We conclude this particular numbered cocktails theme week with the One-Armed Bandit.

I'm more of a red wine guy than a white wine guy (much more, actually), but this drink has so many other ingredients in it that I love that I'm going to try it tonight. It's white wine with Cointreau, grenadine, oranges, lemon, and lime. Cocktail.com doesn't say who created the drink, but does say that it was "discovered in Vegas." That's good enough for me.

Continuing with the theme week of numbered cocktails comes the 20th Century, from the book Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails. Wikipedia says it was created in the late 30s to help promote the introduction of the Hudson Dreyfus Engine, which powered the 20th Century Limited Train.

I like the color.

I think I inadvertently started a cocktail "theme" week here yesterday: cocktails with numbers. Yesterday I had the Shane 75, and today is the recipe for Esplanade 1925. This one is also from Imbibe.

It's a drink that was inspired by the Regent Hotel Esplanade in Zagreb. Esplanade 1925 also happens to be the named of the lounge/bar there.

Burnett's London Dry Gin is 40% abv. / 80 proof and the US version is made by Heaven Hill Distillery according to Sir Robert Burnett's 1770 recipe. It is a distilled gin which means that the botanicals are distilled with neutral spirits to create the gin. This is the method used by premium quality gins and it is surprising to see a gin in the lower price range made this way, this well.

The aroma is light and crisp with a citrus and juniper nose with hints of spice and black pepper finishing with a slight earthy tone that is from some root botanical, maybe angelica. It has a nice, complex smell and I wish I knew more about the botanicals in the recipe. I wrote to Heaven Hill a few months ago and after several emails back and forth still couldn't get them to give me any details.

The flavor is light and in the classic London Dry style. Juniper, spices in the peppery realm, and citrus come on smoothly and softly, and in a clean way. Burnett's is a great gin for mixing in cocktails and highballs, especially a gin and tonic, or anything else where you want a gin presence, but not one of the overwhelming powerhouses not suitable for most cocktails. It also tastes fine on the rocks, for when you want nice, light, crisp gin; and not anything else.

There's been a longstanding assumption that journalists and drinking have always gone hand in hand. I'm not sure how rumors like this get started. I'm here to tell you that journalists only drink when they absolutely have to, on days of the week that end in a "y." No more than that.*

This drink is The Journalist, and it's made with gin, two kinds of Vermouth, Triple Sec, lime juice, and bitters. To all the writers out there, make one for yourself tonight and type away!

* Yes, this is an old joke.

There are a gazillion martini recipes out there, and sometimes it's hard to pick one we either want to drink regularly or experiment with (I like mine with gin, thank you very much).

Here's one from the terrific book The Craft of the Cocktail, by legendary mixologist Dale DeGroff. It's for the Smoky Martini, and it's not only a very simple concoction it also has a very cool, mysterious name. Full recipe (along with variation) after the jump (the pic is from another site, not sure if it's the same as this recipe).

Wow. Is it late August already? No matter how much we pout, the Summer is coming to a close. The days get shorter, the temperature gets cooler (in most normal parts of the country - here in LA, it still gets into the 90s), and we move our "entertaining" indoors. Right?

No! I refuse, my friends, refuse! I am a clingy girl, and I am going to hang onto the last rays of the summer sun if it burns the skin on my shoulders to a bacon-y crisp.

thebar.com makes it easy with a few cocktails, Pineapple Orange Margarita and Rangpur Madras, that will keep that summer vibe going, even if it's me standing by myself in my living room in a pair of sunglasses and a straw hat sipping on these cocktails (I am not a fan of tequila nor of gin, but look at how pretty the cocktails are!)
Recipes after the jump.

So, you found it hard to get back to work today after the long July 4th holiday (assuming, of course, that you didn't work last Thursday or Friday)? Feeling like you had some sort of work-related jet lag today? Then you need a cocktail!

This is called The Bachelor Bait. Not sure why, unless they think that the mixture of gin, orange bitters, grenadine, and egg whites is enough to "get a man." Maybe this recipe was created in 1959, who knows. Or maybe it's us bachelors who are doing the baiting?

Full recipe after the jump.

