Third and final (for now) part of the Alpha Flight series. All A-Flight drinks are compiled into a one handy pdf: you can find it in recipes and downloads, among the rest.
GUARDIAN
2 parts Canadian whisky (or bourbon)
4 parts Passoã
2 parts Aperol OR dash or two (all the way up to 1 part) Campari
2 parts cranberry juice
dash of lemon juice
dash of maple syrup
(one tiny dash of cognac, see below)
Shake with ice and strain into a cocktail glass, add one small ice cube.
As usual… for cranberry juice, please use high quality concentrate without additives, diluted with water 1-1 ratio instead of recommendation (usually 1-3 or 1-4).
I didn’t want to design just another version of Captain Canuck, so I decided to drop the white layer from the start; choosed the red colour theme and try to come up with something totally different than Captain C.
Cold, harsh winters; chilling but beautiful autumn forests; the feel of the huge landscape – these were the things I tried to contain in the drink. Well, I fell somewhat short of my goal (as I usually do), but still I think Guardian The Cocktail is a decent drink.
The harshness of winter is represented by, you guessed it, by Campari or, if you prefer a bit less bitterness, Aperol. The tiny splash of cognac I mentioned among ingredients… Let’s say you try the Campari version and find it too bitter for your taste: the only option is to flush it in the sink? NO! Even few drops of cognac will “mellow down” the drink…
…and cognac can be used even for its own, not just to “save” the drink from Campari. I couldn’t decide: is cognac drop making the drink better or worse? Is it “rounding up” the different aromas together, or is it “cutting down” the parade of tastes?
I couldn’t decide, so I added it as an option; you decide.
The northern autumn forest…Cranberry juice and lemon juice will describe these.
What Passoã has to do with Canada? Well, adding it to the ingredients above creates “a broad taste”; the feel of the vast country…suitable for the second largest country in the world.
Finally… maple syrup is not there just for The Canadian Thing: cocktail needs a tiny bit of added sweetness to work out properly – maple syrup’s taste is gentler than simple syrup’s, works better in this drink.
If you yearn for more cranberry cocktails with kinda similar feel, please check out eg. Robin and/or Man-Bat.
MARRINA
3 parts reposado tequila
3 parts Advocaat
1 part Cointreau
2 parts lemon juice
Create a half rim of sea salt 🙂 in the suitable glass, add a quite a lot of ice. Shake ingredients vigorously with ice and strain into the glass.
Well… it’s been a while since my last ocean-dwelling character cocktails, Marrina Smallwood offered a great chance to explore that kingdom again: for more Sea Cocktails please check out Aquaman and Namor, Mera and Ocean Master and Black Manta. Okay, Hydro-Man isn’t actually “an ocean dude”, but definitively a water-related character.
Okay, I’ve designed quite a few of those… how do I approach one more? How do I offer my readers something new about the subject “superhero from the waves”?
I started thinking about salty sea…”salt? – what relates to salt? – uncivilized peasant drink the cheapest tequila available, and they shoot it with a lick of salt – Hmm, maybe I got something here…”
I tried quite a lot of combinations, traded a sharper blanco tequila for more gentle reposado; realized that Advocaat not just binds everything together nicely but also matches with Marrina’s skin colour; “the additional liqueur” changed from Luxardo Marascino to Triple Sec, I battled with ratios until I realized soft Cointreau rhymes well with soft reposado; salt and tequila cry out for lemon, but what is the right amount etc…
But here it is, Marrina The Cocktail. I’m first to admit that this drink doesn’t particularly well shout out “marine Plodex”, but I think it has a certain ocean feel… of course lemon juice describes the rough seas; tequila, supported by Cointreau, finally fell into a supporting cast, their main role is to act as a connecting bridge between lemon and salt… and the salt: only rim half the glass, and try sipping the drink with or without the salt – the sea can be either rough or gentle.
Of course the Advocaat acts as a soft all-covering blanket which makes the drink deep and kinda “suffocating” (in the right way); without it this might be a namesake drink of a bad guy – now this is Marrina The Cocktail.
Okay, that’s Alpha Flight. The weather is getting warmer here in Finland, so next time there is something more suitable for the spring… see ya 🙂
Superhero Cocktails 