As pumpkin season lands upon us with a slightly squishy thud, allow me to share this recipe for pumpkin cocktails. These are always a huge hit at Thanksgiving, but also enjoyably appropriate for Halloween. Be aware that you need to prepare in advance to give the vodka time to infuse....

I mentioned Zygo Energy Vodka a few weeks ago, when it first came to my attention. Recently, I had a chance to taste it and experiment with a few drinks. The vodka has all the appealing energy-boosters that are in drinks like Red Bull, such as guarana, taurine and yerba matte in the form of a 70-proof spirit, which sounds like the perfect drink for party-goers.

Zygo isn't quite as smooth as 44°North was, but it is very, very close and certainly more so than many vodkas. It smells and tastes like peaches, and underneath the peach, there is a hint of vanilla and orange that really rounds the flavor. It tastes great on its own. Really great. In fact, I think that Zygo is an excellent choice just to sip chilled or over ice. I can't say that I felt a big rush of energy from the drink, and I'm fairly certain that what I did feel was from the alcohol, but I won't deny that the feeling was a good one, wherever it came from.

With peach, orange and vanilla, there are a plethora of mixers that would do well with Zygo if you're not inclined to sip it straight, so if and when you have a chance to pick up a bottle, don't hesitate to experiment. I decided to use the peach flavor to its full advantage by keeping the other ingredients to a minimum.

Peachy Sunrise
5oz orange juice
2 oz Zygo
splash grenadine

Combine all orange juice and Zygo in a tall glass over ice. Stir together, then top with a splash of grenadine.

A Dutch liqueur made from an old Indonesian recipe - or so they claim. It is made from bananas and other fruits plus herbs. Pisang means banana and Ambon is Island so this syrupy, baked banana flavoured liqueur is Banana Island. The liqueur retails for around £15 in the UK.

Star Wars

• 2 shots Cognac
• 1/4 shot Pisang Ambon
• 1/4 shot Blue Curacao
• 1/8 shot lemon juice
• 1 shot grapefruit juice
• 1/3 shot sugar syrup

Mix all the ingredients and shake with ice. Strain and pour into a martini glass. Apparently - and I havent tried this one - it loks like swamp water but tastes OK.

 

The photo is taken from flickr and taken by mramberg. Pure drink porn!

Actually ExtraTasty is more than a simple cocktail listing site - and how many more of those do we need!

Still a work in progress apparently but in addition to a growing recipe database there is a My Bar area. This is where you enter and store the contents of your drinks cabinet - we all have one of those don't we - and the system brings up a wide variety of cocktails that these ingredients can make. On the right is a small group of tags which also brings up a listing of all the listed cocktails that contain that item.

 

So taking the first tag - amaretto - we have 14 recipes ranging from Soco Amaretto Lime (Peach Liqueur, Amaretto and Lime juice) and Lunchbox (Beer, Orange Juice, Amaretto). Each recipe can be rated and comments can be posted. Unsurprisingly Monasterium returns zero results but Baileys has only one - an indication of on going expansion. A few illustrations wouldn't go a miss either.