I may have come up with a new cocktail as well as a fresh movie franchise. Here’s the tagline: A former gang member, after morally failing to go through with a murderous initiation ritual, flees to another sector of Los Angeles, and while he’s in hiding, meets a retired former leader of a covert military team from Japan who teaches and trains him in the ways of the samurai. Something like that. It’d be the Karate Kid for the new generation. Cut and paste. Come and see me, movie execs. I know the next year or so will be a thirsty time because the writer’s strike is still going strong.

This one, once again, came from fresh and a bunch of stuff we had sitting around. I guess you’d call it larder items if you were a chef. I’m not a chef, so I’ll call it something else. “Booze closet diaries?” Anyway, this past citrus season we really went above and beyond with the kumquats and stretched them to the absolute limit of their flavor endurance. I guess you’ll need an example and for this one you’ll need a family tree:

Fermented kumquat/vanilla syrup>>>Kumquat liquor

or

Fermented kumquat/vanilla syrup>>>Kumquat shrub>>>Weird tequila infusion

With the leftover kumquat husks from the kumquat vanilla syrup you just add a bunch of pisco and vodka and let it sit. Once this goes for a couple of weeks and you strain it off and toss it out as you can’t use the kumquats for anything else after this. Ah, but, if you make shrub with those same kumquat husks, you can still use them for a booze infusion which creates this really odd semi vinegar laden tequila that still retains a twinge of that crazy kumquat numbness.

And that’s what got me thinking a bit. That numb feeling from the kumquats. Would that be Comfortably Numb or Comfortably Kum? What else in nature give us that? Well, grapefruit oil for one, but also sichuan peppercorn. Yes, we had some sichuan bitters I made last year. The cocktail came together quite well after this dust off but lacked the back end oomph we were looking for so we went with some amazake syrup again instead of more dairy ingredients to at least make it vegan but also provide some added flavor, density, and lasting power.

And hey, while we were at it, there was still some Mandoquat syrup hanging around that had really fermented and got all bubbly. This went 50/50 with some orange sherbet and we were off to the races with “Binge.” I called it this instead of Mando-orange syrup because I thought of one thing that rhymes with orange. Porn binge.

Cholo Shogun

2 oz. Cholo Shogun Batch

1 oz. Fresh Lime Juice

.5 oz. Binge Syrup

.25 oz. Macadamia Amazake Syrup

.25 oz. Fresh Dragon Fruit Puree

2 Dashes Sichuan Peppercorn Bitters

So, the whole thing here revolves around the Cholo Shogun batch which includes mezcal, quat liquor, the weird tequila kumquat infusion, and some aji amarillo infused tequila we had hanging out in the booze closet. When this all goes away I have no idea what will happen but in the words of Eminem, “I’m sorry mama, I didn’t mean to hurt you, I didn’t mean to make you cry, but I’m cleaning out my closet.” Does anyone else sing this to themselves when they do it? Asking for a friend.