McDoel Gardens cocktail recipe

Our light, tropical Tiki Rum meets green things from the garden, and it just works. Try this refreshing recipe by our bartender Chris Resnick this weekend:

McDOEL GARDENS

By Chris Resnick of Cardinal Spirits

1.5 ounces Cardinal Spirits Tiki Rum
2 slices cucumber
1/2 ounce lemon juice
1/2 ounce Cardinal Spirits Flora
Sprig of dill

Add all ingredients to a shaker, then muddle to release flavors of cucumber and dill. Add ice to the shaker, then shake vigorously. Strain into a rocks glass filled with ice.

Craftpack, Vol. 26

Links that make you go Hmmm.

Before you crack open that $14 mini liquor bottle, read how to hack a cocktail in your hotel room

Whoa: 1 in 7 spirit launches worldwide are craft spirits

Cardinal Spirits is now sold at the largest liquor store in the U.S. — The Party Source in Bellevue, Ky. (and we're distributing throughout Kentucky!)

The secrets that make "Chef's Table" sooooo good 

Homes & Lifestyles magazine goes behind the bar with Cardinal Spirits co-founder Adam Quirk

Homemade limoncello and 19 other fun kitchen projects for this summer

Loosey Goosey cocktail recipe

While on the hunt for some fresh cocktail ingredients one Saturday morning, our bartender Kevin Hinkle spotted gooseberries at the farmers' market and brought them back to the distillery. These tart little berries are kind of obscure and old-timey and from the same species as currants. Definitely not something you'll find in the produce section at most grocery stores.

So if you see them at the farmers' market, scoop em up like Kevin did, and make this tart, zippy summer refresher. 

LOOSEY GOOSEY

By Kevin Hinkle of Cardinal Spirits

1.5 ounces Cardinal Spirits Standard Dry Gin
3/4 ounce fresh lime juice
1/2 ounce gooseberry syrup (recipe follows)
Ginger Beer
Lime wheel and gooseberries, for garnish

Add gin, lime juice and gooseberry syrup to a shaker, then add ice. Shake vigorously, then strain into a tall glass with ice. Top with ginger beer and garnish with a lime wheel and gooseberries.

For the gooseberry syrup: In a saucepan over medium heat, combine 1 cup sugar, 1 cup water and 2 cups gooseberries. Stir and cook until sugar dissolves. Remove from heat and let cool completely. Strain gooseberries from syrup before using. 

Cardinal in the Wild: Fourwinds Lakeside Inn and Marina

In the summer, we like to spend as much time as possible by the water with a cold drink in hand.

Oh, you too?

Well, then, this should make us all happy: Cardinal Spirits will have a pop-up bar on a handful of summer nights at Fourwinds Lakeside Inn and Marina on Lake Monroe in Bloomington. Fourwinds is tucked away on a woodsy peninsula known as the Fairfax State Recreation Area, and it's a longtime summer getaway for Indiana folks.

Our first pop-up bar is this Saturday, June 11. Here's the deal...

Fourwinds hosts free live music on weekend nights throughout the summer on its big patio overlooking Lake Monroe. Our pop-up bar will be on the patio on a bunch of those band nights, and we'll be pouring samples of our spirits and mixing special cocktails while you boogie (or, you know, toe-tap) al fresco.

You can find us starting at 8pm on July 2, July 15, July 30, Aug. 6, Aug. 20.

It's free. It's casual (think shorts and flip-flops). This Saturday's band is Soul Stricken, which covers '80s and 90's rock. So, fun sing-along stuff. 

Here are the three summery cocktails we'll be making: 

For a broader cocktail menu, check out Fourwinds' Wind Jammer Grill, an island-themed bar that serves those fruity, tropical concoctions you crave when you're on the water — frozen strawberry-mango daiquiris, Long Island iced teas, rum runners and more. Wind Jammer is just steps away from the band area. And, it serves Cardinal Spirits, too!

While you're there, go for a little stroll and check out Fourwinds' beach (!), 960 boat slips and gazebo where you can look back on all of the action happening on the music patio.

Riverboat Gambler cocktail recipe

Have you ever thought to infuse our Tiki Rum with tea? It's a brilliant little twist by our bartender Chris Resnick and you've got to try it in this cocktail recipe of his:

RIVERBOAT GAMBLER

By Chris Resnick of Cardinal Spirits

1.5 ounces Cardinal Spirits Tiki Rum infused with Darjeeling tea
3/4 ounce Cardinal Spirits Flora
1/2 ounce fresh lime juice
2 strawberries, one for garnish

Add 1 strawberry and Flora to a shaker and muddle to break up the strawberry. Add the tea-infused rum (recipe follows) and lime juice to the shaker, than add ice. Shake vigorously, then strain into a coupe glass. Garnish with a strawberry.

For the Darjeeling tea-infused Tiki Rum: Place two Darjeeling tea bags in a bottle of Tiki Rum (750ml) and let steep for two hours. Remove tea bags and discard.

CRAFTPACK, VOL. 25

What cocktail pairs best with your zodiac sign? (Looks like it’s a mojito for me!)
 
