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 Assorted Syrups
One of the best gifts you can give someone interested in cocktails is booze. You don’t even have to break the bank (although you might reconsider picking from the bottom shelf) because it doesn’t have to be the rarest or the most expensive item in the shop. Pick a decent base spirit and you really can’t go wrong. For example, there’s no such thing as having too much gin for classic cocktails, and who would turn away a nice bottle of whiskey or rum? Certainly not me, so if you want a no-brainer gift idea that will be used and appreciated, look no further. The problem with this approach is that a bottle of alcohol may not be the most personal or creative gift idea. It will work as a last resort, but you can do better!
If a bottle of booze is the baseline,
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 With so many spirits and liqueurs to try, it’s easy to forget about flavored vodka. After all, most of what you can buy can be easily replicated at home. If you are just getting into cocktails, infusing vodka with some of your favorite flavors is an easy way to develop a taste for more diversity as you challenge yourself to try new things. Yet, despite how simple it is to make flavored vodka, I don’t always consider it. Then rhubarb appears and I remember how delicious it can be!
You may recall from a previous post exactly one year ago that it doesn’t actually take much to get a decent infusion, so long as you are using fresh rhubarb. My results are much better this year because I am using crisp, fresh stalks—about five per quart jar batch. Chop them into pieces and place these into the jar. Then,
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 We like vodka at Summit Sips. We really do. But over the years it hasn’t shared as much of the lime light on these pages as other spirits. There are a few good reasons for that. One is that vodka was virtually non-exisitent in the US before the 1940s. As such, it’s nearly impossible to find classic cocktails that use it because it doesn’t appear in any of the old books. Of course, one can’t ignore the the Moscow Mule, the Cosmopolitan, or even James Bond’s Vodka Martini, but these are all relatively new ideas. Everything pre-prohibition would have contained gin, whiskey, brandy or rum; it may be hard to imagine, but vodka was unknown at that time.
Another reason vodka doesn’t appear quite as often considering the momentum surrounding classic mixology these days is that by definition, it’s a flavorless spirit. Now, I realize, some of you will
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 If life on earth started in the sea, it might explain why most of us consider food “unseasoned” without a little salt. It’s one of our five (six) primary tastes and it’s fundamental in the culinary world. Yet, not many cocktails embrace this flavor. Perhaps drinks are meant to be refreshing and thirst-quenching—a characteristic that is incongruous with salt. However, if added in small amounts, salt can enhance other flavors just like it does with food. Margarita fans recognize that salt tastes great with lime and tequila. Also, some muddled ingredients such as cucumber will benefit by adding a scant pinch beforehand. But generally speaking, salt is largely ignored in cocktails with only a few exceptions here and there that incorporate it nicely. When it is used, it’s often crystals on the rim of the glass or sprinkles upon a drink’s surface as a garnish. But what if you want
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 A few weeks ago, I received an email from a reader seeking ideas for a pumpkin cocktail. Kim Reynick, a friend of my brother’s who lives in San Francisco, was putting together a cocktail menu for an upcoming event and wanted to feature a pumpkin drink for guests. After exchanging a few emails discussing some options, she came up with a recipe that I wanted to share with everyone.
Inventing a cocktail completely from scratch can be a challenge, especially when there are specific constraints. Often, time is your biggest enemy, preventing you from testing long infusions or obtaining hard-to-find ingredients. Other times it’s the guests themselves that pose the greatest challenge. You could create something mind-blowing and unique, but it has to have crowd-appeal if it’s going to be a success at an event. If boozy flavor profiles, bitter aperitifs and esoteric liqueurs might alienate your guests, you
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 This week I want to keep it short and sweet. The Vesper, or as some call it, the Vesper Lynd, is a drink named after a Bond girl. In fact, it’s the only drink ever invented by a fictional character named after another fictional character. If this is all going over your head, the Vesper is the martini that James Bond orders in Casino Royale, and he later decides to name it after his love interest. Indeed, this is the drink that inspired the graphics for Summit Sips.
Vesper 3 oz gin 1 oz vodka .5 oz Lillet Blanc
Combine in a shaker, add ice and shake to chill. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass and garnish with a twist of lemon.
Bond eyes his Vesper.
For a completely fictional set of circumstances, Ian Flemming created a cocktail that is actually pretty good. As martinis go, this is
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 Last year I infused some vodka with rhubarb and it turned out so good that it was gone too quickly. In fact, I believe this was the fastest we went through an infusion ever. I’ve done everything from chili peppers and pineapple to coffee and vanilla, but the rhubarb is my favorite. This year, I decided to try it again and I let it go a little longer to see how the flavor intensified. It turns out that the flavor of rhubarb develops very quickly and after only one day you can see a its gorgeous pink tint and smell the effects. This time I let it sit over the long holiday weekend, and I think I have another winner!
