Plymouth was handing these out at Thursday’s Juniperlooza session. I didn’t get one right away, but my new friend John Martin grabbed an extra and passed it along to me on Friday.

I don’t know whether to use it or just admire it!

Natalie Bovis-Nelsen from The Liquid Muse has a series of webcasts from this year’s Tales of the Cocktail. In installment 3, she attends the blogger party and invites each blogger to introduce himself or herself to the camera. I’m in there, too.

I have lots more to say, but since I had to dive back into the freelance life today, I haven’t had a chance to write much. More soon, I hope.

Also, I plan to announce soon what I hope will be fun new feature of this blog, so stay tuned. Next up, though, will be tonight’s Mixology Monday post, as if I haven’t blogged enough in the past week. (ETA: I just noticed Paul’s announcement of the extension. Whoo hoo!)

Blew in to New Orleans, La., yesterday morning after a layover in Charlotte, N.C.  Got my luggage and met the Airport Shuttle. The driver was delightful, full of wit and good stories about the city, pre- and post-Katrina. I was happy I was toward the end of his route so I could listen to him a few minutes longer!

Checked in to the hotel without a hitch, and they even had a room ready, even though I arrived about 3 hours before normal check in. Even better, I have a top-floor room with a window view!

(I’m not crazy about this picture, actually, but it’s the best one I have of the view. I want to fix the colors, so it looks more like this picture, from the Riverview Room on the rooftop, but that will have to wait.)

I settled in to the room and then stepped out for a bite to eat. I wanted my first meal in town to be a muffaletta and Pimm’s Cups at the Napolean House, and lo, it shall be done.

It wasn’t until after I got my bearings that I realized I was seated right next to a table with Misty Kalkofen, from Green Street in Cambridge, Mass., and several of her peers from other Boston-area bars. I wanted to say hello, but then again, I didn’t want to interrupt a lively conversation.

I came back to my room after half a muff and two Pimm’s Cups. I wanted to shower the airplane stench off of me and change clothes. I made my way to the rooftop, where the Toast to Tales of the Cocktail kickoff was scheduled. I met up with a Twitter friend, John Martin, and he introduced me to Joe Gendusa, who leads a cocktail tour, year-round, through New Orleans. Shortly thereafter, I heard someone say, “Mike?” I turned, and Blair, from the blog Trader Tiki, introduced himself to me.

I met several of the booze bloggers (and a hanger-on or two), and we made haste to have a drink at the Swizzle Stick Bar, before 4:30’s Booze Blogger Meet and Greet. I had a delicious Mai Tai:

Then, it was back to the Monteleone, for the blogger meetup, sponsored by Cabana Cachaca, which served up two drinks–a Cabana Shrub, with raspberry shrub syrup, and a classic Caiphirina. I met a lot more bloggers there, and then we repaired to the next room, for a Sloe Gin cocktail tasting.

I went up to my room for a bit, to call Jen and rest. Our next stop was the Palace Cafe, for a Beefeater-sponsored reception, with good food and gin cocktails. I ate, drank, and mingled. Ran into Matt Rowley again, who introduced me to author and Esquire columnist David Wondrich, with whom I chatted briefly before Dale DeGroff distracted him. The Beefeater reception was crowded and loud, and the room was warm, so although I was enjoying the food and drink, I was too uncomfortable to stay.

I came back to the hotel and got a couple of Sazeracs at the Carousel Bar. I had apparently just missed Cameron and Anita, so I texted them and arranged to meet at the Carousel. We chatted a little while, but they needed to freshen up a bit, so we parted for half an hour and re-met in the lobby to go to the Daiquiri party at Arnaud’s French 75 Bar. I stayed there about an hour, and met Erik Ellestad and his wife, but I was beat, so I came back to the room.

I’m about to head downstairs for the Hemingway panel and the start of Day 2. Salud!

