Negroni Week (June 4-10) starts in five days.
I remembered this morning and mixed up 500ml of my favorite equal parts cocktail in a glass flask and dropped in a charred oak stick.
To prepare for the celebration next week, check out some of my other Negroni-related posts:
One of the gifts I’m giving to a family member this Christmas is a 2L charred American Oak cocktail aging barrel.
Here are 5 cocktail recipe options I scaled up to 2L to go along with the barrel. All of these cocktails age very well. You can’t go wrong with any of them!
One thing to note about these recipes: I only age the liquor in the barrel. I add sugars/sweeteners and bitters directly to the glass before mixing in the aged liquor for two reasons: 1) Sugars don’t really mix in or age well, and they have a shorter shelf life. 2) Bitters don’t scale up linearly like the liquor does.
This weekend I had one of the best drinks I’ve made in months. It takes a little bit of patience, but it is totally worth it.
I bought some charred oak staves from Tuthilltown when we were up there two weeks ago and promptly put one to work aging a Negroni.
I mixed up 8oz of Plymouth gin, 8oz of Campari, and 8oz of Carpano Antica, my favorite sweet vermouth, and poured it all into a bottle. I tossed one of the staves and put it in the cabinet. I left my typical addition of orange bitters out because tincture bitters don’t scale as easily as other liquors. Instead, I add a few dashes directly to each glass before serving.
Every 2-3 days I got the bottle out and inverted it a few times to mix it up. It got slightly darker of the course of two weeks, but not a ton. After about a week, the stave got saturated and sunk to the bottom.
I tested out the taste after two weeks with a friend who came to visit and I was very pleased. The bitterness of the Campari was rounded out a bit by the caramel/oak/vanilla flavors and the carbon took the edge off the alcohol.
As usual, I served it in a Mazama Negroni glass with clear ice from the Studio Neat Ice Kit, added 2 dashes of orange bitters, and garnished with an orange peel.
I have two more of the small charred staves to use, but I’m thinking of buying a few toasted and raw staves from Add Oak to experiment with. I’ll cut them down to size here at home and add varying levels of char.
Update September 30, 2016 – Reporting back on 4 weeks of aging: The sharp points in the drink continued to mellow out and the drink picked up some slight caramel and smoke flavors. Pretty good, but not radically better than 2 weeks, so if the time tradeoff is a concern, drink it any time after 2 weeks.
I do a podcast with Sean Nelson called Snack Time.
In Episode 3 Sean and I celebrate Negroni Week on the air. We discuss recipes, bitters, art, hipsters, and glassware. I get a little tipsy and say “incredible” too much, and I have minor recording issues that I’ll fix on the next episode.
Listen to it over at SnackTime.fm, iTunes, or Overcast.
Let’s get right to business: Equal parts gin, Campari, and sweet vermouth. Make it even better with orange bitters and an orange peel. If the bitterness of the classic Negroni isn’t your thing, use Lillet Blanc instead of Campari to make a French Negroni.
June 6-12 is Negroni Week, a time to sip one of the best cocktails we can imagine and support some great charities.
Save these recipe cards to your iPhone and import them into the free Highball app.
The simple recipe is easy to remember, easy to make, and great to experiment with. Have some fun this week. Here are some ideas:
Sip a tasty Negroni this week and donate to a good cause.
Regular readers know how much I love the classic Negroni. That wonderfully bitter flavor profile from the Campari isn’t for everyone, though. If you prefer something sweeter that still has a lot of complexity, the French Negroni might be the drink for you.
The French Negroni subs Lillet for the Campari in the original recipe. This adds a sweeter floral flavor to the drink.
I learned about the French Negroni from the Speaking Easy Podcast (which you should definitely listen to):
//platform.instagram.com/en_US/embeds.js
It is normally served up, but it is also pretty good over ice. If you choose to serve it over ice, switch to a rocks glass.
Save this recipe card image to your iPhone and import it into the free Highball app.
By the way, here is how you can use the rest of that bottle of Lillet.
In my opinion, the king of all summer drinks is the Negroni, which is said to have been born in 1919 when Count Camillo Negroni asked the bartender at Caffe Casoni to replace the club soda in an Americano with gin. The result is boozy, bitter, and wonderful.
The simple equal-parts recipe of gin, Campari, and sweet vermouth is a great base for young cocktail artisans to experiment with. Here are some ideas:
Save this recipe card image to your iPhone and import it into the free Highball app.
Do you want a clear ice cube like this? Get the Neat Ice Kit.
Cook Like Chuck 