Over the past several months, I've taken an interest in gourmet or hand crafted cocktails. Ever since our visit to Bevy about a year ago with their house made syrups and infused liquors all the way to Hank's (of Hank's Haute Dogs) penchant for my "Asian Grace" with St Germain, Canton ginger liqueur and Q-Tonic, it got me thinking about new cocktails. Perhaps it's semi-genetic since cocktails are simply compounded liquors and which trade started the compounding business? Pharmacists!
But one thing led to another and I recently started seeing barrel aged cocktails in the food and wine publications so I did a web search and low and behold, found Oak Barrels Ltd which sells oak barrels as small as 1 liter all the way up to 20 liter for the serious mixologist. I started with the 1 liter (with hints from cocktail blogger thecocktalian.
First try to shake out as much debris as possible (oak chips and dust) then insert the spigot with a rubber mallet and fill with water to let the oak staves swell and create an almost waterproof seal. I let it sit for 1 week then emptied and filled it with my standard Manhattan - 3 parts rye whickey (I prefer rye to bourbon) and in this case Bulleit 95 Rye. I was a little short of 24 ounces so I added a bit of Redemption Rye.
To 1 part of sweet vermouth. No fancy Punt e Mes or Dolin or Carpano, just Noilly Prat from the local drugstore.
And since I love bitters, 24 drops of Angostura and 12 drops of Peychauds along with 3 teaspoons of liquid from your standard Maraschino cherry bottle. Of course while my libation was brewing (like Milton the Monster) for 2 weeks, I had to make sure I had glass vessels to store the finished product in and that's where my Martin Miller gin bottles came in handy. They hold 1 liter versus your standard 750ml liquor bottle.
So after 2 weeks, I filtered the barrel aged Manhattan and did a blind tasting for the Mrs. I poured a standard "fresh" Manhattan (though made with all Redemption rye, I don't think it influenced our evaluation of both products). Both were poured over tennis ball sized ice cubes from the Tovolo ice mold (you definitely have to get these ice molds if you love cocktails). First sip of the "fresh".... cough, cough (the Mrs isn't really into hi-octane cocktails). Now a sip of the aged... Mmmmmm!
As you can see, the aged cocktail on the right is a lot darker and I'll put it this way. It adds another 3 to 4 "o"s to SMOOOOOTHE!
I've already rinsed and refreshed the barrel the with water and filled it with my standard Negroni. Since this is the barrel's second pass, I'll let the cocktail age for 3 weeks instead of 2 weeks. Supposedly, you can age 4 or 5 different cocktails before the oak gives everything it has and simply turns into a bar decoration. But in the meantime, rest nicely my fine Negroni until we meet again...
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