Negroni

Then Negroni is one of those drinks that enjoyed some popularity back in the Mad Men days and is now becoming popular again thanks to "boutique" Gin labels which are doing a good job tricking hipsters to shell out too much money for Vodka that they dumped an herb garden into and let sit for a week (seriously you can make your own Gin at home, it's not hard).

But if you're going to live life as a secret agent or want to drink something dark colored that isn't whiskey based (or something retarded like vodka and diet coke), then this is worth it.

A standard Negroni contains Gin, Campari, and sweet Vermouth.  You will not be getting the standard Negroni how-to here.  Instead you will be getting our take on it, which is decidedly more bitter and angry than a normal Negroni.  We will still be using Gin, but as for the rest:

Campari --> Fernet Branca.
Vermouth --> Punt e Mes. (sorry Dolin, you're too hipster).





We recommend keeping all these ingredients chilled.  The Gin can live in the freezer, but keep the Fernet Branca and Punt e Mes in the refrigerator.  Punt e Mes will actually freeze solid, and Fernet Branca doesn't like being that cold because it mutes the flavor too much.







We are not saying top-shelf gin isn't worth it, but we're saying that combined with the heavy hitting aromas and flavors that the other ingredients are going to bring to this, you are going to lose the subtleties that make a good gin good.  We certainly do own a bottle of Brooklyn Gin, which is really good, but putting it in this would be a waste and we prefer to enjoy it neat.  Top level Gin (even the London stuff) can have some fragile botanical qualities that you would obliterate in this recipe.  Since good Gin costs, why would you use it in something in which you'd never get the full gin-ness of it?  











The ratio we use here is a straight up 2.5 ounces of Gin (2 shots) and 1.25 ounces of the other two ingredients (that's a shot of each). 




You can even add a dash of orange bitters if you want to shake things up even more. We garnished with a lemon peel, but the orange peel is traditional.  If you really want to get crazy, you can garnish with a stick of licorice root.  

These are smooth, they go down easy and before you know it you've killed a fifth of Gin before you friends show up.  As you know our little slideshows usually include a cautionary tale involving the loss of pants and such.  However, as you can see, we are outdoors for this one, and the loyal staff of Pinky Mixology had already lost about a pint of blood due to some very aggressive mosquito activity. Knowing that these little biting bitches would probably die form ingesting our blood which had alcohol levels high enough to need a catalytic converter was very little comfort, and we ducked for cover.

Next time:

SODAS

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