Caputo’s Cheese Caves Week just wrapped and we’re celebrating with a very special cocktail dedicated to our founder (and my dad-in-law) Tony Caputo. A fun fact about Tony is that he wasn’t a big drinker, but when celebrating or traveling, his drink of choice was always the same; a classic Italian aperitivo – Campari and soda. This drink is a simple combination of soda water and Campari, an Italian bitter liquor which you likely recognize from its distinctive red bottle and strong bitter qualities.

Mix one part Campari to three parts Italian mineral water, and spice it with a dash of Mr. Bitters Negroni Bitters. Yes, there is a difference – just try a side by side for yourself. We lovingly dubbed our version the “Tony Negroni” and naturally, we’re serving it with a sidecar of Tony’s Flowers.

Best served alongside Tony’s Flowers

This one’s to you, Tony!

Behold: the musings from guest wordsmith and genius behind Workhorse Rye, Rob Easter, below. Enjoy!

In the wild, whether at bars making outdoor or to-go cocktails or folks mixing at home, our punchy and focused Orange Cacao Bitters are joining forces quite swimmingly with a veritable cornucopia of ingredients: sherry, gin, rye whiskey, agave spirits, orgeat, funk-forward rum, etc… they seem to have bridged more gaps than any of our other bitters to date.

The drinks we estimate to be the most reliable in wowing drinkers seem to be two classics: The Old Fashioned Cocktail (many spirits work well, our Rye Whiskey and Orange Cacao Bitters are a perfect match, but so is Calvados, and some are even sweetening with a scant dash of sweet wine instead of sugar for an extra dry cocktail) and a Strong Bitters & Soda (roughly 6 oz soda water, 3-6 dashes of Orange Cacao Bitters) as a digestif.

These aromatic bitters are whole plant macerated from our spirits, as always no water or sugar additions (besides the oranges!), using top quality cocoa from Dandelion Chocolate, whole Valencia oranges from the hills of Oakland, and organic dandelion root from Lhasa Karnak.

A note about usage: The profile of these bitters is no accident, instead the product of years of collaboration and learning, between Workhorse Rye distiller Rob Easter and former Camino bartender Tyler Vogel who made whole plant bitters for their restaurant for almost a decade. We wanted these bitters to have serious range: to be able to use these bitters to in small doses (1 dash) to simply backseat-balance Classics like the Martini and the Old Fashioned, and in higher doses (2-4 dashes) to offer an obvious brace of clean orange, luxurious cacao, and earthy/savory dandelion root to any cocktail or N/A beverage. These bitters are now in our standard collection and we intend to keep them on offer as best we can, thank you for embracing the evolution of our bitters, now seven years in.

Our recommended Bamboo Cocktail recipe (Death & Co recipe included as well, we cut the sugar and use only Orange Cacao Bitters instead of two bitters):

• 1.5 oz Dry Vermouth
• 1.5 oz Sherry or other light/bright flavored fortified wine such as @BrocCellars 2007 Fortified Rosé
• 2 dashes Orange Cacao Bitters

In 2011, two free-spirited distillers, Rob Easter & David Gordon, founded Workhorse Rye. Their vision: lower overhead by hopping around established distilleries, funneling  all capital into product quality. This allows Workhorse to distill whiskeys from all organic grains utilizing established equipment, a rare approach centered on impact and sustainability.

So — what’s whiskey got to do with this bitters announcement? Unlike most retail bitters, which rely on a neutral spirit (i.e. vodka or Everclear) for the base, Workhorse distills their own rye whiskeys, brandies, and custom blends for each individual bitters base, building layers upon layers of flavor.

With each new creation, you will taste adventurous spirit, complex recipes, and unrivaled skill.

Pink Lemon boasts racy acidity from pink lemons grown on the southern slopes of the Sierras blended with bright Oaxaca hibiscus. Oak Barrel Aged Aromatic’s base is a whole plant maceration aged for two years! 80% organic Mexican cane rum and 20% organic rye spirit, followed by six months in Whiskey Del Bac oak casks, and finished with sea salt.

Orange Cacao definitely got our attention. Camas rye and Mexican heirloom sugar cane are blended with organic Valencia oranges and Dandelion Chocolate’s beloved “Camino Verde.”

