Cabinet Beer Baseball Club

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Cabinet Beer Presents: Drinking with Writers feat. John Dufresne & Blue Christmas

Drinking With Writers feat. John Dufresne/Blue Christmas—The Interview

Ho! Ho! Ho! Merry Christmas. Sort of. For episode two of our new series, Drinking With Writers, we sat down with John Dufresne. He’s the author of four novels, two short story collections, two books on writing and, most recently, the editor of Blue Christmas: Holiday Stories For the Rest of Us, an anthology of real (ie. unsentimental) holiday stories featuring a roster of writers too good to be true.

During our interview, we discuss what it means to have a “Blue Christmas,” how the idea for the project came about, and what it was like working with such talented writers with such a wide range of stylistic voices—seriously, the Colin Channer story, and the Steve Almond story (and the Diana Abu-Jaber story, and the Robert Goolrick story, and the Ana Menendez story) are must-must-must-reads—and why this collection isn’t for just for the Scrooge’s and Grinches of the world.

And of course, it wouldn’t be Drinking With Writers if we didn’t have our cocktail taste-test. For this episode, we conjured up three holiday drinks that are sure to warm any blue spirits this holiday season. Like always, check out the recipes down below for all three drinks, but be sure to watch the episode to find out which drink John chooses as the official Blue Christmas cocktail.

Drinking With Writers feat. John Dufresne/Blue Christmas—The Drinks

Lastly, from all of us here at Cabinet Beer Baseball Club, we’d like to thank you, our readers, that have made year two such a great year. Happy Holidays to you and yours and have a very Merry Christmas, blue or otherwise.

Suggested Pairing
Blue Christmas Cocktail#1

1. Slice a Granny Smith apple into quarters. Toss one wedge into shaker.
2. Pour 2 oz. of white rum into shaker. Muddle apple and rum together.
3. Pour 1/2 oz. nutmeg simple syrup* into shaker.
4. Pour 1/4 oz lemon juice into shaker.
5. Add 2 dashes of Bittercube’s Jamaican #1 bitters into shaker.
6. Fill with ice. Shake. Fine strain into cocktail glass.
7. Take a remaining apple wedge, dust with freshly grated nutmeg.
8. Cut wedge in half, spear through both pieces and garnish atop of the cocktail glass.

* For this recipe we made rich simple syrup. We boiled 1 1/2 cups of water and, once boiling, removed the water from the heat, added 3 cups of sugar and whisked until sugar was completely dissolved. Once sugar is fully incorporated, we grated 2/3 of a whole nutmeg directly into the water. Once the liquid cooled, we doubled strained it (fine mesh strainer, coffee filter) until all we were left with was the liquid itself.

Blue Christmas Cocktail #2

1. Pour 1 1/2 oz of bourbon into shaker.
2. Pour 1 1/2 oz of brandy (we used Cognac) into shaker.
3. Add 1/4 oz of maple syrup into shaker.
4. Add 2 dashes of Bittercube’s Cherry Bark Vanilla Bitters into shaker.
5. Add 6 milk ice cubes* into shaker.
6. Shake.
7. Pour into rocks glass with one, large milk cube.
8. Garnish with cinnamon stick.

*Simple. Freeze milk in an ice tray same way you do water. For the one large milk cube, we used this this.

Blue Christmas Cocktail #3

1. Pour 1 oz. Cherry Heering into Irish coffee glass.
2. Pour 3/4 oz. Rumple Minze Peppermint Schnapss into Irish coffee glass.
3. Fill Irish coffee glass with hot chocolate.
4. Top with whipped cream.
5. Dust the whipped cream with cocoa powder.

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