Category Archives: Beer and Booze

Around Town: NOLA Brewing Pub Crawl and Krewe du Vieux

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As you’re certainly aware, it is carnival time once again! That means king cake, doubloons, and beads are all returning to the local consciousness. While Mardi Gras has officially started, for most it really kicks off this Saturday, February 4, with the irreverent parade of Krewe du Vieux. NOLA Brewing has also chosen this Saturday to kick-off the release of their Mardi Gras themed Spring seasonal Flambeau Red Ale with a pre-Krewe du Vieux pub crawl. I’m excited because I like the Flambeau Red and I love pub crawls. Best of all, the NOLA Brewing folks have orchestrated the crawl to get you in perfect position to catch Krewe du Vieux. Here’s the line up:

Be on the look out for Flambeau Red's distinctive Mardi Gras themed label

1:00 pm — R-Bar (1431 Royal St)
2:30 pm — Balcony Music Club (1331 Decatur St)
3:45 pm — Turtle Bay (1119 Decatur St)
5:00 pm — Molly’s at the Market (1107 Decatur St)

Each bar will be serving the Flambeau Red for $3.00 a pint while the crawl is there (~1 hour). The Krewe du Vieux Parade starts at 6:30 and will stroll right by Molly’s, so you’ll be in prime viewing territory. One word of advice, unlike most everything else in town, I’ve been informed that this party will run on time. So don’t be late.

Think you can hang all day and all night? You may want to check out the Krewe du Vieux Doo after party. Just be sure to get tickets in advance, because they won’t be available at the door.

Spot at the Bar: Bénédictine D.O.M.

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The distinctive bottle of Benedictine (image from Crown Wine and Spirits)

A bottle of Bénédictine D.O.M. proved to be a little more difficult to obtain than you’d think. I figured walk into any liquor store and you could score a bottle easily. Not the case here in New Orleans. You’ll certainly find Bénédictine in just about every liquor store, only you’ll be getting it in the form of B&B, Bénédictine and Brandy. After I was able to finally score a bottle from Vieux Carre Wine and Spirits, the tasting was on.

Bénédictine is, at least superficially, reminiscent of Chartreuse: It was initially created by French monks, uses a ton of herbs, and said monks ran into a heap of trouble along the way. But that is about where the similarities stop. Bénédictine blends a mere 27 herbs to Chartreuse’s 132, which I found noticeable in the complexity on a head to head tasting. The Benedictine monks had their monastery destroyed in the French Revolution and their property plundered, while the Carthusian monks got expelled and their property seized.

Although not quite as complex as Chartreuse, Bénédictine is still a complex liqueur with a strong herbal smell and flavor. It is also rather viscous. This thickness and the pronounced flavor make Bénédictine a likely companion to mix with “stronger” liquors, Scotch, Brandy, etc. Bénédictine is a popular ingredient in many a classic cocktail, such as the Vieux Carre, the original Singapore Sling, Bobby Burns, etc.

I’ve found that a Bénédictine on the rocks isn’t bad, but it certainly takes a little getting used to. Of course, I’d recommend sticking to mixing this spirit.

Since the traditional Bénédictine cocktail recipes are pretty easy to find, here’s one I’ve created which I call Last Rites.

Simply add equal parts Luxardo, Gin, Bénédictine and lime juice (sounds pretty familiar? It is a Last Word subbing the Chartreuse with the Bénédictine)

Luxardo, Bénédictine and Death's Door Gin

Normally, I’d have made this with fresh lime juice, but Cupcake needed the limes we had on hand for dinner. Which means it was time to improvise: enter a bottle of Nellie and Joe’s Key West Lime Juice. While a nice fix in a pinch, I find that fresh lime juice makes this a better drink.

No limes? No major problem

Nellie and Joe’s is a great back up system to always have on hand. It will stay fresh in the fridge for about a month and provides you some great versatility. No time to juice limes or simply no limes at all? Break out the bottle, but when you can go with the fresh squeezed stuff. When making drinks for people, I find it is important to be flexible and always have a backup plan!

The Last Rites--The Nellie and Joe's tints the color a bit more than fresh lime juice

It certainly gives you a different flavor profile than a Last Word would and, in my opinion, isn’t as nicely balanced (due to Bénédictine’s strong presence). But that doesn’t mean it isn’t a tasty drink.

Spot at the Bar: New Amsterdam Gin

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Photo from New Amsterdam Gin

I was first introduced to New Amsterdam Gin at a Tales of the Cocktail event hosted at MiLa. The gin hadn’t particularly made it onto my radar, but we had been to plenty of special dinners at MiLa and have always been pleased, so we figured we’d give it a shot.

