Once you’ve broken your cherry by making some bacon-infused vodka Bloody Marys, give this one a shot.  After tasting a bacon Bloody Mary, I was inspired to create a BLT-type drink.  After a lot of trial and error, here’s what I came up with.

Now, if you haven’t made bacon vodka yet, it’s time to man up already.  It’s wicked easy – cook some bacon and add vodka.

Having done that, let’s make some BLT-inspired cocktails. For our first example, start by adding equal parts of the following: Bacon-infused vodka Hendricks gin (The “L”) – For those of you not familiar with it, Hendricks is a Scottish gin made from traditional botanicals as well as cucumber leaves and rose petals.  You WILL taste the difference. If you’re afraid of gin, this one’s a pussycat; people who hate gin love this one.  I also know that cucumber is not the same as lettuce, but who in the hell wants a drink made from lettuce? Tomato Juice A dash of celery salt and/or sea salt

BLT Cocktail

The cucumber flavor in the Hendricks is subtle when mixed with the bacon vodka and tomato juice.  I added a splash of cucumber juice  to enhance it (cucumber+blender+cheesecloth).  It’s not necessary, but it’s definitely an improvement that’s worth the whopping $0.50 and two minutes of hard labor. My favorite aspect of it is that you taste it in stages – first the cucumber, then the tomato, and finally the bacon. It’s basically a “light” version of a Bloody Mary.  This is also a deal-maker since it goes down smoother than water and is laden with alcohol. It’s like Rohypnol for the DIY-er!

Now, I love Bloody Mary’s, especially Bacon Bloody’s, even Virgin Bloody’s – but after having one, I’m ready to settle with a smoother cocktail. This next drink is something you can knock down with ease until you can’t legally drive, and it’s equally as tasty (and if you don’t want to shell out $35 for Hendricks as far as the gin is concerned, it’s a much cheaper alternative…).

BLT Smoothie

In your blender, add: One cup of diced seedless (English) cucumber, or about 4″ worth. 2.5 oz tomato juice and 2.5 oz of bacon vodka. Toss in a couple ice cubes and blend. It’s more of a smoothie than a cocktail, but delicious nonetheless. The texture of the cucumber actually enhances the flavor. To be honest, I prefer this version of the drink, but it requires too much preparation and cleanup for a guy without a wife. So if you have a wife, this drink might be for you! Cheers!

This was a joint venture between myself and Erik Brown, the bartender at the Oregon Grille. Once I learned that it was possible to create a bacon-infused vodka, I immediately thought, “That would make a bitchin’ Bloody Mary.” I finally got around to making the vodka a couple of weeks ago, and the drink had its debut today. It was a big hit. Once you make your bacon-infused vodka (refer to previous link!), the hard part is over. All you have left to do is make your mix. For his Bloody Mary mix, Erik works outside the realm of standard measurements. He adds enough of each ingredient until it tastes just right (I’ve found it’s better to make the mix to your personal taste anyway.)

You’re essentially going to combine tomato juice, prepared horseradish, Worcestershire Sauce, cracked black pepper, celery salt, Tabasco, and a little lime juice. Do feel free to go Avant Garde on the ingredients though, because you can easily balance out your mistakes. However, the mix will make or break this drink. If you don’t love the mix then start over.

To top this all off is a coated rim. It’s a combination of celery seed, Old Bay, and black pepper. To make it adhere to the glass, wipe the rim with a wedge of lime.

It’s finished off with a celery stalk and a few olives; 3 to be exact.

Cheers!

With the onset of cooler weather, I thought that a spiced bourbon would make for some pretty tasty cocktails, and I was right. Try out this recipe for spiced bourbon and you’ll agree.

To begin with, use a decent bourbon (Maker’s, Evan Williams Single Barrel will do). To make the spiced bourbon, you can use whatever spices you want-it’s all about personal taste. But since my personal taste is better than yours, you should follow these guidelines. For the infusion I chose cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, and clove. Whatever spices you choose, use the whole (not ground) versions. If you do use nutmeg, crack the nut – don’t leave it whole.  I wrapped mine in cheesecloth and let them steep in the bourbon.

The key to this project is daily tasting.  Each spice will infuse its flavor at a different rate of speed, so you may have to add or remove them during the process.  When it tastes right, remove the spices.  If you wrap each spice separately in cheesecloth, it will be much easier to add or remove them.

Here’s the breakdown of ingredients in this case:

• 2 cinnamon sticks
• 2 nuts of nutmeg (cracked)
• 1 tsp. allspice
• 1 tsp. clove – clove comes on strong. I had to pull mine out after 3 days to keep everything balanced. The cinnamon and nutmeg took longer to impart their flavors.

I let my spices steep in the bourbon for seven days, but you could go longer or shorter depending on how intense you want the final product; I came up with two drinks for this, both served hot.

Spiced Bourbon Cider Use 1 part spiced bourbon and 2 parts apple cider, then heat in a microwave. Wipe a lemon wedge around the rim of the glass and put a spoonful or so of Sugar in the Raw on a plate and rub the rim of the glass over it.  This step is key-you need the sweetness of the sugar to balance out the spice of the bourbon. Once the cider/bourbon mixture is finished in the microwave, squeeze a lemon wedge over it and add a teaspoon of honey.  If you want to go balls deep, you can top it off with whipped cream, nutmeg and cinnamon.