Barbara Holland is one of my favorite writers. She has a way of taking culture and history and creating little book gems such as Wasn't The Grass Greener? and Endangered Pleasures. Her autobiography When All The World Was Young is quite good too. It's always great to see her come out with a new book. This one is called The Joy of Drinking.

Holland has touched on the subject of drinking over the years in a couple of the above books, but this one really gets into the history of drinking, explaining how people came to drink certain types of alcohol, how drinks were invented, even the laws that have governed drinking over the years. It's a rather small book, but she gets a lot of information in the pages: Mark Anthony, Pope Leo, the Prohibition, what our founding fathers drank, right up to today, talking about what our drinking habits are like now.

Yes, there seems to be a whole bunch of drinks based around our favorite Gotham City crimefighter (and his friends and enemies).

The Batman Cocktail sounds like a variation on a Shirley Temple or Buck Rogers, something for the kids, and it includes grenadine and orange juice. The Penguin includes gin, cherry liqueur, and benedictine, while The Alfredo has Campari and gin. There are also drinks based on Robin, The Riddler, the Batcave, even Commissioner Gordon.

What, no drink for Catwoman? That sounds like a natural.

As you may know I am a spirits fanatic, especially gin, and a big fan of fine cocktails. I have been doing intense research in the areas of spirits and cocktails for quite awhile and examining the details of what takes a cocktail and elevates it to the realm of sublime.

Many cocktails have a plethora of ingredients, sadly they are dismal creations better suited to cleaning drains than sipping for enjoyment. For a good cocktail, usually less is more. Classically in a cocktail you have the main spirit or two, spirit or alcohol based modifiers to add their character, possibly a fruit component, a small but very important addition of something like bitters for complexity, and another modifier that brings down the strength of the drink. Usually this is melting ice/water, but in the case of highballs it is also soda, tonic, etc., and in some great cocktails it's topping off the drink with champagne.

Now that Spring has sprung and summer is just around the corner my thoughts go to the Gin and Tonic. I happen to really like G&T's. Since I was in my late teens and able to drink legally, this was the drink that I had more often by far than any other. (Actually it was my drink of choice from a much younger age, but times were different back then, and the legal drinking age of 18 was treated more like a suggestion, than a law.) The more I came to love my G&T, the more exacting I became about the ingredients and proportions in the drink. I came to think of it as a science and have made off the cuff speeches many a time while ordering my drink. I ask what types of gin they have available and what brand tonic water. Usually the choices are poor but lately that has been changing.

I was interviewed just a few days ago by the New York Post for a Sidebar on their Good Libations summer drinks feature on the state of gins and tonic waters available today. One thing I came back to again and again is that the brand and types of gin and tonic make a big difference in the final drink. All G&T's are not the same. In fact they can vary so greatly that at times one wonders if they are the same drink.

I don't think that any other "name" drink has as many offshoots as this one (though I could be wrong). We have the Alexander, and there's also recipe's for Alexander's Brother and Alexander's Sister. I wonder if there's a crazy aunt or a shady cousin around?

Alexander's Brother

3 cl gin
3 cl creme de menthe
4-6 cl light cream

Shake with ice in a cocktail shaker. Strain into cocktail glass and garnish with mint leaf.

D. H. Krahn Gin is 40% abv. / 80 proof and made in the USA in small batches. they use French, custom made, Stupfler alembic copper pot stills, which are considered some of the best stills made. Many gins brag about being triple or quadruple distilled. The multiple distilling is done for a variety of reasons, but usually to make the gin as clear and neutral tasting as possible, before adding the botanicals and redistilling. D. H. Krahn says that they start with clean neutral spirits and then add the botanicals. After which the gin is only distilled once to "preserve the fragile aromas and precious essential oils of the botanicals- essences that are lost each time a spirit is distilled." Then the gin sits for three months after distilling to meld and mellow.

The product was created by two Cornell students, Dave Hughes and Scott Krahn who were designing a unique brand for a class project and decided upon a premium gin. They became so enthusiastic about the class project that after graduation they pursed the dream, to create the product in reality.

The botanicals used in D. H. Krahn, as listed on their website are: "Jumbo Italian Juniper Berries, Moroccan Coriander Seed, Floridian Oranges, Californian Lemon and Grapefruit, and rounded out with a touch of Thai Ginger."