I’m something of a Midwestern nationalist.
I live here. I grew up here. All of my favorite teams – the Iowa Hawkeyes, the Minnesota Twins, the Vikings, etc. – are here.
Yessir, the Midwest runs in my blood the way the Mississippi River cuts through the continent. Minus the excess nitrogen and phosphorus from farm run-off, that is.
Thus, when I sat down to write a column on spring cocktails, I knew what I wanted. I wanted drinks that were easy to make and included ingredients that most people would already have in their liquor cabinets.
But that is not what I found.
When I googled “Spring Cocktails,” I found a lot of suggestions from sites like Food and Wine magazine, Food 52, and Forbes. The Harmony G&T, for example, called for botanical gin, aromatic tonic, and something called blood orange tincture. I quickly resumed my search. Another concoction known as the Caipi Lychee, had ingredients like bergamotto liqueur, rectified lime juice, and lychee cordial.
Sorry, but if I have to look an ingredient up in the dictionary, chances are I don’t have it. And I’m not going to run out and buy it just to make one drink. We Midwesterners are practical, after all.
As I grew increasingly frustrated, I remembered something I’d read in a book about the old fashioned. Old fashioneds are my all-time favorite cocktail. A supper club staple, they are sweet and boozy and ever so delicious. Nevertheless, Robert Simonson, a Manhattan-based mixologist, once described the supper club old fashioned – complete with maraschino cherry and orange slice – as a drink that “sends shudders down the spines of the new breed of cocktail classicists.”
It’s those “cocktail classicists” that insist on creating drinks out of things not available at your local supermarket.
Hence (do Midwesterners say “hence?”), I decided to narrow my search to “Midwestern cocktail” recipes. It turned up some interesting things, most of which are easy to make and fantastic to drink. Nor will you break the bank buying the ingredients.
Now, some of you may quibble over how Midwestern cities like Detroit and Indianapolis are (the homes for two of the cocktails below), but the drinks are certainly easy to make and drink.
Hence (there I go again), I am including them here.
Boozy cherry-vanilla cola
One of my best friends from high school lives in Indianapolis. That’s also the city where this cocktail was born. It’s a play on the old soda fountain cherry-vanilla Coke, but this version contains rye and bourbon.
One small complication is that you need to make your own vanilla syrup. Don’t worry, it’s not hard. Here’s all that you have to do:
In a small saucepan mix together ½ cup water, ½ cup sugar and ½ tablespoon vanilla extract. Heat over medium heat until the sugar dissolves. Allow the mixture to cool completely before using it to make cocktails.
I found the recipe for the cocktail at Difford’s Guide.
Ingredients
1 oz. bourbon
1 oz. rye whiskey
¼ oz. syrup from maraschino cherries or any bottled cocktail cherry
½ oz. vanilla syrup (see recipe above
2 oz. Coca-Cola
Ice
Pitted cherries for garnish (optional)
Combine both whiskeys with the cherry syrup and the vanilla syrup. Stir. Top with the Coca-Cola. Serve over ice with pitted cherries.
Horsefeather
Mike Wright is from Detroit, which just so happens to be the home of this cocktail. It’s similar to a Kentucky Mule (which is similar to a Moscow Mule), but it uses lemon juice instead of lime juice.
I found this recipe at Liquor.com.
Ingredients
1 ½ oz. whiskey
4 oz. ginger beer
4 shakes of Angostura bitters
1 lemon wedge
Stir together the whiskey, ginger beer and Angostura bitters in a tall glass. Squeeze the juice from the lemon wedge into the drink. Add ice.
Brandy Old Fashioned
In a way, this is the cocktail that started it all. For me, anyway. Our supper club group always orders old fashioneds when we’re out for a night on the town.
But what you put in that old fashioned matters. If you’re in Iowa or Illinois, it’s not unusual to use bourbon in this cocktail. Badger-land, however (aka Wisconsin), prefers its old fashioneds sweet. That’s where the brandy comes in (and the lemon-lime soda). Some hoity-toity cocktail aficionados may consider this drink to be fruit salad with a little alcohol. I, however, consider it to be delicious.
Ingredients
1 orange slice
1 maraschino cherry
1 teaspoon cherry syrup (from the jar of cherries)
1 sugar cube
4-6 dashes of Angostura bitters
1 ½ oz. brandy
Ice
Lemon-lime soda (7Up, for example)
In your glass, muddle (stir together and crush) the orange slice, cherry, cherry syrup, sugar cube and bitters. Add brandy and fill glass with ice. Top with the lemon-lime soda.
Beer-ga-rita
I first discovered this concoction at Hell’s Kitchen in Minneapolis. It is a fascinating drink. Most folks are shocked to discover that it includes beer. That’s because it is a very booze and almost creamy drink that goes down very easily, especially on a hot spring day.
Ingredients
¾ cup frozen limeade
¾ cup beer (Hell’s Kitchen recommends an IPA)
¾ tequila
Ice
Blend all ingredients together in a blender. The mixture will be very foamy, but the foam will settle over time.
Michael Knock is a longtime food columnist for the Press-Citizen.
This article originally appeared on Ames Tribune: The delicacy of Midwestern cocktails | Food Column
Reporting by Michael Knock, Special to the Press-Citizen / Ames Tribune
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