Spiced Bourbon and Cider

Spiced Bourbon Old Fashioned

Spiced Bourbon Old Fashioned with Blood Orange You can make this with regular oranges, but it won’t be nearly as good. To start, wipe the rim of the glass with a slice of Blood Orange. Then, coat the rim with Sugar in the Raw – I added a bit of cinnamon as well to liven things up.  If you want to avoid the mess of coating the rim with sugar, muddle it in with the orange and cherries. Heat about 2.5 ounces of your bourbon. Next, muddle  a couple maraschino cherries and a decent slice of Blood Orange, along with a teaspoon of Maraschino Cherry juice if you have a sweet tooth.  I also tossed in a quarter ounce of Blood Orange juice to make it more user-friendly. Pour in the hot spiced bourbon. Add a splash of club soda; it really cleans up the taste of the drink and prevents it from being too sticky-tasting. On a final note; go easy on the Blood Orange!  It has an intense flavor, so if you add too much, you’ll wind up with a hot spicy orange juice.

CHEERS!

Behold as the tragically hilarious guest poster Lee of The Jackal’s Den bestows upon us his thoughts and feelings on this past Saturday’s vodka infusion festival (my own material will be posted when I get my hands on some pictures of it):

Sunday, June 7, 2009

Getting Awesome With Awesome Vodka

When you get awesome the way Jackals get awesome you tend to know people who do awesome things. Evan “Strike List” [redacted] does awesome things, namely make awesome vodka infusions.

$20 all you can drink vodka’s and mixers as well as a buffet (the meatballs were the fucking bomb). In the interest of full disclosure I was still feeling the effects of how awesome we got Friday night when we (Heather, Beth and I, DC Representing in BMore two saturdays in a row. respect that!) arrived for the 2:30 pm tasting but I fought through it like Butch fighting through pride fucking with him if he chose to do that instead of fucking over Marcellus in a most Jackal way, but I digress…

The menu of vodkas went something like this:

• Peanut Butter Vodka
• Lemon and Grape Vodka
• Bacon Vodka
• Coffee and Caramel (it was awesome. like van goghs but not as sweet. if van goghs is a white chocolate mocha this was espresso. damn that was GAF, but i’ll just keep it moving to the KIM)
• Cucumber and Jasmine Vodka
• Pickletini (fuck pickles fuck them in their nasty ears. i even had my pickle hate t shirt on in protest)
• Cherry and Lime Vodka
• Lemon and Ginger Vodka
• Rosemary and Garlic Vodka

I started out as any red blooded MerCan would with the Bacon. Damn did that shit taste like Bacon. I mean really taste like Bacon. Big time. I had it on the rocks for a bit and felt like it really needed some horseradish (note to Evan, make Bacon Horseradish Vodka and sell it to me). Not wanting to be a pain in the ass I settled for adding some Tabasco. It was good when I had one of my awesome ideas. What if I made a screwdriver out of this? I mentioned the idea and was met with 5 or 6 “what the fuck” looks but the bartender was feeling my genius. He topped me of with OJ and The Breakfast of Champions shot was born. It basically tasted like you took a bite of awesome breakfast sandwich and then a sip of your OJ all in one awesome alcoholic beverage.

Next up was the peanut butter vodka. Damn that shit tasted like peanut butter and was awesome. This was hands down the most popular vodka at the tasting. People were mixing it with Baileys, making awesome white russians with it, we dropped it into Guinness and did car bombs, mixing it with the coffee one. It rocked. I even rocked it out with some 100 poof peppermint schnapps and made a Girl Scout Leader.

Moving right along I tore into the Lemon and Ginger and mixed that bad boy with Blue Moon to make a Fancy Poison. If you’ve had Poison it was exactly the same but with good vodka and better beer.

We also tried the Lemon and Grape with an IPA but it wasn’t as good as fancy Poison, way too bitter.

The champion of the stand alone vodkas however was the Rosemary and Garlic. That shit was good. Really fucking good. The other vodkas had stronger flavors but this one was just smooth as all get out and made me want lamb something fierce. Now that I think about it I was a good 6 or 7 vodkas deep when I tasted it so perhaps I should try it again when sober but I am 99% sure, ok make that 79% sure it still would be my favorite. As for the mixed drink that goes with this awesome vodka, Lambtini = ground lamb and Rosemary and Garlic vodka.

So all in all the vodkas were quite awesome and the event was quite fun. As an added bonus I got nice and drunk before 5pm which is always fun. The only negative thing I have to say about the entire thing is that The Wiz and Steven didn’t show up with basically makes them GAF.

EVENT EVENT EVENT EVENT

BACON AND BEER HAPPY HOUR AT BAD DECISIONS (1928 FLEET ST.) MONDAY, JUNE 1ST – LOCAL BACON CELEBRITIES (and me) WILL BE THERE, TALKING ABOUT BACON! AND EATING BACON! AND DRINKING BACON!!

That’s right folks, stop by on Monday and meet and or greet local fans of bacon and beer. I’ll be bringing some of my (ultra) locally famous bacon vodka and a very special, magical food item: bacon ginger snaps.

WHAT?

Yeah. You heard read me. A fruend of mine sent me the recipe, and I made them. They’re actually quite normal tasting, but I’ll let you all be the judge.