"Southern" Mason Jar Cocktails

Because they all had so fun together during the winter furlough, Little Z, Mama Z, and the Married Couple made plans to get together again in late January. This time the gathering would be south of the Mason-Dixon line at the Married Couple’s house and would include at least one cultural activity – visiting the Terracotta Warrior exhibit in the Capitol. Little Z extended the invitation to me once the plans were confirmed, and I was happy to learn that flights into the area were both reasonably priced and reasonably timed. I would only have to work a slightly adjusted work schedule on Friday to make it to the airport in time for a 7pm flight.

The Offer

Since Little Z was instrumental in the decision to make the Buddhacello, I had to text her after I completed the batch in mid-January. Of course, I offered to bring two jars of the magic elixir with me on my trip south – one for her and one for the Married Couple. In the course of that text conversation, I mentioned that I might bring more Mason jars with me on the trip. Little Z responded very positively to that suggestion, especially since she and Mama Z would be driving down there and could take any leftovers with them to drink at a later date. She didn’t think that we could possibly finish all the Mason jars, but then I did some math for her. I figured each of the four jars has a 16-ounce capacity, which was roughly three ounces per person when divided among the five of us. If The Husband decided to drink something else, each of us four ladies would end up with four-ounce cocktails. A bit long for a drink, but still not over much. So, if I filled all four jars, that would be four cocktails across two days. That would roughly be the equivalent of one cocktail after I arrived on Friday evening, two cocktails on Saturday, and then one cocktail before I left on Sunday evening. Nothing too ambitious, especially since Little Z was willing to take the undrunk Mason jars with her. I’d have to acquire a second set of Mason jars for her (so as not to disturb my experiments with my sister) but that was very easily taken care of.

The Plan

Having done the math, I had a better idea of how I would design this particular cocktail tasting session. There would be two daytime drinks – one Saturday, one Sunday – and two nighttime drinks – one Friday, one Saturday.

The first Mason jar was obvious: the Pimms Cup base for a daytime drink. Little Z and The Husband both really enjoyed the Pimms Cup during the winter furlough trip, so I figured that would be an obvious one to bring. After all, who stocks Pimms No. 1 in their liquor cabinet? As it turns out, not even I do! I drained my bottle of Pimms mixing drinks over winter furlough. Fortunately, my small local liquor store stocked it on the very top shelf of their liqueur section. Once I got the Pimms, the jar was filled in no time because I still had the recipe for the liquor base calculated from when I mixed the first set of Mason jars for my sister at Thanksgiving.

The second Mason jar came to me in a Saturday night dream, one that I no longer remember. I just know that when I woke up, I was fixated on making a batch of Morning Glory as the second daytime drink of the trip. The original Morning Glory was a fantastic cocktail that I had at brunch in a restaurant near the local cooking school over the summer. After a little experimentation on my own, I recreated the cocktail at home using the ratios of 1 part elderflower liqueur to 1 part limoncello to 3 parts prosecco. I confirmed with Little Z that she would pick up the prosecco, if I brought the liquor base. While I gave some thought to substituting my homemade Buddhacello for the commercial limoncello, I ultimately decided against that course of action. The Buddhacello was good enough for sipping, so I should save it for that.

I was at a loss for a few days as to what to mix for the two nighttime drinks. And then, as I was putting the commercial limoncello back where it belonged, I spied my almost empty bottle of Bulleit rye. That got me thinking along the lines of what type of rye or bourbon drinks could I bring with me. It took a while, but I eventually reached the conclusion that a rye Manhattan would be perfect, especially if I used Mama Z’s recipe. I had a bottle of wisniowka (Polish cherry brandy) still lingering in my liquor cabinet from the last time I mixed Mama Z’s recipe. Yet again, I would have to substitute good rye from Mama Z’s Canadian whiskey. Unfortunately, in finishing off the bottle, I fell about 1½ ounces short of the perfect proportion. I took a mental note to buy more rye and to off the jar, but I somehow suspected that note might be written on a mental magic slate. Much to my dismay, I discovered that my bottle of red vermouth was very light. Sure enough, it too fell approximately 1½ ounces short of the perfect proportion. But I mixed the jar of Manhattans anyway, and labeled the shortfalls so that if I made it to the small local liquor store before it was time to pack my suitcase, I could top off the jar to perfect proportions.

Figuring out the last jar brought me almost to the wire on my travel plans. As of Wednesday night, I still had no idea what to mix in it. For some reason, I was thinking something with chocolate liqueur as an after dinner drink, but nothing as rich and thick as the chocolate peppermint martinis that I had made for the holiday dessert party. Something more along the lines of the cocktails that I had mixed with the Godiva chocolate liqueurs when I was finishing up random nips earlier last year. My adaptation of the Spicy Mistletoe Martini looked like it could be easily adapted for a Mason jar, because it was a 3:2:1 ratio although I might have to make some additional hot honey syrup to complete the cocktail. My adaptation of the Café con Chocolate Martini also looked like it could possibly be a winner, provided that I could use the Godiva chocolate liqueur in my cabinet in the place of the Godiva white chocolate liqueur in the recipe. Then again, I would probably have to brew a pot of decaffeinated coffee special for use in this drink. So I went back to the Godiva liqueurs website to see if there was another option that could be easily scaled up to 16 ounces. There was the Grand Martini, which was essentially a 2:1 ratio of Godiva dark chocolate liqueur and Grand Marnier, and there was the Sparkling Amaretto Martini, which was essentially a 4:3:1 ratio of sparkling wine, Godiva dark chocolate liqueur and amaretto. Since I couldn’t make up my mind, I texted Little Z to see what she and her mother preferred. The answer came back overnight: chocolate and orange was preferred. So at my available opportunity, I hauled out the Godiva liqueur and the Grand Marnier and mixed up the last Mason jar. The only catch was that the recipe called for Godiva Dark Chocolate liqueur, which looked clear in the website photos. What I had was an unopened bottle of Godiva liqueur, with no further specification. When I poured from the bottle, it was an opaque chocolate liqueur. But I figured that chocolate and orange would be good regardless of what type of chocolate it was, so I went ahead.

