south to some of the best bourbon distilleries in the world, including Woodford, Willett, and Four Roses. We also sampled numerous other bourbons at various locations including Eagle Rare, Old Forester, Booker’s, Maker’s 46, Hudson baby bourbon, and, yes, even the immortal Pappy Van Winkle (even have the bottle to prove it). We thought that maybe you might like to know which ones we liked best. How about this selection of six?