As far as gin’s go, New Amsterdam falls into that catch-all category of New American (or New Style) gins, which basically means it isn’t a London Dry, Genever or Plymouth gin. That New Amsterdam is unlike most any other gin you’ve had is obvious from the get go. While not all gins are dominated by juniper flavors, New Amsterdam basically forsakes it all together. The result? A citrus focused gin that boasts the ability to be enjoyed straight. While few outside the frat houses would typically have the desire or fortitude to take a slug of warm gin, new Amsterdam’s smooth candied orange flavor actually make this an accomplish-able feat for most people (of course, not that you should). Best of all is New Amsterdam’s low price, we were able to pick up a liter bottle from the Rouse’s for a mere $19.99.

This isn’t to say that New Amsterdam is the kind of gin you go looking for to use in classic gin based cocktails. It isn’t. But it is a great change of pace to vodka in many citrus driven cocktails and as an easy re-introduction for those who have sworn off gin entirely. I’ve found it the New Amsterdam to bring in rave reviews for cosmopolitans and, in most instances so far, preferred by vodka drinkers instead of their normal vodka cosmo. At such a cheap price, its basically a no-brainer.

My New Amsterdam Cosmopolitan
1.5 ounces New Amsterdam Gin
.75 ounces Cointreau
.25 ounces fresh squeezed lime juice
1 ounce cranberry juice (I prefer to use the tarter 100% cranberry juice, if you prefer a sweeter drink go with the cranberry cocktail)

Shake over ice, strain into a chilled glass. Orange peel for garnish. Enjoy!

Spot at the Bar: PumpkinPalooza! The Smashed Pumpkin

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Cupcake loves the Fall and one of the true flavors of Fall is the pumpkin. So to honor that much beloved gourd, Cupcake has settled on PumkinPalooza. This week long celebration seeks to give you lots of recipes to use through the Fall and over the upcoming holidays. As Cupcake has things pretty tightly wrapped up on the cooking end, I’ve tried my hand on the boozing end (I’m sure that shocks you all). What I’ve got here is a Cupcake tested and approved pumpkin cocktail. This little guy packs quite a wallop, so I’ve decided to call it the Smashed Pumpkin. If anyone else has a better name, feel free to let me know and perhaps we will rename it for you.

All measurements in parts (using 2 cls as 1 part in this recipe fills one of our martini glasses):

1.5 pumpkin puree (you know, the stuff you use for pumpkin pie filling)
1.5 soda water
1.0 Domaine de Canton
1.5 Tuaca
1.5 Laird’s applejack
Cinnamon-Sugar for the glass rim

Step 1: Prepare your glassware

On a flat plate, spread out the cinnamon-sugar mixture. Wet the rim of your glass (including the inside). Some people like to run a wet cloth, but I find just using the faucet works best. Once you’ve wet the rim, place it in the cinnamon-sugar to coat the entire rim. NOTE: This step is really important. It really pulls the drink together.

Step 2: Prepare the drink

Put all the ingredients but the soda water in a shaker and shake. This will let you mix in the pumpkin sufficiently without fizzing up the soda too much. Then add the soda water and ice and shake again. Strain into the cinnamon-sugar rimmed glass. NOTE: depending upon personal preference you may want to strain the mixture through a fine strainer before serving to remove some pumpkin “debris.” So far everyone has preferred the pumpkin debris, but people are different.

Step 3: Serve and enjoy!

Hand people their drinks.

Spot at the Bar: “Champagne” Cocktails

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This past Sunday, the Saints were kind enough to delay their whipping of the Colts until 7:20 pm (If you wish to relive that, video here). Problematic for work the next day, excellent for tailgating. Not having to be out at the Dome for 10:00 am meant Cupcake and I could take our time in the morning and even pop a bottle of prosecco* that has been hiding in the wine fridge for too long. After a round of mimosas, I figured this was the perfect opportunity to break into some “champagne” cocktails since we rarely ever have sparkling wine.

First up was the Champagne Cocktail, a classic cocktail from way back:

Soak a sugar cube with Angostura bitters
Dump the sugar cube in your glass and fill

Angostura soaked cubed in the bottom of the glass

The bitters are released into the prosecco as the sugar dissolves

Verdict: This was an ok drink, but I think I’d use this to salvage sparkling wine that was too sweet for my tastes.

Next drink up was the Elderflower Spritz from Speakeasy:

4 ounces [my cheapy prosecco]
2 ounces St-Germain elderflower liqueur
2 ounces club soda
3 thinly sliced lemon wheels

The Elderflower Spritz (Thanks to Speakeasy, with minor alterations)

Verdict: This drink delivers a great first sip, it is cool and refreshing. Unfortunately, the drink tends to sweeten up on you and becomes a bit much. However, we both agreed that this would be the perfect drink for a spring or summer shower or similar gathering. Mix up a big batch in a pitcher or cooler and have at it.

