When I married my wife, Tamara, in June, the Mazel-Tov Cocktail was the signature drink at our wedding.

The name was an easy choice— Mazel-Tov Cocktail, a zine published in 1995, was the first comprehensive work exploring the connections between Jews and punk. As the author of Oy Oy Oy Gevalt! Jews and Punk, I am a particularly big fan.

And while Tamara and I were planning our wedding, and considering a signature drink, a crazy thing happened: The Mazel-Tov Cocktail was in the news! Two days before Election Day, a Donald Trump supporter inadvertently said “mazel-tov cocktail” instead of “Molotov cocktail” on CNN. The Internet had a field day, and I explained the origin of the term in a Jewcy article. With Tamara’s blessing, I now felt compelled to name our signature wedding drink the Mazel-Tov Cocktail.

It turned out, our wedding venue already had a signature drink for the season. It was called a Pineapple-Ginger Smash, also known as a pineapple-ginger mojito. The cocktail consisted of light rum, muddled ginger, fresh pineapple, lime juice, and mint. It sounded nice, but Tamara and I never would have conceived of that combination of ingredients.

I was in a quandary; neither Tamara nor I drink much, but this was an opportunity to put our own stamp on our special day. The idea of creating a Mazel-Tov Cocktail had a personalized touch: punny, punky, and Jewish. The Pineapple-Ginger Smash sounded like an adequate option among many at the bar, but we had already thought about having a signature drink, and it felt like this cocktail was random, and had nothing to do with us.

The solution was ultimately obvious: As a compromise, we renamed the Pineapple-Ginger Smash the Mazel-Tov Cocktail. It didn’t have blatantly Jewish signifiers like Manischewitz wine, but dayeinu. Between the rum and ginger, it packs a punch, and the pineapple is sweet, but just tart enough to be perfect for a happy occasion. It turns out it pairs really well with a wedding where Golem is the band. And I was able to drive home the drink’s name with signs featuring the cover image from the zine Mazel-Tov Cocktail.

The Mazel-Tov Cocktail was a hit. I got to taste one in a bridal suite following the ceremony. Both bars ran out, until my mother urged the event manager to remedy the situation.

You can make your own Mazel-Tov Cocktail, for your punk (if slightly tropical) simcha! This recipe, inspired by our wedding, is based on similar ones from Food.com, Kitchen Sanctuary, and mostly Domesticate Me.

L’Chaim!

Ingredients:

3 tbsp cup pineapple puree OR one pineapple ring
1/2 tbsp of ginger, muddled
1 ounce light rum
6-8 mint leaves
1 tbsp lime juice
Shaved ice
A spritz of seltzer
Additional mint and lime wedge to garnish

Directions:
In a cocktail shaker, muddle the ginger, mint leaves, and lime juice. Add the pineapple ring or puree (you can blend fresh pineapple), rum, and a couple ice cubes, and shake vigorously to combine. Pour into a cocktail glass filled with shaved ice. Top off with seltzer, garnish with a fresh mint sprig and a lime slice. Serves 1.

Recipe photo by Christopher Duggan Photography. Drink photo by Michael Croland. 

The post Jewcy Recipes: A Mazel-Tov Cocktail appeared first on Jewcy.

For recipes you can make at home, click here, here, and here.

In addition to making booze for Pesach, you can also buy it. Though many alcohols are distilled or fermented from grains, there’s plenty out there that’s not. Look for Kosher for Passover varieties of:

• Tequilla that is 100% agave
• Potato Vodka/Beet Sugar Vodka
• Absinthe
• Bulldog Gin
• Distillery No. 209 Gin
• Plum brandy (aka Slivovitz)
• Dupuy Cognac
• Apparently, Bacardi Superior Original Rum is officially kosher for Passover. Ask your Rabbi.
• Industry City Distilling vodka is made only from beet sugar; it is not hekhshered, but there is nothing in it that is not kosher or kosher for Passover.

Additionally, any locally made versions of the above products might be okay. Call up the distillery and ask them if the alcohol touches grains at all during the process. They’re usually honest.

Making your own alcoholic beverages can be lots of fun, and it can transform Passover from a somewhat annoying holiday into the best one.

Enjoy (responsibly), and share your photos with @JewcyMag if you make anything!

Have a great holiday!

Rachel Jacobs is a podcast and radio producer in food media. She is the most Brooklyn.

Photo credit: Wikimedia

The post Passover Alcohol Week! Part 5: Commercial Alcohols appeared first on Jewcy.

To read the other recipes, click here and here.

Sima is basically alcoholic lemonade. Like the mead and cider, you can add herbs, spices, and fruit juices to add extra flavors.

Ingredients

• Distilled water
• 3-4 lemons per gallon of water
• 1 ½ c white sugar per gallon of water

Thinly slice the lemons and put them in a bowl with the sugar. Add boiling water and stir until sugar is dissolved. Add this to the carboy, then add the distilled water to fill the carboy. Once again, let the water cool before adding the yeast.

When It’s Ready (The Same For All These Recipes)

After two weeks, put the entire carboy in the fridge to cold-crash for 24 hours. This will slow down the yeast and stop the fermentation. It will not, however, stop it completely.

Assemble your auto-siphon by carefully heating the flexible tubing so it creates an air-tight seal. Do the same thing on the other end of the tube attaching to the bottling wand.

Using the auto-siphon and a friend, bottle your drinks in a flexible plastic bottle, like a seltzer bottle, that has also been sanitized. This will allow some flex room for the leftover yeast to still carbonate, and it will not explode.

Auto-siphons can be tricky, but let gravity do the work: place your carboy on a higher surface and bottle on the floor. Pump the siphon and it should start to suck the liquid from the bottle. Press the spring-loaded tip of the bottling wand in the bottom of your bottle and lift it when the bottle is filled. Repeat until there is no more to bottle. There will be sediment at the bottom of your carboy, and you don’t really want this in your drink, so don’t empty the carboy completely; leave about an inch or so of liquid.

Put your home-made alcohols in the fridge, and enjoy (responsibly)! They’ll get slightly boozier as they sit, and they should all be good to drink for about 2-3 weeks— in time for the Seder.

Rachel Jacobs is a podcast and radio producer in food media. She is the most Brooklyn.

Editor’s Note: Stay tuned tomorrow for the finale in this series, and tips for buying alcohol for Passover as well!

Photo credit: Gabriela Geselowitz

The post Passover Alcohol Week! Part 4: Sima appeared first on Jewcy.

To read the other recipes, click here and here.

Mead is an old-fashioned honey wine. It’s strong and sweet. Real mead is aged like wine, for at least a year and sometimes in barrels. This is a lighter, faster version, but it’s plenty alcoholic.

I’m not 100% sure there are any officially kosher commercial meads. But it doesn’t matter because now you can make your own.

Ingredients

• 1 pound of honey per gallon
• distilled water
• flavoring agents – I like blackberry puree and lemon, ginger and lemon, orange peel, blueberry/mint. You can also add tea as a flavoring agent to turn this mead into alcoholic tea.

Pour the honey into the carboy. For adding tea, ginger, or similar spices, boil about 2 cups of water/gallon and let the flavors steep for a few minutes. Add this to the carboy, along with whatever you were steeping. Fill the rest of the carboy with cold distilled water, cover the top with a clean hand, and shake until the mead is dissolved

Do not add the yeast until the water has cooled to room temperature. If you add the yeast to hot water, it will die.

Once the water has cooled, add the yeast, yeast nutrient, and place the airlock same as with the cider.

When It’s Ready (The Same For All These Recipes)

After two weeks, put the entire carboy in the fridge to cold-crash for 24 hours. This will slow down the yeast and stop the fermentation. It will not, however, stop it completely.

Assemble your auto-siphon by carefully heating the flexible tubing so it creates an air-tight seal. Do the same thing on the other end of the tube attaching to the bottling wand.

Using the auto-siphon and a friend, bottle your drinks in a flexible plastic bottle, like a seltzer bottle, that has also been sanitized. This will allow some flex room for the leftover yeast to still carbonate, and it will not explode.

Auto-siphons can be tricky, but let gravity do the work: place your carboy on a higher surface and bottle on the floor. Pump the siphon and it should start to suck the liquid from the bottle. Press the spring-loaded tip of the bottling wand in the bottom of your bottle and lift it when the bottle is filled. Repeat until there is no more to bottle. There will be sediment at the bottom of your carboy, and you don’t really want this in your drink, so don’t empty the carboy completely; leave about an inch or so of liquid.

Put your home-made alcohols in the fridge, and enjoy (responsibly)! They’ll get slightly boozier as they sit, and they should all be good to drink for about 2-3 weeks— in time for the Seder.

Rachel Jacobs is a podcast and radio producer in food media. She is the most Brooklyn.

Editor’s Note: Stay tuned tomorrow for one final kosher-for-Passover alcohol recipe!

Photo credits: Rachel Jacobs and Gabriela Geselowitz

The post Passover Alcohol Week! Part 3: Short Mead appeared first on Jewcy.

Good old-fashioned hard apple cider! I actually wonder why they don’t sell kosher for Passover cider, because basic hard cider only has one ingredient: apples.

Ingredients

• 100% apple juice
• Other fruit juices or fruits for flavor, if you so wish. Some good choices are pear juice, tart cherry juice, pomegranate juice, and pureed blackberries.

You can grind your own apples, but that usually takes an entire day. If you want to venture down that road, here’s instructions I’ve published.

Pour the juices into a carboy. Add the yeast, add yeast nutrient, then put the bung on.

Add a little bit of water to the airlock- about halfway – and place it in the hole. Leave for two weeks in a warm, dry place, like under the sink. You should notice change after a few days – there should be bubbles in the airlock. If not, the yeast might be dead, and you should get another one.

When It’s Ready

After two weeks, put the entire carboy in the fridge to cold-crash for 24 hours. This will slow down the yeast and stop the fermentation. It will not, however, stop it completely.

Assemble your auto-siphon by carefully heating the flexible tubing so it creates an air-tight seal. Do the same thing on the other end of the tube attaching to the bottling wand.

Using the auto-siphon and a friend, bottle your drinks in a flexible plastic bottle, like a seltzer bottle, that has also been sanitized. This will allow some flex room for the leftover yeast to still carbonate, and it will not explode.

Auto-siphons can be tricky, but let gravity do the work: place your carboy on a higher surface and bottle on the floor. Pump the siphon and it should start to suck the liquid from the bottle. Press the spring-loaded tip of the bottling wand in the bottom of your bottle and lift it when the bottle is filled. Repeat until there is no more to bottle. There will be sediment at the bottom of your carboy, and you don’t really want this in your drink, so don’t empty the carboy completely; leave about an inch or so of liquid.

Put your home-made alcohols in the fridge, and enjoy (responsibly)! They’ll get slightly boozier as they sit, and they should all be good to drink for about 2-3 weeks— in time for the Seder.

Rachel Jacobs is a podcast and radio producer in food media. She is the most Brooklyn.

Editor’s Note: Stay tuned tomorrow for another kosher-for-Passover alcohol recipe!

Photo credits: Rachel Jacobs and Gabriela Geselowitz

The post Passover Alcohol Week! Part 2: Cider or Fruit Wine appeared first on Jewcy.

Now that Purim has come and gone, it’s time to talk about Passover! Aren’t we all ready for 8 days of over-priced, over-processed food, and awkwardly explaining to co-workers why we can’t partake in Margie’s birthday cake? No? But come on, Passover brings us two of the best things in Jewish holidays:

(1) Matzoh Pizza and

(2) Ceremonial drinking

But there seems to be a stigma on kosher for Passover alcohol. The holiday is associated with overly sweet wines like Malaga, Manishevitz, and Barternura Moscato D’asti, with the strange perception that all good alcohol is grain-based and therefore forbidden.

But Jewish holidays should be merry-making, and I, for one, am going to make merry. In a carboy.

Making Your Own Kosher for Passover Booze

Many home-brewers have only delved into making beer, but, aside from requiring a lot of equipment, it’s also by-definition not Kosher for Passover. Passover law strictly prohibits almost all grains that would be used to make beer: wheat, barley, spelt, oats, and rye, as well as kitniyot like corn for Ashkenazim. But luckily, beer is not the only delicious alcoholic beverage you can make in your own home. And these are much, much easier. Any of these below recipes will take you maybe an hour, plus another 30 minutes for bottling a few weeks later.

The Basics

Alcoholic beverages are made when sugars meet yeast. The yeast eats the sugars and turns it into OH, or alcohol. This means that anything containing sugar or starch can be fermented into alcohol – or you can add sugar to a drink to ferment it.

The recipes in this series are starter suggestions, but you can really make booze from anything that has sugar, honey, syrup, or fruit. (This means real sugars –stevia, xylatol, sucralose and aspartame will not convert). A lot of this information comes from my friend and radio show co-host Mary Izett, whose book Speed Brewing is entirely about quick alcoholic beverages.

Fair warning, not everything that contains sugar should be fermented. While rum is distilled from fermented molasses, I would not suggest just fermenting molasses, because it tastes terrible. Do some research before trying something new.

The equipment

For everything below, you will need the following equipment that you can pick up from your local brew-shop or online:

1. A carboy, or 1-3 gallon container.
2. A bung
3. An airlock cap
4. An auto-siphon
5. Bottling wand
6. Tubing
7. Champagne yeast
8. Yeast nutrient

Really, that’s it. You can also pick up some star iodine, because cleanliness is key, but in a pinch, you can use some isopropyl alcohol, (very!) watered-down bleach, or potato vodka. The star iodine is like 3 bucks, just get it.

You’re going to clean all your equipment with an iodine solution or cleaner, washing out the inside and outside of the carboy, and then leave the airlock/bung to soak in the mixture.

While there are a hundred yeasts for beer and wine, for everything below, we’re going to be using champagne yeast. You can use probably a quarter of the packet per gallon of booze, then put the rest away for later or use it on a different recipe. Champagne yeast is crazy active and will ferment everything within two weeks.

That’s right, TWO WEEKS.

YOU: “But isn’t yeast forbidden on Passover?”

No. If yeast was forbidden on Passover, you wouldn’t be able to have wine at all. Yeast or leavening agent is forbidden when combined with the aforementioned grains. Without the grains, you are technically allowed to eat it straight (though I wouldn’t recommend it).

There is but one specifically kosher for passover yeast and you must buy it in bulk.

However, Red Star is the brand that I use. Their yeast is kosher, there is nothing in it that makes it not KFP, but most of the stuff in the stores does not have the KFP certification. Many Rabbis say that yeast that is used for wine production is kosher for Passover by nature, and I have confidence in yeast-strain labs to keep their equipment clean from cross-contamination. Obviously, it’s up to you.

With all of that said, shall we get started?

Rachel Jacobs is a podcast and radio producer in food media. She is the most Brooklyn.

Editor’s Note: Stay tuned this week for a piece each day about kosher-for-Passover drinking, including recipes that you can ferment in your own home. Enjoy responsibly!

Image Credit: Rachel Jacobs, Gabriela Geselowitz, and PunToad via Flickr

The post Passover Alcohol Week! Part 1: The Basics appeared first on Jewcy.