Flip, Flop, Fly

Tale of two cocktails (Candy Cane Eggnog on the Right, Homemade Eggnog on the Left)

The weather has turned cold again and I get to writing. Been messing 'round with something akin to eggnog but with a lot of alcohol. I made a few drinks while watching 'The Saint', which is a reboot of a franchise I watched as a kid. I remember the lead character as brash and refined. A smooth show where a thief and rogue worked the fine line of being bad and doing the right thing. It helped that Roger Moore starred and later became Bond, the government version of the Saint. It was romantic and suave.

This might seem like a digression but I assure you that it ain't. On this snow filled night and the descent of the thermometer, I took some Forty Creek and worked it into the experiments I have been doing. I took the modern equivalent of an eggnog, namely PC Candy Cane UHT eggnog, and mixed it with the booze. I also took an egg, some simple made with leftover ham spicing, Fernet Branca and milk and made a flip.

Ham spicing before I simplified it

Okay, hold on, Hold on! what the f star is a flip?

We can go back and talk about this medieval beer drink mixed with booze and egg but that does no one any good. That is just pretentious and precious. I may do it someday to show how douche-y it is but in the mean time, I will try something, at least a little bit more modern.

A flip is basically, booze, egg and some cream. If you omit the cream, it seems that you can't call it nog. At least that is my close reading of the internet recipes floating around. My first flip, other than eggnog, was a few years ago where a bartender made me some type of brandy drink with raw egg. I recognized it and dearly wanted to try it at home.

The recognition came from a time in my teens where I would mix a raw egg into store bought chocolate milk and bask in its luxuriant goodness. In reality, it was probably a few weeks where I wanted to gross out my sisters. I would mix a raw egg into a carton of chocolate milk. After a few inadequate mixings, I stopped because the sliminess grossed me out. Anywho... The bartended drink was pretty good and it gestated or incubated or stuck around like a chestbuster (Alien reference, look it up you kids) and finally came to be this year.

First the basics...

2 oz booze
1 oz simple syrup of some kind
1 egg
.5 oz cream

Take it all and shake it for about a minute.

That is it. Super simple. The variations are endless. I have used rum, whiskey, rye, bourbon, and even mescal as the booze. For simple, I have replaced it with a sweet liqueur such as a coffee liqueur or a fortified wine and most successfully, a simple syrup made with that packet that comes with a ham for glazing. The cream can be replaced with milk. It makes it slightly less smooth but it is very slight in the change.

So. I wondered. Does it matter with this raw egg thing that I am doing? Is this just another move to show that I am some type of bar star? There was this candy cane eggnog at my local Valumart that was half price because, well, Christmas is over and the eggnog market bottom has dropped out. Half price eggnog.

I took 1.5 oz of that and 2 oz of Forty Creek. Added it to some ice and shook it for about a minute and poured it into a glass. The pics show two glasses because I was going all whiskey glass and then took a left to a coupe. Regardless.

I took 85g package of glaze, added twice as much hot liquid to make a simple syrup. That is 170 ml for those that don't like math. I used .5 oz simple, .5 oz Fernet Branca for the mint flavour and .5 oz milk. Added an egg and 2 oz Forty Creek. Shook that up too.

There were some differences. Some were obvious. Take a look at the picture up top.

First, the egg based one was smoother and richer. Made sense. Secondly, the egg one made almost two drinks due to the volume that the egg made. Also, made sense. The other differences were that the spicing was more pronounced in the egg and glaze based drink. I was expecting that the flavours on the store bought eggnog would be better and more pronounced but it turns out that the thinness and the spicing didn't hold up to the homemade.

I have been drinking some variation on this drink through fall and will probably continue to summer. If I was using store bought eggnog, I would adjust the spicing. Really, though... it is so simple to add egg and milk or cream, I can't see myself going back to store bought eggnog. As long as I mix it up enough and don't get salmonella, I'll keep on doing this.

BTW, here is where I got the name of the post from....