Cardinal Spirits is officially in Kentucky! Here are some awesome pictures of the launch party with our new Louisville friends at Good Folks Coffee Company.
 
Grapes, potatoes, grains, and now this?!?!  Vodka truly can be made with almost anything.
 
Now that lake season is in full swing, check out these rum cocktail recipes to go along with your fun in the sun.
 
This cool business is changing the game when it comes to booze delivery services.

LOUISVILLE LAUNCH PARTY PICS

Louisville, thank you for the incredibly warm welcome! Check out pics from our Kentucky launch party last night at Good Folks Coffee Co. — we use tons of coffee from this wholesale roaster in our Songbird Craft Coffee Liqueur just for Kentucky, and their beautiful roastery in Shelby Park just happens to be a fantastic spot to throw a party. 

We are now distributing in Louisville and throughout Kentucky. If you're a bar, restaurant or retailer who would like to carry our spirits, get in touch: hello@cardinalspirits.com

Photo courtesy Monica Wolf

Photo courtesy @goodfolkscoffee

Photo courtesy @do502

Photo courtesy @kelly125

Photo courtesy @kathyvr623

Photo courtesy @yelplouisville

Photo courtesy @mixerdirectinc

THE SOURCE: GOOD FOLKS COFFEE CO.

Did you hear the good news? We're expanding distribution for the first time outside of Indiana — to Kentucky. 

Louisville, we're coming for you first! You'll see our spirits in Louisville bars, restaurants and retailers very soon. 

You'll definitely want to keep an eye out for Songbird Craft Coffee Liqueur, our magical elixir that is made with a ton of roasted coffee, Bourbon vanilla beans and cane sugar. 

We've given Songbird Craft Coffee Liqueur a special twist, just for Kentucky. The liqueur is infused with roasted coffee beans from Good Folks Coffee Co., the wholesale coffee roaster in the Shelby Park neighborhood of Louisville. 

We know how important it is to buy local and support fellow small businesses, so we wanted to partner with the best roaster in Louisville for the Kentucky edition of our coffee liqueur. (Meanwhile, here at our home base in Bloomington, Ind., we source coffee beans from the terrific Hopscotch Coffee for the Indiana edition of the liqueur.)

Naturally, we want you to get to know Good Folks. 

Co-owners Matt Argo and Zach Hensley relaunched the brand just a few months ago (the company was formerly known as Argo Sons Coffee — that name might ring a bell for Louisville folks). Good Folks' beans are sold by the bag around Louisville at at Whole Foods, Rainbow Blossom Natural Food Markets and ValuMarket, and brewed at Please & Thank You and Press on Market, two of the city's specialty coffee shops (and highly Instagrammed ones, at that). The roaster supplies customers as far north as Chicago and Fort Wayne, and to the south in Arkansas and Tennessee.

We talked to Matt from Good Folks about the beans that went into our coffee liqueur, what makes his roastery special, and how to tell if you're drinking good coffee:

Cardinal: We’re curious how a roaster makes a cup of coffee in the morning. What’s your go-to method?

Matt: For me at home in the morning, it’s usually drip coffee in a coffee pot. We need to just push a button and move on. On the weekends, we do French press at home. At the roastery, I drink espresso, but if I’m brewing straight up coffee, it’s Chemex, nine times out of 10.

Cardinal: Where did the name Good Folks come from? 

Matt: We’re getting coffee from good folks on the farm level and we’re roasting coffee for good folks at the cafe, restaurant and grocery level. There’s just this long chain of people and that’s kind of what our company is about. We just want to do good by the people that we roast for.

Cardinal: What made you decide to get into the coffee business?

Matt: I was as in the military for eight years before I started this company and did some traveling. And then when I got out, my wife and I did some more traveling to different parts of Africa and elsewhere, and what we noticed is everywhere you go, you need to build relationships. And doing that over coffee is a really easy thing. We just noticed this common pattern, and loved the idea of maybe having a coffee shop one day. As research began, I started thinking, I’m really interested in roasting. That’s kind of how the company became a wholesale coffee roaster instead of a retail coffee shop.

Cardinal: The labels on your bags of coffee say things like “Fruit-forward and fun" and "Balanced, round & smooth," instead of the country of origin of the beans or their type. What made you want to go this route?

Matt: We want to stay out of people’s way, in a good way.

We didn’t want people to be overwhelmed with, you know, a pacamara or caturra varietal from so-and-so’s farm and all this crazy stuff they can’t pronounce. It was becoming really confusing in the grocery store.

Cardinal: Give us a primer — what do you roast?

Matt: We’ve got our packaging lined up in three colors — a black bag, a craft bag and a white bag. Our black bag is our espresso line. Our craft bag is our blends, and all of our blends are either regionally inspired or travel inspired. Our three blends right now are Day Tripper, Carry On and Globe Trotter. And then our white bags are our lines that are “relationship coffee.”

Cardinal: Which means?

Matt: Well, we have a relationship down in Colombia — I was there back in February — and basically we’ll go to auctions and bid on coffee from farmers that have never sold their coffee outside of their own country.

