El Querubin

A little experimentation… Your choice of 100% Blue Agave Blanco Tequila, Bittermens Commonwealth Liqueur, Dolin Blanco, a little grapefruit bitters stirred and served straight up with a grapefruit twist.
Dubbed El Querubin, a sweet and delightful cherub

Working on a Mexico inspired menu this week has left me with the space at the end of my page for just one more cocktail…

And so El Querubin was born!

• 30ml Premium Blanco Tequila (Patron pictured, but any good quality 100% Blue Agave Tequila would probably work)
• 15ml Dolin Blanco
• 15 ml Bittermens Commonwealth Liqueur
• 3-4 drop of Hopped Grapefruit bitters

Stirred lovingly and strained into a chilled cocktail glass, sprayed with the oil from a grapefruit twist, rim glass and float on top of the drink.

Just a bit of tequila fun for Friday evening 🙂

Grapefruit Syrup

I ❤ Tequila, Like so much!
So as I endeavour to expand my cocktail menu, I’ve been wanting to put a Paloma on the menu, I really like to use grapefruit zest in a number of drinks I’m sure I can find a few interesting drinks to tweak with a Grapefruit Syrup, like perhap my A Bitter Pill to Swallow.

Creating syrups is one of my favourite past times and last week I scoured the internet for a simple recipe to make a citrus infused sugar and I found this great recipe for making Grapefruit Simple Syrup.

The original recipe:

2-4 Ruby Red Grapefruit
2 Cups of Sugar
2 Cups of Water

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My Recipe:

Zest of 4 Ruby Red Grapefruit
1 Boston of Sugar
1 Boston of Hot Water (To be added the next day)

I’ve adjusted the recipe only in that I find a 425ml Boston Glass a really useful measure on the bar when it comes to keeping proportions even.

My method was to use a peeler to remove the zest (trying to get as little of the white pith as possible).
I chopped the zest and used a muddler to extract the oils into the sugar (kinda like using a mortar and pestle).

Here we have a Boston filled with sugar and the zest of 4 red grapefruit

I chopped the grapefruit peel into small chunks to make it easier to muddle into the sugar, and bit by bit added sugar and peel as I muddled it to evenly extract the oil into the sugar.

I’ll leave the grapefruit & sugar overnight to infuse and then tomorrow I will add a boston of boiled water and strain out the grapefruit zest.

As an exercise in reducing waste I also took the juice of the 4 grapefruits, simmered it on the stove and then added equal volume of sugar to make a syrup, which I thinking of blending with the zest syrup I make tomorrow to see how it affects the flavour/colour.