It’s not your mother’s Piña Colada! Sophisticated, flavorful, with fresh ingredients and the perfect hit of booze, a sloshie is a high-octane slushie—the ideal summer drink that’s a far cry from the cloyingly sweet blender cocktails of yore.
Written by Jerry Nevins, cofounder of Kansas City’s Snow & Co.—named the #1 frozen cocktail bar in the United States— Sloshies features more than 100 innovative refreshers guaranteed to jazz up (and cool down) backyard parties, barbecues, or any gathering with family and friends. And they are so easy to Based on a simple granita technique, sloshies require little to no special equipment. Just mix the ingredients, stick them in the freezer, and wait until they’re slushy.
There’s the the Whisky Smashed, a frozen mint julep; the cucumber-kissed Limey Bastard; and the Sunshine Boulevard, a stone-cold shandy starring beer, vodka, and citrus juice. The the alluringly exotic Blue Roses (featuring a bouquet of curaçao, vodka, and rose hip liqueur). The spiced and including a Manhattan with rye-infused cherries, and the Proud Mary—yes, that’s a frozen Bloody Mary. Plus drinks with floral notes, like the Midnight Orchard, a beguiling combination of whiskey, elderflower, bitters, and maraschino, and a few nonalcoholic granitas to refresh the palate.
The book includes recipes for the syrups and infused liquors that many of the drinks are built upon, plus information on garnishes, serving suggestions, and other finishing touches.
Great ideas for refreshing slushy cocktails especially during these warm summer days, but too many specialty liquors are needed. I'm sure I won't be able to find them in my town, and if I do they'll be expensive. I'm not much of a drinker so the ease of finding ingredients and cost are important considerations for me. You may have different considerations , but I'll stick to buying those premade alcoholic slush drinks or going to a restaurant to enjoy a frozen cocktail. Three stars from me for the idea and overall book presentation, just not as useful to me as I had hoped.
Sloshies by Jerry Nevins is an excellent guide to making frozen cocktails for the beginner or for those that want more yummy recipes. The book starts by giving the recipes of the syrups and infusions, how to keep the ice cold, and the glasses used. All with lots of photos. Then it shows lots of recipes complete with pictures, what to garnish it with, and even what glass to use. It gives the reader even hints to make it easier or what to watch for. This book makes it very helpful and a great recipe and guide book in one. The hints and how-tos in the beginning is great. The recipes look so yummy! I like the fact they tell you everything you need to know for that drink, even the glass to use! In the back of the book, you can pick what recipe by the liquor you want to use. Great book, thanks NetGalley for allowing me to read this book, I did learn a lot.
The first thirty or so pages of the book provide some background on Snow & Co, the author’s frozen cocktail bars, and detail how to be successful in crafting a frozen cocktail. The author’s hope is that his book provokes the cocktail world to make frozen cocktails as amazing as anything else inside their bars, made with focus and care similar to that seen in the contemporary craft cocktail scene. Frozen cocktails are different than standard cocktails because you need to balance spirits and other ingredients in a way that will allow the mixture to freeze correctly using common equipment. And the equipment Is fairly simple: the suggestion is to start with the freezer bag method – just a ziplock freezer bag and a freezer – and some additional equipment such as jiggers, juicers, strainers, an immersion blender, and jars for infusions. I loved that they had pictures of the glassware alongside the short paragraphs describing the basic purposes of the glassware. In this section, the author also included an awesome chart of three types of basic syrups and six types of infused syrups (based on 16 ounces of simple syrup). He also included three pages of recipes for infused liquors. There were some really clever ideas on “Frozen Flair” such as stenciling the top of the drink with colored sugar and garnishing with infused fruit skewers or flower blossoms.
The over one hundred pages of recipes are organized by flavor profile: tart, sweet, spiced, and floral. The majority of the recipe titles are really clever, with lots of pop culture references like “LaunchPad McQuack,” “Vesper’s Variation,” “Winter is Coming,” and “Gandalf’s Staff.” Along the left hand side of each recipe is a snarky or clever headnote, the alcohol by volume (ABV) percentage, the recommended serving glass, and the recommended garnish. The ingredients are listed in order of cost – least expensive first, most expensive last, with whole milk listed dead last. The thought process behind that was that if you made a mistake early on, it wouldn’t be as costly as if they were listed in a different order. Alcoholic ingredients are in bold and underlined. The ingredient list names specific brands of liquor but, according to an earlier call out box, that is more to indicate what is used at the Snow & Co. bar than to tie the hands of the home bartender. The home bartender is free to make brand substitutions as appropriate. That is good to know, since several of the recipes use local Kansas City ingredients like Boulevard Beer. The measurements can get a little odd; measurements often include fractional ¼ or ¾ ounces. For the most part, the recipe steps are pretty standard and simple: combine, freeze, serve. Recipes with whole milk have an extra “blend” step to prevent curdling. But kudos to the author for writing each recipe so it could stand alone, without reference back to the front matter or to other recipes. The last recipe – or three – of each section is alcohol free so that designated drivers and other abstainers from alcohol can get some benefit from the book as well.
