Saturday 23 December 2023

Finnginn's Favourite Festive Drinks: Number 1 - The Gimlet


Anticipation is better than reward. 

Cocktail hour in the Finnginn household is an established part of the weekend routine, and there’s no beating the thought of the sharp citrus hit of an ice cold lime green Gimlet. 

It's an easy cocktail to make as you can substitute a lime cordial for sugar syrup and fresh lime. 

(One of detective Philip Marlowe’s clients in Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye opines about the quality of the Gimlets in the cocktail bar they meet in, saying: “A real Gimlet should be half gin and half Rose’s lime juice and nothing else. It beats Martinis hollow.” )

The essential part of the process is to shake the mixture over ice. The key to making half-diluted gin palatable is temperature.

In my bartending days, I would "freeze" the glass by putting ice and soda water in it while I mixed a Martini in the Boston Tin. Good odds a drunk person would take a sip of water and look perplexed if I placed this on the front bar.

The Perfect Gimlet

Cold glass. Cold mix of gin and cordial (squeeze of lime to freshen it up). Angostura Bitters. Just don't try and hit the high FaLaLaLaLas at the Carol Service afterwards!

Teetotal Alternative

Lemon barley water - that'll be my 5pm drink for dry January. Got to get that sour hit somewhere!

Happy Xmas Everyone!

Thanks for reading and sharing your favourite drinks on the social media. It's been loads of fun. As usual I've overstretched myself with no planning, but it's been a great diversion from the grind of corporate copywriting.

Catch you in the New Year!


Thursday 21 December 2023

Finnginn's Favourite Festive Drinks: Number 2 - Port


My notes for today’s blog read as follows:

  • Tawny vs ruby vs LBV
  • Cheeky vimto?
  • With what cheese?

Just thought I’d give you a peek behind the curtain of how these articles are constructed. Typically I’ll start with these notes and then write an introduction. Then expand out the notes into paragraphs, then go back in to the text editor and revise at the sentence level. 




This week I thought I’d just pop these notes into Google’s Bard “AI” content plagiariser and get it to write the thing for me.

I used the following prompt:

“Write a Finnginn style blog article with the title "Finnginn's Favourite Festive Drinks: Number 2 - Port" based on these notes: Tawny vs ruby vs LBV; Cheeky vimto?; With the Cheese?”

Bard seems to think that Finnginn is some kind of pirate and after some fairly laboured and dull descriptions of the three affordable port types finished with this paragraph.

“Cheeky Vimto? With the cheese?

Now, before you go pourin' Vimto in yer port (though I wouldn't put it past some o' ye!), remember, port is meant to be savoured. Take your time, swirl it in yer glass, and let the flavours dance on yer tongue. And as for the cheese? Well, that's a whole other story for another day. Just know that a good Stilton or a creamy Camembert can be the perfect partner for your port (though maybe not the Vimto).”

Large Language Models such as Bard are trained on billions of examples of text data, and produce outputs as correlated best guesses of likely word combinations that form grammatical sentences. 

A “Cheeky Vimto” you’ll remember is the classic combination of 275ml blue WKD alcopop and 50ml ruby port beloved of UK clubbers circa 2005. In a separate prompt, I asked Bard for a recipe for a Cheeky Vimto and it gave a passable one.

All this is weird because the actual blog I wrote up from my notes is as follows:

Finnginn's Favourite Festive Drinks: Number 2 - Port

I've written a handy poem to help you remember your different types of port. (I've excluded vintage port for reasons budgetary and literary). Here it is:

Finginn's guide to the affordable ports

Tawny’s brawny,

Ruby’s cheap, 

But FTW: LBV!

(“Cheeky Vimto?” - “Not for me.”)

-

As for the cheese I’ll be pairing with my Graham’s Late Bottled Vintage? Here’s my top 5 Xmas Tunes for 2023!


5: Christmas Wrapping: The Waitresses



4: Staple Singers: Who Took the Merry out of Christmas?



3: Boney M: Mary’s Boy Child



2: The Three Tenors: Adeste Fideles!




1: Dolly Parton: Hard Candy Christmas



What cheesy Xmas tracks will you be rockin' around the Xmas tree to after a sweet and mellow glass of port? Let us know in the comments or on the social media.

Tuesday 19 December 2023

Finnginn’s Favourite Festive Drinks: Number 3 - Liqueur Coffee


Poultry including turkey is a great source of the amino acid L-tryptophan - a chain molecule so acute in its effects that a single gram can cause a delay in sleep latency. So if you find yourself nodding off during the Dr Who Xmas Special - you can blame the tryptophan not the triple amaretto you over-generously poured yourself.