Good Folks is considered very, very small. Stumptown or Intelligentsia, they’re small. And yet they’re massive compared to us. There are things that they can get that we can’t get, and there are things we can get that they can’t get.

We can go in and buy 10,000-20,000 pounds of coffee from a farm — just kind of buy their whole farm — and (larger roasters) can’t do that, it’s just too delicate for them. But we can do that, and grow with the farmer, and they’ll grow with us. We can tell that story and say, that’s our coffee from these guys, and no one else has it.

Cardinal: Tell us more about the black bag, Fast Track, which is the Good Folks blend that goes into our coffee liqueur?

Matt: Fast Track is our espresso, and it doubles as a dark roast. It’s got a nice chocolatey, caramely sweetness to it. It’s not crazy dark and it’s not light at all — it’s just that happy medium. In coffee drinks, it really pushes through milk or cream. I was really happy you guys chose this one for the liqueur.

Cardinal: How do people know if they’re drinking good coffee? You can probably tell right away, but what about the rest of us?

Matt: You shouldn’t have to be told that you’re drinking something good. It’s definitely subjective and it’s definitely an acquired taste, so as you drink more your palate develops. A lady that owns a grinder company told me she knows it’s a good cup of coffee when she finishes it and doesn’t realize she drank the whole cup until it’s gone.

So, that’s what I tell people all the time: if you finish it, and it went down easy, and you want more, that’s a good cup of coffee.

Cardinal: What’s considered fresh coffee?

Matt: That’s a great question. For me, this (cup I’m drinking) was roasted yesterday. But that’s not feasible for most people — you don’t buy coffee every day at the market, two ounces at a time.

I think if you get something that’s been roasted within a week or two, that’s really nice. It also depends on how dark it is. If it’s really dark coffee, it loses freshness easier, whereas really light roasted coffee will keep its freshness a little bit longer.

Cardinal: OK, forget coffee for a minute. When it comes to booze, what do you like to drink?

Matt: I like bourbon — I’m required to say that. And I also like gin, and I really like tequila. Those are kind of my three go-tos.

Photos provided by Good Folks

Hoffman House Fizz Cocktail Recipe

 

This gin cocktail with roots in the early 1900s gets shaken into a rich, creamy, luxurious tizzy, then it's topped with a splash of soda to give it an ethereal fizz — and bring it back to just this side of decadence.

HOFFMAN HOUSE FIZZ

2 ounces Cardinal Spirits Standard Dry Gin
1/2 ounce fresh lemon juice
1/2 ounce fresh orange juice
1/2 ounce grenadine
1/2 ounce heavy cream
Egg white
Club soda, about 1-2 ounces

Add all ingredients except club soda to a shaker, then add ice. Shake vigorously, then strain into a tall glass (without ice). Top with club soda.

Tiki Rum Earns 92 Points from Wine Enthusiast

Cardinal Spirits Tiki Rum has been awarded an impressive 92 points and a “Best Buy” rating by Wine Enthusiast magazine in its influential buying guide for spirits, wine and beer. The score makes Tiki Rum one of the top-rated craft rums on the market, and at $25 a bottle, certainly among the most affordable.

Tiki Rum is a natural star: a light rum with a smooth and fruity profile that is wonderful in a range of drinks, from classic tropical ones to modern cocktails. The way Cardinal Spirits ferments and distills this spirit in small batches leads to one intriguing rum, and Wine Enthusiast agreed.

Here is Wine Enthusiast’s review of Tiki Rum: “Aptly named, this rum is tiki-drink ready, for sure. It leads with a pungent banana aroma and distinct tropical fruit flavors—banana, mango, touches of lychee and coconut—with ginger and nutmeg sparks on the finish. It’s not infused with fruit, but all those flavors may have you wondering.”

Get the recipe for this refreshing 92 Point cocktail, made with Tiki Rum, pineapple and ginger beer!

Get the recipe for this refreshing 92 Point cocktail, made with Tiki Rum, pineapple and ginger beer!

HOW WE MAKE IT

Tiki Rum is fermented and distilled from cane juice and light molasses, and we pitch a mixture of hefeweizen yeast and a yeast strain that was discovered growing wild on sugarcane. We let it go slow, keeping it cool in the beginning as the hefeweizen likes it that way. Then we distill to just under 150 proof, leaving fruity and sugary flavors in the spirit before proofing down to 80 for bottling.

WHY IT’S DIFFERENT

We enlisted a yeast whisperer — our friend and Indiana University biochemist Matt Bochman — to select and propagate the yeast strains that make our Tiki Rum one-of-a-kind. Where some distilleries might purchase commercial dry yeast to make their rums, we use active, or living, yeast. Yeast is important because it’s where all the flavor comes from. Living yeast makes fermentation more effective, and, ultimately, it makes a better rum.

WHY WE MADE IT

We initially crafted this rum especially for our ever popular Tiki Tuesday cocktail nights. Tiki drinks are magnificent creations, and our masters of tiki needed a light rum with lots of fruity esters like pineapple and citrus to stand up in such complex cocktails.