Your New Favorite Pumpkin Martini Recipe

I know that it’s a little late in the season for this post, but seriously, pumpkin stuff tastes good any time.

This fall, I realized that I love pumpkin flavored stuff.  I’ve always liked pumpkin flavored products, but it recently came to me that pretty much all pumpkin anything is delicious- pumpkin pie, beer, 

bread, coffee… So it didn’t take a lot on convincing to get me to invent and write about a pumpkin martini.

Before I get into it, a pumpkin martini isn’t a new thing. If you Google “pumpkin martini”, it comes back with over 6 million results. The thing is that a lot of the recipes out there use obscure ingredients, take 45 minutes to make (no joke), require cooking, baking or my personal least favorite- recipes for making ingredients that are the actual drink ingredients.

If you know me or the type of drinks I like to make, I’m all about making and enjoying drinks that don’t require a lot of prep time or trips to a gourmet grocery. Keeping with how I roll, I came up with a pumpkin martini that uses easy to find ingredients and doesn’t require you to use a stove, oven, blender, knife or can opener. I mean, who the eff has time for that? We got drinkin’ to do!

Add the following ingredients into a shaker, plus ice:

2 ounces Pinnacle Pumpkin Pie Vodka
3/4 ounces Pinnacle Whipped Vodka
1/4 to 1/2 ounces half and half (you can also put pumpkin coffee creamer if you’re feeling bold)
Orange food coloring (optional if you want it to be orange)

Shake and pour into a martini glass. Put a dash of cinnamon or nutmeg garnish on top. You can also add whipped cream on top if you’re feeling desert-y.   

Enjoy!

How to Not Sound Like a Dumbass at the Bar

There have been plenty of times when I’ve heard someone order a drink and one of two (or two of two) things have happened:

1)      A person orders a martini or whiskey drink.  The bartender asks them certain specifications of how they want it.  They turn silent with confusion.  

2)      A person orders a martini or whiskey drink with their specifications of how they want it.  But their specifications don’t make sense or aren’t even real terms and the bartender has to ask a bunch of questions to figure out what that person means.

In either case, one word most likely passes through the mind of the bartender and possible onlookers: DUMBASS. 

I don’t want this to happen to you and neither does your friendly neighborhood Spiderman.  I mean bartender.  So you can sound like you know what the f*ck is up when you’re ordering at the bar, I have gone over a bunch of terms that are good to know, especially if you are going for a martini or whiskey drink.  Ready?

A martini classically contains gin.  As of late however, I have made ten times more martinis with vodka.  Even though vodka martinis are way more popular these days, you still need to specify that you want a vodka martini vs a normal martini with gin.  Last, please order it with a good gin or vodka. Otherwise it’s just gross.

I heard someone ask for their bourbon “straight up” one night.  This can be an unclear order to the bartender and spurred me to include this paragraph. Straight up generally means chilled and served in a martini glass without ice, hence the “up” part, because the alcohol is high up above the table/bar due to the shape of the martini glass.  Another word for “straight up” is just “up”.  One generally doesn’t serve non-chilled alcohol in a martini glass or “up”.

Another set of terms has to do with having your drink in a rocks glass (a short cup made of glass) opposed to a martini glass.  If you want your Jack Daniels in a rocks glass with ice, you would say “on the rocks”.  If you want the bartender to just pour you some Jack in a glass and give it to you with no ice, you would say that you want your Jack “neat” or “straight”.  This is distinct, however, from “straight up”, which would be chilled Jack Daniels in a martini glass, which isn’t really a thing unless you add a few things to make it a Manhattan.  With me so far?

