Christ & Cocktails

This past Sunday our congregation marked the ordination of our former youth pastor. As part of the celebration I was asked to make a cocktail. In reflecting on the path to ordination, or any significant career milestone, I thought of the parallels to making a bespoke cocktail - conception, planning, trials/prototypes/execution, sharing with others. While there is no comparison between the years of dedicated scholarship and service that goes into becoming a pastor and me fiddling with a cocktail recipe, the steps are the same. Done right and done well the end result should be something that brings delight and, hopefully, celebrates a Creator that delights in our own creativity.

So what does one actually make as a cocktail for an ordination? While beer and wine have long held places in at least some Christian traditions, the cocktail was created at exactly the wrong time to have a chance of entering into any kind of ecclesiastical embrace. What with the temperance movement just getting started (and with good cause, but that's another post). This is a loss given the witness something like the monastic breweries have in reflecting stewardship of and creativity with the creation. It seemed appropriate that crafting a drink for a specific celebration should focus on persons and locations. We were celebrating a particular person in a particular place. Oh, and it had to scale to serve up to 150 guests. So . . .

Reflect on the person - in this case I recalled the enjoyment and enthusiasm our ordinand and his wife had for the Trader Vic Mai Tais we made for them this past summer. Of special note was the appreciation and fairly quick use of the batch of homemade orgeat we shared. Clearly orgeat should find its way into the drink and something at least reminiscent of Tiki cocktails may be a good move.
Consider place - Fortunately Philadelphia has some strong distilleries and a number of up and comers. One text exchange confirmed gin as the favorite base spirit, thus setting Bluecoat as our foundation for the drink.
Match - Bluecoat delivers citrus notes that pair well with more citrus giving good direction on pairing, but orgeat plays better with some than others (lemon? that will take a bit of work). Orange seemed too sweet on its own. Lime too predictable. Grapefruit? One more text exchange and that was a lock. Now I just needed to bring in an herbal or vegetal element for some balance and depth and look for any gaps in the test recipes.
Prep - To pair with the grapefruit I looked to thyme and rosemary. Both are good matches and I had some tinctures to use in test recipes. I also wanted to work the grapefruit in through more than the juice. Orgeat offers a wealth of possibilities that don't seem to get much exploration. Would infusing grapefruit into orgeat work? Yes, yes it does.

Second batch of grapefruit infused orgeat and a new old tool
Mix, taste, repeat (and share with trusted tipplers) - I tried five variants before hitting on the right balance. I expected to need more trials, so was pleased to have extra time for making the scratch ingredients.