Aviation and NightFlight

Hey, happy Friday everybody, at 4 o'clock Pacific time on Friday, that means it is time to start drinking. You'll notice I'm wearing a mask and I wear this mask because I respect you and I care for you and your families and your guys's health, so follow the example where I'm asked.

Welcome to this week's episode of drinking on an empty stomach. I'm your host, Steve Hagin, therefore this should be super fun this week. The, this week, it's kind of a really good twofer. We didn't meet last week, next week you guys are gonna be gone for the 4th, so we probably won't do next Friday as well, so this had to be really good and we've got two strong drinks, I don't mean strong,

like, like that strong, although they are super boozy. I mean strong like these are really good drinks. One's called the Aviation and the other's called the Night Flight, which is something that I think you will enjoy. Aviation, this drink's been around for a long time. Well, not a long time, it's, I wouldn't call it a classic cocktail. It's better now for about 15 to 20 years. I'm not sure where it came from, but I'm pretty sure I know where it got its name from, and it's the hue and the color. It looks like kind of blue clouds, right, but it's a good dream. My niece's

boyfriend Clayton turned me on to this and I just hadn't tried it for a long time until maybe about six weeks ago or so. My, and the kids were, I don't know where they were, they weren't in the house or I was doing something in the house by myself, but I decided to finally try to make this. It's actually a really good drink, it's a pretty simple drink to make, and the reason why I've got both of these drinks this week is because the Night Flight is going to build on the Aviation. The Night Flight is actually kind of a bastard love child of an Aviation and a Vesper Martini, if You remember the vest for Martina from like I think week three, that thing was Like pretty freakin good.

This drink is really good as well, the Night Flight, and not only that but it looks amazing if you use the ingredients as I tell you to, this looks like a twenty dollar bar drink, right? So with that let's go ahead and get started with the Aviation. Aviation is interesting, I'm actually gonna make a variant of the Aviation that I have not tried before, I'm going to try a different gin with it this time, and I remember I told you guys to get creme de violette. An Aviation is gin, maraschino liqueur, creme de violette and some fresh, freshly squeezed lemon juice, but I did some variants of it.

Molly doesn't like the creme de violette, so I wanted to find something she'd enjoy, so I tried elderberry and it actually works really good, so I'm going to, for the Aviation, I'm gonna use a nice, just a clean gin, and I'm going to use Breckenridge gin Records just distillery out of Colorado, is actually pretty good, they make some really good bourbons, or they make at least one really good bourbon, this gin is super good, they make kind of everything there, but it's a good distillery. This gin's a little higher proof, it's about 45 proof, most gins are about 80, or sorry, about 40 proof, or Sorry, 45 percent alcohol by bottom, so 90 proof as opposed to 80 proof, but let's go ahead and make this bad boy. This is a drink we're going to shake, so we have a friendly shaker.

I'm gonna start by using two ounces of gin, because remember we don't make anything with less than two ounces of Booze, and in this household, right, okay. oh my goodness, I'm out, and the funny part about it is you guys can't see this, it's literally two ounces, I got lucky on That pork, so to answer the djinn, okay.

just gonna pour that in a shaker, we're gonna use half an ounce of maraschino liqueur, okay, so there we go, I've got a half ounce of that, and now usually in this drink you would use creme de violette, in this case I'm going to use an elderberry liqueur, I'm gonna chase, St-Germain, same difference,

But elderberry liqueur is so I will say in this drink, the Aviation, there's actually a lot of room to experiment with. We tried, remember when we made the PB&J the other week and we had, you know, there's a strawberry in the blackberry variant, and I said you could use the creme de cassis which is the blackberry Liqueur and blackberries in their muddle those, it actually works okay in the Aviation, but it's not nearly as good as a creme de violette or the elderberry.

The elderberry, mmm, you never had it before? Well, I was like elderberry but it's a different taste, it's a little bit sweeter, it's not nearly as botanical as the creme de violette, so I'm gonna use this for the Aviation, like I said, a true Aviation now is not St-Germain, or Elderberry liqueur, a true aviation is creme de violette, but we're going to use that in the next string. Okay, so now we're gonna use 1/2 ounce of freshly squeezed, see, I did that just for you guys.

Freshly squeezed lemon juice, you can, depends on how tart you like this, really no more than a half an ounce, maybe third to a half an ounce, I'm just, you can't see but I'm gonna go just under half ounce for that. Okay, and that is really it, so we got two ounces of gin, we've got 1/2 ounce of maraschino liqueur. We got 1/2 ounce of freshly squeezed lemon juice, and if you guys have been cheating and been using like the lemon juice out of the bottle, shame on you, get freshly squeezed stuff, this little guy was like 5 bucks, it's perfect, and then what else do I put in, that's it, okay.

