Michael Young's blog

Recipe

• 1 part Campari

• 2 parts orange juice

Pour into a tall glass and stir.

Campari is insanely bitter (see Negroni) and although that might be a good thing, it needs some sweetness to balance it. Orange provides a great acidic and sweet counterpoint, and the whole thing ends up tasting like one of my favourite fruits – blood oranges! All in all, a lovely sharp long drink, which I'd take over vodka and orange any day.

Recipe

• 3 parts Aperol

• 3 parts sparkling white wine

• 1 part soda water

Pour it all into a wine glass with ice.

This was delightful and refreshing. Some bars seem to serve it with a lower amount of Aperol, which just tastes bland and dull. By this recipe, we get a strong bitter taste balanced wonderfully with sweetness from somewhere, and it makes for something beautifully drinkable.

I'd have used more ice if I was making it, since mine melted quickly and the drink got a bit warm by the end. I recently learned something surprising about ice in drinks: the more ice you add, the less water ends up in the drink. If there's enough ice to keep the drink close to 0°C, the ice stays frozen and everyone's happy; but if you only add a couple of cubes, the drink only gets down to 5°C or so, and then it all melts. It seems obvious now, but it would never have occurred to me.

Recipe

• 330ml Mexican lager

• 15 ml lime juice

• 2 drops Tabasco sauce

• 2 dashes Worcestershire sauce

• Ground black pepper

• Salt

• Cayenne pepper

• Lime wedges

Wet the rim of a pint glass and run it through salt and Cayenne pepper. Then add everything but the beer, and serve to an unsuspecting customer.  The customer then adds the beer, making a horrible-looking swirly chunky mess.

This was pretty horrible.  I like a Bloody Mary or a margarita, so I was willing to try a drink with salt; and I like trying new things, and I was in a Mexican restaurant.  But this was seriously unpleasant, and I didn't finish it.  I think they actually put salt in the drink, which meant that I wasn't just getting a hint of salt from the rim (very nice in a margarita), but actually a salty beer.  Also they didn't include any ice, despite what the menu said, and warm lager is bad enough on its own.

Maybe it'd be worth another try with a bit more attention to detail.  As it is, this is probably only to be drunk as some kind of dare.

Recipe

• Ginger ale

• Grenadine

• A cherry

Fill a highball glass with ice, and slowly pour ginger ale in until nearly full. Drizzle a little grenadine (perhaps 10ml) on top, and add a cherry.

A delightful drink for when you don't fancy alcohol. It's very sweet, but the ginger ale is dry enough to stop it getting too sickly – despite what Shirley herself thought about it.

First time I tried this, I was told to put the grenadine in first – it sat right at the bottom and I had to mix it with a spoon, making an awful mess. This time I put it in last, and it sank through the ginger ale, creating the nice gradient you see here. Much better, and providing an extra-sweet twist at the end!

Recipe

• 3 parts vodka

• 1 part pineapple juice

• 1 part Chambord

• Lemon zest

Squeeze the oil from the zest into a cocktail shaker.  Throw the zest in, along with everything else, and shake with plenty of ice.  Pour into a martini glass and serve.

These aren't the proportions most people use for a French Martini, but it's what the IBA recipe says, and I'm a sucker for international standards (see also the YYYY-MM-DD date format on this blog).  It results in a surprisingly sweet and drinkable cocktail, not as sickly or as outrageously pineappley as other recipes I've had.  If I were to criticise, I'd say it was a bit boring, with the Chambord's raspberry flavour crushing anything else in there.  But I'd drink it again! The whole zest-squeezing thing is highly suspect.  I peeled some rind off a lemon using a potato-peeler, making sure to get only the yellow outer bit, and I squeezed it with the pores facing outwards in order to try to get the oil in the cocktail shaker, but I'm not really sure whether anything happened – I certainly couldn't taste it.  In future I might skip instructions that tell me to squeeze oil out of things, and just add rind as a garnish instead.  We'll see.

Recipe

• 50ml gin

• 30ml orange juice

• 5ml grenadine

• 5ml absinth

Shake with ice, and pour into a martini glass. Serve with salted peanuts.

This was a weird one! It doesn't look like much, but it's got an amazing taste – surprisingly drinkable for something that's half gin.

The last two ingredients are in tiny amounts, but they make such a difference: the grenadine gives a much-needed sweetness, while the absinth makes it taste weird, complex and alien. The IBA recipe calls for "two drops" of each, which is surely taking the piss. How big are these drops supposed to be, and what kind of bloodhound would I need in order to detect them?

I happened to drink mine while eating some salted peanuts, and it really went well, with the salty snack balancing the sweet drink – so I put them in the recipe. Although perhaps monkey nuts would have been more appropriate.

Recipe

• 30ml gin

• 30ml Campari

• 30ml red vermouth

Fill an old-fashioned glass with ice, pour it all in and stir. Add half a slice of orange (thick) and put it straight in as a garnish.

Oh my god, it's bitter. More bitter than I was expecting. I still enjoyed it, hence the thumbs-up; it was a spectacularly refreshing punch in the mouth that I was able to savour for well over an hour while playing video games. But it's not one I'd want every day, especially after dinner when I find I want something sweet.

Perhaps it could do with a little extra juice from the orange – or perhaps Negroni is just an acquired taste.

Recipe

• 6 parts gin

• 1 part dry vermouth

Shake the gin and vermouth thoroughly with ice, and pour into a martini glass. Put 3 olives (green, in brine) on a cocktail stick, and add.

This is a great excuse to drink, like, a quintuple measure of neat gin and have no one question it. Definitely not one to have if you want to get anything else done that evening.

Watch out for snobs: it seems people insist on having as little vermouth as possible and stirring the ice so as not to chip it. I say the impurities are what makes this drink pleasant: a good measure of vermouth takes the edge off the gin, and a little meltwater makes it lighter and easier to drink.

I especially love the salt that comes off the olives, and they double as a little snack.

Recipe

• 45ml bourbon whiskey

• 1 sugar cube

• Angostura bitters

Hold a sugar cube and pour bitters onto it until saturated with colour. Put it in an old-fashioned glass, add a little hot water (about 10ml), and stir until dissolved. Fill with ice, add the bourbon and a cherry, and stir.

I've made this a few times now, and I love it! Bourbon can be a little sickly, but the bitters cuts right through it, making for a refreshing, strong alcoholic drink. I used the Official IBA recipe from Wikipedia, figuring I should stick to international standards wherever possible.

The rich whiskey and the flavour of cloves from the bitters definitely remind me of Christmas – perhaps I'll make a few of these in December.

Recipe

• 4 parts bourbon whiskey

• 4 parts vodka

• 3 parts maple syrup

Shake thoroughly with ice, and pour into a martini glass over a thin slice of lemon.

I heard the name of this cocktail in an episode of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and after failing to find a good recipe online, I made this one up. It has a sweet, rich flavour, with the burnt maple taste coming through a few seconds after the bourbon. Very satisfying as a sweet drink after a meal. I think I'll try green apple instead of lemon next time.