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autumn COLLECTION: EPISODE 2

The english penicillin.

Created by our Creative Director, Joe Schofield, this is an All-English twist on the classic Penicillin cocktail. Whisky meets honey, meets ginger meets lemon. It’s a beauty and can be drunk either HOT or COLD!

We have combined some of our favourites for this one:

Cotswolds Distillery - Single Malt Whisky

Asterley Bros - SCHOFIELD’S Dry Vermouth

Shropshire Distillery - Wardington’s Triplecello

The King’s Ginger - Ginger Liqueur

And the garnish this month is in the atomiser to be sprayed over the drink just before serving (a top-secret recipe with hints of cinnamon, citrus, ginger and smoke!)

This delectable cocktail can be served 2 ways:

1. COLD: Place the pouch in the freezer for 30-60 minutes ensuring it is ice cold, then pour into an ice-filled tumbler. Spray the atomiser twice over the glass & sip discreetly.

2. HOT: Pour 100ml into a cup or mug and add 100ml freshly boiled water. Spray the atomiser twice over the cup & slurp noisily.

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We hosted a live tasting on with Ollie from Cotswolds Distillery, to talk distillation, barley, yeast and barrels! If you missed it, you can still catch it here!

Cheers,

Rob, Jim & Joe.

SO what IS a penicillin cocktail?

Originally created by New York bartender Sam Ross when he was working at New York’s famous Milk & Honey bar. The drink quickly gained a foothold as a modern classic and it’s now served around the world. The Penicillin takes the warming, soothing flavours of honey, lemon juice and fresh ginger and fortifies them with a good dose of scotch whisky before finishing with some peaty Islay malt. The classic recipe is below:

• 60ml Blended Scotch

• 25ml Honey & Ginger Syrup

• 25ml Lemon Juice

• 5ml Islay Whisky

• Combine ingredients in an ice-filled shaker, shake and strain into a tumbler over block ice

We have twisted it up a little, combining our favourite English ingredients and creating a lively but subtle cocktail that is shelf-stable and can be served ‘Hot Toddy’ style on these cold soggy nights.

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SERVING NOTES

TO SERVE COLD

1. Please ensure the liquid is cold when pouring, ideally -10C (1 hour in the freezer)

2. Use plenty of ice. If you use just a few cubes, your drink will warm up quickly and the ice will melt, causing dilution. This will make the cocktail watery. Again, use plenty of ice. Don’t be shy.

3. No need to freeze the glass this time…but it’s always a nice touch!

4. Spray the atomiser just before serving. It will coat the inside of the glass, and the top of the drink, so you will experience the aromas just before you taste the drink.

TO SERVE HOT

1. Ha! Not much to say about this one! Pour it into a cup or thick-walled glass and add the same quantity of freshly-boiled water (or a little more if you want a longer and hotter drink).

2. Spray the atomiser just before serving. The heat will help the aroma to dissipate more quickly and to fill the air as you sip. Delicious!

OUR INDEPENDENT BRAND PARTNERS

EPISODE 5: COTSWOLDS DISTILLERY

Each month we aim to showcase one of the independent brands that we love and have used to create the cocktail of the month.

This month its the Cotswolds Distillery, true craftsmen in every sense of the word. They make the most stunning range of whiskies, supplemented with some delicious gins too, as well as liqueurs, absinth, whisky amaro, vermouth, bitters and who knows what else by the time you read this!

A brilliant distillery with a huge focus on its terroir and surroundings, making English whisky a force to be reckoned with…

single malt whisky

THE WHISKY - COTSWOLDS SINGLE MALT

Cotswolds Single Malt Whisky is the first whisky ever distilled in the Cotswolds. They use 100% locally grown, floor-malted barley and mature the whisky in first-fill ex-Bourbon barrels and reconditioned red wine casks. Rich, fruity and sippable with notes of honey, Seville orange marmalade and dark red fruits.

Non-chill filtered. Natural colouring. 

THE DISTILLERY

Whisky production is at the heart of everything that takes place at the distillery. The flagship Cotswolds Single Malt is a rich & fruity whisky with a balance and depth of flavour that belies its young age, due to the exceptional attention to detail in our distilling and the use of the finest oak casks for maturation.

If you would like to learn more about the detail process behind the crafting of this delicious whisky, take a look here.

TASTING NOTES

Nose: Notes of honey and butterscotch layered with light fruits (peaches & apricots), a hint of marzipan.

Palate: Strong notes of tannin-rich malt, oils and dark sugar with lots of spice, caramelised Seville orange marmalade.

Finish: Long and resinous, with dark red fruits and a hint of treacle.

