Tag: lemon juice

Cocktail of the Week: French 75

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You know what’s better than a Tom Collins? A Tom Collins with Champagne in it! We’ve had a bottle of the bubbly sitting in our fridge for awhile and I decided I wanted to do something with it. Something other than a Bellini. Friends had a few recommendations. The French 75 ended up winning.

The ingredients
The ingredients

French 75

  • 1 oz. gin
  • 1 oz. fresh lemon juice
  • 1/2 oz. simple syrup
  • champagne (around 2 oz.)

Add gin, lemon juice, and syrup to shaker filled with ice. Shake. Strain ingredients into a Collins glass filled with cracked ice. Top with champagne. I has some frozen raspberries so I tossed a few of those on as a garnish.

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Doesn’t look like much, does it? That’s okay though because it taste’s great. D and I took these out on the back porch last evening and sipped them as the sunset. The French 75 was the perfect treatment for the 97 degree weather. After drinking this I don’t know if I can ever go back to a regular ol’ Tom Collins.

Cocktail of the Week: Gin and Sin

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I’m not quite sure how I stumbled upon this cocktail. I think I was looking for cocktails that had cranberry juice in them. Of course, that is a lot of cocktails, but this one had gin and fruit juice and I was hopeful!

The ingredients
The ingredients

Gin and Sin

  • 1 1/2 oz. Gin
  • 1 oz. Orange juice
  • 1 oz. Lemon juice
  • 1/2 tsp. Grenadine or Cranberry juice
  • Fresh cranberries

In a shaker half-filled with ice cubes, combine all of the ingredients. Shake well. Strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a few cranberries.

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But, either I made it wrong or it’s just not that good. D thought it tasted like cough syrup. I thought it was much too sour. Maybe the lemons were too tart? Maybe the orange was sour? I don’t know, but this was the first time I’ve made a cocktail and not liked the end result. When I try it again, I will use a sweet lemon and use less of its juice, more orange juice and maybe some cranberry simple syrup, something with a lot more sweet in it, than just juice or a splash of grenadine.

Cocktail of the Week: Shandy

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Seems the Shandy gets a bad rap.  Before making them I thought this might have something to do with the low regard in which people hold mainstream American beer. Also, the low regard mainstream beer has of itself… The cocktail has a long history in the UK and Germany (where it is known as the Radler). But, on this side of the Atlantic I’ve never heard anyone order it or seen anyone drink it.The most common recipe for the cocktail is really simple: equal parts beer and soda, usually a ginger ale or lemon/lime soda. That’s fine but I wanted to class the drink up a little and I didn’t have any Sprite or 7Up. I did some looking around the internet and found a few alternative recipes and using them as a guide and a little experimentation I came up with this.

The ingredients
The ingredients

Shandy

  • 8 oz. blonde beer (I used a lager from the local brewery)
  • 4 oz. ginger ale (I had ginger beer so I used that)
  • 2 oz. fresh lemon juice
  • lemon slices for garnish

Pour into glass and stir.

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Turns out, It looks as tastes as good as it look…

These were a disappointment. D couldn’t finish her’s; she said it tasted too much like beer. I thought mine tasted like ginger beer with lemon in it. Perhaps I could have used more beer? Perhaps I should have just gone with the traditional recipe and used ginger ale or Sprite? Or maybe I needed a different beer? I don’t know… I like to have my cocktails be a little escape from the day and the Shandy didn’t offer that. It’s a mediocre beer or a mediocre soda. Why drink that when you can have a superb beer or a superb soda? Or better, a superb cocktail?

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