Monday, April 18, 2011

[battle royal fizz]

1 1/4 oz Cynar
1 1/4 oz Fernet Branca
1 dash Angostura Bitters
1 Egg

Shake once without ice and once with. Strain into a glass filled with 1 oz Gritty's Blackfly Stout brown sugar syrup (1:1, still lightly carbonated). Perhaps adding 1/2 oz of brown sugar syrup (2:1) on the shake and using 1 oz of stout in the glass would work just as well with perhaps more carbonation than the beer-brown sugar syrup.

For my nightcap at Ben Sandrof's Sunday Salon, I requested an egg or egg white drink with an ounce or two of beer float. I was still thinking about the drinks like the Mad Monk Fizz and the Morning Glory Fizz variation that Ted Kilpatrick made me at No. 9 Park, and I was curious to see what Ben could conjure up. Ben's creation was a cross between the Cynar Flip developed at Drink and the Fernet Flip made at Eastern Standard. The pairing of Cynar with beer was one I was familiar with such as in California Gold's Dark Horse which paired it with a stout syrup and a kind of "groovy drink" that Hugh Fiore made me with IPA. However, beer and Fernet? Only as a beer and a shot combination in separate vessels.
For a drink name, I dubbed it the "Battle Royal Fizz" after all of the rich flavors fighting it out and as a play on my first thought of the "Bitter Royal Fizz." The drink's nose contained aromas of the Fernet Branca and the roast and hops of the stout. A rich malty sip from the beer and egg was chased by Fernet's menthol notes on the swallow and a Cynar-flavored finish. If I were to compare it any of the drinks I mentioned above, Cali's Scotch-based Dark Horse was probably this drink's closest cousin.

No comments: