somewhat similarly, i recently had a drink made with mint, lemonade, watermelon and gin. it was pretty good. i haven't tried to reverse engineer it at home yet but was tempted to when fem g came home with a watermelon.

that reminds me, last night I made one with cucumber

I've been making a variation of these all summer

Gently Muddle 4-5 mint leaves with a tablespoon of simple syrup and a shot of gin in a shaker
Add another shot of gin for good measure
Fill shaker with enough watermelon to almost reach the top. Muddle the watermelon into juice

Fill a Highball with ice and 4-5 mint leaves
Strain the Watermelon/Gin/Mint juice into the highball (Glass should be about 3/4 full)
Add Club soda until the glass is full and stir

Also had my first stinger (which is an old after dinner drink my parents used to drink) earlier in the week:

2 parts Brandy
1 part Creme de Menthe

I was expecting it to be pretty bad but it was actually pretty good.

<---- mainly bumping so I don't have to look for the thread every time I have the urge to make one of Dreaded Marco's Merchants.

Yeah. The Merchant is a keeper. I make them fairly often.

I was able to order the St. Elizabeth's allspice dram from that distributor link you posted--thanks. I haven't made a Lion's Tail yet but will try one soon.

I've been experimenting some with different bitters lately. I found I like the Merchant best with Miracle Mile Chocolate Chili Bitters. Bitter Tears Jamaican #1 Bitters works really well with the Lion's Tail. I have "Miss Piggy" Bacon Bitters on order.

A Bar down the street from me has a cocktail on their Fall menu called the Most Interesting Cocktail in the world

It's Mezcal with Cinnamon Syrup, Lime Juice and Chocolate Chili Bitters shaken with ice and strained into a coupe cocktail glass which is then dusted with cayenne pepper. I made the cinnamon syrup a few weeks ago with equal parts demara sugar and water with 5 cinnamon sticks steeping in it.

I've played around with the ratios and think I've come close:

3 oz Mezcal
1 oz Cinnamon Syrup
Juice of a half of a lime
3-4 dashes of bitters
light dusting of the cayenne

Damn, that sounds crazy.

I had a ton of olallieberries that I picked up last year with the intention of making a pie but got lazy and froze them instead. I thawed them this week and while still very tasty, they were too watery and mushy to try to bake with so I decided to make a shrub/drinking vinegar with them instead.

Last night was the first night that I had a chance to play around with it in cocktails.

I made four different ones each with different base spirits (gin, cachaca, tequila and rum)

The tequila one was awful. The rum one was pretty good, the gin one was even better and the Cachaca one was awesome.

I didn't write down the ratios I came up with but I think it was pretty close to this:

2 2/3 oz Leblon Cachaca
1 oz Olallieberry Shrub
3/4 oz Becherovka
1/2 oz Lime Juice
1 oz club soda

I've been rocking caipirinhas as of late. I knew nothing of cachaca prior to this; but now I know that "51" brand cachaca is akin to an entry level white tequila. Although the "51" isn't terrible, I'm hoping that other brands of cachaca have a smoother profile .

I don't specifically remember the "51" brand other than that it's the top selling cachaca in Brazil. There's a wide variance in quality though and many are really harsh. Leblon isn't really a great cachaca but its aged in cognac barrels which makes it a lot smoother than the lower end ones. It's pretty much an export only cachaca targed mainly at the American market but it makes a pretty good caipirinha or batida (which are basically just cachaca, fresh fruit, sugar and ice). You want to look to look for something better than if you want to drink it neat. There didn't use to be many choices for cachaca here but I'd imagine that there are a lot more brands exported to the U.S. than there used to be. That seems to be true for most spirits.

I'm definitely going to explore cachaca further, but I was still surprised how dissimilar it is to even the sugar cane juice based rums since it's essentially the same base ingredient.

After some research, these brands are supposed to be more solid representations of cachaca: Novo Fogo, Fazenda Mae de Ouro and Sagatiba