If this were one of those typical food blogs I’d probably start talking about how much I love fresh apricots in the summer and yawn. Instead, I’ll say this: “If you’re losing your soul and you know it, then you’ve still got a soul left to lose.” Can’t remember the full quote or who said it, but that’s why the great googs exists, no? Ah, here we go, it was Charles Bukowski. Figures. No idea why I thought of that this morning. It has nothing to do with anything. At any rate, Denise has been working on a sesame washed cocktail for a while now. It’s great if the sesame is toned down somehow, otherwise the flavor is very overpowering. In the right circumstances, however, it is heavenly. Let’s take a look at the specs:

Lost Cause

1 oz. Scotch/Japanese Whisky Blend

1 oz. Apricot Punch

.75 oz. Fresh Lemon Juice

.5 oz. Macadamia Amazake Orgeat

.5 oz. Sesame Oil Washed Bourbon

.25 oz. Banana Liqueur

.25 oz. Apricot Syrup

.25 oz. Manzanilla Sherry

Yes, did you see how I put the recipe early on in the post? Can we reach out and get the food bloggers to do this more often? I don’t want to read anyone’s boring five page shit about why the recipe is important to them. Just give me the look so I can compare it to others and move on.

Yeah, don’t ask how this one came together. It’s one of those weird monster mash ups that somehow works. It would be nice if there were less ingredients, but if you continue reading there are some options to help deal with this.

So let’s talk a little about batching. It seems intimidating at first until you realize you just add the ingredients as they read in the recipe, just in larger increments. So, in the simplest form, you’d do this:

1 cup Scotch/Japanese Whisky

.5 cup Sesame Washed Bourbon

.25 cup Banana Liqueur

I prefer to keep the batched stuff behind the bar to just include booze, sometimes the syrups and juices get all weird when they sit a long time and you always want your juice to be as fresh as possible. At a big party, go ahead and batch the whole damn thing. Anyway, batching makes this cocktail a little less annoying to make. I know, eight ingredients makes it an annoying bitch, six, just a little less.

Lost Cause Batched Version

1.75 oz. Lost Cause Batch

1 oz. Apricot Punch

.75 oz. Fresh Lemon Juice

.5 oz. Macadamia Amazake Orgeat

.25 oz. Apricot Syrup

.25 oz. Manzanilla Sherry

I have no idea why I started reading about the dukkah spice blend, but it dawned on me that we had a few of those things kicking around. Add a little seasonal stone fruit and voila. This one takes you on a crazy little ride to flavortown.