Weird craft cocktail ingredients
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Sadly I can't handle any alcohol at all these days. Back in my younger youth I used to love to experiment making various cocktails.
This article talks about some "interesting" ingredients to try in your next experiment.
https://www.foodrepublic.com/1336865/unusual-craft-cocktail-ingredients/
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Batavia Arack looks like Klingon gagh.
I have had a couple of them. Pisco is one, and it's not particularly uncommon. I have Empress 1908 gin with pea flower in it (not tea, however). Makes a nice blue gin that turns purple when in contact with citrus. Great for The Aviation, which requires Creme de Violette and Maraschino liqueur. Both of those are unknown to most people, but not on this list.
I've had a number of cocktails that use smoke (in Las Vegas and in Santa Fe). The Secreto Bar at the St. Francis hotel in Santa Fe serves a smoked sage margarita that's worth a try.
http://www.cookindineout.com/2014/10/cocktail-smoked-sage-margarita.html
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There’s a cocktail bar a block away that I’m told is exotic and wonderful. Even their ice is supposed to be special. However, I’ve never been a fan of mixed drinks. I‘ll take a nice wine or a Scotch with water or ice.
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I think the butterfly pea tincture is the only one I've had. There's a Vietnamese restaurant a couple of blocks from our house that serves very good food, but isn't particularly pretentious, so the apparent sophistication (and by this I mean that I'm not particularly sophisticated in such things and may be wrong) of their seasonal cocktails surprises me. Anyway, that's where I had the butterfly pea cocktail.
It's actually the only coctail I've had there that was mildly disappointing, but it wasn't the butterfly pea ingredient that I didn't enjoy. I just found the drink to be a little weak and astringent, like maybe it had too much soda water.
We took some out-of-town guests there last night and I had a cocktail that was so good that my friend ordered one for herself. It had cognac, Grand Marnier, blood orange liquer, orange juice, ginger marmalade, lemon juice, and orange bitters. My friend had just told me earlier in the day that she wanted to try a variation on a margarita that she'd heard about, where the traditional margarita is shaken with orange marmalade, so maybe marmalade is becoming popular as a cocktail ingredient?
Maybe it's been popular for years. It's certainly less exotic that the ingredients in the article. As I said, I'm not particularly sophisticated in this area. In any case, the drink was really tasty!
