22 January 2023

From the bartender’s corner – Baja Gold

This is one more drink from the book of cocktails and trivia that Natasha gifted me. This is Tequila, mango juice, Agave nectar and lime. The original recipe called for pineapple juice but I am not a big fan of pineapple juice. Somehow, that particular acid does not sit very well in my mouth.

The trivia mentioned for this drink is interesting.

“In 1669, The German Alchemist Hennig Brand, after noting that gold and urine were similar in color, developed the belief that he could distill the precious metal from it. So, he started collecting urine, mostly from his wife and her friends.

After boiling over 1,500 gallons of it, he found no gold. Instead, he discovered phosphorous!”

21 January 2023

From the bartender’s corner – Satan’s Whiskers

Made this from a cocktail book that Natasha had given me as a Christmas present. This is a fairly old gin cocktail. And I replaced orange juice with mango juice to make it a little sweeter.

One of the interesting things about the book is that it gives some trivia with every drink recipe. For this it had – “Did you know that a cat’s whiskers go out for the same length as the width of the cat’s body? This allows them to judge if they can fit in thru a hole!”

Back to the drink – this is gin, dry vermouth, sweet vermouth, orange juice and orange bitters.

21 January 2023

Finally solved the cold fingertips problem

Got myself a pair of heated gloves. Heated not from the motorcycle battery but two rechargeable battery packs in the gloves itself. I should have gone for a size smaller, I think – but I will manage.

The hands were nicely warm and toasty through out the cold ride today.

Next target – to see if I can ride when the temperatures are in the 30s!!

15 January 2023

From the bartender’s corner: A Tasmanian gin!

Ever since I finished the “Great Gin Experiment” (some 42 gins from 15 different countries), I have mostly been staying out of the gin scene. Recently Matt Tebbe – my friend of 12 years or so – brought me a gin bottle from Tasmania. I opened it this evening.

Simply great gin!

The lavender notes are very soothing to the nose and the juniper leaves a fairly good effect on the palate. I used Fever Tree tonic water and used more ice than normal.

I could not find too much literature on this gin. In fact, I could not even locate the distillery’s website thru multiple Google searches. The only thing the bottle mentions is it uses copper stills for distilling. (which is fairly standard).

Thank you Matt! This was a great throwback to the years when I was experimenting with gin a lot!

14 January 2023

Letter writing from my favorite bar

Since Sharmila was not at home, tried something new today. Grabbed my letter writing stuff and went to my favorite bar (Chiringa), found an empty table and started writing to two of my penpals while sipping some wine.

The environment is less Chiringa, more Cheers for me. Where everybody knows my name, And they are always glad I came …

Loved the white noise around me, the occasional chat with Lauren and Rebekah, the waving at Charlotte, Susan and Logan when they swung by while finishing some letters headed to Europe and Argentina.