Shaker me twice, okay, so let's shake this bad boy up. Nice and cold, especially today, you guys grew up around the Seattle area, it's freaking hot today, it's like 80 degrees up here, and then it's gonna rain just in time for the weekend, which is awesome, so tomorrow gets crappy again, so here we go.

Here's our aviation, and you notice it's kind of got this almost like a mint green look to it. That's the elderberry liqueur, okay, we're gonna take, if you had a brainy cherry, those work really good, I'm gonna take a maraschino cherry, there we go.

Cheers. Mmm, super tasty drink, think about this, if you use the elderberry it makes it a much kind of a milder drink. Elderberry liqueur, sands remain, that kind of stuff is a sweet liqueur, it's not super sweet, it tends to, if you use too much of it it will overwhelm what you're putting in, or we're putting it in, two, but if use right amount it actually brings out the flavor of everything you're, you're putting in there, so remember we put in some maraschino liqueur, you can actually really taste the cherry in it, the elderberry is kind of subtle, the gin, is you're just getting the botanicals from the gin, so it mates really well with this stuff.

Yep, maraschino cherry at the bottom, holy crap, at some point I'm gonna eat before one of these things, but lunch isn't my thing, and I got to get in a couple drinks practice before I do these, right? Yum, oh okay, no doubt, super yummy. Now for the main attraction, this Night Flight starts out like a Vesper, and you're gonna see the ingredient we put in it are the same greens we used for a Vesper, kind of, I'm gonna start adding stuff that you typically find any aviation lab, we're gonna add a little zip at the end, but this drink is super good, super tasty, some people have a

love-hate relationship with the creme de violette, I highly suggest you try it, I like it, I think the creme de violette, it's kind of a flowery liqueur, so it ends up taking on the botanicals of the gin really well, and this drink looks amazing, like I said, this is one of $20, I consider this a martini, some people like the martini stirred, in this house our martinis are shaken, right, I will say this drink is, it's, it's beautiful, like it's a pretty looking drink, and if you stirred it you wouldn't get the muddled look that we're gonna get with the cracked ice, okay, so I will say that, but the cracked ice kind of melts anyway, and it ends up being amazing anyhow, right, and it clears up, so this bad boy I'm

gonna do a little bit of this, hmm, so with this we're getting is a different kind of gin, you can use a regular gin, but just to make this super pretty. So the, let me show you the creme de violette first, see, look at that color, I don't know if you can really see it, but this is really dark blue, a purple, I'm colorblind so I don't know, but it's kind of what looks like to me, super super dark. Look at this Empress Gin, gorgeous, this is nice blue purple color, so the drink that you're going to make just looks, it looks amazing.

Like it's, it looks very very pretty, and we're gonna use this Empress gin, this is actually not an expensive gin, it's like 20 25 bucks. Taste-wise, I mean it's, it's a good gin, you take, you smell it, and you can smell the Juniper right away, it's maybe a little bitier than some gins I use, but I still like it, it's very very tasty, it's a very mixable gin, right, so like everything, remember if you haven't tried this before, obviously I have, because I've drank like half the bottle, but you should always try the liquor you're using, super important, because you're gonna find that you, there's some things you like, some things you don't like.

Right, oh, that improves gin. Some good [bleep]. Okay, so we're gonna start out with an ounce and a half of gin, okay, I'm gonna go, an ounce and a half of gin, we're putting that in the shaker. Okay, now we're gonna grab some vodka, have an ounce of vodka, and with the vodka, I would recommend a clean vodka.

You want to block it, it on is very mild, doesn't have a lot of flavor to it, because it's gonna ruin the rest of the stuff, plus it's gonna get lost, trust me, but we're gonna use an ounce of vodka. Okay. I'm just using Tito's, there's another vodka that I, it's kind of my house, walk a star vodka which I really like, second ninety and ninety one point vodka I get. It, okay.

Sixteen bucks for a half gallon of total wine, it's really good, so the next thing we're gonna do is you're gonna use Lillet Blanc or the Cocchi Americano. The Lillet Blanc is a little sweeter, Cocchi Americano a little bit spicier, so that's why I'm using this, now if you remember from like week three or four, and we're gonna use the half ounce of this, by the way, if you remember from week three or four when we made the Vesper Martini, this should sound super

similar to a Vesper Martini, like if we took the measurements and we made a big hefty Vesper and we actually split it, well, I told you guys that I drink the whole damn thing, but if you look at the measurements, these are about half the measurements of a Vesper. So what we have in here right now is really a Vesper, right, we've got an ounce a half a gin, we got an ounce of vodka, and we've got a half ounce of, I use the Cocchi Americano, but you could use a little, that Blanc, right, that is essentially a Vesper right there. Now what we're going to do is going to use a half ounce of this creme de violette, okay, and this stuff can be overpowering if you've never had it before.

