No entries to the March contest so no winner. For April our ingredient challenge comes from @neptune@dmv.social,winner of the February challenge who suggested Cynar, Artichoke April.
The rules are few. At least 3 ingredients, must be (as far as you can tell) a novel drink or novel variation on a known cocktail. Winner is most upvoted, any downvotes are discarded.
Post requirements: A picture, a recipe including measurements and directions, and a reaction - how was it? What does it taste like, mouth feel, anything you notice when drinking it.
(Removing the requirement for a picture as nobody is including one and Lemmy sometimes fights them).
I was thinking of a Boulevardier when I started, although I deviated from that pretty quickly. I’ll riff on this a little more before the end of the month.
1 oz rye, 1 oz Cynar, 1/4 oz dry curacao, dash orange bitters. I would garnish with a twist of lemon or orange, but I haven’t had fresh citrus around for awhile.
It’s pleasantly bittersweet and warming, overall pretty good. The orange flavor goes well with both the rye and the Cynar. Could be better though, I think the sweetness is not right. Maybe a less sweet orange liqueur or maybe add a splash of maraschino to make it sweeter?
I made this last night and it was pretty good! I don’t own cynar so I used Aperol. I also ended up increasing the rye and apperol, effectively reducing the curaçao, to match my tastes a bit more as well.
I did try a couple of other additions and substitutions. Subbing an allspice dram for the dry curacao was interesting, and adding simple syrup was pretty bad.
Here’s the final: Stirred, served on ice in an old fashioned glass, garnish with an orange peel. 1 oz bourbon, 1 oz Cynar, 1/4 oz dry curacao, barspoon of maraschino liquor, 2 dashes angostura bitters.
This worked out really well. It’s still bittersweet, but it’s much better balanced. The orange is still present, but more subdued, and the earthy herbaceous notes becomes the most forward flavor.
I didn’t try this final version with rye, I switched to bourbon because I was trying to smooth out some of the sharp edges. It would probably still be good with rye, but I liked this a lot. I’m not sure about serving over ice. It’s definitely good cold and I don’t think the dilution hurt, but if I was more committed to perfecting the recipe I would definitely try serving it in a chilled Nick & Nora.
Doing this was fun. I already like riffing and making up drinks, and having some rules to work within made me more thoughtful. I just need someone to drink more of these drinks for me so I can try out more variations. I’ve got a picture, but I keep getting a JSON error when I try to upload it. Picture an old fashioned, but more brown and you’ve got the idea.