Gareth Hives

Love the look of these glasses, was very excited to see they were £8.60 for a set of 4 (knew that looked wrong) and yes alas the Buy Now link takes you to the Lewis Ice Bag in the Difford's Shop. Oh well, was just looking through the Negronis and will have to make my 'Celebration' in something else, boooooo! 🥹

Love it, just different enough. Was tempted to up the Montenegro but no need, just right . 5 ⭐️

The state I live in you can't even get beers in convenience stores and it still shocks me when I go to NY or somewhere and I walk into the store and there's beer and malt drinks in the refrigerator section. You can't drink them in public though still.

sounds like prohibition all over again, crazy stuff

Where do you live that Amazon sells alcohol? India?

anywhere in Europe, I buy alcohol on Amazon all the time here in the UK, you can pick up loads of stuff that you just can't find in the shops, it's great

But you don't tell us about the whiskeys Gareth. What did you use? Makes a difference with an Old Fashioned. For example, while Maker's Mark is our workhorse Bourbon for most cocktails, we use Elijah Craig Small Batch for our Bourbon Old Fashioneds. Would have been a fun evening. No cigars?

Sorry Simon missed this. Nothing crazy on the whiskeys , we went with fairly good but still entry level (for a ‘cocktail’). So Red Breast 12 YO and Jamesons triple triple distilled. Cigars are a must have and there were various sizes of Olivas, Zinos, Davidoff Churchill late hours and even a Ghurka at one point 👍🏼

Our 25% ABV rule of thumb probably places us at the cautious end of the bell curve. We used to set the bar a bit lower at 20% and, at that level, never lost a bottle. These days we can afford to be more cautious since we have some wine fridges (Vintec) which we maintain at a constant 12°C. So those are what we mean when we say "fridge". Our cocktail bottles occupy a bit over half the space of one of them and they are about my height (195cm). The kitchen fridge, at its lower temperature, would be the best storage option but, as you say, is impractical. The bottles we've lost in the past (in our pre-cool-storage days) were all vermouths, sherries or aromatised wines. The strange, sickly smell was the giveaway...and having smelled it you will also taste it in the glass. A good bottle always smells unremarkably fresh to us. The big payoff for us in having a dedicated wine fridge is the greatly expanded range of cocktails that one can choose to make at any time.

Thanks Simon yes that makes sense, it would be much easier if I had multiple wine fridges to be fair but alas not enough space. The bar fridge needs to hold wine, beer and soft drinks so really doesn't have much capacity for more than 1 or 2 other bottles. I might try putting a couple in there now though as it's unusually warm here. To be fair for at least 5 months of the year our ambient air temperature is probably 12 degrees or lower anyway so maybe that's why I haven't lost more bottles yet. Will definitely look at getting a couple in the fridge as and when possible though 👍🏼

Decent but not wow, Sam seems to be riffing himself with this. Very similar to, but not as good as, the broken plane.

That is very sage advice. The trouble is you'd just fill your fridge with half bottles. I lost a half bottle of Beesou which saddened me, it sat on the bar shelf for a couple of months inbetween uses and had gone dark orange and bitty. Shame.

sorry to spam this but it's something that I've been thinking about for a while. So are we saying that my Lillet Blnc, Cynar, Noilly Prat etc etc at under 20% should all be in the fridge? I'm guessing the purists will say yes, but on a practical note between the family kitchen fridge and the bar fridge I just wouldn't have enough room for it all. The 3 I've just mentioned seem OK but how do you know if they've gone off? I haven't done a count but it could be 12 - 15 bottles of various things that would fall into this bracket.

For us, anything under 25% ABV goes in the fridge after opening.

That is very sage advice. The trouble is you'd just fill your fridge with half bottles. I lost a half bottle of Beesou which saddened me, it sat on the bar shelf for a couple of months inbetween uses and had gone dark orange and bitty. Shame.

Had an old fashioned evening yesterday, tried a lot of variations with rye, bourbon, whiskey and rum (it ended up being a long night) and the general consensus among the group who all love their whiskeys was that 12.5ml is too sweet. 10 worked well with rye but for most others 7.5ml sugar syrup was the sweet spot. Literally.

And meant to say that orange bitters were fave over Angostura. Luxardo cherries are also worth their weight in gold by the way, give anything that little extra lusciousness.

Had an old fashioned evening yesterday, tried a lot of variations with rye, bourbon, whiskey and rum (it ended up being a long night) and the general consensus among the group who all love their whiskeys was that 12.5ml is too sweet. 10 worked well with rye but for most others 7.5ml sugar syrup was the sweet spot. Literally.

Lovely. The description mentions both orange and lemon as a garnish and although the photo is with orange I preferred lemon. Maybe a lucky mistake! It does have a lovely spicy finish, hence I had to try two obviously.

Well that was lovely. I’ve accidentally made variations of this when messing around, some of my fav ingredients in this. I dialled up everything by 10 ml but left the maple syrup as it was, absolutely smashing. And my wife Debs (seriously) is not listening to the instruction!

Settled on this to celebrate our wedding anniversary. A good choice...on all accounts.

So different I’ll have to try it when I can get passion fruits, all the supermarkets are always out, far too many pornstars being made! And congrats!

just starting to explore Calvados so will definitely give this one a go later. It looks slightly light on the Applejack, you'd expect more like 60ml, is that something to do with it being brandy rather than whiskey?

Tried it with my new chocolate bitters and found it a bit too sweet, need to get some Abbotts bitters then…..

well done Nils! This looks amazing and is now on my hit list for the coming weekend as soon as I grab some more Fino. Congrats.

Ran out of sherry, subbed some ruby port instead and still lovely. Did two dashes of bitters just to offset the sweetness

well done Leroy you've done it again! This looks amazing, a worthy winner, huge congrats. It would never cross my mind to have milk and soda water in the same drink, crazy mixologist skills 👏🏼