So don't, don't use more than a half ounce to begin with, right, see how you like it. For this drink actually I use lemon bitters in, okay, And lemon bitters, it's hard to find if you find them, they're the same price as any other bitters, but I would always recommend you have several different kind of bitters, you just want the regular bitters, just get some bitters, get some orange bitters, get some lemon bitters, if you're feeling a little spicy, get some chocolate bitters, because around the holiday times there's some

really good holiday drinks, so they use with chocolate bitters are super super tasty, but bitters are very cool because you can experiment with them, we may even have one of these where we talk about making bitters, I can't really show you, because making bitters takes like three or four weeks, it kind of sucks, but bitters are pretty cool, always have three or four different kinds handy, this is lemon, right, so we're gonna take a couple dashes, look at that, a couple dashes of lemon bitters in there, and now we're going to add some ice to our shaker.

So right now we've got gin, bouncing half of gin, we've got an ounce of vodka, we have a half an ounce of the coachee Americana, but you can use the left lung right, the Cocchi Americano I think's a little spicier, the Lillet Blanc is a little bit more mild, we have the half ounce of creme de violette, we have a couple dashes of bitters, okay, take this bad boy

out, if you can see that, like this beautiful purple color, absolutely gorgeous looking, there we go, oh my god, like, just, it's amazing, like, I know if you guys can see that color, I wish you can see it from the top down. Now I shake these, you kind of see it looks a little muddled, and that's because of the cracked ice in there, right, you could stir this like all my teams, you could stir your martinis, if you stir the martinis it's going to be a much more vibrant kind of a purple color. Now we're going to add the finishing touches to this bad boy. If I actually have brandy cherries I'd use one of those, but I like my maraschino cherries, papa maraschino in that bad boy, and we're going to take

a lemon wheel, so this is the other half of the lemon that I did not squeeze, we're gonna cut a lemon wheel, see, you take half of that bad boy off, I'm going to squeeze a little bit of that in there, you shove that right on the edge there, and that, my friends, is your Night Flight, and the reason why it's called a Night Flight is because after a couple of these you our beddy-bye, you are flying straight the freakin bed, because these things are awesome, oh man, I really enjoy these, the creme de violette is not for everybody, like I said, it's a super floral liqueur.

But with gin it pairs perfectly right, because you've got all those botanicals in gin, this creme de violette mates with those amazingly well, right. And we're gonna put in some vodka, just because we can, pretty much, and there's no taste in Vodka, so we're just making a boozy er is. all we're doing. And then we add a lot, we add lemon, we add some citrus, some punch to it, right, to make it a little bit tart, because if we didn't it would be super flowery, super sweet, too much botanicals, I think so, we um we took the lemon.

bitters, we've got the lemon slice, or the lemon wheel, we squeeze that in there, and then we've got the maraschino cherry down at the bottom, which adds just a little bit of sweetness, and I think really puts this drink over the top. So you can kind of, so take a look at that color now, okay, that's what you're gonna get if you stir it as opposed to shake it, right? So now, well, I drink half of it, but, you know, kind of cracked ice as it melt a little bit, but oh my god, it's a beautiful drink. So you go to a bar and this bad boy is like a twenty dollar drink, I mean look at it, it's freaking, it's a gorgeous drink, and like I said several times over and over, the stuff that we're doing, the stuff that I learned how to do, this stuff that you all know now how to do, it's awesome and it's pennies on the dollars for going out. I don't get me wrong, I love going out to the bars, but the one thing that the epidemic or the pandemic sorry has taught me was to make really good drinks.

Like, I've become a much better bartender, and there's no reason why you guys can't either, right? I mean, I'm a freaking Luddite, right, I was raised on beer, love that stuff forever, right, and then for some strange reason I went to bourbon, and that was a gateway to, and now I make drinks, right, and all you guys can make drinks to, in these types of drinks right here are amazing, they taste amazing, they look amazing, you're gonna freakin impress your friends with something like this, I mean, this is it, it's a beautiful drink, right, the only thing I could have done is, I could have taken the lemon slice, and I could have carved in a little naked lady lemon thing, or and they could dude lemon think that would have been cool, but I didn't, because I can't, and I'm too

lazy to learn how to do that, but I can make the drink, and all you guys can't do it, and these things are amazing, so all I can say is invest in your bar a little bit. You don't need a lot of stuff to make great drinks, right, and when you buy mixers, don't get freaking, like, mixers, don't get like that Cuervo stuff, don't get that sugary crap, go out and buy actual liqueurs. It's a mix with you drink, oh, there's another one, right? I mean, in my bar I don't have a single sugary crap thing that doesn't have booze in it, right, I mean, yeah, this is, this is a sweet look, liqueur is all the chords are sweet, but guess what, that bad boys also 40 proof, which is

better than all that sugary stuff you get in the bottled mixers for, like, the Hurricanes and the margaritas, awesome, don't buy that stuff, but you don't need it, you guys are better than that. And these things are easy to make. So the aviation, let's go back to that, just to recap, two ounces of gin, two ounces of creme de violette, I used elderberry in the core, though, so St-Germain or something like that would be really good, half an ounce of maraschino liqueur, and then a half an ounce of freshly squeezed lemon juice.

