A Bitter Spirit

Welcome to our 2016 Advent Calendar

Well .. it's December 1st, fellow booze hounds. And you know what that means? Time for the Trgovac Cocktail Advent Calendar! We're doing full Advent this year - December 1 to 24.

We got off to a bit of a rough start (But it's booze, you say. You love booze!), but we're here, ready and currently 1 day ahead of schedule (oh, yeah, motherfuckers, we've made and photographed 2 DAYS!)

[Psst .. Kate .. this is a family friendly blog .. you might not want to say "motherfuckers". SHUT UP, I had a big sip of today's cocktail.]

Regarding the theme for this year .. Watch this (or at least the first few seconds):

No .. we're not doing only Jewish/Russian cocktails. Though .. tempting.

This year is all about about TRADITIONS!

And, because it's us, we have 4 sub themes:

1. Solstice or Festival of Light celebrations
2. Christmas Story Events
3. The Dark Side of Christmas
4. Christmas Day Around the World

OK, maybe it's a bit of a hodgepodge. But when you think about it .. aren't traditions a bit of a hodgepodge?

Go with it.

Welcome to our 2014 Advent Calendar

To paraphrase one of the gurus of our age "All right, all right, all right". We're back - the boozin' siblings, Drew and Kate. We had such a great time doing our Cocktail Advent calendar last year that we're doing it again in 2014.

We've got a new theme this year: Christmas Carols. We LOVE Christmas Carols (yes, they even occasionally come up in an iTunes mix on Kate's phone in July). We decided to make a list of all our favourite carols as well as those with an interesting story that would lend itself to a cocktail. Somehow, we managed to narrow that down to 25 carols.

And then we grouped the carols into themes (because who doesn't like a theme?): the Christ Child, Mary, Spirit of the Season, and Family. So week 1 of Advent, all about Jesus. He is the reason for the season after all.

We learned a lot last year about bitters, booze infusions, and the chemistry of cocktail making. This year, we're continuing our exploration of mixology as well as trying a few new techniques (though no bacon-washed bourbon this time).

So welcome to our 2014 Advent adventure .. we look forward to the next 25 days.

Looking Back at the 2013 Advent Calendar: "Missed It By That Much"

Some of you may get the reference in the post's title. And then some of you may have been born after 1985 (or are Canadian). The phrase comes from Maxwell Smart, agent of the spy organization CONTROL, on the TV show Get Smart. When things went wrong for Smart (code name Agent 86), he often told the "Chief" that he "missed it by that much." His female partner, only ever known as Agent 99, would mostly just roll her eyes and then be super supportive (role filled by Rosemary, wife and sister-in-law).  

These are the drinks year's calendar that we thought were a bit of a miss.

Kate's Misses

Jack Frost ... I really think there is something to a lemon/peppermint combo, but this version didn't capture what I had in my head. Need to change up the ingredients or something. Back to the drawing board...

Cold Miser ... A coconut rim is just, well, weird

The Hermey ... Personally, it just wasn't my favourite flavour combo.

 

Drew's Misses

Heat Miser ... The first of anything is rarely the best and I just didn't like this.  I even hate the ingredient picture (which I took and poorly Instagrammed!).

The Cold Miser ... The second of anything is rarely the best...*shudder*. Hell, we technically even screwed up the name!

Yukon Cornelius ... It was just ok. It was our first attempt at bacon washing (see my comment about first of things above) and I remember having a hard time getting the amount of lemon right.  It could've been so much better.

Notice that most of what we consider our misses are at the beginning.  Once we got on a roll, our ways of thinking started jiving and we came up with some very successful cocktails. The new calendar is currently in development.  Stay tuned to more information about it in coming posts and the first drink begins with the first Sunday in Advent (and Kate's Birthday) November 30th.

Looking Back at the 2013 Advent Calendar: The Favourites

Hi there. Remember us? Your favorite sister/brother team of boozehounds. Go ahead. Tell us you missed us. We missed us too. Or rather, we miss experimenting with booze almost daily. But never fear! We are coming back for round two of the Cocktail Advent Calendar (patent not pending). What we thought we'd do is post a bit of our thoughts about last year's cocktails, what we liked and what we'd like a Mulligan on.

In case you forgot what happened last year, we created a calendar of 24 cocktails inspired by any manner of Christmas characters and divided them into several categories (Naughty, Lovable Lug, Nice, Dickensian & the Magi). We learned so much about cocktail construction and what was needed to make a good drink. It was great fun and scratched a creativity itch that both of us had.

We thought we'd share the drinks we thought were the best and the drinks that made us say "meh."First up are the Favourites.

Kate's Top Three...and a Bonus

The Griswold ... This was an amazing take on eggnog. Better, I think.

The Sugar Plum Fairy ... We served pitchers of this (with the club soda addition) at our family Solstice celebration. It was the BEST Solstice we'd ever had. A really tasty, party drink.

The Kaspar ... The fig infusion of the gin was my favourite infusion. Overall, this was a very tasty cocktail and a little unexpected.

Bonus: The Randy ... These flavours all worked together really well. The bacon washing worked better here than in the Yukon Cornelius.

Drew's Top Three...plus One

The Sugar Plum Fairy ... This drink tasted exactly as I/we envisioned it. And it was fantastic. And double everything Kate said!

The Ghost of Christmas Past ... Sometimes simple is better. I honestly think this was the best classic version of a martini I ever had. Three quality ingredients make a fantastic drink.

The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come ... A very different type of cocktail and definitely only meant for certain occassions but, man, was this interesting. And I feel like this was our best example of creating a cocktail completely from scratch. No riffing there; this was an original composition.

Plus One: The Clara...What's not to love about adult cherry limeade? Bubbly, clean and not super sweet.

Our next post is going to be about what we thought were our less successful creations.  We posted links to our social media pages at the top of the blog. Follow us wherever you like to socialize!

Welcome to our cocktail advent calendar

Since we started this blog at a festive time, we thought our first project should be a holiday-themed one. Of course, we can't start small. So we're doing an advent calendar of cocktails. That's right - 24 days, 24 cocktails.

This advent calendar has been a month in the making. Spreadsheets have been involved. Multiple spreadsheets and many late-night video chats. But it's December 1st and we're ready to launch and share our first cocktail.

But before we get to that - a bit about how the calendar is organized. Every good advent calendar needs a theme. And we didn't want to just do "Christmas-related" - so we came up with the idea of choosing our favourite holiday characters from film, TV and literature and creating a cocktail that would suit each of their personality or back story.

Within our theme of Holiday Characters, we have six sub-themes (are you keeping up?). We won't reveal them ALL now .. but the first group are folks you would find on Santa's naughty list. And who's at the top of the list? The Heat Miser.