Cocktail Deconstruction: The Brixton from PettyCash Taqueria

Have you wondered how to make at home that great cocktail they feature at your favorite watering hole.  Well you can -  or you can at least try.  In a new feature called Cocktail Deconstruction, Thirsty Lawyer is going to deconstruct that great cocktail made by your favorite mixologist and come up with a recipe you can follow at home.  Think how impressed your dinner guests will be.

Over the weekend Thirsty Lawyer went to PettyCash Taqueria (http://pettycashtaqueria.com/).  Aside from some seriously great food (charred octopus tacos - my life will never be the same!), PettyCash has a great cocktail program.  While most of their drinks are either tequila or mezcal focused, the stand out cocktail of the evening was the Brixton.  The cocktail menu describes the Brixton as follows:  gin, pablano sorbet, habanero, fresh lime, flaming green Chartreuse.  This is what it looked like when it showed up at our table.

File this one under "Absolutely Must Try At Home"!  Now granted, the pablano sorbet requires some advance preparation  (the Los Angeles Times, California Cookbook has a great recipe at http://recipes.latimes.com/recipe-poblano-sorbet/) but once that part is done, you are ready to go.

The Brixton.

Gin, preferably Plymouth -1.5 oz

Pablano Sorbet -1 oz

Fresh lime juice -1oz

Bittermens Hellfire Habanero Shrub - dash

Shake and serve on the rocks

Green Chartreuse - .5 oz set aflame in your favorite small, halved and hallowed out citrus fruit.

Jason Hervey (aka Brother Thirsty Lawyer) On Katie Couric

Jason Hervey (@jasonhervey) finally comes clean with the truth that I, Thirsty Lawyer, was the inspiration for his character, Wayne, on the Emmy award winning show The Wonder Years.  All jokes aside, Thirsty Lawyer loves his little brother very much and is very, very proud of his success and accomplishments.

Book Club and The Limiting Factor

Me and a friend - who also happens to be a fellow cocktail enthusiast - host a a semi regular (meaning, whenever the mood strikes us) pop-up cocktail hour.  We call it book club.  We work out a theme based on our guests (our first Book Club guests were all from the video game industry so our theme was sci-fi), choose a book (The Player of Games by Iain Banks) and then design a cocktail that ties it all together.  In this instance we designed a particularly delicious cocktail called The Limiting Factor (which also happens to be the name of a spacecraft in the book).  Its more of a cold weather cocktail - but it was particularly dreary in LA last weekend.

2 oz Balvenie 12 year sherry cask
.25 oz honey water
fresh squeezed half lemon
dash orange bitters
dash toasted pecan bitters
egg white
Shake vigorously and serve up.

Brother Thirsty Lawyer On Fox and Friends

Thirsty Lawyer's brother was on Fox and Friends this morning to talk about his Discovery network show, The Devils Ride, and his former life in front of the camera as Wayne Arnold on The Wonder Years.  Thanks for mentioning that I was your source material for all of the evil things your character Wayne did to Kevin (Fred Savage)

Mon Sherry - A Twist On The Classic Negroni

Feeling adventurous this past Friday, I decided to take some liberties with one of my favorite cocktails, the Negroni.  I decided to substitute Aperol for the Campari, and swap out my go to sweet vermouth, Carpano Antica, for Lustau East India Solera Sherry.   This is the first time I substituted sherry for sweet  vermouth it turned out to be a bold but delicious move.

East India is a sweeter sherry; not dry like most.  It has a complex, mature nose of burnt sugar, spices, raisins, chocolate, walnuts and orange peel. Its a sweeter sherry.  The resulting cocktail lacked the bitter profile usually present in the traditional version of a Negroni.  This cocktail had more of a mellow profile; rich and full bodied.  It will be interesting to see what East India brings to other traditional cocktail  recipes.  

El Manhattan Featuring Tapatio Anejo

When the good people at Charbay sent me some of their R5 Whiskey to sample, they also sent me some testers of Tequila Tapatio, Anejo, Blanco and Reposado. &nbsp. Tequila Tapatio is 100% blue agave, and distilled by Master Distiller, Carlos Camarena for La Altena. The Anejo is aged for 18 months in used Jim Bean American Oak Barrels.

Tequila Tapatio is a well known and beloved tequila brand and has been available only in Mexico. "It's the 75 year old icon of Tequila," says Eric Johnson , co-owner/ respected bartender of San Francisco's Bar Agricole. A frequent Tequila seeker, he's been waiting for years to pour it here in the U.S. His wait is now over; Charbay recently began importing this brand into the United States.

Carlos Camarena 's La Altena Family Distillery distills its Tequila only from estate grown blue agave plants. According to Charbay's press release, when Charbay's father and son team decided to distill their own Charbay Tequila, the Camarenas invited the distillers to distill with them. The two families shared their distilling methods. The friendship expanded into Charbay becoming the exclusive USA Importer of the Tequila Tapatio brand.

On Friday night I thought I would put the Tequila Tapatio, Anejo to the test with the El Manhattan recipe from the PDT Cocktail Book. The Anejo is a very smooth tequila, with cocoa, wood, cinnamon and clove on the palate. It made for one great cocktail.

El Manhattan

2 oz Tequila Tapatio Anejo
1oz Punt e Mes
Dash Orange Bitters

Shake, serve up in a coupe; garnish with a burnt orange peel.

Diez de Mayo - Perfect Day For a Margarita

Cinco de Mayo has come and gone, but I am having a craving for the margarita cocktail artisan Rhino made for me last week at the Phoenix in Beverly Hills.  This recipe happens to be one of my all time favorites.

2oz. Reposado tequila
.5 oz fresh lime juice
.5 oz grapefruit juice
two jalapeno slices
three cucumber slices
fresh micro cilantro

Combine all ingredients with ice in a cocktail shaker. Shake.  Double strain over ice.