                                                                                                         

One time a girl ordered a dirty vodka martini from me.  I made the martini with the vodka she asked for and served it to her.  She took a sip and said, “You didn’t make this right.  There’s too much vermouth in here.”  I’ve decided to make this girl’s story into a cautionary tale.  A lot of bartenders, including myself, won’t put any dry vermouth in a dirty martini because you just can’t taste the difference. Plus most people think that dry vermouth is gross.  Read on for the various martini specifications…

There are a bunch of other terms for quantities of vermouth in your martini or Manhattan.  Like I mentioned above, a dirty martini will often have olive juice and no dry vermouth. A dry martini has a tiny tiny splash, like a few drops, of dry vermouth.  Extra dry will have none at all. Then there is a perfect martini or perfect Manhattan, which has equal parts sweet and dry vermouth.

The last term that we’re going to cover here is “with a twist”.  This means that the drink calls for a lemon, lime or orange rind, commonly lemon, twisted up, quickly rubbed over the rim of the glass and then dropped in the glass.

OK all, that’s all I have on this topic for now, so go out to a bar, get drunk and sound smart!

David

How to Make Beer Even Better

How to Make Beer Even Better

Yes, I know what you’re thinking: “Beer is awesome.  God made it on the 4^th day and it’s perfect.”  And I agree- beer is effing great.  In this post I’m going to share some things that I’ve been playing with (and loving) to make a good beer even better or a crap beer OK.  So crack a cold one and lets go!

I like Blue Moon and have always found it interesting that it is probably the only widely distributed beers that is garnished with an orange.  One day it came to me to throw some triple sec in it.  The result: delicious. It tastes like orange soda and is stronger than normal beer.  Then I didn’t think much about adding cocktail ingredients to beer for a long time. 

A little while ago I was in Hawaii and got introduced to a local brand called Kona Brewing Company.  If you haven’t had their beer, try it- it’s great.  My favorite of these was their Pipeline Porter, which is a coffee flavored porter.  Once I was back home in DC, I bought a 6 pack of Pipeline Porter and started getting creative.  I had some vanilla vodka sitting around that I use in my Smurf cocktail and decided to mix the two.  One Pipeline Porter mixed with ¾ to 1 ounce of vanilla vodka is fantastic.  It’s called Hawaiian Christmas.

In case you couldn’t see it coming, the way to make beer even better is to add ¾ to 1 ounce of vodka.  And not only does adding vodka make beer even more awesome, it makes it stronger. I’ve recently started experimenting with all kinds of combinations of beers and vodkas.  My favorite types of beers to use are stouts and porters but others work too.  My favorite vodkas to add are vanilla, espresso or chocolate.  These are my go-to flavored vodkas, but lots of different ones will work.

Lets explore some good combinations, shall we?

Pipeline Porter + Vanilla Vodka
Chocolate Beer + Espresso Vodka
Vanilla Beer + Chocolate Vodka
Chocolate Beer + Chocolate Vodka
Pumpkin Beer + Pinnacle Pumpkin Pie Vodka
Pumpkin Beer + Pinnacle Whipped Vodka
Light Beer + Citrus Vodka
Blue Moon + Orange Vodka
Fruity Wheat Beer + Peach Vodka

The combinations are endless. I’ve talked about adding vodka to beer in this post, but you can also add tequila, rum or any other cocktail ingredient you fancy.   Lastly, be careful- these drinks are good ways to get a hangover- read this post to arm yourself.

Enjoy!

David

Whiskey Stones

Whiskey Stones

Picture this. You are at a fancy soiree. Someone breaks out an 18 year scotch. Your fellow party goers are impressed and you get excited.  You love scotch.  That person starts pouring.  You’re lucky enough to get a glass for yourself.  You take a sip and it’s warm. This elegant drink burns.  It’s hard to enjoy so you start to feel guilty. You think you should love it but you don’t.  You cave and turn to the person next to you who also got some, “hey, do you know where I can get some ice?” while making a subtle gesture towards your glass.

They quickly glance at you and then your glass. You hear a forced “dunno”. You see a flicker of judgment and slight disgust in their face.  You understand.  You’re trying to hide your embarrassment.  You know that you shouldn’t have done it.  You tried to put ice in nice liquor. 