Final cocktail was the Le Perroquet (the Parrot) from my newest acquisition, The Craft of the Cocktail by Dale Degroff.

Generous dash of Campari
dash of gin
2 ounces fresh orange juice
4 ounces [my cheapy prosecco]
twist of lemon peel
twist of orange peel

The making of a Le Perroquet

Verdict: Not bad, but before I draw any conclusions I think I’d need to redo this drink. I was a bit heavy on the gin and the Campari and my twists look like crap.

*The La Marca isn’t a bad deal, as you’ll be able to score a bottle for $12-15. The poor label was ripped as it was just a hair thick for the shelf it was on.

Around Town: NOLA Brewing Can Release Party

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NOLA Cans coming Thursday!

If you’ve stopped by here before, you know we’re high on NOLA’s beers.  Our biggest problem with NOLA is that home consumption can be challenging.  The Fridge Pigs are cool and all, but they don’t fit in my beer fridge and I think it is a little bit of overkill unless we’re having people over (yes I know they save for a few months, but still).  Fortunately, this one little problem will be cured on Thursday at 8:00 when NOLA debuts the first of their cans at Tip’s.

More details, straight from the presser:

New Orleans Lager and Ale Brewing Company will be releasing their long awaited cans on Thursday, October 27 at Uptown New Orleans music venue Tipitina’s. This first release of NOLA beer in cans will be the flagship ale, NOLA Blonde – followed by NOLA Brown and Hopitoulas in the coming months.

The Can Release Party will start at 8:00 pm and feature music from Colin Lake, Flow Tribe and Big Sam’s Funky Nation.

Tickets will be $15 which includes your first can of NOLA Blonde ale and the award winning coozie from the NOLA Brewing coozie contest from earlier this year.

Tipitina’s will be offering specials on NOLA Brewing cans all weekend.

Hopefully we’ll see you there!

Gnarly Barley Brewing: Coming Soon!?

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New Orleans On Tap was this past weekend.  If you didn’t get there, you missed one of the great fall events in town.  Dogs, beer and charity is a pretty good threesome for a perfect Saturday Afternoon.  Tons of beers you know and a good handful of beers you don’t.  Beers on tap and beers in bottles, big brewers and little brewers and home brewers.  So much beer to choose from and not enough space in my liver stomach for it all.

As impressed as I was with the NOLA Smoky Mary or how much fun I had getting into a Chimay Grande Reserve, neither was the highlight of the day.  No, completing the Around the World card and getting my free t-shirt wasn’t it either (although it fits nice).  Stumbling into the Gnarly Barley booth was tops for the day.  A craft brewery pulling it together in Ponchatoula, they are yet another entry into the exploding Southeast Louisiana brewery scene.  They featured two beers at NOOT, the Lazy IPA and the Korova Coffee Porter.  The Lazy IPA was good, but the Korova was a masterpiece.  A fantastic porter that brought me back to my delinquent days of learning to appreciate great beer, particularly dark beers.


Unfortunately for everyone involved, I was not able to work out a better timeline for the Korova to hit the shelves other than “soon.”  While, that’s all I’ve got for you right now, I’ll let you know as soon as I find anything else out. Until then you can follow up on their progress on Facebook and Twitter.

And for those that care, Korova is the Russian word for milk.  Which works, because the Korova is a milk porter.  But that isn’t where it comes from, not directly anyway.  Korova is the name of the milk bar in A Clockwork Orange and inspiration of the name (confirmed by those working NOOT and reflected in the picture above).

The Next Big Thing in Cocktails?

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It is undeniable that the craft cocktail movement is here. Individual drinks of fresh fruit juices, quality liquors and, in many cases, very precise measurements can be found all across the country. Just in New Orleans, you’ll be able to track down such drinks at bars in pretty much every section of the city and just as many restuarants. But as people continue to dig into the history of cocktails, they begin to realize that punches really paved the way. And I’m not talking those frat party Jungle Juice concotions, but real honest to goodness, tasty punches. Only problem is people are so particular and individual that making large punches for the entire bar probably wouldn’t go over that well these days.

So what’s the next logical step? It’s got to be bridging the gap between single drinks and the massive punches. Something for more than one, but not quite everyone in the bar. Enter the pitcher. Typically associated with margaritas, sangria and daquiris, the pitcher is about to get a bit more classic. Like most cocktail trends, this one is already starting to make the rounds in NYC. Will it stick? If so, how long before we see it here and which of our cocktail bars will be the first to take up banner?

