Sharkbaits Cocktail of the Week: Snowblind

Happy Friday! House Sharkbait is full on preparing for this weekend’s snopocalypse that’s supposed to hit us on Sunday. We’re picking up some last minute food stuff from the store this afternoon hopefully before the masses descend on the supermarkets for the eggs, bread and milk that are required to have on hand for a major snow storm. Thankfully we have a guide on hand for how much prepping/shopping we need to do:

Part of the shopping also included booze, because getting snowed in requires cocktails of some kind. I’m dangerously low on gin now, thanks to a Mr. Alton Brown. I love his stuff. I loved original (and re-booted) Good Eats, and Iron Chef America was the last show I would seek out to watch before the Food Network went completely into the cooking reality show/competition genre. So when I came across a youtube video of his talking about martinis, I had to watch, and it gave me some inspiration. For those unable to watch this short, what Alton does to make his martinis different is he only uses 2 teaspoons of vermouth in his version. As well as adding a teaspoon of watcher. What makes this even more different is that he freezes the water and vermouth in an ice tray. I never would have thought to do that. So I needed to give it a shot:

3.5 oz. gin, frozen if possible

2 tsp. Dry vermouth

1 tsp. Water

Hours before, add your preferred glass to the freezer, and combine the vermouth and water in a standard ice tray and let freeze. Remove the glass and the vermouth and water ice cube. Add to the glass and pour the gin over the ice cube. Garnish with an olive (or in my case lemon twist) and let sit for about two minutes to let the vermouth slowly melt into the drink.  

If you look closely when slowly agitating the ice, you can see the water/vermouth swirl into the gin. That is a pretty cool effect. It definitely helps with the presentation of the drink. As to the aromas? I get lots of gin on the nose. There is a slight citrus hit from the lemon twist. I always enjoy that. Lemon and martinis are such a good combination.

Alton says “After about two minutes is when I take my first sip, which is going to be very gin forward”. Uh, he is definitely not lying here. The first sip is strong on the gin. Not very shocking really.  Because this whole thing is nearly entirely gin, aside of the 3 teaspoons of slowly dissolving vermouth water. Says the first sip is gin forward is burying the lead for sure. I actually get little to no vermouth initially. Once the ice cube is almost completely gone, this is tasting better. I can pick up more of the vermouth now. This tastes like a regular, albeit extremely dry martini. I will say though, I am kinda digging how the slow dissolve changes as the profile of the drink  as the ice slowly melts into the cocktail. It’s a pretty novel concept I would not have thought of.

This is definitely a one and done drink for me. Not just for the huge gin hit you get up front, but two of these is 7 oz. of nearly straight gin. That’s a lot  to take back to back. Now, Is this going to be a more regular style of preparation? Perhaps. Depends on how motivated I feel to batch out vermouth ice cubes. I also don’t know if I’d do it for this drink either. I like a strong drink, but this is pushing it for me. I do like it, but I think I might prefer the classic medium I’ve been going with lately. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to make sure my snow blower starts. Enjoy the weekend.

(Banner image courtesy Matthew Tetrault Photography)