The recipe below is indeed the first one I ever came up with and as such is very near and dear to my heart; it’s a pretty simple, easy drinking cocktail with a lot of citrus flavor (I really like citrus). Good for sitting around on a sunny afternoon or impressing your friends at your next nerdy political debate party.

1.5 oz gin

1 oz blue curacao

1 oz sour mix

ginger ale

tonic water

Fill a rocks glass with ice and add the liquors and sour mix. With the remaining half of the glass, fill with equal parts ginger ale and tonic water. Stir and garnish with a slice of starfruit.

For the full effect, try soaking the starfruit in grenadine for a few minutes while preparing the drink to give it a deep red color that sits on top of the blue liquid. Drop in a white stirring straw and you’ve got a nice example of American liquid courage.

Liberty Prevails,

Foggy

1.5 oz vanilla vodka

1.5 oz creme de cacao

.5 oz Godiva white chocolate liqueur

Hershey’s chocolate syrup, sugar for rim, and maraschino cherry for garnish

Wet the rim of a chilled martini glass with ice or a thin layer of chocolate syrup and coat lightly with granulated sugar. Drizzle a very thin stream of chocolate syrup around the inside of the glass (I let the first bead hit the bottom of the glass and then turn it without moving the syrup bottle so that it creates a swirl pattern like a candy cane). Shake liquid ingredients over ice and strain into glass to mix with the syrup. Slice a cherry to garnish the rim or drop it into the glass and it will sink to the bottom. I occasionally top this with whipped cream for that “sundae” feel, but the drink will be more visually appealing without it since the cream will quickly melt even with a cold drink.

Cheers,

Foggy

My real name is Matt; I currently live in Arlington, Va in a 100 year old little white house that most closely resembles a… shack. But only on the outside. On the inside it’s starting to look pretty nice.

The back room of said shack has recently been converted into the 3rd rendition of one of my favorite hobbies – remodeling unused rooms in my residences into speak-easy-style bars within which I practice the dark arts of bartending and throwing kick-ass social gatherings.

I started this pastime back in Charlottesville, Va where I attended the University of Virginia. Most of my reasons for starting a speak-easy were obvious enough that they don’t need repeating. A less common motivator was that I wanted to teach myself the ways of the high-class bartender and the mystical arts of mixology in order to score a job at one of the local established bars. My reasons for wanting that can be summed up a few sentences back(Note: if you don’t consider mixology,the art of creating fine drinks composed of various other drinks and materials, to be “mystical,” then you’re doing it wrong).

I assumed that the best way to learn how to bartend would be to build a bar and the only way I could learn to make all the drinks that a real bartender would be asked to create would be to stock it with every kind of imbibable liquid imaginable. This turned out to be far from necessary, especially in a college town where virtually no one orders anything interesting, other than that one really sleezy guy that exists in every watering hole and insists on drinking only one particular concoction because he saw it in a film and it has a cool name that he thinks will make him appear more suave to the ladies. Nonetheless, that’s exactly what I did.

I dubbed my creation Foggy’s Pub (full story on that in a future post), later to become a brewery as well, and began inviting over anyone and everyone interested in helping me practice my skills. Over time it turned out I had a knack for making drinks and stuck with it. Long story short – fast forward to the present and I now am bursting at the seams with a ridiculous amount of information, both useful and absurd, regarding things like how to make a good cocktail, how to build/stock a killer home bar and what not to do, etc.

Hence this blog.

So in the days/weeks/months? to come I will as often as I can attempt to give back to the internet in one concise place all the bits of information I’ve gathered over the years on this one very specific, but awesome hobby. I will likely also use this as a venue to try out new recipes on which I most certainly hope any readership I get will comment and critique (I have taken lately to crafting drinks based on pop culture phenomenons).

And finally, if anyone reading this is actually in the process or looking to build their own speak-easy, I’d love to hear from you and will be happy to share any useful experience I’ve had thus far. For the moment, it’s 6pm and I’ve been at my desk about 30 minutes longer than I planned as Thursday night is 40’s night at Foggy’s nothing stands in the way of 40’s night.

Until next time,

Foggy