Horchata
Jasmine · Cinnamon · Agave
It’s hot out! Time to make something refreshing.
For anyone who is not a desert lizard basking on a rock, this summer was persistently, unpleasantly hot. Whenever I checked the forecast, I remembered that 90s Sears air conditioner commercial: “Another scorcher!” Not the greatest time for our AC to conk out. We called the repair folks (not Sears), but even with the AC fixed, our old home struggled to stay cool. Even our heat-loving cat, Mochi, was found lying in front of the box fan on more than one occasion. Needless to say, any cocktails involving hours of prep in the kitchen were quickly bypassed in favor of minimal effort options that could be served cold. It was the perfect time to make Horchata.
Another scorcher!
The cocktail includes homemade rice milk, agave and simple syrup for sweetness, and a 50/50 blend of Casa Noble Reposado Tequila and Banks 5 Island Rum. A cinnamon tincture was added at the end, and the whole concoction was served with hunks of hand-cracked cinnamon ice. The prep was super simple: toast the cinnamon and cook most of it en sous vide with some Everclear to create the tincture, and use the rest to infuse water to make the cinnamon ice. Soak, strain, and blend some jasmine rice to create the rice milk, add the sweeteners and booze, then toss in a couple pieces of cinnamon ice and serve in to-go cups with the cutest colorful straws you can find. I’ve had trouble getting hand-carved ice to freeze in the past. Since this ice didn’t need to be clear, I got to avoid the indignity of stuffing my small cooler in between bags of long-forgotten mixed vegetables for 48 hours only to find a reservoir of ice water lurking underneath the thin frozen surface. Instead, I poured my cinnamon water into a deep metal cake pan, and 12 hours later, I had the perfect rock-solid slab of ice.
The house smelled so good after letting this steep.
The Aviary Cocktail Book didn’t say anything about this cocktail beyond the flavor descriptors of jasmine, cinnamon, and agave. The flavor was great. It was a bit sweet if you drank multiples, but as a stand-alone cocktail, the flavors and sweetness were well balanced. I could drink Jamaican rum in anything and the Banks 5 rum is in my top three rums of all time next to Smith & Cross and the bottle of 1943 E.J. Burke Jamaica Rum. The Casa Noble Reposado tequila blended so well with it, adding a darker, caramel note. Everyone loved the cinnamon ice.
I’ve been doing a ton of project management work this summer for Gayviary, and consequently very little cocktail making. Launching the website was a big win and took a lot of time. I’m so proud of how it looks and happy to have moved into more of a maintenance stage where all new content is built off existing templates. I do a lot of web design and content creation for my day job, and it was fun to apply those skills in a purely creative context. Mostly fun. Sometimes my evenings were spent tediously trying to refine elements of site design that were off to me, but without being able to articulate exactly what about them felt off. Colors? Padding? That weird default font that looked like a nerdy blog about cartoon robots from the early 2000s? It was valuable learning to articulate this vision but also a bit of a slog.
Poco a poco. Día a día.
Then there was creating a single master archive of photos, videos, DMs, and captions from Instagram. This was even more of a slog but felt important for a few reasons. First, I’ve become fairly disenchanted with Instagram over the last couple years with all of the enshittification taking place. When we created a dedicated Instagram account for The Gayviary in 2019, the feel was markedly different from today. There was a large community of home bartenders connected through their participation in various cocktail projects. It was (and still is) fun to see the incredible photos, recipes, and stories that others share, and it makes sticking around on Instagram worth it. (Some favorites include @da_gin_joint, @gellan_in_brooklyn, @anushu802, @sheepishjen, @drinkingdetails, and @highalcoholcontent.) I wanted to organize the bulk of our Instagram content as it spans both personal and dedicated accounts, countless stories, as well as an unofficial guestbook for the many events we’ve hosted. While I anticipate finishing the remainder of this project over the next two to three years, it doesn’t seem unrealistic for social media giants like Instagram to either start charging for old or archived content, or to make it all but completely unfindable by even the content creators themselves.
After retrieving and organizing hundreds of posts, thousands of photos, and countless threads of conversations spread across social media, email, SD cards, etc., I went on to create a project plan for finishing the remaining cocktails in The Aviary Cocktail Book. There are all sorts of factors that go into planning for what’s ahead, including effort, cost, ease of photography, seasonality, format, and integrating this into the rest of my life. A pint of 1932 S.P. Lancaster Bourbon may cost $2,000, or $5,000, or nothing at all depending on the circumstance. I can’t make several cocktails without a rotary vacuum distiller, which will potentially cost around $1,000. The cocktails requiring black Perigord truffles will need to be made when those ingredients are available fresh. There are some cocktails like Bloody Mary 2017 that I have no interest in making without help from friends. I also wanted to be kind to myself and allow for flexibility in my project plan when life calls for it. And I want to be able to write about the 57 cocktails I made prior to launching the website, which will involve reviewing previous notes and combing through the archives for photos and other bits of information.
I want to mention all this in part because I find it impressive. It was a lot of work, mostly unseen, and I’m really proud of myself for stepping back and creating a foundation for completing and documenting this project in a way that I’ll appreciate for years to come. As much as I love sharing my process and stories around completing each cocktail, it genuinely feels more like sharing than bragging. Here, I’m bragging. This was one of the coolest things I’ve done this year and I am thrilled with what I accomplished—especially as someone who struggles with organization.
So. Many. Spreadsheets.
I also mention it because up until now, the cocktails themselves have been the star of the show when it comes to posting and sharing. The strategy and planning are often much less sexy and I haven’t always seen the value in writing about them beyond a few notable details here and there. Lately, I’ve come to realize that they are important to write about, and are actually interesting. One thing about Instagram that has never resonated with me is the disconnect between a creator’s real, unfiltered life and the polished images I post. Conversely, I really appreciate having my own blog to write about these aspects of the project and my life as it is a much better container for those stories and supports a different kind of engagement than polished photos with brief snippets of content.
All that is to say, Horchata was the perfect cocktail to make at this time: perfect for the season, perfect for batching for a crowd, and perfect for a summer when my attention was focused on other parts of The Gayviary besides making cocktails.
Our friends, Waldo and Christina, invited us to a dinner party at their place. They’re great hosts and always provide quite the spread. They also happen to live close by, so we walked there with our batched Horchata cocktail in tow. Dinner was a lovely spread of Mediterranean dishes along with some freshly smoked brisket. The evening was perfect, and it was honestly pretty nice to serve one of these cocktails with everything pre-made and ready to go instead of last-minute prepping and staging in the kitchen.
The closest you’ll get to seeing this ice in its final form. My countertop got too wet and messy to pause for a dedicated ice photo. Too bad, it tasted great and deserves its own shot!
Thanks for reading.
Whether you're a fellow home bartender, photographer, writer, collector, or simply enjoyed the story, I'd love to hear from you at hello@gayviary.com.