So I was on a good schedule, and then Beer Week happened. I apologize for the delay here, but you know…gotta enjoy good beer when it happens, and one does not get that many opportunities to enjoy a Pliny the Younger or 3. We all make sacrifices.
However…I still gotta a lotta bottles here and have a whole week off for Noise Pop (yay live music!). On that note, it’s time to dust off the mixing tin and get to work.
What does getting to work look like? I don’t really have a whole lot of great ideas. It’s been busy time. But I have been continuing to add bottles here and there that have intrigued me. A few weeks back I was at Blackwell’s, fishing around for a few bottles I’ve had trouble finding at some of my other regular stops, when I impulse purchased a bottle of Crème de Noyaux. I’d had my eye on it for a while, but didn’t really have any need per se.
So…what is Crème de Noyaux? It’s an almond-flavored liqueur distilled from stonefruit pits and mixed with almonds (obviously). It tastes like…Noyaux? In seriousness it has vanilla-y notes in addition to the obvious almond flavor you would expect, and a beautiful color and Tempus Fugit, which makes its living producing historic liqueurs like this among other things, brought this back into the forefront. They make killer Crème de Cacao and Crème de Menthe as well, spirits you may know a bit more about, but Noyaux is definitely a bit more out there.
What do you do with it then? Well, I got it because there are some recommended drinks, but the stonefruit (particularly the apricot pits) got me thinking about how to substitute it in an interesting fashion in some more classic drinks…like a Hotel Nacional. You can find a few different recipes out there but this is a classic one:
muddled pineapple to get approximately .75 oz of pineapple juice (I use 6 small pieces the way I cut it)
.75 oz lime juice
.5 oz demerara syrup
.5 oz Apricot liqueur (usually Rothman & Winter in my kitchen, but whatever you got)
1.5 oz lightly aged rum (Ron del Barrilito 2 Star most days, but Plantation 3 Star or something similar works fine too)
Muddle, shake, drink, right? It’s great in a chilled coupe. What does it look like if we do a…Hotel Noyaux-cional?
muddled pineapple to get approximately .75 oz of pineapple juice (I use 6 small pieces the way I cut it)
.75 oz lime juice
.5 oz demerara syrup
.5 oz Crème de Noyaux
1.5 oz lightly aged rum (Ron del Barrilito 2 Star most days, but Plantation 3 Star or something similar works fine too)
Again, the process doesn’t change. I will note double straining is essential if you are using crushed pineapple of course, which gets a little messy at times, but it yields a nice frothy head which looks nice. As for the character of the drink, obviously almond is not quite apricot, so it’s…not as bright? Obviously both in color and in flavor, but still a delightful drink, it still plays well with all the other ingredients.
Anyway, getting back on track with an off-calendar post, and back in a week which I already have some ideas for. Until then, enjoy responsibly
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