Tails of the Merman-Ep. 2: Special Delivery - With Contest

Tails of the Merman-Ep. 2: Special Delivery - With Contest
Click through to the youtube page to contribute a guess to the contest, for a fabulous prize.

ICE CRUSHERS MANUAL - a photoset on Flickr

ICE CRUSHERS MANUAL - a photoset on Flickr
Fantastic set of manual ice crushers. The photographer/collector promises a set of electric crushers soon.

Friday Cocktail - Bourbon on the Rocks

I know the Friday Cocktail and this blog in general have been a bit vacant lately, but the merman has taken over my free time. However, I recently tried my hand at seriously tasting some bourbon and writing about it and here are the results:

I currently have 4 bourbons on hand: Knob Creek, Woodford Reserve, Evan Williams: Single Barrel Vintage 1997, and 80 Strong.


I usually have Jim Beam for simple bourbon and Cokes (actually Coke Zeros which works exceptionally well with bourbon or rum if you ever do that sort of thing). And, I always have one mid-premium rotating between Knob Creek, Maker's Mark, and Woodford Reserve. I've tried not to let my palate get me into the higher priced bourbons. I've never really tried to write or talk about tasting bourbon, so this was a good opportunity to give it a try. Here's the method I followed. I pulled out 4 small glasses and poured the first bourbon, Knob Creek, about 1/2 to 3/4 oz. I took some time smelling the glass and jotted down notes, then took a sip or two for taste 1 and took notes. Then I put 2 ice cubes in and swirled them around and took notes for taste 2. Then I moved on to the next bourbon, letting the first sit in the ice cubes. After tasting all 4, I went back through tasting them again with with a little melted ice on them. Finally, I pulled out The Bourbon Companion and compared my notes with the Regan's to see if I knew anything or if they could better help me to verbalize what I tasted. Here are the results:

Knob Creek (100 proof)
Nose: Sweet, a little fruity and vanilla
Taste 1: sweet, soft for the high alcohol content
Taste 2: crisper
Taste 3: nose is sweeter with water,
Regan's Rating 90 - they also talk about berry notes which I probably just can't distinguish from fruity, and oak/carmelized sugar


Woodford Reserve:
Nose: sweet, but slightly medicinal
Taste 1: warm, welcoming, rounder, fuller
Taste 2: takes to the water quicker, smooth (90 proof)
Taste 3: woodier now
Regan's Rating 91 - they mention vanilla, caramel, toffee, and leather which I probably verbalized as warm, welcoming, rounder, and fuller


Evan Williams: Single Barrel Vintage 1997: (87 proof)
Nose: sweet, more citrus
Taste 1: corn
Taste 2: sweetest
Taste 3: very smooth, but loosing a little character
Regan's Rating 90 - they describe it as sweet and sharp which I think I got with sweet and citrus (I never got caramel, but did get herbal)


80 Strong: (80 proof)
Nose: most medicinal
Taste 1: woody
Taste 2: woody but still a bit chemically
Taste 3: chemically
This is a new bourbon and has been both panned and praised in the blogosphere. I'm a sucker for the pin-up girl gimmick. I bought 3 bottles online, which came with 3 t-shirts for about $70 shipped. It's too new for Regan's book, but I liken it to Jim Beam. If the price were similar to Beam in a local store I'd buy it for the packaging, but it's not something I'd plan on sipping.

Origins of Barbarella

The World Of Kane.
This is probably old news to many, but it was new to me. Barbarella was based on a French comic book. The World of Kane shows lots of images from the French version. Here's one from the artist's website that was translated to English:

I also found out at the artists site that in the second comic Barbarella runs a space circus. And there will be new "reinvented" Barbarella movies in the near future, which I'm simultaneously excited about and afraid of. More on all of that here: http://www.hollywoodcomics.com/forest.html

Tails of the Merman-Episode 1: LuRu Prepares for a Party

YouTube - Tails of the Merman-Episode 1: LuRu Prepares for a Party
I decided to release this in parts so it doesn't take forever. Episode II should be ready in about 2 weeks.

