Dry January 2024 – Careful You
Dry January would not be complete without a drink using San Bitter. I know that it is artificially coloured and contains a lot of sugar, but I just love the bittersweet taste. In this case, I paired it with milky Oolong syrup and grape juice for a Negroni-esque drink.
For the ‘Careful You’ I used another tea syrup I made a while back. I just discovered milky oolong in 2023 and fell in love with it. So, I also made a syrup with it. Obviously, this also works with gin and rum, but in this case it gives the drink a bit more depth.
Grape juice and Italian soda
A Negroni-esque drink would not be complete without a replacement for the vermouth. While my experiment of making non-alcoholic vermouth at home failed miserably, I just used high quality grape juice. To blance out the sweetness of the grape juice, the syrup and the San Bitter, I added a healthy dash of soda water.
1,5 cl Milky Oolong Syrup*
Build – chilled Highball glass over ice cubes – top off;
Garnish: Lemon Twist;
Song: TV on the Radio – Careful You;
*Brew a stronger than usual milky oolong tea – cook 2:1 simple syrup with tea instead of water – fill into clean bottle.
The ‘Careful You’ starts with the distinct bitterness of the San Bitter. Yet, after a little while you can discover more depth to it. There is a slight tea flavour and a lot of fruitiness from the grape juice. Yes, the drink is on the sweet side, but this way it also goes down very easy. With hindsight, a little drop of high-quality raspberry vinegar would have worked here, too.
