Grouse Rampant (Death & Co. Recipe)

 

"X" Marks the spot with the Grouse Rampant. This a spicy take on the classic egg white foamed Sours served in a coupe glass. There are some very specialized ingredients at work here: fuji apple infused Famous Grouse scotch is the main one, requiring a few days panning in advance. Then there's honey and cinnamon syrup (or cinnamon whiskey flavored honey syrup in my case.) Finally the Peychaud's bitters "X" makes this drink as fun to look at--almost, anyway--as drinking.

To make the infusion of fuji apples, I used one large fuji apple diced and a half bottle of Famous Grouse. Apples infuse quickly, so 24 hours is all that is really needed to get rich apple flavors from the fruit. But after a few days the scotch loses a lot of its smoke and pepper and you are left with something like a sweet apple whiskey.

I make my cinnamon syrups with MurLarkey cinnamon whiskey. A few drops per cocktail (added right to the jigger) is all I need to transform honey or ordinary simple into something similar to cooking cinnamon sticks into the syrup. So as long as I have this shortcut available, I'm taking it. 

• 2 oz. fuji apple-infused Famous Grouse Scotch
• 3/4 oz. lemon juice
• 1/4 oz. acacia honey syrup
• 1/4 oz. cinnamon bark syrup (1/2 oz. honey syrup and 1/4 oz. MurLarkey cinnamon whiskey used)
• 1 egg white
• Peychaud's bitters

Combine all ingredients except bitters in a shaker and dry shake to create foam. Add ice and shake again to chill and strain into a chilled coupe. Use Peychaud's bitters to form an "X" on the foam in two swipes.