For those of us anxious to stay awake to be disappointed by the Dr Who Xmas Special we’re going to need a post prandial stimulant. Coffee should suffice here, I don’t want a repeat of the Xmas where I made space at the table for three last minute Russian guests only to overhear one of them say “Нет, Виталий, мы не принимаем амфетамины до окончания банкета.”

I’ll never quite get the appeal of the Espresso Martini. Who wants to drink cold coffee? I recommend that we normal hot coffee drinkers have a delicious Liqueur Coffee to perk us up at some point after the pudding and before the cheese board.



What is it?

Liqueur coffee is sweetened coffee with a measure of alcoholic spirit added and cream floated on the top.

When I was younger I didn’t need coffee. If I was tired, I simply took a nap. Parenthood and the 9-to-5 grind removed this privilege, so I (like so many others) became slave to the bean - if only to stop the embarrassment of nodding off at the office desk while my hydrated caffeinated Gen Z colleagues giggle at the elder-millennial drooling in his keyboard.

These days I have a mug most days to fight the existential fatigue but, if I have one after 3pm, I’ll fall asleep fine at night and then awake suddenly in the wee hours and be unable to get back to sleep for an hour.

People who know more about coffee might disagree but personally I think freeze dried instant is fine for our purpose here - you’re going to add sugar and put a glug of grog in it anyway so save your finest Arabica whole beans for Boxing Day morning and go for Gold Blend instead.

Pro tip: Adding sugar makes it easier to float the cream. Pour single cream over the back of a spoon and it will form a distinct layer on the top of the coffee.

Any old cupboard booze can liven up a coffee. I’ll be going for Armagnac - as I’ll have some on hand to light the pudding. Liqueur Coffees are named after the country where (approximately) the bottle you choose originates. So mine is a French Coffee, someone taking rum will be drinking a Jamaican Coffee, Irish Coffee made with Jameson’s or Bushmills depending on whether you're Catholic or Protestant, Vitaly definitely doesn’t need a Russian Coffee but if he did it would be made with Vodka.

Teetotal Alternative: I don’t want to seem unimaginative here but I’m just going to go with coffee.

What are you splashing into your Xmas day coffee? Let me know in the comments below or on the social media. 


Image by Max from Pixabay

Thursday 14 December 2023

Finnginn's Favourite Festive Drinks: Number 4 - Dishwasher Vodka

If you are stuck for a last minute gift idea for a sweet-toothed friend, remember: you can convert their favourite candy into an alcoholic beverage using your dishwasher.



What is it?

Definitely not bathtub gin.

Combining sweets and vodka is all about applying enough heat to melt the sweets without boiling off the alcohol. You can’t just chuck all the ingredients in a saucepan and hope for the best. Ideally, it will be done in the bottle in a temperature controlled water bath. Now where can I lay my hands on one of those…?

The dishwasher is not the first kitchen appliance you turn to for cooking. But it is basically a giant steamer with fairly accurate temperature controls. 

(I once read that you could wrap a side of salmon in tin foil and poach it in the dishwasher, but unfortunately I never owned a dishwasher before I was married and my wife is allergic to salmon so still no dice. Do let me know how you get on if you try it! - I reckon a quick shine at 60℃ should do the trick.)

Lidl's delicious Putinoff brand vodka makes a good base. Don't confuse it with Putinka vodka or profits from your purchase will go to allies of the Russian premier. Any old cheap vodka can be used as a base.

Dishwasher Vodka Method

Remove a few ml of vodka from the bottle, replace the missing liquid with sweeties, screw the cap on tightly, pop it in the dishwasher on its intensive 70℃ cycle (ethanol you will recall from high school chemistry boils at around 78℃). When it has finished its run, let the glass bottle cool down slowly (transferring to fridge straight away may lead to a shattered bottle) , shake gently to combine and then either gift wrap or chill ready for serving.

Pro tip: As the dishwasher’s running anyway, you might as well get all the unusual glasses - the sherry schooners, brandy snifters, martini glasses and champagne coups - out of the cupboard and treat them to a detergent-free hotwash ready for the season they’ll be in most demand.

Teetotal Alternative

Hot chocolate bombs. You’ll need some basic chocolaterie skills here and a silicone mould will help. But the principle is basically the same as making easter eggs. Hide marshmallows and a spoonful of instant cocoa in a chocolate sphere and then melt the whole thing in a small pan of milk.

