Twisted Sling

Mount Gay XO Golden Rum

So I am going to post my recipe 'Twisted Sling' on here for you all to enjoy.
This cocktail was the very first recipe I conjured up whilst working at Mai Tai Lounge bar in Ashley Cross in Poole. This cocktail was designed over two years ago and has featured on their menu to this present day. Mai Tai was the first cocktail bar I worked at and was the starting block for my career in mixology. As young bartenders with little experience we were looked after and trained very well by mentors who were fully established mixologists. We as staff were heavily encouraged to play around with all types of products and encouraged to express our creativity in drink form, anything we could play around with we would hoping we could create a tasty, simple yet effective drink to be made and sold in the Mai Tai, this opportunity also gave us the chance to design a drink which would feature  on the menu as the bartenders own signature drinks.

Twisted Sling

Ingredients - 50ml Mount Gay XO golden Rum, 2 wedges of lime squeezed, 15ml Monin caramel syrup, 15ml creme de cassis (optional) Ginger Beer.

Method - This is a stirred drink which involves no shaking. In a Sling glass or a High ball glass add your squeezed lime wedges,caramel syrup and Mount Gay XO Rum. Once in stir the contents for about 30 seconds until the ingredients are married together. Add hard ice to the rim of the glass and top with ginger beer (preferably Fentimans) Now if you have a sweet tooth and like a fruity flavour to your cocktails you can drizzle about 15ml of creme de cassis over the top, this adds a nice fruity kick to the drink and also adds a lovely flavour and acts as a great option to variate the recipe.I have also found that a touch of mint added into the the drink adds a lovely fresh finish to the nose and taste, why not try it!!

Garnish - Lime wedge and blackberries.

Calorie count - Roughly 180Kcal

Creme de Cassis

Monin Caramel syrup

Published II

Nutty Alexander Recipe

A couple of weeks ago my cocktail recipe 'Nutty Alexander' which was posted on my blog was published in my local newspaper The Daily Echo. This is the second cocktail recipe of my own which has been featured in The Echo's Taste supplement. I have been informed that the editor of the supplement has had a positive response to the recipes which will hopefully result in more of my drinks being published. All good!!!

Nutty Alexander in 'Taste'

Nutty Alexander

Nutty Alexander

My cocktail I have produced this week is called The Nutty Alexander. This cocktail is a variation of the classic Brandy Alexander. This is a basic yet effective drink, as the winter nights set in and Christmas is approaching this sort of the drink accompanies this time of the year perfectly. The Daily Echo which I write cocktail recipes for have asked for more of an autumnal drink, so as well as publishing this drink here for you guys it will also be in my local Daily Echo. Hope you guys enjoy this.

Ingredients - 35ml Hine cognac, 25ml Frangelico, 15ml Mozart chocolate liquor, 50ml 50/50 (even measures of milk and cream) Cinnamon 


Method - Add all the ingredients apart from the cinnamon into your mixing glass. Fill the mixing glass up with hard ice and shake for 30seconds till the tin is ice cold. Double strain the contents into your Martini glass. For those really cold winter nights this drink can be served hot by putting the ingredients in a pan and heating it on the hob, this makes the drink just as enjoyable.


Garnish -  Garnish the drink with either a cinnamon rim or flamed cinnamon.


Tasting notes - The Nutty Alexander should be a creamy drink with the hints of Frangelico bringing the nuttiness out in the drink. The cognac should be predominant but not too overpowering. The cinnamon adds a nice sweet twist complementing the other ingredients.


Calorie Count -  (roughly) 265kcal

What's this

Plymouth Sloe Gin

What is Plymouth Sloe Gin? Plymouth Sloe Gin liqueur is made by gently steeping the finest sloes in Plymouth Gin and soft pure Dartmouth water. The process is carefully monitored and never hurried, until the perfect liqueur flavour is achieved.

Sloe berries are usely picked after the first frost of the winter in October or November, although now spring comes earlier in the UK they are sometimes ripe and ready to pick in September.

In the production process a wide-necked jar that can be sealed is needed. Each berry is pricked, and the wide necked jar is filled half way with the pricked berries. For each pint (0.5 litre) of sloes, 4oz (100g) of sugar is used, then the jar is filled with gin, adding a few cloves and a small stick of cinnamon, as well as the almond essence. The jar is sealed and turned several times to mix, then stored in a cool, dark place. It is turned every day for the first two weeks, then each week, until at least three months have passed. The gin will now be a deep ruby red. The liqueur is then poured off and the spices and berries discarded.The liqueur can be filtered, but it is best decanted back into clean containers and left to stand for another week. Careful decanting can then ensure that almost all sediment is eliminated, leaving a clear liqueur. Made in this way, the alcohol extracts an almond-like essence from the sloes, avoiding the need to add almond essence.

Sloe gin is a favourite of mine and is a brilliant product to use in the creation of fantastic tasting cocktails. Its not a product which receives a lot of press and is not used enough in my opinion, hence why I am educating  you the readers about it and appreciating the product by featuring it in some of my recipes.


You can purchase Plymouth Sloe Gin in most supermarkets, it normally retails at around the £17 mark.