Please share this around, and of course comments are always nice.

now THAT's corn

now THAT's corn, originally uploaded by Mamluke.

For any FOMers who stop by.

Yard Sale Bloodbath � Super Boobs!

Yard Sale Bloodbath � Super Boobs!
snicker

The Other Night at the Wreck Bar

The Other Night at the Wreck Bar
My how this blog has suffered lately, focusing on this other project with my free time. Here's another taste:

And check out the merman's myspace page: http://www.myspace.com/meetthemerman

Tails of the Merman Trailer

YouTube - Tails of the Merman Trailer

Been a while since my last post. We were on vacation. Here's a little something we worked on while on vacation. Got some new ideas, to add, so this is just a trailer.

Also check out the Merman's myspace page: http://myspace.com/meetthemerman

Cocktail of the Week - Ti Punch

Travel Bar in Action 2, originally uploaded by Experiment 33.

Thought I'd give everyone a break from our surrealist cocktails and share something new we tried. Ti Punch is popular in the French Caribbean. The Ti is short for petite. It is simply a mixture of lime juice, simply syrup, and rum that is traditionally served in a way that each person makes his or her own. This is currently the drink of the month at the Fraternal Order of Moai and skitiki has provided a nice introduction over there. Four our ti punches, I went with a wine glass full of ice, juice of one lime, healthy splash of simple syrup, topped with rum. It was perfect four our Bed and Breakfast in Key West last weekend as we celebrated our lucky 13th wedding anniversary.

Cheers!

More pics from the weekend here.

Cocktail of the Week - Sidecar

Classic Sidecar, originally uploaded by chipandandy.

1oz Brandy
1oz Cointreau
1oz Lemon Juice

Shake with ice and strain into a cocktail glass. An old classic served on decadent Sunday because it was very popular in Paris around the heyday of the Surrealists. The name is said to have come about due to an eccentric army captain who was chauffeured to and from the bar in a motorcycle sidecar.

Cheers!

Friday Cocktail - Golden Cadillac

Golden Cadillac, originally uploaded by chipandandy.

3/4 oz Galliano
3/4 oz White Creme de Cacao
3/4 oz Cream

Shake with ice and strain into a cocktail glass, or other serving vessel. After assessing the cost of our ebay glass slippers, I convinced LuRu to give some local thrift stores and flea markets a shot. She thought I was a little crazy, but the results were fantastic. We only found 2 suitable shoes, but the fish is my favorite anyway.

This was my first time using Galliano, but certainly not my last. It has an anise taste and smell, but it's much rounder and softer than Pernod and has many other herbs.

You may notice the glue sticks in the background. I think we must have played the newspaper poetry game with this round. LuRu and I cut interesting words and phrases out of newspaper headlines for the past week or so and tossed them into a hat. People pulled them out and glued them to a sheet of paper to form "poems."

Here are a few shots of the drinks being drunk:

Had to use a straw for the open slipper.

The boot worked very well.

Kissy the fishy. I love this as a glass.

Cheers!

Friday Cocktail - Velvet Hammer

Velvet Hammer, originally uploaded by chipandandy.

Shake equal parts:

Tia Maria
Cointreau
Heavy Cream

with ice and strain into cocktail glass, or glass slipper. Your choice. This is another one from our Surrealist Sunday. Early on after we decided upon this theme, LuRu got the idea she wanted people to drink from shoes with the surreal symbolism. Onto ebay and we quickly bid on these three darlings, and several others. After winning the auction and realizing that the shipping made the price not nearly as reasonable, we stopped at three. Each couple shared a slipper, and a second creamy cocktail was served in different containers (cliffhanger).

When it was time to decide what to put in the glass slippers, LuRu thought we should drink a warm, salty, creamy drink. Well, Decadent Sundays are supposed to be about the drinks first, so that idea was nixed, but I kept the creamy part. The cocktail itself was a quite lovely desert drink. Not nearly as heavy as I imagined. I'm guessing due to the vigorous shaking with ice. It paired well with the incredible merange desert.

There are tons of variations on the velvet hammer, some using vanilla ice cream, others adding vodka, still others with creme de cacao. You can check out 16 or so of these recipes at ZuckerBlog.