Shaker, chiki chiki chiki chiki porn, and drink, maraschino cherry, glug glug, awesome. The night flight is a combination of a Vesper martini and the aviation, really, those two things. I'm not sure, like, I think I just got bored and started, decided I was gonna make up stuff. But the night flight, it's freaking amazing, right, it is one of the better drinks that I think I make. One and a half ounces of gin, one ounce of vodka, a half of an ounce of either Lillet Blanc or the Cocchi Americano, right, so these were aperitifs. The Lillet Blanc tends to be, I think, a little smoother, a little sweeter, the Cocchi Americano tends to be a little bit spicier, so I like that. And Then for the knife light, you really have.

to get some creme de violette. The problem with creme de violette, this stuff, if you buy a bottle of this stuff, it will literally last you forever, because you're not going to use that much stuff in a drink. This stuff, for liqueur, is kind of spending, like, you can get elderberry liqueur, and you can, like, creme de cassis, and all the other stuff pretty cheap, they're all about 20 bucks. If so, it's creme de violette, that's hard. To find, if you can find it, it's about 35 bucks, right, but well worth it and you will have it for a long time and buy it right, so sorry, I digress.

What, 1/2 ounce of gin, what a serve all good clean, straight vodka, not any kind of flavor E BS stuff, half an ounce of Lillet Blanc or Cocchi Americano, 1/2 ounce of creme de violette, some lemon bitters, couple dashes lemon bitters. Shaky shaky shaky, garnish with a lime, or sorry, lemon wheel and a cherry, dude. In fact, I, you could probably go to a bar and say, dude, make me a Night Flight.

They'd be like a bunch of jackasses. You can make this thing for like super cheap. It's amazing, you'll impress your friends and you'll be like the man or woman of the hour. These are good, again, I highly recommend if you guys are following along, these Friday things, do this on an empty stomach because it's way better. Mmm, this is a good frickin drink.

So the Aviation, thank you Clayton for that, I know I put that off for weeks, weeks, weeks, and thank you for persisting. Super good, of the Night Flight. It's a bastard love child of the Aviation and the Vesper, right, so you know that's gonna be boozy as hell, like when we first started making it was a Vesper and then we added some other things to it, but that is a great drink, and it's the Night Flight is one of those drinks, were it's just, it's so unusual and it's so beautiful, I mean it's just a beautiful drink, and it tastes as good as it looks, it really does, right, and it's easy to make, like

if I can do it, you know, dude, look at me, I'm a freakin Luddite, like I'm freaking, if I can do this, all of you guys can do this stuff, right, so Aviation, Night Flight, two great drinks. I hope you have a safe and sane 4th of July, remember, write masks, because guess what, you respect people you care about them, you care about their families.

Ok, well, it's not that hard, I can breathe, I can talk, it's, it's not a freedom thing, it's a freaking science and smart thing, so don't be a dumbass, or I'm asking, respect people around you, ok, I love you guys, have a great safe saying forth, where I'm asked, be careful, be safe, don't blow your freaking fingers off, holy [bleep] you know, just don't do stupid stuff like when you're a kid, you did stupid stuff, from a pipe bombs, you held a mateys, that's great, don't do that now because without a opposable thumbs you can't use a shaker, take care of guys,

I will see you after the fourth. I probably, probably won't do this on the third cuz I know you guys aren't gonna be tuning in anyway, but we'll probably pick this up again the week after the fourth, and maybe we'll go to some more bread-and-butter drinks. There's actually a really good Sea Breeze that I make from scratch that I want to show you guys, and most you guys are like, Sea Breeze, it's vodka and cranberry juice, no, it is not, so maybe that's what we'll do. We'll do some kind of going back to basic stuff, because this week with Aviation, the knife light is pretty advanced stuff, right, I mean, coming up with a freakin purple drink that take some stuff, so I'll think about it.

I'm always open to suggestions, right, it may take a while, I know Clayton, it took you like two months to get your suggestion into me, but I'm always open to suggestions. And with that, be, be safe, be careful, be smart and respect those around you. Wear a mask, I love you guys, cheers, bye.