homemade Manhattan, mm-mm good!

I’ve been spending some time recently discovering new and delicious cocktails – of which there is an abundance in this fine town. However, it ain’t cheap. Some places *cough*Vessel*cough* charge up to $12 for their signature drinks! Since I’m not made of money, I try to limit my trips to the upscale places to twice a week and either spend the other cocktail hours at home or in wallet-friendly haunts like the NiteLite ($4 pitchers!).

If you are thinking about beefing up your home bar, here are my recommendations:

To start out with, a cocktail book is a must. There are many to choose from, so check out the list Keith (Union) created to help narrow down the options. If you can’t wait for Amazon or the library to deliver, the Cocktail Database is also an excellent resource.

Next, ingredients. It goes without saying that you’ll need to go to your friendly neighborhood Washington State Liquor Store for the spirits, but don’t forget that they have a product search page so you can find out which specific store has the particular type and/or brand of spirit you’re after. I cannot tell you how much time I’ve saved by looking things up beforehand.

As far as the non-booze ingredients go, sure, many grocery stores have the standard maraschino cherries and one type of bitters on their shelves, but I highly recommend checking out:

1. DeLaurenti‘s selection of bitters. If you can break yourself away from the cheese long enough and walk up to the wine section, you can get Angostura, Peychaud’s, orange, and almost any other kind of aromatic bitters [drinkboy] you can think of, and
2. Metro Market‘s cherries. Located at the cheese counter, there is a jar (or sometimes packages – for room, I assume) of Italian cherries in syrup. They are heavenly as garnishes. You might not go back to the bottled version again. Metro Market also regularly carries blue cheese stuffed olives for the martini lovers in the house and their lower Queen Anne store stocks orange flower water for the Ramos Gin Fizz lovers in the house.

As far as bar tools go, I lived for a while without so they’re not strictly necessary, but they certainly do make life a little easier. This shaker is a little on the excessive side for price, but it’s all you really need.

And there you have it: easy peasy and all on the way home from work. Staying at home not watching Grey’s Anatomy is so much better with a drink, wouldn’t you say?