So, the gifts are almost all wrapped, the tree is already coming apart thanks to your four-legged family members, you’ve threatened Santa’s visitation rights to your kids more than you care to admit, AND WHERE IS THE SNOW? You deserve a break, a sweet indulgence of sorts, and a drink. Let’s combine all of those into one lovely, warm cocktail to soothe your soul and melt away the stress.

If you’re not yet familiar with Waterpocket Distillery, consider this your introduction. One of Utah’s newest distilleries is raising the bar with centuries old traditional liqueurs, unique spirits, and a fresh face. We’re using their Notom Amaro here, you can find it at liquor stores around town or by visiting the distillery for their entire line. This is a great way to introduce amaro to your home bar, but also try this with a ice cube, neat, or stirred into your next cocktail. (Wanna know more? Check out the cocktail classes we’re hosting them at here!)

My take here on the classic hot toddy replaces whiskey with Waterpocket’s Notom Amaro and we’re swapping out the usual sweeter honey for deep, savory, and slightly bitter chestnut honey. I’m also omitting lemon juice as I find it a bit overpowering for the amaro, but feel free to take control of your toddy as you see fit. The combination of Amaro and chestnut is herbaceous, complex, and lovely stirred with hot water. Try your favorite honeys, amari, and citrus as you see fit.

Notom Hot Toddy
Serves 1

• 2 ounces Waterpocket Notom Amaro
• 2 teaspoons chestnut honey
• Hot water
• Orange wheel, for garnish

Stir amaro, honey, and hot water together in a mug. Float an orange wheel in your toddy. Turn off all electronics and enjoy some human interaction with friends and family.

When Caputo’s asked me (aka Crybaby Bitters) to serve drinks at this year’s Chocolate Festival, it took me about one minute to decide what beverage I should make. The featured chocolate producer for the festival was Marou and my assigned chocolate bar of theirs was named “Treasure Island”—one that was no longer in production. My drink was supposed to be a sort of tribute to the bar instead of including the actual chocolate in it and with a name like Treasure Island, I immediately knew that I would make a big batch of old-school rum punch.

Not just because the name brings to mind rum, spices, and tropical vibes, but because with an estimated 200 attendees arriving all at once (150 of which would be drinking), there was no way I was going to make every drink to order. I’ve bartended many large and small private events but have never worked in a bar, so I have been spoiled with the ability to make big batches of drinks without having to meter every single shot of liquor. Punch has always been my go-to beverage for a large crowd because it is cheap, easy to serve, and infinitely customizable.

Since Caputo’s Chocolate Festival was going to be my first big event as Crybaby, I wanted to make something more complicated impressive than a basic rum punch, which typically includes just dark rum, lemon juice, lemon peels, sugar, and water. I knew I was going to include both of my bitters in it (bay leaf and fruit punch) and I considered infusing the rum with Marou’s cacao nibs, tropical fruits like pineapple and mango, or even one of the more exotic fruits native to Vietnam (where Marou is from) such as mangosteen or durian. I decided to test out a recipe with the ingredients I knew would be in the punch before I went shopping for fruits I wasn’t even sure I’d be able to find in Salt Lake City, though.

I didn’t want to experiment with this punch recipe my making an actual batch of punch (which I usually make with at least a whole bottle of liquor) I set out making a single cocktail-sized version just to get an idea of how the final punch would taste. I started with 2 oz Appleton Estate Signature Blend rum, which I usually choose as the base of my punches because it is cheap and has enough Jamaican rum funk to make even the most basic of punches interesting. To the rum I added 3/4 oz lemon juice, 3/4 oz simple syrup, 1 dash Crybaby Bay Leaf Bitters, and 1 dash Crybaby Fruit Punch Bitters. I shook it all in a cocktail shaker for twice as long as usual with only a few small ice cubes to provide the extra dilution that a punch would have.

I split the drink between myself and Associate Crybaby Alli Matyja, who had volunteered to help workshop the drink. We both nodded in approval but agreed that it could probably use more bitters, so I made another with 2 dashes each of bay leaf and fruit punch bitters. After the first sip of the second version, we both looked up and said, “oh DANG.” This was it. On paper it was a pretty simple punch, but the combination of the bay leaf and star anise aromas with the cinnamon, hibiscus, and pineapple flavors from the generous 4 dashes of bitters fully evoked “Treasure Island.” Plus, the drink had a nice dusky orange color—very tropical-looking. Alli and I decided that it was pointless to try to overcomplicate the drink just for the sake of being complicated. The dozens of ingredients in the bitters provided enough depth of flavor and aroma and any additional ingredients would have seemed superfluous. Well, that was easy.

