Duck Camp Cocktails

Ed Wall Media

 

Elevated cocktails are all the rage these days, part of the craft cocktail craze in which ingredients such as homemade syrups, hand-squeezed juices, and artisanal bitters are used to take creative concoctions to new heights.

Sounds like a little too much thinking going on, to tell you the truth.

Here's the kind of cocktail I like after a morning in the duck muck: I like a little something that reminds me of where I just came from, something a little earthy, a little musky, with a little nose of wet dog and a nice finish of old canvas. This tends to lead me to brown water of some sort, but not always. I'm likely too tired for a lot of muddling and mashing, so pouring and stirring are about as complicated as I want to get. And please, no blenders.

I like a cocktail in a real glass that is sheathed in condensation that glistens with reflections from a fire. I like a pour that makes you cock your head just a bit, but not so stiff that you bite your lip and wonder how you're going to get up at 5 a.m. for the third morning in a row. I like to tip it back when my Lab, Minnie, is conked out on the floor in front of me, her four black legs twitching as she dreams of ducks overhead and ducks on the water and ducks to come. I raise a glass to her dreams, and mine.

Sounds pretty swell, huh? Here's a solid mixed bag of drink recipes and ideas that would fit right in.

STRAIT LAKE SMOKY OLD FASHIONED

During waterfowl season, Chef John Fearrington runs the kitchen at Arkansas's Strait Lake Lodge, a duck camp known for its prime flooded timber hunting.  A lot of his hunters love a Smoky Old Fashioned, Fearrington says, but he has always felt that most bourbon cherries lend an overpoweringly sweet taste to the drink. He devised an easy method of smoking cherries to cut their sweetness and boost their flavor, in the process creating his own twist on the lauded cocktail that pairs well with memories of foggy mornings and love-hate feelings regarding a wet dog shake.

Ingredients

• 6 to 8 ounces Calumet Farm or other bourbon

• 3 to 4 dashes Angostura bitters

• 1 tablespoon simple syrup

• 1 smoked cherry (see adjacent recipe)

• 1 spoonful cherry syrup

• Orange peel (if desired)

Preparation

Fill a 20-ounce shaker with ice. Pour in the bourbon, bitters, and simple syrup—you won't need much because of the sugar in the cherries—and shake vigorously. Add to a cocktail glass with ice and a smoked cherry. Top with the cherry syrup. If you want a drink with a touch less sweetness, add a strip of orange peel.

Smoked Bourbon Cherries

Ingredients

• 1 dozen fresh cherries, pits intact and stems removed

• 3/4 cup water

• 1/4 cup bourbon

• 1/4 to 1/2 cup raw sugar

Preparation

1. Place cherries in small aluminum foil dish and soak in water for 1 hour. Pour off the water and then place in a smoker set at 250 degrees for 1 to 2 hours. Keep an eye on the cherries; when they start to wilt, remove them from the smoker. 

2. Place the cherries in a small saucepan with the bourbon and sugar. Simmer until the skins soften and they are about to burst. Remove from heat and remove the cherries from the saucepan.

3. Place the saucepan back on the heat and simmer until the liquid is reduced slightly and bubbling. Remove from heat, let cool slightly, and pour liquid into a glass jar. Add cherries. They will stay fresh in a refrigerator for at least three weeks.

DUCK BOOT

This is my own concoction, and its taste was no surprise to my hunting pals, given that I am a sucker for brown water of both kinds—the kind that comes in a bottle and the kind that comes trickling through the cypress trees behind a beaver dam along some Southern creek. After a successful day of wood duck hunting, I was pining for a duck-plucking cocktail, so I foraged through the kitchen cabinets. I'd recently picked up a bottle of Campfire Bitters, a custom recipe from Owl & Whale tonic brewers in Portland, Maine, and distributed by High Camp Flasks. When I unscrewed the cap, I smelled charred wood, old moss, and a hint of molasses. Delicious.

Tonic water was originally flavored with cinchona bark, which contains quinine. The genesis of the classic gin and tonic cocktail, in fact, was when British sailors cut the bitter taste of their anti-malarial medicine with a slug of gin and a splash of club soda. Some modern tonics are still flavored with the original woodsy ingredient, while others use quinine powder or plain old fake flavoring. But craft tonics such as the one used in this drink get their flavor from herbals and other extracts. You can find Campfire Bitters online or go off the grid yourself and stir this drink up with another of the many fine artisanal bitters out there.

Ingredients

• 2 ounces of your favorite bourbon

• 1/2 ounce Campfire Bitters or similar

• 1/2 ounce simple syrup

• Splash of club soda

• Lime wedge, gently squeezed

Preparation

Combine. Stir. Drink. Make plans for your next duck hunt.

DUCK CAMP DINERS BLOODY MARY

Chef Jean-Paul Bourgeois's story snakes like a muscadine vine from Louisiana's bayou country to California, France, the US Virgin Islands, and New York City, but he's at home anywhere there's a black iron skillet and an open flame. His Duck Camp Dinners video series is available on the Split Reed YouTube channel, with condensed episodes airing on Waypoint TV. Bourgeois didn't hesitate when asked for a drink recipe for duck camp, and this one has Cajun written all over it.