Next week, as I’m sure you’re aware by now, is 2008’s Tales of the Cocktail. This will be my first time attending, and I’m pretty excited about it. And also more than a little scared of it–all the pounding my head and liver will take.

Regretfully, I have to tell you that Jen will not be joining me this year. She’s working a new job and doesn’t have ample vacation time amassed yet. We talked about having her fly down on Friday after work, but that’s a little grueling. She’d have to get up at 6am, work a full day in Boston, grab a flight from Logan to NOLA, and arrive probably no earlier than 10:30pm. So, alas, this ain’t the year. But 2009? Stay tuned.

So, I’ll be arriving Wednesday and flying back Sunday morning. Unfortunately, this means missing one of the most intriguing discussion of the week, Sunday morning’s look at the life and times of Gentleman Charles H. Baker, Jr. Gah! I don’t know what I was thinking when I made my flight arrangements, and I can’t change them now without incurring a huge penalty. Blast and damn.

For those of you who will be at the Baker panel, please write up a kickass blog post about it. Please? Baker really fascinates me, and I’m kinda pissed off at myself for my scheduling gaffe.

Onward. Instead of lamenting what I won’t get to do, lemme talk about what I will be doing instead.

Wednesday: I drop in at around 10:30am and will be getting the airport shuttle to the Monteleone, where I’ll be staying. I’ll probably grab a muffaletta or some gumbo and then hit Toast to Tales, the blogger reception, and the Beefeater-sponsored welcome reception that evening.

Thursday: I’ve got the Hemingway panel at 10:30 and then a dilemma at noon-thirty. Should I attend Juniperlooza or Molecular Mixology? 2:30 is Hausgemacht, followed by Artisan Still Design at 4:30. I have nothing from 6 until 8, so I’ll probably explore the city a bit, or just drink at the Carousel Bar. At 8 are the Spirited Dinners, and although I had a tough time deciding, I finally chose the dinner at Bourbon House, in part because of the bar chef, LeNell Smothers, whom Jen and I know from shopping at her store.

Friday: Another busy day. It begins with the Jerry Thomas panel, slides into the absinthe discussion, louches along to the history of the bar trade talk (which I might skip in favor of more exploration–we’ll see), and finally dribbles out into Essential Guide to American Whiskey. This latter panel conflicts with one on rye, and it still baffles me that two American whiskey panels were programmed opposite each other. But Essential Guide is hosted by Gary Regan and the aforementioned LeNell, and if you’ve never seen those two together, you’re in for a hootenanny. Gary did an event at LeNell’s a few years back that Jen and I attended, and it was great fun.

Saturday: Beachbum Berry’s tiki panel leads the morning, assuming I’m not in my undies in my room, watching cartoons and holding a gun or an ice pack to my head. I may do the Herbsaint panel at 12:30, or I might wander through town. I remember some charming shops on Magazine Street, from a pre-Katrina visit in 2002. I’d love to know whether they’re still open. At 2:30 is Cracking the Egg, hosted by Eric Seed and that LeNell woman again, and if she hasn’t gotten a restraining order by then, I’ll probably be there. At 4:30 is the Roll Yer Own talk, and I’m eager to see whether Paul and Erik are going to poison us.

Sunday: Plane leaves at 8:45am. I just know I’m going to deeply and bitterly regret this.

I don’t talk about this here, since this ain’t the right venue for it, but my first geek love, long before I ever enjoyed bourbon or gin, is the comics. Not the stand-up sort (although I love them, too–don’t get me started on NYC’s Moonwork, or I’d-be-here-all-week-try-the-veal), but the printed type. Peanuts, Bloom County, New Yorker gags, Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes, Jules Feiffer, Little Annie Fanny, the beat goes on.

This is all to say I really dig on what Doc Bamboo’s been up to. I can barely even post once a month, let alone draw a crazy-lovely picture with each post. I know from cartoonists, and I think Craig’s a damn good cartoonist. And on top of it all, he makes a good drink.

