Sharkbait’s Cocktail of the Week: Hot Hot Hot

Welcome back! The bar is open on a nice Friday for the first time in a while! This week I’m taking some inspiration from a cocktail test I did on the cape last weekend. I needed to use up part of a jalapeno pepper and figured attempting another drink with it was the way to go, before cooking the rest of it for breakfast this morning. I wanted to see if I could impart some of the heat from the pepper into a regular dry martini. I kept the recipe basically the same, with the addition of some lemon juice to aid in the muddling process to get the flavor from the pepper out into the drink. Here’s exactly what I did:

3 oz. London dry gin

1 oz dry vermouth

Juice of 1/4 of a small lemon

4-5 slices of jalapeneo

Add pepper slices and lemon juice to a shaker. Muddle the peppers in the juice. Add gin, vermouth and ice. Stir until cold. Double strain into a chilled coupe glass. Garnish with more jalapeno pepper slices and a twist of lemon peel.

The nose is fairly benign, I get some vermouth coming through, very little gin botanicals, and no jalapeno at all.

So, the quarter of a small lemon is too much lemon juice apparently. That is the most prominent flavor at work here. It’s almost off putting to be honest. I was wondering if it wasn’t going to be enough when I was adding it. I’m clearly wrong and way overdid it. Mrs. Sharkbait was not a fan and suggested some sugar next time to cut it down. I declined to add some simple into the finished product to see if it would help, erring on the side of caution in order to attempt to finish this experiment.

I’m also slightly disappointed in the level of heat, or lack thereof. I guess that’s on me for rolling the dice on a jalapeno, which can be hot, or rather mild, which apparently was the one I got. I even left the seeds and ribs in when I muddled. It was a rather large pepper, and those are the ones that usually are milder in flavor. A change of pepper is required next time I attempt this. The finish is where the gin finally comes through.  Giving the finish a classic dry martini flavor profile. All in all, this was a decent attempt I think. At least it was a good way to use up a leftover jalapeno. More experimentation clearly needs to be done.

(Banner image courtesy Matthew Tetrault Photography)