The Week in Home Cocktailing July 24, 2016 Part I

The week ending July 24, 2016 saw a flurry of cocktail activity with a literary flair. The birthdays of authors Ernest Hemingway and Raymond Chandler were on July 21st and July 23rd respectively. I would be negligent to let the birthdays of these two bon-vivants pass without having a celebratory cocktail in their honor. Without further ado, let's see what I came up.

On July 3rd I celebrated the passing of Ernest Hemingway by making the Hemingway Daiquiri. In keeping with the daiquiri theme, for his birthday I decided to make what is known as the Papa Doble. This cocktail is made as a frozen drink and is a powerhouse of a cocktail.

Though I found this cocktail to be really strong, it was very refreshing. I can see why Hemingway would have five or six of these in a sitting while at La Floridita in Havana. Like him, I had multiple drinks. The difference being is that I decided to experiment with different rums. 

As the image above shows, I used the Real McCoy 3-year rum for the first cocktail. For the second cocktail I used the 1.5oz Real McCoy in conjunction with an 1.5oz of Cruzan® Black Strap Rum. I really like the addition of the Black Strap to the cocktail. The molasses flavor gives the cocktail an added level of flavor. I highly recommend it, using equal proportion of light and dark rum. 

For the third drink, I decided to use 3oz of Ron Abuelo Añejo rum. I was really expecting something exciting from the use of an añejo in the frozen drink. I was highly disapointed. I found the cocktail to be somewhat sour and really lacking. It was unappetizing to say the least.  

Here is the video I posted to YouTube on my initial take on the Papá Doble Frozen Cocktail:

For Raymond Chandler, I decided to make the cocktail that he describes in his novel The Long Goodbye. In the exchange between his protagonists Philip Marlowe and Terry Lennox at Victor's Bar in Los Angeles, Lennox describes why he likes Gimlets. Here is how the cocktail is described:

We sat in the corner bar at Victor’s and drank gimlets. “They don’t know how to make them here,” he said. “What they call a gimlet is just some lime or lemon juice and gin with a dash of sugar and bitters. A real gimlet is half gin and half Rose’s Lime Juice and nothing else. It beats martinis hollow.”

Now I already knew that this cocktail would be very tart. I had a brief conversation with Joel P., who told me that he had the Chandler version of the cocktail and that some much Rose's Lime Juice gave the cocktail a somewhat artificial feel to it. That he prefers his Gimlets with fresh lime juice and a splash of Rose's Lime Juice. For the sake of research, I decided to make it as Chandler described in his book.














As I already surmised the cocktail was very tart and I can see what Joel meant about it being artificial. Its not unappetizing in the least if you like tart cocktails. Hey it was Chandler's birthday, who am I to argue with his way of making Gimlets. Right?

Here is the video I posted to YouTube after I tasted the Gimlet from Raymond Chandler's the Long Goodbye:

For Part II of the week in home cocktailing ending July 24th, I'll be profiling an infusion I made with La Certeza Tequila Reposado in preparation for National Tequila Day, which was celebrated on July 24th. I initially was going to prepare one cocktail and ended up making two different drinks. Come back to see what I made.

Until Then Happy Drinking,
SiscoVanilla
#SiscoVanilla
#SiscoVanillaAtTheMovies
#SiscoVanillaAtTheBookstore