Two ‘fer, Halloween Style

Day 185, Cocktails 180 & 181

The Halloween season officially kicked into gear tonight when I set up the Halloween village pieces while watching Psycho and enjoying the first of a week’s worth of Halloween inspired cocktails.

The first cocktail of the evening was a classic, the Corpse Reviver.  This cocktail has been around since the 1930’s and is credited to Harry Craddock who had written the Savoy Cocktail Book.  The purpose of the Corpse Reviver was to revive one the next morning after a night of drinking (a problem I don’t seem to suffer from).    As near as I can tell, this is the original recipe that Craddock used.  I mention that because there is also a Corpse Reviver II recipe (just like any good Halloween movie, there has to be a part two) which is completely different, featuring gin, Cointreau and Lillet Blanc.  Unfortunately, I won’t get to this one this week.  I did have the original tonight, and here it is.

  Corpse Reviver

• 2 oz Calvados
• 3/4 oz XO brandy
• 1/2 oz sweet vermouth

Combine the ingredients in a shaker with ice and shake, shake, shake to mix and chill.  Strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

This is a strong one, which I guess you need to revive a corpse.  If you like brandy and Calvados, you will probably enjoy this.  If you don’t, then you may want to pass.  I drank mine, and, well, maybe it tastes better when hung over…

On to the second drink of the night, the Halloween cocktail.  I picked this recipe up from Cocktailtimes.com, and I enjoyed it.  Once again it was a bourbon based cocktail that when I looked at the ingredient list I thought “you’ve got to be kidding”, but it worked out very nicely.

  Halloween Cocktail

• 2 oz Maker’s Mark bourbon
• 3 oz orange juice
• 1 oz lemon juice
• ginger ale

Combine the Maker’s Mark, orange juice and lemon juice in a shaker with ice.  Stir and strain into a collins glass filled about 3/4 with ice cubes.  Top with ginger ale and garnish with a couple of large, pitted green olives – and if you’re really creative, you’ll carve little pumpkin faces into the olives!

The original recipe called for the juice of 1/2 of a lemon.  You can do this for the sake expediency, but I like my cocktails to be consistent, which is why I settled on 1 oz of lemon juice.  The flavor is suprisingly similar to a whiskey old fashioned between the orange juice and flavor of the olives.  Both Gwen and I enjoyed this one and I wouldn’t hesitate to make this drink again – and I just may do that this weekend!

Cheers!