Tonight in the chatroom is a Thursday Drink Night with the theme of “brand new.” Since it is a brand new year, it is time to bring out an ingredient you have never used in a TDN drink before. Perhaps a dusty bottle like that Galliano that sticks out over the rest of the bottles on your bar. Or perhaps a new addition to your shelves.  Either way, show up after 8pm EST and show off your new (to us) ingredient!

• Michael Dietsch of A Dash of Bitters continues on with his Five Essential Cocktails series by covering rum. While many of these drinks like the Daiquiri and Hurricane have had their name stolen for syrupy horrors, the originals as Michael presents them are exquisite drinks!
• Speaking of rum, A Mountain of Crushed Ice’s Tiare travels over to London for the UK Rumfest. She presents recipes from Beachbum Berry’s “Don’t fear the blender” seminar, the award recipients, and lots of great photos of the event.
• Camper English of Alcademics wishes a happy 60th birthday to the Galliano Alexander, otherwise known as the Golden Cadillac. He also covers the menu changes SF’s Jasper’s Corner Tap and the Starlight Room and Manresa and the drinks at the new Wo Hing General Store, Monterey’s 1833, and NY’s Le Bernardin. His reviews of some of these bars were published in Class Magazine.
• The Cocktail Virgin/Slut, Frederic Yarm, writes about a few drinks he had out including Misty Kalkofen’s mezcal-laden Beneficio de Cafe and Eastern Standard’s Bourbon Derby Flip. He also has a pair of Rogue Cocktails drinks, one in — the Racketeer, and one out — 2 Cups of Blood. Other drinks he had at home were Robert Hess’ Black Feather and Brian Block’s chocolate-infused Negroni variation, the Portolono.
• Matt Rowley of the Whiskey Forge offers up a hangover-helping recipe for bacon dumplings and pontificates over one of the more famous drunkard authors, Charles Bukowski.
• The RumDood, Matt Robold, reviews Novo Fogo Cachaça with aromas of “grassy… honey, citrus, and green apple” and makes a lighter style Caipirinha with it to let this spirit shine in the glass.
• Marleigh of Sloshed presents two Halloween-themed drinks in time for the season: the Devil’s Own, Jason Schiffer’s rum and Fernet concoction, and the Diamondback, a dual spirit plus Chartreuse wonder from Bottom’s Up.
• Cocktail Chronicles’ Paul Clarke offers up his Mixology Monday breakfast-themed drink, the Black Velvet. His theory is that if you are truly hungover, complex mixology and ice banging around in a shaker should be left to other people.
• Doug of the Pegu Blog shares a link to the gin flavor wheel that helps to provide flavor and aroma suggestions for tasting new gins.
• The stomp through the Savoy Cocktail Book continues as Erik Ellestad provides the diverse history and interpretation of the Whisky Daisy and to a lesser extent the Santa Cruz Rum Daisy. His beer of the week is Ovila Abbey Saison which contains some delicious earthy, spicy, and citrus flavors.

The Thursday Drink Night theme last week was Kahlúa – everyone’s favorite coffee liqueur from Mexico. Never gone beyond pouring it in your coffee, or White/Black Russians? Well, here are some different and creative uses for that old bottle of Kahlúa.  Citrus and coffee, 2 drinks with Fernet Branca – there are definitely some interesting looking recipes to try here.

Check out the recipes then vote! (Poll below recipes)

Sweet Wake Up: 1 oz chicory coffee, 1 oz warm milk, 3/4 oz Kahlúa, 3/4 oz dark rum,  dark cocoa dust. Brew a cup of café au lait, add dark rum and Kahlùa and stir. Dust a little dark cocoa on top.

Veracruz Sling: 1 1/2 oz Kahlúa, 3/4 oz lime juice, 1/2 oz orange juice, 1/4 oz Angostura bitters. Shake with ice and strain into a rocks glass.  Top with 1 oz club soda.  Garnish with a floated coffee bean.

Veracruzan Swashbuckler: 1 1/2 oz aged rum (Zaya), 1 oz Kahlúa, 1/2 oz orange juice, 1/4 oz Fernet Branca, 1 dash absinthe.

4 Stars: Muddle lemon peel, add 1 1/4 oz Laird’s bonded apple brandy, 3/4 oz Kahlúa, 1/2 oz Fernet Branca, 2 tsp Bénédictine. Shake & strain.

Solitary Confinement: 1 1/2 oz rye whiskey, 1/2 oz Lemon Hart overproof rum, 3/4 oz Kahlúa, 1/2 oz green Chartreuse, 1 barspoon cane (or simple) syrup. Stir, orange twist.

Dolemit: 4 oz whole milk, 1 1/2 oz brandy, 1 oz Kahlúa, 1/2 oz Trader Tiki’s vanilla syrup, 1/2 oz Bénédictine, 2 dashes mole bitters, shake/strain into a pint glass half-filled w/ice. Top with grated nutmeg and 3 cardamom pods speared on a cocktail pin.

Sunday Sapote: 1oz Kahlúa, 1 1/2 oz Cruzan rum, 1 oz Black Sapote (chocolate fruit) espresso puree, 1/2 oz Clément Creole Shrubb, Chantilly cream head, Orange twist garnish, flamed Cruzan Spiced Rum mist.