To learn a bit more about the pitcher movement in NYC, check out this post by Robert Simonson.

Distilleries are on their way to New Orleans

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Todd Price from the Times-Pic broke this story last week, but it appeared to just go almost unnoticed, even by us! So I figured news this big bears repeating or even shouting from the rooftops. We’re getting a new distillery (Old New Orleans Rum is currently distilled over on a part of Frenchman you never knew existed, across from what looks like to be a concrete plant). One of the really important parts of the story isn’t even in the story, but found in a place many people don’t dare to venture, the Nola.com comments. Typically a bastion for neither nice nor typically well informed things, Todd used the comment section to update his story to inform us that not one, but two distilleries are on their way here! I’ve yet to track down anything on the second distillery, but I’m working on it. I haven’t seen anything new out of Todd, but when I do I’ll pass that around here too.

As far as the first distillery (the one we know about), Ian Nygren is opening Soc Au Lait (sack of milk) Distillerie at 301 N. Claiborne, or at least he is as soon as the city lets him put a distillery in a commercial neighborhood. From the Distillerie’s twitter feed it looks like things are going as planned and they’ll actually be allowed to move forward. Started in the late fall of 2009, it looks like New Orleans have locally produced Vodka on the shelf in early 2012.

Soc Au Lait plans to make two products when up and running. Voo Doo Vodka, which will be a corn based vodka that is distilled 5 times. Unsure of vodka made from corn? Another small distillery that has been winning fans over left and right uses corn, Tito’s out of Austin. In addition to the unflavored vodka, Soc Au Lait is jumping full on to the current sweet tea flavored vodka craze with a grain mash vodka base, also distilled 5 times.

Voo Doo Vodka Seersucker Sweet Tea

Itching to track each of these products on Facebook? Voo Doo Vodka has its page here, and Seersucker is here.

Mid-City Irish Pub Crawl: Finn McCool’s

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Mid-City is a great neighborhood for bars. In a little over a square mile, you’re looking at Twelve Mile Limit, Mid-City Yatch Club, Finn McCool’s, Mick’s, and the Bulldog, just to name some of the more popular bars. Of course, it wasn’t until I flipped through Kari Dequine’s piece for the Times-Pic that I realized there were so many Irish Pubs. Five Irish pubs, all in close walking distance (mostly). To tackle all these places in a single day sounded like a fine plan, but was it actually doable? To find out, we headed out with the mysterious Mid-City Sippers, a close-knit drinking club that doesn’t actually restrict its drinking to Mid-City.

The Sippers kicked their day off at Mid-City’s best known Irish Pub, Finn McCool’s. If you’re looking to catch (or possibly play) some soccer or enjoy a pint of Guinness, Finn’s is sure to be on the top of your list. Mondays also find Finn’s packed to the gills with trivia nerds for the weekly Pub Quiz night. Finally, Finn’s has recently rounded its offerings out with the addition of BooKoo BBQ in the back kitchen. BooKoo runs out the wide range of decent pub food, but this post is about drinking, so we’ll have to cover it later. Just one word of advice, BooKoo is cash only.

For a random Saturday day, Finn’s was pretty packed thanks to a Liverpool game. Even though Liverpool was up 3-nil at the 84 minute mark, red jersey clad patrons were glued to the flat screen TVs as if the Saints were driving, down 6 with less than 2 minutes to go. In addition to the Sippers, the crowd was diverse: A cougar on the prowl in her workout gear eyed potential targets from her perch at the bar, a group of people all looking fresh out college pushed together a number of tables effectively taking over a huge section of the back of the bar, all while a handful of regulars were practicing for the Tuesday night dart league.

Finn’s itself is a dark bar, which sort of neutralizes the joy of day drinking. Not only is there limited natural light in Finn’s, but the decor is dark and the lights are generally kept low (or at least it seems that way). But this darkness nicely compliments the Guinness, which flows at all hours of the day. Best of all, Finn’s does Guinness right. A time-consuming double pour ensures that your Guinness is as close to perfect as you can get. Just don’t expect to get it any time soon, as the process takes a while. Under official Guinness rules, the perfect pint should take just under two minutes to pour, Finn’s takes just a bit longer than that. Not to say that Finn’s is only Guinness, a full complement of Irish beers are available as are your typical beers and a full bar. Being a legitimate Irish bar, Finn’s definitely hasn’t gotten on board the non-smoking scene that is gaining steam in other corners of the city.

For the start of our pub crawl, Guinness was the order of the day. As pint after pint of creamy deliciousness was passed down the bar, I realized we were in deep and the day was just beginning. To learn a little bit more about the power of Finn’s and reflect on how far we’ve come over the past 6 years, check out the video below: