Mixology Monday is here again! After the last few themes (Tom Waits? Really?) I wasn’t sure if we would be entering again, but this month it’s a good one: brown, bitter and stirred. We love a good smooth bitter cocktail, so we were anxious to do some experimentation. Some of the ensuing cocktails were excellent, some not so much. We won’t talk about those.

As I’ve mentioned before, Jon has been well smitten by Cynar in the last year. A bitter artichoke liqueur, it works well as a replacement for vermouth or amaro in cocktails. In this case, Jon used it with bourbon and a hint of triple sec to create a Manhattan-like drink that was both sweet and bitter with a slight spiciness. The orange bitters are rather important here. To our surprise, this turned out to be one of our favorite drinks of all time and may actually replace the Manhattan as my go-to autumn cocktail. How cool is that?

The name comes from the paint we’re using on our garage. It’s an old Craftsman style building, which means it has a lot of detail and we’ve been seeing brushmarks behind our eyelids at night. Our main color is “Brevity Brown” which seemed highly appropriate for a tasty brown cocktail like this. Certainly better than “Manual Mocha.”

Brevity Cocktail

• 1.5 oz bourbon
• 1 oz Cynar
• 0.25 oz triple sec
• 3 dashes Regan’s orange bitters

Stir all ingredients with ice, strain and garnish with a lemon twist. Serve up or on the rocks.