Now, to translate the single-serving-sized punch into a batch large enough to serve 150 people.

Matt Caputo presenting with a very empty punch glass

A one-bottle-of-rum batch of punch ends up being just over a half gallon in volume, which amounts to 20 servings of roughly 3 1/2 oz each. For this batch size I would normally use 6 oz lemon juice (about 4 lemons worth), 6 oz cane sugar, 1 bottle rum, and 1 qt cold water. Although I typically use equal parts lemon juice and sugar by volume, I wanted the Treasure Island punch to be a little less sweet to more accurately match the single-serving test cocktail, so I decreased the ratio of sugar to lemon and multiplied the one-bottle recipe by 8 to cover my bases for (at least) 150 servings. This is what I ended up with:

• 8 bottles Appleton Estate Signature Blend rum
• 48 oz lemon juice
• 32 oz cane sugar
• 8 qt water
• 2 oz Crybaby Bay Leaf Bitters
• 2 oz Crybaby Fruit Punch Bitters

With Alli’s help I washed 40 lemons, peeled 32 of them with Y-shaped veggie peelers, and set the rest aside—I always get a few more lemons than I think I need in case they aren’t juicy enough to provide the required amount of juice. Alli muddled the lemon peels in the cane sugar for a couple minutes then let it sit for an hour so the sugar would extract the oils from the peels to form a goopy mixture called oleo saccharum. While the oleo saccharum did its thing we juiced the lemons until we got 48 oz of juice—we ended up using a couple more than 32 lemons, so it’s a good thing I got extra. When the oleo saccharum was ready, we heated up 1 qt of the recipe’s 8 qt water and mixed it in to dissolve the sugar that the lemon oils didn’t. Into this we poured the lemon juice, strained it all into a 22 qt Cambro, and poured in the 8 bottles of rum along with the bitters.

If we were making a regular sized batch of punch I would have added the remaining water and chilled the punch before serving. I didn’t have enough time or fridge space to chill 4 gallons of punch, though, so we added 7 qt ice water to the container and stirred it until the ice was mostly dissolved before splitting the punch between a couple 2-gallon insulated beverage dispensers and rushing to Caputo’s to set up.

The Treasure Island punch was a big hit at the Chocolate Festival and 4 gallons ended up being enough to serve the crowd with even a little bit left over. You probably don’t need to make an 8-bottle-of-rum batch of punch, so here’s a recipe for one bottle of rum worth.

Treasure Island Punch

• 1 bottle Appleton Estate Signature Blend rum
• Peels of (about) 4 lemons
• 6 oz lemon juice
• 4 oz cane sugar
• 1 qt water (divided)
• 1/2 oz Crybaby Bay Leaf Bitters
• 1/2 oz Crybaby Fruit Punch Bitters

Wash the lemons and peel using a Y-peeler. Muddle the peels in the sugar and let sit for an hour to make an oleo saccharum. I like to use unrefined cane sugar that is about as chunky as kosher salt rather than white sugar (which isn’t as tasty) or turbinado sugar (which is too chunky to dissolve well in the oleo saccharum). Juice the lemons to yield 6 oz lemon juice. Heat up 8 oz of the water and stir into the oleo saccharum to dissolve the remaining sugar. Add the lemon juice and strain into a pitcher, punch bowl, or insulated beverage server. Add the bottle of rum, the bitters, and the remaining water. You can use ice water and serve immediately or add cool water and chill before serving.

Are you a Crybaby? Founder and Crybaby creator, Cody Kirkland, left the early morning third wave coffee scene behind for the late shift and burgeoning craft cocktail community in Salt Lake City. Cody’s history of expertly made coffee beverages extended to the pages of Fresh Cup Magazine and garnered attention for his mixed coffee and tea drinks incorporating handmade syrups, tinctures, and bitters. He left coffee with his penchant for creating deep and complex combinations of flavors to birth Crybaby (pun intended). Now, you’ll find him crafting unique bitters and preaching the bible of craft cocktailing to SLC locals in his series of cocktail classes. Crybaby’s bay leaf bitters are a cure-all for drinks and dishes alike and you won’t want to miss his Fruit Punch bitters that electrify the glass in both color and effortless panache.