Appendix #1 lists five different tried and true combinations of cocktail flavors plus two more free-form variations of flavor combinations. Appendix #2 discusses the beauty of serving flights of frozen cocktails, as well as some of the specifics on how to pour them and keep them from getting soupy. There are also eight suggestions for flight patterns, which are all very interesting. Appendix #3 is simply an alphabetical list of the frozen cocktails in the book, while Appendix #4 is a list of the frozen cocktails organized by liquor. Closely examining Appendix #4 provides an excellent overview of the wide variety of liquors used in the frozen cocktails: alphabetically the liquors range from absinthe to X-Rated Liqueur, and include five types of wine, at least two types of whiskey, two types of rum, two types of vermouth, and four types of vodka.
There is a two-page spread of full-color food photography at the beginning of each recipe chapter, usually showing four to six drinks. This gives a good idea as to what some of the finished products should look like. Most of the recipes have comical little illustrations on them, which make the book really fun.
I was very impressed by the range of creativity of the recipes in this book. I was really concerned that several recipes would be just slight variations on each other, but that was rarely the case. And when it was, the author was very up front about it. The ingredients used were pretty amazing: everything from Italian prosecco and limoncello to American craft ales and shrubs. Of course, I found my favorite craft cocktails in frozen form: the Bellini (A Kick to the Peaches), the Manhattan (The Rockefeller), and the Negroni (Frozoni). After reading an entire book on Bloody Marys, I was a little shocked to see that their frozen version included milk, but I suppose I’ll just have to try it before passing judgment on it. A few of the ingredients may be hard to find - like hibiscus liqueur, jasmine liqueur, falernum liqueur, and some of the specific shrubs - but there are more than enough recipes with strictly common ingredients, especially when you consider that they encourage substitutions, that pretty much anyone can find something that would appeal to them in this book.
Although I have marked several recipes as “must try,” I have yet to test any of the recipes from this book. When I do, I will update my review.
Unless you have the time, kitchen space, and funds-- not to mention a love of dishwashing-- to make these drinks at least weekly, I can't see owning this book as useful for most individuals. The ingredients are typically pretty specialist, so I couldn't even recommend it for small libraries: Rose hip liqueur? Maraschino liqueur, organic cucumber liqueur, elderflower liqueur? You can't buy that anywhere around our small town. Plus, several brands or ingredients only appeared once or twice in the whole book-- that's a pretty specialized ingredient. In fact, looking at the "Drinks organized by liquor" index (Appendix #4) (a very nice feature, actually), it's more than just a handful of bottles that only get trotted out once or twice.
The book also isn't super accessible. I don't drink mixed drinks much, so I don't know what prosecco is, what "shrub" refers to, or what a grenada is-- a word used heavily in the first chapter but never defined. Brand names were tossed around as if the reader would be familiar with them, too. So, not for beginners.
SLOSHIES; 102 Boozy Cocktails Straight From the Freezer by Jerry Nevins
I was given my copy via Net Galley, Jerry Nevins and the Publisher for a fair and honest review.
This book is an excellent resource to own if you like Frozen cocktails. I am not a good fit for this book because I do not drink alcoholic drinks. I requested it because my husband does enjoy getting ideas for new drinks and for entertaining guests who we invite for dinner and this is the wrong time of year to want a frozen drink with it being freezing cold with snow. I will keep some of these recipes in mind to make for guests and my husband maybe starting in June when summer starts. I have an eighteen year old son who was unlucky to develop Type I Diabetes when he was six years old. My youngest son is going to be sixteen in June. I don't want to set an example of drinking alcohol for them to model or fall into the example of drinking alcohol, because they are both at the ages where I worry about underage drinking. I feel as though I want to teach them by example that it is okay not to drink alcohol and be normal and well adjusted.
This book has some unique recipes and would be fun reading experience for most people. I may have some sweet tasting sloshies leaving out the alcohol. I am sure there are recipes that will appeal to everybody. Enjoy!
