Benjamin Zorn, preaching the good word at the BPL

Benjamin Zorn is a bartender at Tooker Alley in Prospect Heights and a cocktail-smith of the highest order. He also looks a little like Encyclopedia Brown, but that was appropriate to the context in which I first encountered him. Last week, Jason and I took one of the “culinary cocktails” series of classes at the Brooklyn Public Library for which Zorn was the master of ceremonies. Why the library decided to let a bunch of people come drink in their fancy new lab area, I’m not entirely sure, but it probably has to do with the library being awesome.

Similar to many enthusiasts of offbeat and intricate crafts, Zorn was almost visibly vibrating with fervor and brimming over with an abundance of helpful hints. These ranged from the obscure (explaining the dangers of ice chips in egg-white cocktails to a crowd of people who did not look as though they previously knew egg-white cocktails existed) to the obvious (“You can tell a bartender’s sense of humor from the way he names his drinks”*), from the practical (the difference between an $8 bottle of vodka and a $15 bottle of vodka is mostly sensed in the hangover) to the near-mystical (“Always pour with confidence!” my final note of the evening reads, which I must have written right before I chucked my notebook aside and started drinking the free samples.)

But perhaps the most useful concept (and the main theme of February’s class) was this: you can get a lot of mileage out of sticking to the elegant proportions of classic drinks but jazzing them up with infused liquors and syrups. Usually, I’m not wild about Old Fashioneds but when Zorn made one with star-anise simple syrup, Brooklyn-made bitters and an orange peel…hot diggedy!

Anyway, I didn’t want to rip off Zorn’s recipes, so I decided to use what he taught us and come up with my own take on a Tom Collins. I call it the Winter Thaw, and I’ll post the recipe below so you can rev yourself up before attending Zorn’s next library class in March.

The Winter Thaw

After just a few minutes of infusing

To prepare the ingredients: infuse a jar of gin with a tea bag of raspberry-flavored black tea for about an hour. While you’re waiting for this to happen, boil 1 cup water with 1 cup white sugar and 1 cup brown sugar to make a simple syrup. Remove from the heat and add about a tablespoon or so of whole roasted allspice seeds. Allow to steep while the syrup cools.

To make the cocktail: combine 2 oz of the tea-infused gin with 1 oz of the simple syrup and 1 oz of fresh-squeezed lemon juice. Shake and serve over ice with a lemon slice garnish.

Note: the allspice and brown sugar give this a nice wintry taste, but I bet if you use regular simple syrup and add the traditional splash of soda water included in a Tom Collins, this would be great in the summer, too.

*Not that I am bragging**, but I once won an impromptu cocktail making/naming contest not only by creating a drink involving spiced rum and root beer that Llalan named the Boot Rear, but also by naming her drink the Thai Me Up (well before the Fifty Shades of Gray era, by the way). I don’t have the foggiest idea anymore what was in the Thai Me Up, but does it matter? Wouldn’t you order one?

**That’s a lie. I am bragging.