Ingredients

• 1/4 lemon, cut into a wedge 

• Slap Ya Mama Cajun Seasoning (regular or hot) for the rim of the glass

• 1 tablespoon pickle juice

• 1 tablespoon olive juice

• 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce

• Slap Ya Mama Cajun Pepper Sauce, to taste

• 2 pickled quail eggs

• 2 pickled green beans

• 2 green olives

• 1 pickled okra

• 8 ounces Slap Ya Mama Bloody Mary Mix 

• 2 ounces vodka

Preparation

1. You'll need two mixing cups and a serving cup. Squeeze the lemon into one of the mixing cups and then run the squeezed lemon around the rim of the serving cup. Sprinkle the Cajun seasoning on a plate, turn the serving cup upside down, and swirl the rim to dust with spice. Set this cup aside.

2. In the mixing cup with the lemon juice, add the squeezed lemon wedge, pickle juice, olive juice, Worcestershire sauce, and a few dashes of Cajun pepper sauce. Carefully mix the Ingredients by pouring back and forth between the two mixing cups. On the last pour, keep the mix in one of the mixing cups.

3. Add ice to the serving cup, then add quail eggs, green beans, olives, and okra. Stir bloody Mary mix and vodka together with the other Ingredients in the mixing cup and pour into the serving cup. Serve immediately.

HEMINGWAY'S COCKTAIL

Ernest Hemingway is known for a direct, no-frills writing style, and that's certainly the case with this recipe for a favorite rum snort he jotted down in a handwritten fishing journal during the summer of 1933. All the note contains, under the straightforward descriptor "Cocktail," is a list of Ingredients: rum, hard apple cider, lime, and sugar. Hemingway had been chasing billfish with his longtime pal Joe Russell, a Prohibition-era booze smuggler who ran hard liquor from Cuba to the Keys. Russell rocketed to local fame when he opened the famed Key West drinkery Sloppy Joe's soon after Prohibition was repealed, and there's evidence that he actually cashed checks for Hemingway early in the fledgling writer's career, when banks wouldn't take the chance. With its hard apple cider base, this is a welcome drink after a cold day in the duck blind. Or cold morning, Hemingway-style.

Ingredients

• 4 1/2 ounces light rum

• 12 ounces hard apple cider

• 2 ounces fresh lime juice

• 3/4 ounces simple syrup or 

• 2 teaspoons sugar

Preparation

Add ice to a tall pitcher, stir in the Ingredients, and serve with a lime wedge garnish.

DUCK FART

It's a funny name, but since all three Ingredients in this cocktail contain alcohol, make sure you don't laugh your way to more trouble than you can handle. The Duck Fart originated in Alaska, possibly at the old Peanut Farm bar in Anchorage. The drink got its name (the story goes) when the lady helping to concoct the drink knocked one back and promptly belched. Evidently, the belch sounded like a duck fart, and the drink became a local staple. When it made the rounds, literally, on the popular series Deadliest Catch, fame followed. 

Ingredients

• 1/2 ounce Kahlua coffee liqueur

• 1/2 ounce Bailey's Irish cream

• 1/2 ounce whiskey

Preparation

The recipe is simple: layer each ingredient in a tall shot glass, and down she goes. But there are a few tricks that will help with the presentation. First, chill all the Ingredients to help them retain their position in the various layers. Pour in the Kahlua first. Then, using the back of a spoon held closely over the Kahlua, pour the Bailey's slowly over the spoon, allowing it to cascade gently into the glass. Make sure the spoon doesn't touch the layer below. Repeat that process with the whiskey.

PACKING THE GOOD STUFF

Sure, you could wrap your bottle of brown water in an extra pair of long underwear, but wouldn't you like to make a better impression? Try one of these fetching designs that are as classy as a canvasback and will elevate any après-hunt celebration.

1.  Canvas Tailgater Bag

If you have a hard time deciding what you might want to toss back at duck camp or the big game, Tom Beckbe's Canvas Tailgater Bag will have you covered. Padded, removable interior dividers will securely hold six standard-size liquor bottles, and exterior pockets provide plenty of room for other supplies. The bag is dressed in the brand's proprietary Field Canvas and comes with leather carry handles and an adjustable cotton strap. It's available in two colors: bark and sawgrass. tombeckbe.com

2.  Cocktail Shaker

It's not a flask or bottle carrier per se, but YETI's 20-ounce Cocktail Shaker should still be a duck camp staple. It comes in a ton of fun colors, and with its double-insulated vacuum walls it's guaranteed to keep a slug of the good stuff cold while the fire burns down. Already own a YETI 20-ounce Rambler? You're in luck. There's also a Rambler Cocktail Shaker Lid that fits like a glove. yeti.com  
   
3.  Sampler Satchel

With theBar2GO's 5-bottle cases, you can have your bourbon and your whiskey too. These elegant leather minibars hold a foam insert with cutouts to fit the five refillable 50-ml bottles. A small stainless-steel funnel is also included. The cases come in a wide range of fine leathers. thebar2go.com 

4.  Whole Bottle Flask

Never worry about breaking a bottle of spirits again. The Firelight Flask 750 from High Camp Flasks swallows a full bottle. A pair of vacuum-insulated sweatproof tumblers attach to the top and bottom of the flask with hidden magnets, so you're never without a classy way to end a hunt. highcampflasks.com

5.  Tailgate Flask

Tom Beckbe's Bottle Flask is a classy way to tote a snort or four in a pack or blind bag for a field toast after the guns are cased. The leather-wrapped stainless-steel bottle holds 8 ounces of the good stuff. Four toasting cups and a funnel fit neatly under the ingenious leather cap. tombeckbe.com