This book is highly original and is aimed at both the novice and the experienced mixologist (the official title for a cocktail maker according to Google search!) It explains everything you need to know to make frozen cocktails from advising you on the glass to serve it in, the syrup bases that you need to use, through to specific brands of drink for quality, although these are simply suggestions and not compulsary. As someone who is lactose intolerant, I would like to point out that many of the drinks contain milk or dairy based liquors. Alternative dairy free milks are not wholly recommended, although can be used, as they would alter the taste. Some of the recommended alcoholic drinks would also be quite difficult to find. The photos of the finished drinks serve to entice the reader to the recipes and the hints and tips help you to ensure good results every time. All in all, a great book.
I chose to read this NetGalley ARC for which I have given a voluntary and unbiased review.
Ohh, this book promises so much, and totally delivers on every level.
The cover is enticing. The layout is simple and attractive. I normally dislike the ramble at the start of 'cook' books, as they always start from such a basic level, but in this case, I really appreciated it, as sloshies are relatively novel to me and they were pitched just at the right level.
I love the layout of this book. My only concern would be the number of bottles of alcohol I would need in order to try all of them, although the index of drinks by liquor is really useful to identify all the drinks for a particular liquor. This is probably one of the only books that I will actually purchase, in addition to doing the review, as I think it is so great.
My only recommendation would be to number the drink recipes - there are 102, which is a pretty prominent part of the title. I would like to do a tracker for all 102, and rate which ones I like. This is likely to take years - happy years!
Blender drinks without the ice, and some without the blender?! These are low-tech, make-ahead (if you want), you-can-save-some-for-later drinks. The authors have a bar that focuses on these drinks, and the book provides recipes for a surprising number, including mixed drinks that are not normally frozen. Many of the drinks are made with milk, but a fair number are not if you are dairy sensitive. Recipes are grouped by flavor profile, such as tart, sweet, spicy, and floral. There are a small number of nonalcoholic drinks to make for the designated driver in the group. The book has an index that lists drinks by liquor, which is handy. And there are tips for making drinks for a party or to take out for a group event like a picnic or tailgating.
I made four of the recipes, two with milk and two without. The immersion blender (the only specialized equipment, but a regular blender could be used) was needed only for the ones with milk. Then I put each in a plastic freezer bag, sealed the bags, and put them in the freezer. It's that easy. A couple did require that I make syrup or infuse alcohol (vodka in this case), but those instructions were provided as well and were simple to make, needing only the ingredients and either a pot (for syrups) or a jar with lid.
All the recipes I made turned out delicious. The authors use name brand liquors and other ingredients, and sometimes the reason is given (one drink has two brands of elderflower liqueur) but usually it seemed that any brand could be used. The authors are also keen on fresh ingredients, such as fresh squeezed citrus juices, which I did use. There are only a few drinks that have photos, but I thought that was fine because a frozen drink isn't that interesting. For fun there are suggestions for glass style and decorations as well. If you like mixed drinks or frozen drinks you will probably find a number to try in this book.
I received a digital copy from the publisher. My review is my own.
Clever little book, with lots of information to be successful, including multiple methods for freezing, drinks divided by flavor profile (ie, tart, sweet, spicy), and an index with the drinks by liquor type.
Another read from NetGalley. A yummy resource guide for making frozen cocktails! Very easy to read and understand. I really liked how The author gives a wonderful introduction to syrup and infusions, garnishes and gives examples of glasses to use with each cocktail. I couldn't stop staring at all the delicious photos and wishing I had all the things available to make every single one of theses frozen cocktails. This was a really enjoyable read, a book that i would be extremely happy to own in the summer months, but don't think for one moment that I wouldn't make these in the dead of winter!!! I'm gonna try every one of theses wonderful recipes. Yum yum!!!!!
ARC provided by publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
YUMMY!
I am always looking for good drink recipes and I cannot wait to try these out. It is really cold here now so a frozen cocktail is not on the menu but I promise on the first sunny day I am breaking out some of these.
There are lots of brand new concoctions that I have never heard of and they all sound great.
I read an ARC copye of this and am now willing to brave about 2 feet of snow to make it to the liquor store to try out some of these recipes. After all, if you are making frozen drinks, what could be better than several feet of the white stuff, free of charge!
I voluntarily read and used this book for my honest review. I just loved it and couldn't quit trying the new recipes. I can't wait till our summer parties to try them out on my friends.