What sweets would you like to see combined with vodka? Let me know in the comments or on the social media.

Photo credit: author's own


Wednesday 13 December 2023

Finnginn’s Favourite Festive Drinks: Number 5 - Wine

 I know we’re not supposed to admit it, but getting drunk occasionally is quite good fun. And the best kind of drunk in this drinker’s opinion is wine drunk. That’s why wine forms the backbone to my Christmas day drinking. 

There’s the indulgent morning glass of fizz that we have already examined and we may yet come to the best sweet and heady fortified number with which to wash down the final crumb of stilton. But for today let’s look at the still and unfortified wines that I’ll be sampling whilst marking an X in the base of the sprouts and glazing the Xmas ham.





What is it?


Wine is fermented grape juice.


I’m going to keep this brief, as it’s hard to write about wine without sounding like a pompous prick: I don’t want to know that “The vintners of the Côtes de Gascogne region are working miracles with lesser known varieties such as gros manseng…” I want to know if I can get it in Aldi for less than a fiver.


White


I like my white wine to taste of citrus and slate - like licking lemon juice from a defelted snooker table. So naturally, my first choice for wine is always a bone dry Sauvignon Blanc


Rosé


Rosé is not just for summer! We’ll definitely have a chilled box of La Vielle Ferme in the refrigerator over Xmas for any rosé fans that pop by. 


Red


As far as crowdpleasers go, you can’t go far wrong with a South American Malbec. Personally, I’ll be tucking into a Romanian Pinot Noir with my Xmas dinner. Yum!


If it’s not too late to add it to your Christmas list, there’s a great dialogue by Plato called The Symposium - the version I have is translated by Percy Bysshe Shelley. I love how it opens with a discussion of how drunk the assembled Athenians of note should get (they are all hungover from the public celebrations the previous night):


“Whereupon it was unanimously agreed that this would not be a drunken party and that the wine was to be served merely by way of refreshment.”


I think that sums up the spirit of my approach to drinking wine on Xmas day! Everything in moderation! And don’t be the Alcibiades at the party! (The Athenian statesman and general turns up to the symposium late, pissed, and insistent on singing love songs).



Teetotal Alternative


Being very much a supportive husband, I willingly sipped a bunch of non-alcoholic wines when my wife was pregnant and, with the exception of some of the “No”secco style fizzes, they were all awful. Just go with grape juice or Appletiser.


Have you got any wine recommendations? Share them in the comments or on social media.


Photo by CHUTTERSNAP on Unsplash



Monday 11 December 2023

Finnginn's Favourite Festive Drinks Number 6 - Smoking Bishop

Towards the end of A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens gives the central character Scrooge - newly converted to the merriment of Christmas following a busy night the details of which you’ll probably recall from the book/play/film/puppet show/muppet show/episode of Blackadder etc and don’t concern us here - this short speech. The reformed miser says to his clerk (to whom he had formerly refused a day off for Xmas day):

“A merrier Christmas, Bob, my good fellow, than I have given you for many a year. I’ll raise your salary, and endeavour to assist your struggling family, and we will discuss your affairs this very afternoon, over a Christmas bowl of smoking bishop, Bob. Make up the fires, and buy another coal-scuttle before you dot another i, Bob Cratchit.”

The “...Christmas bowl of smoking bishop...” intrigued me, so I looked it up and there’s a whole family of mulled wine recipes that were so popular in Victorian times that a reference like Scrooge’s above could be dropped without further explanation.

Here at the home of the Finnginn blog, we are always saddened to discover that a once-loved Xmas tradition has bitten the proverbial dust. Fortunately, we have a voice, and a host of readers and together we might just reinvigorate the corpse of the smoking bishop tradition.



What is it?

Smoking Bishop is a mulled wine made from port wine and roasted spiced citrus fruits. The Victorian cookbook writer Eliza Acton has a recipe in her Modern Cookery for Private Families first published in 1845.

