So, turns out this is pretty much the same as one of his others, the Brandy Cocktail, just in a bottle. I guess if you made it the actual size he wanted (we cut it down considerably) it’s more useful as a separate recipe, for storing and whatnot. Aged cocktails are certainly a thing now, though I haven’t yet tried the little bit of this we have left, so I don’t know if it improved with age. Either way, I got to use my new bitters!

Not really any keywords to go on for this one. Hm. It’s also really tough for me to not always default to “terrible things that are happening with our government.” So, instead, let’s go for “interesting things that are happening with other governments.” Earlier this week, Kim Jong-Un’s half brother was killed in Malaysia. The mystery surrounding this continues, as a somewhat exciting intrigue/conspiracy plot with North Korea suspected of carrying out the killing. If it weren’t real life, I’d enjoy reading it in a spy novel!

106. Bottle Cocktail

• To make a splendid bottle of brandy cocktail, use the following ingredients:
  • 2/3 brandy. [Assuming he means 2/3 of a bottle of brandy here, but we scaled it down to about two drinks.]
  • 1/3 water.
  • 1 oz of Bogart’s [accepted as Boker’s] Bitters.
  • 2 oz of gum syrup.
  • 1 oz of Curaçoa.
• The author has always used this recipe in compounding the above beverage for connoisseurs. Whiskey and gin cocktails, in bottles, may be made by using the above recipe and substituting those liquors instead of brandy.

Tasting Notes

BN: It’s not super interesting.You can taste the Boker’s, though, which is kind of like Peychaud’s — very anise heavy but almost a cross between those and Angostura. The gum syrup does make it nice and smooth, but overall I’d want something more exciting to be bottled and stored for later. We can try the cocktail again in a few days to retest — maybe the character changes entirely, but I doubt it.

PiC: It’s good, it’s just not that interesting. Just kind of like straight up sweet brandy. It’s not unpleasant to drink, I just would never order it.