Once all the Mason jars were mixed, I tucked them back inside their cardboard box and packed them in a suitcase inside a suitcase for extra safety during flight. The two jars of Buddhacello also fit snugly with the box of jars inside the suitcase within a suitcase. In the space between the inner suitcase and the outer suitcase I packed my down sleeping bag, wrapped around a special gift for our host, and my sneakers. After I finished packing the inner suitcase, I felt fairly comfortable that the glass products would arrive safe and sound.

The Weekend

Believe it or not, my suitcase, its cargo, and I all arrived safely at the Married Couple’s house around midnight on a Friday. Little Z and Mama Z rolled in after I did, so we all were pretty loopy with exhaustion. But curiosity still got the best of us, so we had to sample one of the Buddhacello jars. And it was lovely after it had mellowed for two weeks!

Fortunately, the late night enjoyment of the Buddhacello didn’t diminish our ability to get out of the house early Saturday morning to see the Terracotta Warriors at the fine arts museum in the Capitol. The exhibit was phenomenal. It was built like a maze, with little trinkets from the site and from the era in three different rooms before opening up into a great hall with actual Terracotta Warriors. After that exhibit (and a little shopping), we went to a later lunch at a converted fire station and then to a nearby museum dedicated to one of my favorite American writers. We made it back to the house with no time for cocktails before going out to a late dinner.

After dinner, we finally had time to kick back at the house and see how my experimental Mason jar cocktails turned out. The Married Couple fondly remembered the Pimms Cup from the last set of Mason jars, so I poured those over a healthy dose of ice and ginger ale. The other two ladies and I sampled the Manhattans, also on the rocks. Everyone was happy with her or his drink, which made me happy. Mama Z approved of the rye substitution in the Manhattan, and didn’t seem to notice that her perfect proportions were a little off kilter. I liked it because it was a little sweeter due to the slight predominance of the wisniowka.

Based on a long-standing Girls Weekend tradition, Little Z and Mama Z set about making pierogis, bacon, and scrambled eggs for breakfast on Sunday morning. I volunteered to mix the Morning Glory cocktails, which was super easy. All I had to do was divide the contents of the Mason jar across five glasses and then top that evenly with the prosecco that we had procured the night before. Again, that was well received, especially for how simple it was.

Since we decided to stay at home rather than go out on the rainy Sunday, we finished the Pimms Cup and the Manhattan in a round of afternoon drinks before dinner. Mama Z asked me to crack open the jar of Grand Martini for her, which I served over ice rather than shaken with ice. That turned out to be a good decision because, after about half an hour of melting ice, Mama Z declared that the drink tasted even better than when she first started it.

Quite unexpectedly, Little Z posed me a challenge: to fill one of the empty Mason jars with a new and delicious drink using the leftover alcohol from her apartment. There were bottles of vodka, Bacardi silver rum, Bacardi spiced rum, silver tequila, and white (clear) crème de cacao. I started the project by looking up the oddest ingredient – crème de cacao – on my favorite drinks website. There were 170 different recipes! Scrolling through, I found one that was just crème de cacao and vodka. Little Z nixed that idea because she thought the vodka “tasted funny.” Not sure what she meant, I poured a little and tried it. Sure enough, the vodka tasted like grain alcohol! So we decided not to pursue that recipe, and widened our options by looking into the Married Couple’s liquor stash. From the options that Little Z read out, I chose a different bottle of vodka and a bottle of amaretto. I thought that looking for a drink recipe using amaretto might narrow the possibilities, but there were 750 recipes listed!!! There was no way I could scroll through all those and find what I wanted, so I went back to the crème de cacao listing. Quite quickly, I found a drink with amaretto, crème de cacao, vodka, and whipped cream. Without telling the two Zs the name of the drink, they agreed that it might be worth a try if we skipped the whipped cream. So I checked the recipe for the proportions, which was about a 4:1:1 crème de cacao to amaretto to vodka ratio. Given that there was so much crème de cacao in the recipe, Mama Z and I both took a little taste of the liqueur to see if it was palatable. It was! Of course, my math was off when I went to mix the Mason jar, and I actually ended up with a 3:1:1 ratio – six shots of crème de cacao, two shots of amaretto, two shots of decent vodka. I shook the jar and poured out a small sample. All three of us agreed that it was good, but potentially dangerous. So Little Z eventually renamed the cocktail “The Amaretto Lady Killer.”

With my challenge conquered, Little Z set about making stuffed acorn squash for dinner while the rest of us either played cards or caught up on work. Almost as soon as dinner was washed up, it was time for me to go back to the airport to catch my flight north. The next evening, Little Z reported that she had packed up all of the Mason jars and the Buddhacello to take on her road trip. Only the jars of the Grand Martini and Amaretto Lady Killer had cocktails left in them. She was fine with that because it would provide her and her traveling companion with the perfect nightcaps once they got off the road in the evenings.

The Verdict

Flying with the Mason jars gave me a bit of anxiety over whether I would end up with liquor soaked clothes; however, it was well worth it to be able to share the cocktails with old and new friends. The fact that each Mason jar served five three-ounce cocktails turned out to be perfect for our group, because we each got to try something that we knew we liked as well as something new without overdoing it at all.