Which finally gets to the point of this post: the Raspberry-Thyme Smash. Craig and Mrs. Bitters both read Bon Appetit, and the Raspberry-Thyme Smash caught their eyes. Craig’s already posted it, with a great cartoon, a funny story about a muddler, and the recipe for the drink.

Jen and I are lucky. When we moved to Providence, we landed in a place with raspberry bushes in our patio. And we’re growing thyme for cooking purposes, so the Raspberry-Thyme Smash was a natural. After all, we always have gin around.

So, without boring you any longer, our version of the Raspberry-Thyme Smash:

Many thanks to the guys at Scofflaw’s Den for hosting this month. This was a challenging MxMo. Aside from making Old Fashioneds, I don’t mix with bourbon much anymore; I just prefer the spicier qualities of rye.

But aside from blogging an Old Fashioned, I didn’t feel really inspired. Perhaps this is my own limited imagination speaking, but it’s hard for me to think of a bourbon cocktail that wouldn’t be better as a rye cocktail. Even my Old Fashioneds, these days, are sometimes rye, when I want that spicier backbone.

All of my pre-Prohibition cocktail books called for rye as the main ingredient in whiskey cocktails, which makes me wonder what pre-Prohibition mixologists thought of bourbon. A skim through Charles Baker, too, shows few whiskey cocktails, and what he does offer is mostly in the Julep family.

At this point, I started wondering what an anthropologist might make of all of this, but I had to stop caring because Mrs. Bitters was riding the 5:40 outta Boston, and I was running out of time to find a drink for cocktail hour.

I decided to go modern, so I grabbed Art of the Bar. Hollinger and Schwartz had a drink called The Battle of New Orleans, which they attributed to Crosby Gaige’s Cocktail Guide and Ladies’ Companion. Perfect! I thought. Tales is coming up, so I can talk about that. I can talk about New Orleans. I can reference the song of the same name, and since I have both Hollinger/Schwartz and Gaige, I can talk about both recipes.

But then I remembered that Paul Freakin’ Clarke had made this… exact… bloody… post 11 months ago. (Hey, at least I linked to YouTube. I don’t know whether Paul’s even heard of YouTube.)

Baaaack to Square One (not the vodka), and back to the first cocktail book I bought, Gary Regan’s The Joy of Mixology. When you see the name of the drink I chose, you’ll know that my timing was off, but I owed it to Mrs. B. to have something handy soon. I gave her the Preakness Cocktail, about a month late (sorry, Big Brown):

2 oz. bourbon
1 oz. sweet vermouth
Benedictine to taste
Angostura bitters to taste
1 lemon twist, for garnish

Stir and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Add the garnish.

Whiskey, vermouth, and bitters. Hmm. Sounds like a Manhattan to me. The Benedictine is a nice extra touch. I used Wild Turkey 101 Bourbon and Carpano Antica for the chief ingredients, and about 1/4 ounce Benedictine per drink. Delicious. From the moment I touched Benedictine to whiskey, I knew I loved the combo. I always enjoy a chance to work with it.

You ever see something in a drink recipe that makes you think, “What da fug’s that doing in there?” I was poking through CocktailDB the other day and said just that very thing. A little background, though…

We had some egg whites left over after Jen made homemade pasta. Because the eggs were very fresh, I thought I’d use the whites for cocktails. So I searched CocktailDB for recipes with egg whites. I wanted to try something new, and not your usual gin fizz.

I came across a drink called the Fan Tan. Here’s the recipe on CocktailDB*:

Shake in iced cocktail shaker & strain

1 1/2 oz ginger flavored brandy
1/2 oz fresh lemon juice
1/2 egg white
1 dash Tabasco sauce

Serve in a cocktail glass (4.5 oz)

The Tabasco, as you might imagine, caused my “da fug” moment. I googled around a bit and found another recipe on Mixology.com:

Ingredients

1 1/2 oz. Brandy - Ginger
1 dash Juice - Lemon
1 drop Tabasco
1/2 Egg - White

Instructions

Shake with cracked ice; strain into chilled cocktail glass.