Without any further ado, please, meet Cody and his first contribution to the Caputo’s blog.

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I almost always choose what to drink based on mood and context. Exhausted after a long workday = beers at Fisher. In a great mood on a summer afternoon = daiquiris on the Water Witch patio. Close friend finally got keys to the perfect new apartment = cheap wine while sitting on the bare hardwood floor. There are other moods, though, that are too complicated to prescribe a simple, preexisting beverage or location to. Like autumn. Yeah, autumn is a season but it is definitely a mood. A Big Mood. For me it evokes a lot of visceral memories and feelings: the sweet smell of decomposing aspen leaves in Big Cottonwood Canyon, Nick Drake, an overcast cemetery walk with a new crush, coffee at home on a rainy morning, backyard bonfire beers, the painful death of a past self coupled with the excitement of a fresh start.

I didn’t set out to make a cocktail to encapsulate these feelings or “express myself.” It was the first day of autumn and I just felt like a dark beer cocktail, so I threw together a few things I had lying around. But when I sipped the final version of the drink, I thought, “Whoa, this tastes familiar.” A couple years ago, when I was managing the Rose Establishment and in charge of the beverage program, I created a weird coffee drink for our autumn specialty drink menu. I called it the Serious Drink because I wanted to evoke the contemplative side of autumn. It consisted of black coffee, lapsang souchong black tea, sage and rosemary tinctures, and chestnut flower honey. It was bitter, woodsy, herbal, smoky, and very serious. This beer cocktail just happened to taste very much like the coffee drink from a couple years ago, but it instantly brought up the same kinds of feelings and memories, both old and new.

The first version was a bit too bitter. I had mixed 3/4 oz Paul Masson VSOP brandy (because I’m cheap), 1/4 oz Waterpocket Toadstool Notom (because it’s delicious), 2 dashes Crybaby Bayleaf Bitters (because I’m the baby), and 1/4 oz simple syrup (just because) in an 8 oz mason jar (because that’s all that was clean) and topped it with 6 oz Bohemian Cherny Bock beer (because that’s how much fit in the jar). It was pretty good but, like I said, too bitter and also not quite as herbal as I had hoped. I decided to swap out the Notom for Waterpocket’s Long Lost Oread, which would cut down the bitterness and up the herbal factor. I added another dash of my Bay Leaf Bitters because I figured the missing Notom would justify the addition of a little more bitterness for the sake of increasing the herbal factor, by way of the bay. It worked: I created autumn in a glass. I decided to name the drink after Lilly E. Gray, the person whose mysterious headstone in the Salt Lake City Cemetery in the Avenues is inscribed with “VICTIM OF THE BEAST 666” because, well, it’s Halloween season and it’s spooky.

Here is the recipe:

• 3/4 oz brandy
• 1/4 oz Waterpocket Oread
• 1/4 oz simple syrup
• 3 dashes Crybaby Bay Leaf Bitters
• 6 oz black lager

Add the first four ingredients to a very chilled 8 oz highball glass (or mason jar) and top with the beer. Drink it, go on a walk through Memory Grove, and have a nice autumn!

#PSL, we love you and your squealing, iPhone-wielding, UGG-booted superfans, but this year we’re opting for something with just a little more kick to get us in the mood for fall. Halloween is just around the corner, and what better way to celebrate all things grim and ghoulish than with a strong, pumpkin-spiced cocktail?

As you know, we’re big fans of bitters, and so the Old Fashioned (spirit + sweetener + bitters) is a go-to when we’re in the mood for a pre-Prohibition classic. It just so happens that one of our absolute favorite bitters companies, Workhorse Rye, just released some truly delicious Pumpkin Bitters as one of their masterfully-crafted seasonal offerings, made with five varieties of heirloom pumpkin and a pantry’s worth of festive herbs and spices.

We paired these bitters with a nice high-proof bourbon and a bit of maple syrup for our version of America’s oldest cocktail. Check out the recipe below:

Pumpkin Spice Old Fashioned
Yields 1

-2oz bourbon (or rye, for extra spice)
-0.5oz maple syrup
-4-5 dashes Workhorse Rye Pumpkin Bitters
-Orange peel garnish

Directions
Combine all ingredients in an old fashioned glass. Add ice, preferably large cubes, and stir until you hear the ice begin to crack. Squeeze the orange peel over the top of the drink (the oils release & add an amazing aromatic component to the drink), brush the edges of the glass with the orange, then garnish. Now sit back, listen to the fire crackle, sip slowly & enjoy. Not so #basic after all, eh?

