imbibing Away

We had our weekly cocktail & computer gaming session last night and we opened with a cocktial found in the latest issue of imbibe magazine, which showed up in the mail yesterday. While many of the cocktails in this magazine tend to use fancy, custom syrups (like this month's The Witch Hunt, which wants you to make "apple-cardamom syrup" ), there's always a few that are useful. In this case, we tried the The Kilted Pistolero, which is a very nice tasting mixture of tequila & Drambuie. It says the recipe was created to bring the bottle of Drambuie from the back of the bar (guess no one likes Rusty Nails or Stingers any more!)

The Kilted Pistolero

• 1.5oz blanco tequila (I actually used my favorite reposado, Cazadores
• 3/4oz fresh lemon juice
• 3/4oz Drambuie
• 2 dashes Angostura bitters (I used the Fee Brothers Whiskey Barrel Aged Bitters)

Shake in ice-filled shaker and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

Rusty Nail

• 1.5 oz Scotch (I'm a Dewar's White Label fan)
• .5oz Drambuie

Pour Scotch and Drambuie over plenty of ice in an Old Fashioned glass. Stir well, and serve with stirrer.

Stinger

• 1.5oz Drambuie
• .5oz white Creme de Menthe

Same as above - pour liquors into Old Fashioned glass with plenty of ice. Stir and server with stirrer.

We followed that with a full icey mug of Sierra Nevada North Hemisphere Harvest beer, one of imbibe's 50 Best Brews for Every Season, in this case, the Fall beers. I went on a quest for the fall beers last month and found a couple. The Brooklyn Brewery Oktoberfest beer was only okay - nothing too memorable. The Ayinger Oktober Fest-Marzen was realy good while the Aecht Ochlenferla Rauchbeir was a truly strange tasting "smoked" beer.

I was also able to find the Southern Hemisphere Harvest beer (which was pretty good) but it wasn't until Michael found it that we got to try the Northern Hemisphere. A very hoppy beer. I liked the Southern Hemisphre better, as it was smoother but with as much character as the Northern.

Related articles

• Esquire: Things We Clicked Today: August 11, 2010 (esquire.com)
• 99 Bottles: Hoppy days are here to stay (boston.com)