Here’s a guest blog from Garry and Adam, highlighting the two bespoke cocktails we’re serving up for Halloween this year in our top floor bar, The Black Cat.

Pumpkin Reviver

This is an autumnal spiced riff on the classic corpse reviver. It’s just the thing for reanimating lifeless bodies on All Hallow’s Eve!

• Ingredients:
• 50ml Pumpkin Bourbon
• 15ml Maple Syrup
• 1 Clove
• 1 teaspoon Cinnamon Sugar
• 30ml Half and half (half milk, half double cream)
• 1 small pinch of 5 spice powder

Home Made Ingredients

To make your pumpkin bourbon, find a Tupperware, or other vessel. Take a packet of pumpkin seeds and some bourbon (although any dark spirit will do i.e. Scotch, Dark Rum, Brandy) place both in to your vessel and leave for 2 or 3 days. For added flavour, grind up the seeds.

To make cinnamon Sugar – get 3 parts sugar and mix with 1 part ground cinnamon (if you prefer to use sugar syrup, add 2 parts of the cinnamon sugar you have just made to 1 part of hot water and stir until sugar has dissolved).

Method

1. Add all ingredients in to a Boston shaker, or coffee flask if you don’t possess bar kit
2. Stir for about 30 seconds without ice in order to help the sugar dissolve
3. Add as much ice as possible to your tin and give a good hard shake for about 10 seconds
4. Strain the drink in to a stemmed glass, with a coupe being the best option (wine glass will do!)
5. Finish off by serving it on a crisp, clean autumnal leaf that’s fallen straight off a tree, adding a minuscule pinch of cinnamon on top, accompanied by a fresh pear.
6. This drink can also be served warm, just add all the ingredients to a pan, keep on low heat and stir until the drink is warm.  Serve in a teacup with the same garnishes.

The Black Cat’s Eye

A distinctly dark and otherworldly-looking cocktail, this imagines our mascot as a witch’s familiar, and provides a very different take on some classic elements for Halloween!

Ingredients

• 40ml Bushmill’s Black Bush Irish Whiskey
• 20ml Lustau Sweet Vermouth
• 25ml Pineapple and Fennel Shrub
• 10ml Egg White
• 2sp Squid Ink

Method

Dry & wet shake before fine straining into a chilled cocktail coupe.

Garnish

Garnish with blueberry powder.