Chances are we’ve all had horchata, whether it’s in it’s original state as a beverage or a remixed version like ice cream, cake, or even a donut. My first horchata was in a styrofoam cup a few days after my 21st birthday. My friends had taken me out dancing until the wee hours of the night, then we stumbled to a taco cart for carne asada and horchata. It was a transcendent experience. The mix of spices and texture were perfect. Now, I only go out at night so I can have horchata after.

That horchata is the New World horchata, or, rather, the New World’s answer to the Old World’s traditional version. When horchata de chufa showed up at Caputo’s, it required some research. My late night self knew horchata de arroz all too well. Chufa?? That was a new word for me.

After an introduction from Matt Caputo, I’d learned this horchata de chufa was the O.G. horchata, and that it was made from something called a tiger nut, or chufa. Upon further late reading, I’ve since learned this tiger nut is actually the edible tuber of this grass-like sedge , AND that it sometimes even goes by its alias, the Earth Almond, AND that the actual plant, Cyperus esculentus aka Yellow Nutsedge, is widely regarded as one of the world’s worst weeds. Luckily for us, however, this plant is cultivated on the Iberian peninsula on purpose for the honorable use in horchata. This little tuber was first used in horchata in Northern Africa and first appeared in Valencia via the Muslim Conquest. From there, it spread in popularity across the peninsula in the 13th century. Explorers traveled to the New World with a taste for horchata and learned to make due with substitutions like rice, melon seeds, sesame seeds, and nuts. And there you have it, the travel and evolution of horchata. From North Africa to my cup next to a taco stand.

Horchata de Chufa has me quite twitterpated. The taste is similar to the rice version; however, the texture is much more silky and less granular than what I had first known as horchata. They all certainly make a great substitution for one another, though the chufa iteration is quickly becoming my favorite. Matt and Yelena recently served this at a party mixed with Waterpocket Distillery’s Oread herbal liqueur. It was the perfect combination of sweet spice and full, weighty mouthfeel. I’m looking forward to making many more of these in the fall and winter months and hope to share my newfound volumes of horchata history along the way.

It’s no secret that colonial Americans were true imbibers, though back then it was more of a need than an indulgence. Water wasn’t necessarily safe to drink, so alcohol was the next best option. Our colonial forefathers downed an average of six gallons of pure alcohol per year compared to the current American’s consumption of about two gallons. In the spirit of America’s independence and freedom to imbibe, we’re throwing it back with a colonial era punch. Rum was spirit of American choice long before whiskey, we’re mixing it into a classic Philadelphia Fish House Punch. The recipe was developed by a pre-Revolution social club in Pennsylvania called the Schuylkill Fishing Company of Pennsylvania, also known as the State in Schuylkill. Made up of politicians, fishermen, and common Philadelphians, the club actually declared the assemblage a sovereign state, and called themselves “citizens.”

We’re throwing in a nod to the pre-Prohibition era as well with the much more recent culture of cocktail bitters. Bittercube’s cherry bark bitters add both a level of bitter complexity and a nod to George Washington’s little foray with a cherry tree. Rebel against the tradition of icy beer with us, and pour yourself a glass of punch. If punches like these were good enough for George Washington and the like, they’re certainly good enough for me.

Philadelphia Fish House Punch (A Half Batch)
Servings: 10

• 1/2 cup sugar
• 2 lemons, peeled and peels reserved
• 2 cups black tea
• 1/2 cup lemon juice
• 2 cups rum, Jamaican
• 1 cups cognac
• 8 dashes Bittercube Cherry Bark Vanilla Bitters

Garnish: lemon wheels and freshly grated nutmeg
In a large bowl, add sugar and lemon peels, and rub together to release the citrus oils into the sugar. (This is called oleo-saccharum.) Allow oleo-saccharum to infuse for at least 30 minutes.
Dissolve sugar with warm tea. Add rum, cognac, lemon juice and bitters. Stir to mix. Add a block of ice to chill, and continue to add smaller pieces of ice for desired dilution. Garnish with lemon wheels and freshly grated nutmeg. Ladle into individual glasses.