Welcome To Wonkette Happy Hour, With This Week's Cocktail, The Metropolitan!
It's a Cosmo, but with SCIENCE!
Greetings, Wonketeers! I’m Hooper, your bartender. My boss at the bar challenged me to create a unique take on the Cosmopolitan for a monthly special. The Cosmo is designed to be a citrus bomb, and it does its job beautifully. It’s hard to improve on a drink that good. However, I think I managed it. The drink is sophisticated, elegant, and still recognizably a Cosmo. But I had to defy nature to make it. (They called me mad! The fools!) Let’s make a Metropolitan. Here’s the recipe.
Metropolitan
1 ½ oz Absolut Citron
¾ oz Ocean Spray cranberry cocktail
¾ oz Grand Marnier
¾ oz acid-corrected orange juice
Shake all ingredients and double-strain into a coupe glass. Garnish with a flamed orange peel.
Acid-Corrected Orange Juice
750 ml Minute Maid orange juice
13 g citric acid powder
8 g malic acid powder
Add acids to juice and stir well. Will keep in the fridge for one month.
I’ve mentioned in the past that orange juice is a terrible cocktail ingredient. It’s not acidic enough to serve as the tart component of a cocktail; it’s not sweet enough to serve as the sugar in a drink. Its flavor is strong enough to take over a cocktail without bringing anything to the party. Classic orange juice cocktails, such as the screwdriver and mimosa, are one-note drinks that taste only of orange juice. Classic recipes like the Blood and Sand are considered failed cocktails because the orange juice dominates the flavor profile of the drink.
However, we can use a bit of mad science to make OJ into something … better. (Cue the mad scientist cackling.) Citric acid and malic acid are both naturally occurring acids in fruit; citric acid is obviously present in citrus fruits, and malic acid can be found in tart apples. Combining both in ordinary orange juice produces something that’s as tart as lime juice, but is still recognizably OJ. Swapping the lime juice in a standard Cosmo with corrected orange juice allows us to lean harder on the orange notes of the drink while keeping it tart and fresh.
I wanted to incorporate one more new element into the classic Cosmo before I could call it a “new” cocktail. The standard Cointreau in a Cosmo felt a bit simplistic in the glass with the addition of the corrected OJ. Grand Marnier added depth and sophistication to the drink, transforming it into something truly special. A flamed orange peel is a nice nod to Dale DeGroff’s original recipe for the Cosmo and adds even more depth of character to the drink. It’s not an “orange” drink; the Ocean Spray cranberry and Absolut Citron keep the drink from being completely dominated by orange flavor. But stacking all these different orange notes in the drink provides a ton of character to the cocktail, as opposed to the all-hands-on-deck approach to citrus taken by the standard Cosmo. We’ve got a “Cosmopolitan” on the menu at Hemingway’s that’s better than any other Cosmo in Ohio. I’m very proud of that.
Let’s talk ingredients:
Absolut Citron: This flavored vodka is the classic spirit Dale DeGroff used in his cocktail recipe, but any vodka will work fine here. We’re currently using Watershed Vodka, a spirit produced right here in Columbus, Ohio. It’s distilled with corn and apples, which creates a vodka with exceptional body. Feel free to use your favorite vodka here.
Ocean Spray Cranberry Cocktail: According to legend, Ocean Spray had an active hand in promoting the Cosmo. In 1968, Ocean Spray published a cocktail called the Harpoon on the back of every bottle it sold. The Harpoon is very, very close to a Cosmo. A few bartenders had a hand in making the modern Cosmo, but Dale DeGroff’s version took off when he wrote it for the Rainbow Room in the ‘80s. Madonna was seen drinking it; Sarah Jessica Parker guzzled it in Sex and the City. The rest is history. Generic cranberry juice is acceptable, but the real deal tastes best.
Grand Marnier: Grand Marnier is a curacao, an orange liquor with a brandy base. Cointreau is triple sec, an orange liquor with a neutral spirit base. Both have their place, but the Grand Marnier makes this particular iteration of the Cosmo something special.
Acid-Corrected Orange Juice: I attempted to create this acidic cocktail ingredient using both fresh-squeezed orange juice and bottled Minute Maid. To my great surprise, the corrected Minute Maid tasted better. The bottled OJ was slightly sweeter, and the orange flavor was more prominent. I’m normally not a fan of bottled OJ versus the fresh-squeezed stuff, but in this case, the overprocessed commercial juice is the better option.
Citric acid is easy to find near you; check the canning section of a big-box store. You’ll probably need to order malic acid online; if there’s a home-brewing store near you, I’d check there. If you don’t feel the need to make a full bottle of this stuff, I’d use the ratios recommended here.
My home bar is Hemingway’s Underground, the hottest cocktail bar in pretty little Medina, Ohio. I’m behind the stick Wednesday-Saturday, 4-10. Last call’s at midnight. Swing on by and I’ll make a drink for you … or anything else from our little Happy Hour here at Wonkette.
OPEN THREAD!
Busy. Questions here.
In this episode of gas station stories, a man in a Christmas sweater and Santa hat was dancing in the middle of the lot. I'm guessing Jingle Bell Rock was playing in his head. He approached a man and woman who were walking away by stepping in between them. He then rubbed the man's bald head, patted the woman on the shoulder and then stumbled his way back to continue his dancing. He got an early start on yuletide cheer. The man and woman just shrugged it off and kept walking. Friday night in Cleveland Heights.