For those of you that have had a similar experience, you know that it is, in technical bartender terms, bullshit.  It sucks when you have great liquor in your cup but it’s warm- like heated up warm.  Or tastes too boozy.  Or just plain burns.  So you suck it up and drink it anyway, pretending to enjoy it.  Or you put ice in the glass and everyone judges you.  Either one blows.  It happens to the best of us.  It’s happened to me.  Has it ever happened to you?  Be proud.

Thanks to modern science and industrialization, I have found an answer.  And I am sure that I am late to the party in hearing about this miraculous invention.  They are whiskey stones.  Have you ever used these?  They rock, no pun intended. 

You can use them instead of ice.  They slightly chill your drink, taking away some of the burn, making it smoother and actually open up the flavor of your whiskey, bourbon or scotch.  They also make you a less likely target to be judged, maybe even admired for your ingenuity.

By slightly cooling your drink, it gets more delicious and easier to drink without watering down or “ruining” the liquor.  When you try to do this with ice, you are accused of being a “bitch”.  But no such accusation can be used if you use whiskey stones.  You are all of a sudden cutting edge. A connoisseur.  Trendy even. 
                                                           
However, avoiding scorn and looking like the superhero of getting crunk off of fancy shit isn’t the only reason to abandon the ice and drop a couple of whiskey stones into your drink.  It really does suck when your drink is watery towards the end.  Whiskey stones actually make your drink taste better. As I mentioned above, they help to unlock your fancy bourbon’s flavor.  That and you have to put up with less shit from others.  It’s win-win.

So, if you really want to make the high quality liquor fan in your family (or me) really happy during this holiday season, buy some whiskey stones for that person. A great place to buy these is a store in Dupont in DC called tabletop.  Check it out.

David

How to Avoid a Hangover

In a post a little while back, I wrote about What Causes a Hangover. Today’s post is the second in my hangover series. Not to be confused with the movies. This post will go into some things you can do to prevent getting hung over. That’s right! Get wasted with no hangover- all of the fun and none of the consequences. Unless you wake up next to someone gross. At least you won’t feel like shit for the walk of shame.  I digress… lets get into it.

Tip #1 – Eat a Meal with a lot of Carbohydrates Before Drinking

This helps in several ways.  The first is that drinking when you have food in your belly slows and limits the amount of alcohol that enters your blood stream.  As we learned before, the more alcohol that enters your blood, the worse the hangover. The other reason to eat a lot of carbs before drinking is because it provides your body with the needed energy to process the booze.

Tip #2 – Drink Water

Duh.  Something even better is Gatorade.  Again, no shit.  But the best thing is to drink coconut water. It’s not only delicious, but super hydrating.  It also has fat and nutrients that help your body fight the alcohol.  I keep some in my fridge for times that I know I may be hurt the next day.

Tip #3 – Eat

There’s a reason that there are so many late night food spots serving awful but delicious food.  We have a lot of choices in DC- pizza, falafel, empanadas, sandwiches and McDonalds.  These foods all give your body nutrients, fat and energy that it needs to process the alcohol. They also have sodium which helps your body absorb the water you’re (hopefully) drinking. Last, food slows the speed in which alcohol enters your blood. 

Tip #4 – Avoid Lots of Sweet Drinks

Are you throwing back girly shots or Jager bombs all night?  This will most likely make you feel like shit the next day.  Sugar helps to dehydrate you.  Also, a lot of the flavoring in these drinks will help to hang you over because they consist of impurities.  

Tip #5 – Drink Nice Booze

As I already mentioned, cheep alcohol has impurities that enter your blood and make you feel like shit.  These are also one of the main reasons that you throw up that night or in the morning. Spend an extra $10 on good alcohol over the course of the night and get your day back tomorrow. Plus, I can only imagine how awful it would be to puke up Ben’s Chili Bowl…

Now you know some easy things to help you avoid a hangover when you get wasted.  If you’ve got other good ideas that I haven’t mentioned, let me know!

Party on!

David