the goodist

Manhattan Project: The Best Manhattan Revealed!

What's the best rye or bourbon for a Manhattan? I thought this would be a quick and easy question, but it's spun out into weeks of testing, reading, drinking and drinking (poor me). Alas, today, we have the answers to the burning questions that keep you up at night - rye or bourbon? does pricier vermouth matter? can you do a 4-way rye tasting and 6-way Manhattan tasting in the same evening?

Read on for some unexpected answers...

Manhattan Project: Rye Reviews

Rye oh rye do things always have to get complicated? (let me get it out of my system in the first line then I promise to stop)

After deciding on Bulleit as the spirit of choice for our little Manhattan project, I of course start hearing about rye whiskeys being the likely choice during the invention of the cocktail in the mid-1800's, but bourbon gaining popularity post prohibition. Some purists insists that bourbon shouldn't even be allowed in a Manhattan. I know nothing of you rye, but you're a whiskey, I'm a man, lets meet and greet.

The Manhattan Project: Ezra vs Bulleit

The Manhattan project continues! In today's bourbon battle our reigning champion Bulleit takes on Ezra B 12 Year. Will Bulleit's strategy of sticking to simplicity and clean execution stand a chance against Ezra's muscle (100 proof!) and 12 years of conditioning? Read ahead you beautiful boozers!

The Manhattan Project: Bulleit vs Buffalo

Speaking of bourbon, I'm currently engaged in a project to create The Goodist Manhattan, which means finding the right booze for the job, a burden I bear for you my dear readers. Since this is a mixed drink I'm aiming for mid-priced bourbon (~$25), so let me introduce our first two challengers:

Buffalo Trace: not something you'll likely see at your local booze hole, but an underground favorite for it's value and a long heritage in the heart of bourbon country.

Bulleit: available at most bars in town and a few years back it gained a following for it's ability to kick the living **** out of Maker's at two thirds the price (that was fun while it lasted but it's now they cost about the same).

The Goodist Bloody Mary

Just because I wasn't writing on The Goodist these past couple months, doesn't mean I wasn't slaving away at perfecting a few consumable creations. I'll be posting a few of these over the next week or so to get caught up, starting with The Goodist Bloody Mary...

A friend was coming by for drinks the other night and I was getting tired of G&T's, so I asked her what her favorite drink was while I headed to the liquor store: "Bloody Mary". I was terrified, I'd never made a bloody mary in my life and already knew the endless variations would make this a consuming project considering my personality type.

To make a long story short, I got lucky early on, and after a bit of refining I was able to settle on an easy traditional take on the bloody mary:

Recipe: Carbonated Gin

With no AC at home and 100+ degree days, it seemed only rational to create a perfect gin and tonic - with cooling doses beginning promptly after breakfast. A well made G&T is excellent refreshment, but there have always been two problems with the modern recipe that have annoyed me. One, I like the ratio of gin to tonic near 1:3, but at this point the beverage looses carbonation, especially as the ice melts. Two, tonic water contains as much high fructose evil as any mainstream soda on the market unless you pay for hard to acquire and very expensive specialty products. Both of these problems can easily be solved with a carbonation machine and a little creativity.

Review: Lucid Absinthe

I can think of no better way to kick off The Goodist than a review of the first traditional absinthe allowed into US borders since it's prohibition over 90 years ago - Lucid by Ted Breaux. A wildly popular beverage in western Europe in the late 1800's and legendary for it's "more than just booze" effects on the mind, it's a topic swirling with controversy and confusion due to it's long absence. Fear not, for today your burning questions will be answered at long last with the help of The Goodist and some very willing friends.

A Primer on Absinthe

"Absinthe makes you crazy and criminal, provokes epilepsy and tuberculosis, and has killed thousands of French people. It makes a ferocious beast of man, a martyr of woman, and a degenerate of the infant, it disorganizes and ruins the family and menaces the future of the country."

It was propaganda like this that lead to a cascade of absinthe bans across Europe, culminating in 1915 in France (where it had skyrocketed to such popularity that it exceeded sales of wine) and Switzerland - the country of it's birth. The Swiss even included the ban in it's constitution. Absinthe was a victim of it's own success, as the most popular spirit of it's day, it was the target of teetotalers, wine lobbyists, and doctors who mercifully reported syphilis deaths as "Absinthe Disease".

Absinthe's absence generated a canon of fearful mythology over the next 80 years, with most of the western world simultaneously frightened and intrigued by the lore of it's wormwood-infused psychedelic effects on some of the greatest artists of the 19th century. Curiosity led to experimentation as adventurous souls wandered into herb shops to try to make the stuff themselves by soaking herbs in alcohol (bad idea!). After the ban was somewhat accidentally lifted in the EU in 1988, distilleries popped up making mostly poor quality versions due to lack of experience and the loss of authentic recipes.

It finally took chemist Ted Breaux to track down a pre-prohibition bottle and put it through a gas spectrometer in 2000 to reveal the truth about the green faire. Thujone, the neurotoxin in wormwood, was in fact a very minor player in the overall composition of absinthe - typically less than 10 parts per million. You would be dead from alcohol poisoning far before you'd be high from thujone. So what caused the notorious absinthe high?