Smoked Cocktails: Part 3

Man, life has been pretty crazy lately. I haven’t had a day off in a couple of weeks, and as you might have noticed, this hasn’t left a lot of time for blogging. One of my regulars even called me out tonight and told me I needed to write more on the blog. Anyway, the bar has blown up. I go home and my arms hurt from shaking for like 8 hours straight. Egg cocktails on the bar menu = wicked case of tennis elbow, but as my Treatise on Egg Cocktails might have suggested, I kind of like them. Drunken chickens aside, in the midst of all this shaking, I have found time to continue the smoked cocktails experiments.

Using the smoked fruit discussed last time has endless possibilities, but it does limit what types of cocktails can have a smoke element added. Cocktails made strictly from spirits obviously don’t use any fruit, so another route must be found. The spirits must be changed; let the infusions (and taste-testing) begin. We could throw a piece of charcoal in a bottle of vodka, but I think Absolut already made an announcement that this will be its next commemorative tragedy flavored monstrosity: Absolut California – an infusion of charcoal and other fruit flavors that should not be combined. If you’ve actually tried Absolut New Orleans, you’ll get this joke. Otherwise, I’m just an insensitive asshole.

Instead of the charcoal, I opted for a smoked ingredient that has already been used by one spirits producer. Qi Black Tea Liqueur is a brandy-based spirit that combines Lapsang Souchong with fruit and spices. I had some Qi just before I left Illinois last year, but I never got around to mixing with it or tracking it down once I got to Texas. Had it not been for the Savoy Cocktail journeyman who sent me an e-mail after my last post, I might have forgotten completely about the stuff. Nevertheless, the concept of using Lapsang Souchong had already found its way into a few infusion jars at the bar, I guess I was going to have to sacrifice originality for a great drink.

Unlike the Qi, my infusions used a gin base. I really like how the herbal elements of the gin dance with the tea and smoked flavors. I tried adding some additional ingredients into the infusion, but it just seemed like keeping it simple and adding other flavors in cocktail worked much better. Gin selection was also an important issue. Using a lightly flavored gin like Hendricks does not work well at all. If you’re unfamiliar with Lapsang Souchong, tracking some down is an endeavor worth pursuing. Lapsang Souchong is Chinese black tea that is cedar smoked. I get mine from a local coffee roaster, Katz Coffee. Owner, Avi Katz, told me that the tea resulted from traders who would allow their camels to lay next to the fires on colder night. The tea bags, strapped to the camels’ backs, were smoked, and a new tea was born: Lapsang Souchong. It has a bold and very prominent smoked flavor, so a gin with some backbone is needed.

I settled on Plymouth, it had enough juniper to make a statement, but it still yielded to the tea’s flavor without becoming jumbled as some of the strong London Dry styles did. Mixing it was easy. Smoked negronis, smoked martinis, the possibilities were endless. Try this one:

Smoked Pegu Club

2 oz Lapsang Souchong-Infused Plymouth Gin
3/4 oz Orange Curacao
3/4 oz Lime Juice
Dash Fee Brothers Orange Bitters

Shake and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with lime wheel.

With all the popularity surrounding tea cocktails in recent years, Lapsang Souchong needs to get some more attention. If the idea of a smoked cocktail sounds like a stretch, try starting with the tea, and I might just have you convinced. Soon, you might be asking for more information about smoked drink elements, in which case, you will find your way back here, waiting for the next smoked cocktail post: air infusions. This is a really cool idea (I think), and I am going to do a write-up on how to infuse smoke in a spirit in order to create a smoked bitters. Until then, don’t burn your house down. and let me know what you think of this infusion.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 30th, 2008 at 6:00 am. It is filed under Cocktails and tagged with Cocktails, Mixers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.