The Constante Daiquiri.

The bar , La Florida later El Floridita was opened in 1819. It was called La Piña de Plata "The Silver Pineapple". Located next to one of the old city gates of the former “Villa San Cristóbal de La Habana”, so to speak, the “complete” description of Havana. In the early days of The Silver Pineapple, it used to mainly attract dandies, musicians, artists, military, patrons, etc. The first U.S. military invasion was this bar and the starting point for American alcohol connoisseurs. After 1902, when Cuba became a republic, the bar got the name LA FLORIDA to EL FLORIDITA.

Constante – the inventor of frozen daiquiri, were born in Catalonia, Spain. He came to Cuba in 1924, and joined the Floridita bar in 1928 along with two other waiters. Constante later took large loans and bought off the Floridita bar from the two partners and became the sole owner. The name Ernest Hemingway goes synonymously with Cuba and it isn't a surprise that Hemingway dedicated his favorite bartender in his novel "Islands in the South" to Constante - a character named "Constant".

He was the undisputed "King of Cocktails". At his death in 1952, wrote Ernest Hemingway: "The master of all barmen is dead. He invented Floridita ... "

Image: Original-Daiquiri-recipe from Mr. Cox to Facundo Bacardi - BACARDI ARCHIVES MIAMI

“Origin is disclosed of Daiquiri Cocktail
One Group of American Engineers Named Drink at Santiago Bar

During prohibition Havana was the mecca for Americans

One day, a group of American engineers who had come into town from the Daiquiri mines were imbibing their favorite drink in this restful spot. It was one of those wonderful rum concoctions made from Ron Bacardi. A jovial fellow by the name of COX spoke up. „Caballeros Y amigos, we have been enjoying this delicious mixture for some time, but strange to admit the drink has no name. Don‘t you think it is about time something was done to extricate us from this sad predicament“ It was unanimously agreed that the drink should be named without further procrastination. There was silence for several minutes as each man became immersed in deep though. Suddenly Cox‘s voice was heard again. „I have it, men! Let‘s call it the Daiquiri“ And so it was christened. Originally it was a tall drink, the glass being packed with cracked ice and a teaspoonful of granulated sugar poured over the ice. The juice of one or two limes was then squeezed in and two or three ounces of Bacardi added. The glass was frosted by stirring a long handled spoon for serveral minutes..."

Daiquiri

Cuban light Rum 60 ml

Fresh Lime juice 25 ml

Granulated sugar 1.5 

Bar-spoon

Add sugar and lime juice.stir to mix and taste. 

Add ice and a large portion of Rum.Shake and double strain on a chilled coupette glass. 

Garnish- Float a thinly sliced lime wheel.

note: the amount of ingredients should be in descending order, so u taste more rum, followed by lime which is binded and softened with a hint of sweetener and the dilution that comes from shaking with ice)

Hemingway Daiquiri

Light Rum 2 oz

Fresh lime juice 0.25 oz

Fresh grapefruit juice 0.5 oz

Sugar 1 tsp

Luxardo Maraschino liqueur 1 tsp

Shake and strain on a chilled coupette glass. (But Hemingway liked his with no sugar and blended version)

Source: Club de Cantineros

In the Spirit of the Royal Wedding.

Hundreds of thousands of people are expected to mark the royal wedding with a street party this coming Friday, but plenty more will be celebrating in Britain’s bars. Many operators are planning a weekend-long party after the government allowed them to stay open until 1am on the nights of Friday 29th and Saturday 30th, and special wedding-themed cocktails have been appearing on menus.
Quintessential English ingredients have been used by mixologist Tristan Stephenson of London bars Purl and the soon-to-open Worship Street Whistling Shop. He has created the Royal Jam cocktail using Williams apple gin, produced by Chase Distillery in Herefordshire. This is combined with English strawberry jam, lemon juice, lavender bitters and a splash of Nyetimber Brut, the sparkling wine from Kent. With a flavour profile based on an English Victoria sponge, it is served in a gilded bone china tea cup and saucer. It is accompanied by a pot of Earl Grey tea but not for drinking – dry ice is dropped into the pot to billow out aromatic steam around the drinker to add to the experience. [Read the full story HERE]
Source: Chasedistillery, Bar Magazine

The Tiki Bar.

Originally , referred to a carved statue representing Polynesian god. It brings the image of exoticism, fantasy, mysticism, laid back life Polynesian lifestyle, hula girls, Hawaiian Tattoos burning torches…thanks to CBS-TV series Gilligan's Island..

The Tiki bar was more or less American’s escape from the depression. The tales brought back by returning soldiers after serving in Southern Pacific (WWII) and the uprising of the middle class as an economic force in post war era helped tiki to bloom.

Don the Beachcomber (Feb22,1907-June7,1989) & Trader Vic (Dec, 1902-Oct11,1984)

Donn Beach, a former Texan bootlegger during prohibition, served in WWII, famously known to open a bar and restaurant called Don Beachcomber in 1934 in Hollywood California serving Cantonese dishes with mysterious drinks like Zombie, Navy Grog, scorpion bowls and many others..