Breakfast Bracer Flip: 1 1/2 oz Makers Mark, 1 oz Kahlúa, 1 whole egg, shake with ice, strain, garnish with grated coffee bean.

Satin Sting: 1 1/2 oz Kahlúa, 3/4 oz El Dorado 12 year old rum, 3/4 oz Zirbenz. Dash Angostura bitters, 6 drops absinthe. Pinch ground cloves garnish.

Levez-vous: 1 1/2 oz Sazerac Rye, 1/2 oz VSOP Cognac, 1/2 oz Kahlúa, 1/2 oz cold brewed coffee, 1/2 oz Torani Amer, 2 dashes Herbsaint Original, 1 dash Regans’ Orange Bitters No. 6. Stir/strain into large cocktail coupe, garnish with an orange peel.

Cafe Coco: 2 oz Kahlúa, 1 oz Dark Rum, 1 oz Light rum, 1 oz Cherry Heering, 2 oz Coco Lopez, 2 oz lime juice. Combine with crushed ice in a blender and blend for 20 seconds. Pour into tiki mug and garnish with a flag.

Sunday was National Harvey Wallbanger Day. Did you miss the parade?
There are classic cocktails, and there are classic drinks. One of the latter is the Harvey Wallbanger. It has almost everything I think makes a great cocktail: a cool backstory, controversy about said backstory, a simple recipe with an exotic ingredient, and a wicked cool, evocative name.
We’ll start with that name, and its accompanying backstory. The story goes that three-time world champion bartender Donato “Duke” Antone invented the drink in 1952 in honor of, and for consumption by, champion surfer Tom Harvey. Harvey apparently liked to make the rounds of the shoreline bars after a hard day of carving waves, and usually hit Antone’s place to wrap things up. As you would expect, the trademark balance that made Harvey famous would desert him on the way out and he would frequently bang into the walls. Thus we have the Harvey Wallbanger.
The great thing about this story is that there is very little evidence to support any of it!
Antone could likely have come up with the Harvey Wallbanger. He is also credited with such cocktails as the Rusty Nail and the Godfather, so he was certainly no slouch as a mixologist. But the first real instance of the above story doesn’t appear until the 1970’s… in Galliano’s corporate advertising. Supposed champion surfer Tom Harvey seems to exist only in stories about the creation of his namesake. There is even disagreement over how many “world championships” Duke Antone won. I can’t find any mention of the actual championships he won, and I wonder what kind of bartending world championships they were giving out in the Sixties and Seventies.
None of this makes the story any less fun to relate, so I suggest you file it under “too good to check” and resume your regularly scheduled imbibing and story-telling. If you have actual evidence of any of this, please let me know! The Wikipedia entry for the Harvey Wallbanger claims that there is a biopic in the works about Duke Antone, but take that with the usual pinch of salt for things sourced there as there is no page for such a project anywhere on IMDB, nor a citation on the Wikipedia entry.

The recipe for a Harvey Wallbanger is as follows:
HARVEY WALLBANGER

• 3 parts Vodka
• 1 part Galliano
• 6 parts Orange Juice

Combine in a small highball with large cube ice. Garnish with half an orange wheel and a maraschino cherry (optional).

The exotic ingredient in Ol’ Harv is Galliano. Galliano is an Italian liqueur with a distinct flavor of vanilla, a flavor that is even more prevalent when employed in a Harvey Wallbanger. Galliano has one of the most distinctive bottles in all of liquordom, a bottle that I have discovered is also a huge pain in the keister to store.

It won’t fit in any of my liquor cabinets, even the one I set up to accommodate over-tall bottles.
What’s that? Yes. Yes, I do have a lot of places to store liquor. I have a lot of liquor to store.
But the fiendishly clever folks who make Galliano designed a bottle so tall that it can only be stored out in the open for all to see, which is why you actually see it in every bar you enter, including (now) the one in my basement. There is no way this was an accident.
Finally, there is the name itself. How cool is “Harvey Wallbanger”? It sounds fun. It’s a double entendre. A World Series team even appropriated it back in the eighties. It’s retro. Merely ordering one in a loud voice will likely start a conversation.
What’s more to love?

Oh yeah. I did leave something out.
How does the thing taste?
Although it was invented in the Fifties, the Harvey Wallbanger really came into its own as a hugely popular drink in the Seventies. That’s a warning sign, folks. The cocktail scene of the Seventies was, shall we say, not the finest hour in the storied history of cocktails. The drinks that became popular back then had sweet, muddled flavor profiles that did everything they could to hide the character of the underlying spirit. Gin was damn near extinct as a popular ingredient. Whiskey was for squares. And a darkness was upon the land….
Frankly, a Harvey Wallbanger tastes like a sweet screwdriver made with vanilla vodka. True to the Seventies ethic, all the character of the Galliano is stripped away, and vodka isn’t supposed to have any to begin with. This is the distinction I made between a cocktail and a drink.
A Harvey Wallbanger has little of the complexity, or the potency we associate today with a fine cocktail. But it is actually a pretty tasty drink. You can certainly get one wherever you may find yourself in need of refreshment, even in the most down-at-the-heels dive bar. And even this guy could make you a good one. Wine list offers nothing that tickles your fancy to go with your mozzarella sticks and potato skins? Give Ol’ Have a call.