Gin Jam

Gin Jam

Gin Jam


Here is the next instalment for my 1man1drink cocktail recipe's for you the reader to mix up and enjoy. I recently designed and published this drink for cocktail of the month in a local magazine called DV8.
This weeks featured spirit will be Gin, a favourite of mine due to its fragrant nose and its versatility as a base spirit in any cocktail recipe. This is a simple, unique, crowd pleasing drink.

Ingredients - 35ml Plymouth Gin, 15ml Plymouth Sloe Gin, 1 teaspoon Blackcurrant Jam (home-made or not), 1/4 of a lime, soda, 1/2 teaspoon sugar.

Method - Add the Plymouth Sloe and Plymouth gin into your mixing glass. Add the teaspoon of blackcurrant and stir it in till separated. Now add the sugar and lime juice, fill your mixing glass up with hard ice, attach your tin and shake vigorously till ice cold.
Prepare a rocks glass, or and empty jam jar with crushed ice, strain the ingredients of your mixing glass over the crushed ice leaving enough room for a dash of soda. Once dashed crown the drink with crushed ice. Garnish the drink with a Lime wedge and a smidgen of blackcurrant jam.


Tasting notes -  The Gin Jam should ultimately be a dry drink with a bitter edge and have a sweet finish to it. Depending on the amount of jam you use the gin should be the predominate ingredient standing out. Again this is a very refreshing summertime drink but also an easy drink to replicate at home. Add some muddled blackberries or raspberries to variate, the drink also works well with vodka.   


Calorie count - (roughly) 160kcal

Shaken not stirred - The Vesper Martini

Shaken not stirred, one of the most recognised and memorable lines in the history of film, the term is used all around the world and is recognizable in western popular culture
Shaken not Stirred is a catch phrase of Ian Flemming's fictional British Secret Service agent James Bond, and his preference for how he wished his martini prepared. The phrase first appears in the novel Diamonds are Forever (1956), though Bond does not actually say the line until Dr No (1958) but says it "shaken and not stirred" instead of "shaken, not stirred."

Bond first ordered a drink to be shaken in Fleming's novel Casino Royale (1953) when he requested a drink of his own invention which would later be referred to as a ' Vesper ', named after the Bond Girl, Vesper Lynd. After just meeting his CIA contact Felix Leiter for the first time, Bond orders the drink from a barman while at the casino.

'A dry martini,' he said. 'One. In a deep champagne goblet.'

'Oui, monsieur.'

'Just a moment. Three measures of Gordon's, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it's ice-cold, then add a large thin slice of lemon peel. Got it?'

'Certainly monsieur.' The barman seemed pleased with the idea.

'Gosh, that's certainly a drink,' said Leiter.

Bond laughed. 'When I'm...er...concentrating,' he explained, 'I never have more than one drink before dinner. But I do like that one to be large and very strong and very cold, and very well-made. I hate small portions of anything, particularly when they taste bad. This drink's my own invention. I'm going to patent it when I think of a good name.'

 Why shaken and not stirred - There have actually been scientific studies to determined the difference to a martini shaken and a martini stirred. According to a study at the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Western Ontario in Canada to determine if the preparation of a martini has an influence on their antioxidant capacity, the shaken gin martinis were able to break down hydrogen peroxide and leave only 0.072% of the peroxide behind, versus the stirred gin martini which left behind 0.157% of the peroxide. The study was done at the time because moderate consumption of alcohol appears to reduce the risk of cataracts, cardiovascular diseases, and stroke, none of which afflict James Bond.


So just to re-cap here are the ingredients for the Vesper Martini. 75ml Gordon's gin, 25ml vodka (Russian, as this is Bond's preference) 15ml Kina Lillet vermouth and garnished with a lemon peel. The drink can be shaken or stirred, if shaken, shake til ice cold and double strain into your martini glass, if stirred, use a bar spoon and stir 24 times clockwise and then 24 times anti-clockwise and also double strain into your martini glass. 

Kina Lillet vermouth

Vesper Martini with a lemon twist

James Bond with his weapon of choice

Molecular Mixology - Raising the bar??

A Martini sorbet with olive caviar by Jamie Boudreau.

As we all know the cocktail/mixology industry is forever evolving. Cocktails have advanced from the shaken or stirred method to something a little more exciting. Behind bars around the world a certain technique of producing cocktails is fast coming into fashion. Molecular Mixology (MM) is the latest craze which has hit the bar scene worldwide and is impressing and intriguing people in and out of the industry. Foams, gels, mists and the use of liquid nitrogen are just some of the methods being used by mixologists to design and create a new category of cocktails. The technique (MM) is basically the manipulation of ingredients on a molecular level using kits that you can purchase on the internet, the results you can get from these kits are impressive however the process is quite tricky to master as I found out myself.  (MM) is a very modern, quirky way of jazzing up cocktails, the same process is used in some restaurants (Molecular Gastronomy) as Heston Blumenthal has shown us on his T.V series Heston's Feasts, however this methods in both (MM) and (GM) can be a little over the top and gimmicky which can put some people off and maybe tarnish the reputation of the food and drink industry, I however believe that if done in the right way and not over done this method can produce flamboyant elegant drinks.
If you are interested in finding out more about (MM) and how to accomplish these weird and wonderful techniques there are some videos on-line by Robert Hess and well known mixologist Jamie Boudreau. Follow the links below and check them out.

http://www.smallscreennetwork.com/

http://www.smallscreennetwork.com/show/raising_the_bar/

Champagne cocktail with Cointreau pearls