Oh, and Chip added his photos as well as scans of the results of our surrealist parlour games to the Decadent Sundays Pool on flickr. If you want to read any small print, click the icon for all sizes above the picture and choose the large size. Original size is even bigger, but at least on my test case it flipped the image sideways and made it less easy for me to read than the large size.

Gin(ny) in the bottle

Gin(ny) in the bottle, originally uploaded by shpankme.

For Chip, who's a big fan of Hendrick's.

Now that's what I call a party

Penway Party 1, originally uploaded by Namey McNamerson.

Everyone into the girdle. Don't ask any questions.

Friday Cocktail for Friday the 13th - Corpse Reviver

DSCF1721, originally uploaded by Lokis world.

Wanted to share something a little ghoulish for Friday the 13th. The Corpse Reviver shown here is the darker cocktail in the back. There are at least 3 radically different Corpse Reviver recipe's, but this is regarded as the original created by Frank Meier at the Ritz Bar, Paris, in the 1920s.

Corpse Reviver #1
1 oz brandy
2/3 oz sweet vermouth - Vya highly recommended, I think it makes the drink
2/3 oz Calvados or Applejack

Stir with ice and strain into a cocktail glass.

The lighter cocktail is the Dubonnet Cocktail. If you like gin martinis with a twist over vodka and/or olives, this is heavenly.

Dubonnet Cocktail
1 1/2 oz Dubonnet
1 1/2 oz Gin

Stir with ice and strain into a cocktail glass.

Dubonnet is an aromatic wine, so it's in the vermouth family, but it is very light and crisp, with a little sweetness to it. I like olives, but I've always preferred my martini's with a twist. Now that I've found Dubonnet, I'll have this instead everytime at home. Dubonnet is not very expensive. I think I picked up my 750ml bottle for about $12. Store it in the fridge with your other vermouths.

So, you might be asking, why 2 cocktails, and what's with the eyeball. Well, the photo is from the recent Decadent Sunday party we hosted with the theme of surrealism. The "glasses" are actually a salt and pepper shaker set, sans caps. The eyes were printed on sticker paper and stuck on the caddy. The afternoon was filled with classic cocktails, mostly from when the surrealists were peaking (between WWI and WWII), though these both date to the 20s. We also played a number of surrealist games.

One of the games had us making poetry using opposites. Each person wrote a sentence at the top of the page, then passed it to someone else. The second person wrote a sentence with an opposite meaning, then folded the paper so the first sentence was not visible and passed the paper again. After a while, we'd decide the round was over and read the complete "poems." I paired these drinks with this game because of the opposite natures of the colors of the drinks.

I'll post more of the recipes and photos from this afternoon in future Friday Cocktail posts. If you want to check out some of the photos, the participants started a flickr group: http://flickr.com/groups/decadentsundays to share our photos. They're a little out of order, and I haven't added my shots from Surreal Sunday yet, but Loki has several and I have to thank him for this shot.

Cheers!

Slide Fun

Slide Fun, originally uploaded by Metal Chris.

I love it when people don't take themselves too seriously.

Friday Cocktail: Caribe Cocktail

Caribe Cocktail, originally uploaded by Experiment 33.

Posting the cocktail early today because we're off snorkeling this afternoon. Enjoy!

3/4 oz lemon juice
1 oz Pineaple juice
1 1/2 oz rum

Shake with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

Cheers!

Happy Independence Day - Retro Thing: Past Presidents Immortalized As Avon Aftershave

Retro Thing: Past Presidents Immortalized As Avon Aftershave

Thank you Retro Thing for making blogging worthwhile on this Independence Day. Check out the commentary over there. And, please use plenty of sunblock, and keep your fingers away from the firecrackers.

cocktailnerd: Fight Night! Channel Knives - A blog of most things cocktail and alcohol related

cocktailnerd : Fight Night! Channel Knives

Great review of 3 different channel knives, very thorough, nice photos. I use a channel knife, similar to the cheap one, for lemon twists and other garnishes. I've been thinking it's a bit dull, so now I know there are some other options out there.