Thursday, September 3, 2009

suffering bastard

1 oz Bourbon (Buffalo Trace)
1 oz Gin (Beefeater)
1 oz Lime Juice
1 dash Angostura Bitters
4 oz Ginger Ale (Polar)

Pour everything into a double old-fashioned glass filled with ice cubes. Garnish with a mint sprig and orange wheel speared with a cherry.
After dinner, I scanned the Anvil list for a drink to make and picked the Suffering Bastard. The Anvil's listing has it as a lemon juice drink, and all of the ones I could find were lime. After bailing on the lemon juice recipe search, I figured that the recipe in Beachbum Berry's Grog Log would be one of the better ones to choose. Berry lists the origin of this drink around 1950 at the Shepheard's Hotel in Cairo, Egypt, where the drink was originally made with brandy and ginger beer instead of bourbon and ginger ale. Overall, the Suffering Bastard was pretty refreshing. The lime really stood out on the foretaste and the ginger on the swallow. It was rather hard to tell that there was bourbon or gin in the drink due to the lime, ginger ale, and bitters dominating the flavor profile. With the Suffering Bastard crossed off the list, 27 more drinks remain.

5 comments:

erik.ellestad said...

Nice looking mint!

I so hate to see sad wilted mint in cocktails.

frederic said...

Should be -- it was picked 5 minutes before the photo was taken!

I have 3 types of mint (2 mints and 1 spearmint) growing in my garden (no longer contained in the herb section because they're invasive like that), so fresh mint is available about 7 months of the year depending on when frost comes.

Ayn said...

Hi,

I stumbled across your blog looking for cocktail information, and I'm glad I did! I actually live in Houston and I'm a regular at Anvil; the bartenders there got me into cocktails. I'm working my way through the list (halfway there at the moment) and blogging about each of the drinks.

Anyway, your photos and posts are great; keep it up!

frederic said...

Ayn, did you finish the0 drink challenge? Any favorites?

Ayn said...

Hi Frederic,

I definitely did finish--I was the second person to complete the list (I did it in about 3 months, for better or worse!).

It was a great learning experience; I went into it knowing pretty much nothing about spirits and cocktails. I started out favoring gin and citrus-forward drinks; now I'm a rye girl with an appreciation for vermouth and bitters. I moved from Houston to San Francisco a year ago and am loving the cocktail scene here (in fact, I'm friends with the first poster on this thread).

My husband and I are working on our home bar. I'll definitely be coming back here to find recipes and tips.
Cheers! -A