Victor Jules Bergeron Jr., founder of restaurant called Trader Vic’s is one of the two who claims to have invented The Mai Tai.

Don the Beachcomber Zombie

Lime juice 0.75 ml

Grapefruit cinnamon syrup 15 ml

Pineapple juice 45 ml

Falernum 15 ml

Jamaican rum 30 ml

Gold rum 30 ml

151 Demerara rum 30 ml

Maraschino liqueur 15 ml

Absinth 6 drops

Grenadine 1/8

Bitters dash

Blend for about 5 seconds with few ice to mix and to aerate the pineapple juice. Pour into a tall glass and garnish with a big sprig of mint.

Trader Vic's Mai Tai
17-year-old rum imported by J. Wray & Nephew 60ml

Dry orange curacao 15ml

Lime juice 22.75ml

Orgeat 7.5ml

Rock candy syrup 7.5ml

Shake and strain on a rock glass over crushed ice. Garnish With a mint sprig (the drink should be beige in colour)

Bars like Pain killer (from Guiseppe Gonzales and Richard boccato), Julie Reiner’s headed Lani Kai and Smuggler’s Cove in SFO are to be looked up for the revival of Tiki... Jeff “Beachbum” Berry is a noted rum expert, a tiki demi god known for his dedication to tiki drinks.

Read up more on the Tiki Research by Painkiller, HERE.


Source: Tikipop, Humuhumu.com

Bloody Mary with a Twist.

After a long week, there is nothing like a Saturday brunch with a home made Gin Bloody Mary with a twist of Rosemary.


What You will Need:

Image by: richa

Voila!

Image by: richa

Mix all the ingredients in a tall glass filled half way with ice. Pour the mixture back and fourth a few times to bind all the ingredients together. Top it off with more ice and a slightly bruised Rosemary sprig. ENJOY!

Here is an interesting article we came across about Bloody Mary...

Cocktail Chemistry: Parsing the Bloody Mary

by ADAM COLE

Enlargekillthebird/Flickr

You have no idea what's going on in that glass.

The bloody mary, the signature brunch cocktail, had a friend in Ernest Hemingway. The famous writer bragged in a letter to Bernard Peyton that he introduced the drink to Hong Kong, and further claimed that "it did more than any other single factor except perhaps the Japanese Army to precipitate the fall of that Crown Colony."

I don't know about that, but the bloody mary does seem to hold a special place on the menu. It at least appears to be a healthier option than most drinks (it's mostly tomato juice, right?), and it's often touted as a hangover remedy. So how do you make the perfect bloody mary?

Hemingway's recipe involved a lot of "tasting-as-you-go", and a long list of ingredients: vodka, tomato juice, Worcestershire sauce, lime juice, celery salt, cayenne pepper (modern bartenders usually substitute Tabasco sauce) and black pepper.

"Each of those ingredients has tens of compounds, if not hundreds of compounds," Neil Da Costa, an analytic chemist working for International Flavors and Fragrances, tells Shots. "The bloody mary has been called the world's most complex cocktail."

He should know. Da Costa has used every trick in the chemist's book to analyze each ingredient, and the cocktail as whole. He presented his findings at a meeting of the American Chemical Society this week. Da Costas, an expert in food flavors, is chairman-elect of the group's agriculture and food chemistry division.

With gas and liquid chromatography, Da Costa isolated the wide variety of compounds that give the bloody mary its unique flavor. The drink covers much of the taste spectrum: sweet, salty, sour and umami — the savory taste of glutamic acid.

EnlargeAdam Cole/NPR

A visualization of the flavors in a typical bloody mary

And, Da Costa says, the order of these sensations is appealing: first cool and refreshing, then spicy, and finally a sinus-clearing horseradish kick.

So what lessons can amateur bartenders glean from all this analysis? Make it fresh and make it cool, Da Costa says. Many of the ingredients are chemically unstable, so it's important to make your bloody mary from fresh ingredients and keep it iced to prevent deterioration.

Hemingway would agree. He jotted down at the bottom of his recipe, "Whole trick is to keep it very cold."

He went on to observe: "You can mix it so it will taste as though it had absolutely no alcohol of any kind in it and a glass of it will still have as much kick as a really good big martini."

So if you're aiming for that perfect bloody mary, splurge on the tomato juice, not the vodka. You might not even taste the cheap alcohol.

Neil presented his findings as part of the International Year of Chemistry a "worldwide celebration of the achievements of chemistry" organized by the UN and International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry.

"This was done to try and get chemistry to the masses," Da Costa says. "Anything you eat or anything you do - everything involves chemistry."

Erik Lorincz's Bloody Mary.

To work behind the same bar as Harry Craddock, the man who published the definitive Savoy Cocktail Book in 1930, is the dream for many bartenders, and Erik Lorincz is the latest high profile barman to live that dream. After outperforming 9000 bartenders to win the 2010 Diageo World Class Competition, a Wall Street Journal writer wondered whether that made him “the best bartender in the world.” Best or not, he did become head bartender at the famed American Bar at the Savoy Hotel, which reopened after some fine tuning on 10.10.10.

Bourdain in Japan.

 

Muchacha Caliente.

Source: npr.org, foodgps.com