Eliza Acton deserves to be better known. She was the first in print to refer to plum pudding - that delicious combination of flour, fruits, sugar, spices, brandy and kidney fat - as Christmas Pudding. She also introduced the English speaking world to Spaghetti and to Brussels Sprouts. Now’s not the time to open up an argument between two ladies long since departed but a certain Mrs Isabella Beeton plagiarised quite a few of her recipes. And although I’m firmly team Acton, what’s good enough for Mrs B is certainly good enough for me, so here’s that Acton recipe in full:

“Make several incisions in the rind of a lemon, stick cloves in these, and roast the lemon by a slow fire. Put small but equal quantities of cinnamon, cloves, mace, and allspice, with a race of ginger, into a saucepan with half a pint of water: let it boil until it is reduced one-half. Boil one bottle of port wine, burn a portion of the spirit out of it by applying a lighted paper to the saucepan; put the roasted lemon and spice into the wine ; stir it up well, and let it stand near the fire ten minutes. Rub a few knobs of sugar on the rind of a lemon, put the sugar into a bowl or jug, with the juice of half a lemon (not roasted), pour the wine into it, grate in some nutmeg, sweeten it to the taste, and serve it up with the lemon and spice floating in it.”

Those of us not possessed of a slow fire can simulate that step with an oven or that air fryer you bought yourself last Xmas.

Another delightful fact is that the smoking bishop is but one of a handful of mulled wine recipes in a family known collectively as the Ecclesiastics. They all follow the same pattern as above but have different names according to the wine you use as the base.

Substitute port for whichever of the following you happen to have in your wine store and change the name:

  • Claret - smoking archbishop
  • Champagne - smoking cardinal
  • Burgundy - smoking pope

But the one that will be mulling away in the Finnginn slow cooker to greet Xmas guests returning rosy-cheeked from the Boxing Day walk will be the smoking beadle - which has added raisins and is made with that most Xmassy of wines: Stones Ginger Wine.

Teetotal Alternative

One for the ankle biters to enjoy alongside the grown-ups is hot Ribena which is made by adding boiling water to blackcurrant squash.

What are you mulling this Xmas? Can you help us revive the tradition of the smoking bishop? Let us know how you get on in the comments below and on the social media.

Photo by Hannah Pemberton on Unsplash


Friday 8 December 2023

Finnginn’s Favourite Festive Drinks: Number 7 - Stout


All tastes are acquired, but some tastes take more acquiring than others. No child, mistaking a parent’s glass of dark bubbly stout for a cherry-cola, ever took a sip and thought: “Yes! This is the drink for me!” Liking stout takes practice, and the effort is its own reward.

A solid bottle of stout is a bit like a solid marriage. With any luck there will be sufficient notes of joyful liquorice, coffee and dark chocolate to prevent the undercurrent of bitterness from overwhelming.  



What is it?

Stout is a dark beer brewed from barley that has been toasted until burnt. For purists, stout is traditionally made with unmalted barley and it is this that distinguishes it from the maltier-tasting porter. But in practice there is a lot of overlap between the two and mixing of malted and unmalted grains to get the desired flavour in the brew.

Guinness or Murphy's?

The stout with the best international marketing campaign is undoubtedly Guinness. I’ve worked many St Patrick’s Days in an Irish-owned bar, in a typical week we’d order 2-3 barrels of Guinness. For the 17th March we’d order (and sell) an extra 10. People would tell you how much they disliked the drink as they ordered another tray of 4 pints to get their hands on another Gunness-branded tall nylon hat (known unaffectionately in the trade as a wanker hat). 

The stout with the best local marketing campaign is undoubtedly Murphy’s. I accidentally moved to County Cork briefly in the late 1990s (a story for another time). The town I lived and worked in - Youghal (pronounced like the American second person plural pronoun: “y’all”) - was the only town in Ireland where Murphy’s stout outsold the brand leader Guinness. As a reward, the brewery ran a loyalty card scheme where for every three pints you drank you got a fourth free. The stickers and cards were like a second currency in the town that summer.

When to drink stout

Back to Christmas day - veg prepped, turkey’s in the oven - you’ve got a couple of hours before the spuds need to go on. For me, this is the perfect time to pop down your local boozer for a pint or - if your luck’s in - a bottle of Guinness. Bottled Guinness (sold as Guinness Original in the UK) is a lovely bitter stout with a sharper effervescence than the nitrogen bubbles that give its draft cousin its famous creamy head. A delicious mid-winter warmer.

(Nearly*) Teetotal Alternative: Kvass

Did you ever take a bite of an Eastern European rye bread and think: “My god! If only this was available in drink form!”? Well then you need to get some Kvass - the drink that tastes like bread - in your drinks cabinet. You can even make your own Kvass.

*The minimal research that I do for this blog informs me that the fermentation process leads to trace amounts of alcohol in Kvass - but they give it to children in Russia - so you’ll probably be alright. 

What do you drink in the pub at Christmas time? Let us know in the comments below or on the social media.


Photo by Gary Zhang on Unsplash