Infusing vodka is about the easiest mixology adventure you can take, and a great way to get started thinking about the flavors you can achieve in a cocktail. To
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 Up on the column of the Rain Vodka still. I thought I would post a final wrap up regarding my recent trip to Kentucky. I know everyone out there has been clicking “refresh” waiting for the next posts, so I figured a nice conclusion was probably in order. I also wanted to say a few words about another product I brought back home with me from the Buffalo Trace Distillery.
It’s one thing to take a long weekend and go for a drive. It’s something else to set a destination that is 4 states away and takes a full 24 hours to get there and back. Yet, despite the long time spent behind the wheel, Louisville is definitely within reach by car from the Twin Cities. I know the area has a lot more to offer visitors than we had time to see but we focused on the Bourbon Trail®. This was also an excuse to see the countryside, visit antique shops and stay at charming B&Bs. The bourbon was truly a bonus.
Another bonus was the discovery of Rain vodka. Rain has been around since 1997, and you don’t have to go to Kentucky to buy it.
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  This week, I am doing something a little different. I will give you the recipe for a cocktail to enjoy, but St-Germain isn’t the name, it’s an ingredient. Although it has been around for a few years now, I find that most people have still never heard of it—unless you are a cocktail geek like me.
So, what is this St-Germain stuff? Magic Elixir? Nectar of the Gods? Secret potion? Actually, you might say it’s all of the above. St-Germain is a new liqueur made from fresh elderflower blossoms. The elder, or more specifically, the European Black Elder grows throughout Europe, northwest Africa and southwest Asia. From the foothills of the Alps, the spring flowers are hand-picked and brought to the distillery where a secret process is used to extract their essence. The production of the liqueur combines old world techniques and ingredients with new processes that ensure quality and consistency. Production is limited and vintage bottles are individually numbered.
The use of elderflowers is not a new concept. Elderflower cordial is actually quite easy to make and has been enjoyed by europeans for centuries. However, the cordial is often very sweet—sometimes requiring ten-to-one dilution with water or soda—and inconsistent flavor strength makes it hard to use in a drink recipe. But, now that we have St-Germain, some very exciting cocktails have appeared.
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 If you are seeing this for the first time, be sure to check out Part 1 for the first half of the story.
 Straining the cranberries With that out of the way, I want to repeat that this was an experiment. Why am I saying this again? Well, I guess it’s because my final liqueur ended up a little different than I expected. So, without further ado, here’s the rest of the story:
Strain, Filter and Repeat
Whether I am making a liqueur such as my limoncello, doing a vodka infusion, or experimenting with some other unusual homemade concoction, I find that investing a little more effort in the filtration pays dividends in the quality and often clarity of the final product. The cranberry liqueur was no exception. Continuing where I left off, the next step in this process was opening the infusion jar and pouring the liquid through a fine mesh strainer. I needed to do this in sections because my strainer is not very big. After pouring most of the liquid through and about half of the berry chunks, I began pressing the pieces with the back of a spoon to squeeze any remaining juice from them. I then transferred the chunks to a plate lined with cheesecloth. Finally, the remaining pieces of cranberries were poured into the strainer and I could rinse out the jar.
 Filtering through paper towels saves time This left me with a nice portion of high-alcohol cranberry extract and a pile of berry chunks on cheesecloth. After rolling the cheesecloth into a sort of burrito, I was able to twist and squeeze every last drop of extract from them. I believe this is an important step because the strongest flavors are likely right next to the fruit, if not locked up inside. Having discarded the fruit, I was left with a deep red extract. What looked a lot like fresh squeezed cranberry juice was deceptively high in alcohol and still contained a lot of tiny fruit particles.
 Final filtration with a coffee filter If you have read a few of my other recipes, this should be pretty familiar, because the next steps involve finer filtration. The fine mesh strainer is a good start, but I like to filter everything I make like this through a coffee filter. However, if I jump directly to the coffee filter now, it will take hours to drain through. That’s because the larger particles tend to clog a fine filter very quickly and stop the flow. My solution is simple: paper towels. By starting the filtration using a paper towel, I am getting most of the big stuff out. I usually pass the extract through paper towels twice, discarding the paper with each pass. By the time I am ready to use a coffee filter, most of the particles have been removed and the liquid drains through very quickly. This leaves me with a very clear extract.
 Testing, 1, 2, 3
The final step involves cutting the alcohol to a reasonable level with water and adding sugar to sweeten the liqueur. I can accomplish both by using a simple syrup which is nothing more than sugar dissolved in water. The big question is how much? This is where my experiment took a turn toward the unexpected. I had originally thought I would need to cut the alcohol by about a factor of four, and based on other recipes, do so with a 1:1 simple syrup. In other words, I would mix equal portions of sugar and water, then mix this syrup with my extract at a ratio of about 4:1. Since I always have simple syrup around for cocktails (and you should too) this was easy to test. I started by measuring 1/4 ounce of extract and adding 1 ounce of my simple syrup. The result was disappointing. Not only did this taste far too sweet—it lost almost every indication of cranberry flavor. I quickly realized that while I had originally added 2 cups of alcohol to my berries, I had squeezed even more extract from them! I was diluting my mixture too much.
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