This past weekend, I updated our cocktail menu with a range of new cocktails for the new season. Gone are the cucumber, hot pepper, and muddled fruit drinks of summer, replaced by pumpkin, apple, pear and other great flavors for fall. Earlier this summer, one of our twitter friends (who is also a gin lover) introduced us to a delicious chai from Montana called Tipu’s. For our new menu, I decided to make a delicious syrup with their chai. Here is a cocktail using the syrup, as well as the details on how I made the syrup.
To incorporate the pumpkin notes, I used real pumpkin puree, and simmered it into a syrup. Last year, when we worked with pumpkin, we ended up with separation in the cocktails because of the pumpkin puree’s density, so I played around with ways to keep the pumpkin flavor while losing some of the pulp.
I guess you could call this our take on pumpkin spice, which is all the rage this season. Like everything we do, we did it our way, using real pumpkin, and real spices – ingredients with integrity – and we paired it with our delicious aged rum. Enjoy, or stop by for one soon!
DULLAHAN’S DREAM
1¾ oz North Shore Bourbon Cask Rum
1 oz Pumpkin Syrup (see recipe below)
¼ oz Chai Syrup (see recipe below)
¾ oz Fresh Lemon Juice
Club Soda
Shake first four with ice, strain into rocks glass filled with fresh ice. Top with a splash of soda, and garnish with a lemon curl.
CHAI SYRUP
1½ cup Sugar
1 cup water
1 tbsp Tipu’s Chai Now (Unsweetened version) or another unsweetened chai powder
Mix sugar & chai together in saucepan; add water. Bring to a simmer, let simmer for 1-2 minutes. Cool completely, then store in a glass bottle in the refrigerator.
PUMPKIN SYRUP
1½ cup Sugar
1 cup water
1 cup Pumpkin Puree
Stir together in a saucepan, then bring to a simmer. Simmer for 10 minutes. Cool completely, then strain out all solids from the syrup. Store in a glass bottle in the refrigerator.
The Dullahan – in case you were wondering, the “Dullahan” is a headless horseman in Irish folklore. Pumpkins always make me think of the headless horseman from Washington Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.”