I started thinking about this. The only gingered brandy on the market that I know of is Canton, and its flavor profile already carries a hint of hot spice from the ginger. Used judiciously, the Tabasco should, I thought, complement that. The trick was going to be balancing the drink so that the Tabasco didn’t overwhelm it.

photo by Jennifer Hess

I added it sparingly, stirring and tasting after each drop, until I had the balance I wanted. And I have to say, it worked out just as I thought it would. Jen didn’t even taste the Tobasco until I told her it was there, and even then, she had to roll the drink around in her mouth a bit before she noticed its subtle influence.

*I’m aware that my blockquote formatting is screwed; this version of WP seems to parse the HTML/CSS differently than the previous release, for some reason.

One recent afternoon, Mrs. Bitters and I were in our new favorite wine and spirits shop, Eno Fine Wine and Spirits on Westminster Street. While Jen shopped for that evening’s vino, I studied the spirits shelves. One thing that caught my eye was Thomas Tew Rum, distilled very near by, in Newport, RI. The distillers are also, in fact, the makers of the microbrewed Newport Storm beer.

The Mrs. and I are semi-committed locavores. When we can buy local, we do, but when we can’t, we don’t sweat it. But having just moved here, we’re sampling as much of the local produce as we can, from shellfish to meats to veggies to, yes, rum. We’re not just blindly supporting local producers, we’re just avidly curious about what’s available here.

From what I’ve read, there aren’t many U.S. distilleries producing rum right now. When you find one in your back yard, at the same time the next MxMo post is all about rum… why the hell not?

So of course we bought the Thomas Tew, fool!

photo by Jennifer Hess

Thomas Tew has a good story. Newport was once a major rum distiller, and the Thomas Tew cats are trying to hew closely to the traditions of the past–distilling in a pot still, naming their product for a famous pirate, that kind of thing.

So, how’s the taste? Wellllll, it needs improvement. According to the markings on my bottle, I’ve got a sample of the third barrel that Thomas Tew has produced. When I bought the rum, I asked at guy at Eno, “Have you had this? What did you think?” He said he thought the flavors were good, but the rum was a bit thin. I think that’s a valid assessment. Sipping it neat, I found a simple, tasty dark rum. I didn’t find anything “unpleasant,” as some tasters have, but I didn’t find much complexity in the rum, either. I don’t know if it’s worth going out of your way to procure a bottle, but if the distillers tweak and improve their recipes, I think they can produce a damn fine rum.

For mixing, I wound up adapting the Kona cocktail from Trader Vic’s Book of Food and Drink. The copy I have entreats me to refrain from posting his recipe without his permission. I don’t have his permission, or that of his estate, but it doesn’t matter much because I didn’t hew to his formula that closely anyway. His recipe calls for Puerto Rican rum, lemon and lime juices, and maraschino.

I started with the Thomas Tew and the other ingredients, shook ‘em up, and tasted the results. Not quite what I wanted. I wound up adding a touch of Gosling’s Black Seal, and that was just the right thing to do.

I kinda putzed around with this recipe, so I’m not sure of my final proportions, but let’s say this:

1-1/2 oz. Thomas Tew rum
1/2 oz. lime juice
1/2 oz. lemon juice
3/4 oz. maraschino (Luxardo, in my case)
1/4 oz. Gosling’s Black Seal

Shake, strain, enjoy.

Easing back in to posting, after settling in to Providence.

photograph by Jennifer Hess

This is simply an Aviation variant, with St.-Germain in place of the creme de violette. We sipped this in front of the television while watching Frank Sinatra: A Man and His Music, part of TCM’s Sinatrafest.

With apologies to the folks in this eGullet thread…

You know you’re a cocktail nerd when you move house, and one box contains nothing but bitters.

We’re in Providence as of yesterday afternoon, but we’re still digging out. Catch up with y’all soon.