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Home brewing? Lame. Home distilling? Has a certain illegal chic, but totally passe. What’s cool now? Aging your own cocktails in a barrel your closet.
Such is the adventure of the New York Times‘s Robert Simonson who takes his lead from several New York bars and begins aging his own cocktails. Bartenders age cocktails like the Martinez (gin and vermouth) and the Negroni (gin, vermouth and bitters) in cask barrels, as the wood “imparts flavors of vanilla, caramel and certain spice notes.” Some are aged upwards up of three months, jacking the cost of one serving to as much as $25. A drink to savor, indeed.
(More on TIME: See what booze looks like under a microscope.)
How did Simonson’s home-aging experiment turn out? After falling victim to a leaky barrel (barrels have to be conditioned before use – who knew?), Simonson successfully ages a batch of Negronis. “Smoother, mellower and with deeper flavor notes,” he writes. And only seven weeks in the making. (via the New York Times)