Do you like savory cocktails? I don’t like Bloody Marys (tomato juice) and don’t like martini, but it seems like there should be something, somehow, that doesn’t taste like gazpacho or a cup of straight booze and brine.
I like sweet/salty, like salted chocolate or caramel, like sour/salty in foods so much. Salt on margarita rim I can take or leave, good either way.
Maybe what I am looking for is not a straight up savory cocktail but something with a salt element and not very sweet. Any recommendations?
Have you had a gimlet? A martini with cocktail onions instead of olives. I had one once with Blue Coat barrel aged gin and it was fantastic.
Fernet Branca, absinthe, and most amaro will provide herbal dry qualities to a cocktail. Amaro Sfumato is particularly savory. I made a drink called a Mondragon which is 1.5oz 100 proof bourbon, .5 oz Amaro Sfumato, and .5 oz Anchor Reyes (red) with a healthy dash of Angostura bitters stirred in a mixing glass and strained into your glass of choice. It’s quite nice and just sweet enough.
Ooh this sounds right up my alley. I don’t have Sfumato but have: Tuaca, Aperol, Amaro Nonino and Heirloom Pineapple Amaro, and maybe still some Amaro Montenegro. Keep Ancho Reyes and Evan Williams bottled-in-bond overproof bourbon on hand always, they are some of my favorites. Will think about the Fernet, I don’t use it much but do have some.
I’ll second the suggestion for amaro. It’s a great replacement for vermouth and comes in so many different varieties. You can also find craft bitters that can really expand your possibilities.
If you are making your own cocktails, they should be less sweet than at a restaurant. Look into making your own simple syrup as well.
Or doing a coffee infusion. I just did my first fat wash and I wasn’t super impressed but that’s something to try.
Yes my home cocktails are less sweet than most bar cocktails because I do usually half the sugar and more liquor, sometimes more lemon or lime. Though craft/hipster bars do usually make them about like I do. Not beach bars. There I have to order “tequila shaken with orange liqueur and lime juice” to end up with a margarita. That’s another post, LOL. Bad margaritas.
A coffee infusion sounds like a good Thanksgiving project. I don’t have any coffee liqueur. Made an unsweetened cocoa/chile infusion a couple years ago (found fresh cocoa fruit in a store, fermented it, one of the best smells I have ever smelled but then no idea what to do with the small yield of cocoa so made the infusion) and it is rough as heck, hard to use in anything.
I just read about using beet juice instead of sweet vermouth in a negroni. OK, wow, I’ll have to try that. I also want to add cynar to my cabinet.