AWARDS

IWSC - Gold 2019

Spirits Business - Master 2019

World Whisky Awards - Gold 2019

Great Taste - 2 Stars 2019

PERFECT SERVE

Option 1 - Simple & Classic (honestly, our favourite!)

50ml Cotswolds Single Malt, sipped neat or with a single ice cube. Longtail mixer alongside for company and hydration!

Option 2 - Long & Fruity

50ml Cotswolds Single Malt

100ml Longtail Mixers - Blood Orange

Build over ice and garnish with a slice of orange.

If you like this whisky as much as we do, you can buy a bottle from the online store (you’ll find a link and 15% discount code below).

MEMBERS ONLY - DISCOUNT CODES

Get 15% of all online purchases - Use code ABCC15 at checkout

As a member of the Asterley Bros Cocktail Club you also get 15% discount from any online purchase in our store - Use Code ABCC15 at checkout

IT’S…*FAINT DRUMROLL*………MYSTERY AMARO TIME!

We at Asterley Bros absolutely love the mysterious world of Amaro. It’s a subject very close to our hearts and we have been making both Italian and English Amari* now for the next part of a decade. So we thought we would take the time to introduce some of our favourites to our Club Members!

A little background:

Amaro is the Italian word for ‘bitter’ and Amaro is a hugely popular category of Italian Digestivo liqueurs, usually consumed after a meal to aid digestion. Bittersweet, with a heady mix of herbaceous, medicinal, bitter, aromatic & floral notes, Amari (the plural for Amaro) are very much an expression of terroir. The botanicals and flavours found in Amari are hyper-reflective of the regions in which they are made, using locally grown fruits, herbs and botanicals to create complex and layered bitter liqueurs. Campari, Aperol, Cynar and Fernet Branca are all examples of types of Amaro. *Amari is the plural of the singular Amaro…

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The third Cocktail Club Mystery Amaro (#004) is:

DISPENSE. MODERN BRITISH AMARO - 26% ABV

We are super proud to be able to share with you our very own DISPENSE, a Modern British Amaro that we launched in 2017. In trying to take you all on a journey across and between all the different styles of Amaro out there, we wanted to show you a different style again, and we could pretty much talk about this one for days. We won’t bore you with too many details (unless you want us to!) but will cut to the chase with the info below:

STYLE:

Bright, complex and bold. Using less sugar than many traditional Amari, this was designed to be dual-purpose: Either consumed as an aperitif with tonic or soda for twilight sipping, or after-hours over a single cube of ice, rich and bitter enough to deliver the satisfaction of a late night digestivo. By lowering the sugar content significantly, more of the complex botanicals are allowed to shine through, highlighting the nuances that Amaro can deliver.

HISTORY:

Well, pour us a drink and we’ll tell you the whole thing…but suffice it to say we had a dream to make the first English Amaro back in 2014 and started researching London’s history of tonics, bittering agents and liqueurs. We had been making a Sicilian Amaro for a while, based on a very classic recipe, but wanted to try and create something that was more redolent of our home country and surroundings. We found a medical textbook written by Nicholas Culpeper in the 17th Century, that showed how to use wormwood to cure fevers, and how to distill hops to cure stomach aches and we started to add these amazing botanicals into the Sicilian base of citrus, soft herbs and Arabic spicing. Eventually, after 2 years and more than 100 different trials and recipes, we launched Dispense in 2017. London meets Sicily.

THE PROCESS:

We make three macerations:

1. Organic grain spirit with all our bittering agents, roots, barks and botanicals

2. Molasses based spirit with all our citrus, dried fruits, herbs and spices

3. We then wash all the botanicals above in English pinot noir for 2 weeks…

…and then we blend the three liquids together with some demerara sugar and clarify the resulting liquid with bentonite (a clay used in the wine-making process).

All in all it takes almost 3 months to make a bottle and a full list of botanicals used can be found here.

TO SERVE:

Pour 25ml into a tumbler with a single cube of ice

If you would like a longer aperitivo drink, add more ice and 75ml tonic to lengthen it.

TASTING NOTES:

Big, bold, complex and rich. It has many layers of complex aromatics, with a super-long bitter finish. The bitters play out on the palate with the pinot noir adding tannin and acidity to the experience. The lower sugar content allows the nuance of the liquid to shine through and every sip reveals another layer of complexity.

We hope you enjoy it as much as we do!

Referrals

Don’t forget that as a member of the club you also have a unique referral code that you received in your first subscription box. If you have lost it, please just reach out at info@asterleybros.com and we will resend it.

Please remember to share the code with friends and family so we can grow the club together.

Every time your code is used by a new member signing up, both the new member, and yourself, will both receive an extra free 100ml Rhubarb Negroni & 100ml Vesper Martini in your next monthly delivery.

So everybody wins! Get sharing!

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