Sharkbait’s Cocktail of the Week: With A Little Help From My Friends

Hello once again friends. This week has been full of more shit news. Without rehashing or going into more detail, I think we all need a little break from life, and doom scrolling the news. Lord knows I am extremely guilty of that behavior, and I need a little bit of relief. Amateur bartending has certainly helped a little bit, and I hope reading it helps anyone else as well. One last note before I get into this week’s post. Be careful what you share. There is a lot of misinformation and propaganda floating around the internet. Before you share something to friends, family or complete strangers, verify the source please!

Ok, back to the regularly scheduled post.

This week’s drink is another in the trend of moving towards experimenting with, and mixing my own cocktails. This is the third time in eight weeks this year where the featured drink has been something new and not from a book, and I really want to keep that going. I’m starting to get better with mixing and matching liquors and flavor profiles and will start to get more adventurous. That isn’t to say I’m completely moving off using my library of cocktail books. I have a lot of cocktails bookmarked I want to make in the near future, and will be bringing those to you eventually. Having said that, I cannot take the credit for the cocktail of the week this week. Today’s drink is brought to us by our very own DFS expert: Boris!

Mr. Badenov sent me a recipe he came up with, which is a variation of an Old Fashioned he calls the Florida Fashioned, since he is currently acting as the island of sanity in the sea of crazy that is the state of Florida:
2 parts bourbon
1 part triple sec
1 part pineapple juice
2 dashes angostura bitters
1 luxardo cherry w/ as much cherry juice as one desire

Boozy nose, with orange and pineapple notes as well. There was no garnish mentioned, but I figured adding an orange peel would work out well here, given the presence of the orange liqueur. Of which, I had to pivot to Cointreau, as I’m essentially out of Triple Sec. The sip starts out mildly sweet, with the notes of the bourbon cutting through. Its a great balance of sweet with just enough whiskey flavor to keep you abreast of the base spirit at play. The pineapple isn’t very detectable at first, but the more you have of this, the more you can really pick it out of the overall flavor profile. It’s a nice way to keep balance, and really make this an easy drinker for a whiskey based cocktail. I would suggest this to someone who thinks they don’t really like bourbon or whiskey cocktails, and see if they change their mind.

Boris has really got one here. I want to try this with a rye next, to add a different flavor profile and depth. A good quality aged rum would be a good alternative base spirit as well. As to garnish, I’m thinking mint might play here as well, though the orange gives me a slight pause, but an experiment either Boris or myself will happy undertake.

(Banner image found here)