Fill a highball with ice. Add tequila. Top with the Dry cucumber soda. Garnish with a thin slice of English cucumber.
Shake and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.
Stir over ice. Strain into chilled cocktail glass. Discard lemon zest.
Smokey Mezcal.
Stir, strain, chilled cocktail glass.
For a less spice driven flavor, use a more traditional Aquavit. Very complex with multiple layers or flavors and aromas.
This recipe lead me to being a finalist for the 2013 Uncle Val's Best Botanical Gin Contest held at the Night Club & Bar Show in Las Vegas.
Also just named one of Gaz Regan's 101 Best New Cocktails of 2014.
A very, very nice cocktail. Aquavit can often overpower other ingredients in a cocktail, resulting in a drink with a somewhat unpleasant taste. This recipe overcame that problem with the use of a botanical gin (my two favorites being The Botanist and St. George Terroir Gin; each has a different taste, but both are spectacular) Tonight I used St. George and I also used Blood Orange bitters instead of Regan's No. 6; I also used a grapefruit twist (my twist--no pun intended--as an additional garnish) This cocktail deserves all of the accolades it has received.
P.S. One user found A Simple Quandary "sweet." If a botanical gin is used, there is no way this cocktail can be sweet; in fact, with the combination of Aquavit and Benedictine, there is no way A Simple Quandary can be "sweet," regardless of the gin used.
Thanks for the compliment Michael. This is definitely one of my favorite cocktails I've done over the years. As for the sweetness, originally I used North Shore which has a heavy cumin spice notes to it, so it wasn't intended to be a sweet cocktail, but more savory spiced one. Since then, I've adapted the recipe to use more balanced Aquavit such as Linie or even Krostad which make it far more accessible to most peoples palates. Cheers.
Put all ingredients into a shaker and shake with ice. Strain over large cube or sphere of ice. Garnish with the peel of an orange.
The drink has herbal notes from the Zwack and Tequila. The agave and old fashioned bitters are natural compliments to the Tequila. The Pimms gives a bit of a fruit note. Complex yet approachable.
Shake on ice, strain into old fashioned glass with ice
Shake all ingredients with ice, double strain into a chilled cocktail coupe.
Mixing-glass half-full fine ice, two dashes Angostura bitters, two dashes orange bitters, one- third jigger French vermouth, one-third jigger Italian vermouth, one-third jigger whiskey. Mix and strain into cocktail-glass.
One-third of a jigger is only 1 Tablespoon. Cocktails at the end of the 19th century were smaller than today's so instead of using 1/3 of a jigger one can use 1 ounce each of sweet vermouth, dry vermouth and whiskey and increase the bitters to 4 dashes each for a contemporary size cocktail (i.e., 3 ounce)
The original recipe does not identify the brand of vermouth or the type of whiskey. Based on the date of publication, rye whiskey was most likely used.
"Modern American Drinks"
by George J Kappeler
Akron, Ohio: Saalfield Publishing Co., 1900
Stir, strain, chilled Old Fashioned with a large ice cube. Garnish with expressed lemon peel.
Shake without ginger beer, strain into an ice filled Collins glass. Top with ginger beer and garnish with a lime wedge or wheel.
Light and refreshing, I muddled 1 slice of cucumber since I don't keep cucumber simple syrup around. The rhubarb/cucumber/ginger make a great combination in these proportions. I used Fever Tree Ginger Beer which adds a slight peppery heat to the finish. (Note that the reference URL is long dead and seems to be Indonesian/Malay now. I didn't come a cross a replacement link with the Wayback machine.)