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.

“We are here to celebrate one of my favorite vices, wine,” said Ruby Namdar, a presenter at Thursday night’s DRUNK: an Evening of Wine Tasting and Text Study, which took place at the 14th Street Y in downtown Manhattan. LABA, run by Ronit Muszkatblit and Elissa Strauss, is a secular Jewish house of study and culture laboratory which selects 10 fellows each year to study classical Jewish texts centered around a specific theme.

Last night was a celebration for artists, writers, dancers, musicians, actors, and really anybody with a love of Judaism. Guests walked into a spacious, black room where they were immediately presented with the first glass of wine, my personal favorite, Dibon, Cava Brut Reserve.

The alcohol content of the wines served only increased from there, from 11 percent all the way up to 39 percent (the evening’s official sommelier explained), including Chinon, Rose, El Porvenir de los Andes, Syrah, and Scagliola, Dolcesvago Muscato. The evening grew simultaneously more introspective and comical as the wine aerated and the participants imbibed.

But the event wasn’t just about drinking. The performances ranged from poetry to art to music, all depicting themes of addiction, power, religion, relationships, devotion, and of course, inebriation, which spoke to the hedonist in all of us.

We were told that wine is a metaphor for a mystical quest, and that there are two different types of imbibers: there are those who drink to get drunk, and those who drink to get intoxicated–basically, the yin and yang of wine consumption.

“Turn your vice into a ladder and you can climb higher,” Namdar explained, and the happy, intoxicated audience nodded in agreement.

(Image via Shutterstock)

The post The Jewish Art of Getting Drunk appeared first on Jewcy.

The funny folks at Tablet have created a new batch of holiday eCards for Purim (it’s this weekend), and now’s as good a time as any to send them to your grandparents, aunts, uncles, and Hebrew school teachers.

Here are our favorites:

See the rest and send a card here.

The post Free Funny Purim eCards for the Megillah Lover in Your Life appeared first on Jewcy.

Purim is one of those goodies in the book promoting something fun like indulging and reclining or keeping all the lights off and pleasing wifey on the hebdomadaire, or–this time, wholesome roleplay! Not a pagan holiday like Halloween, dressing for the ho-down to get Merv the Perv all hot and sweaty is good by ma, and if you’re going at the evening with libations so potent you risk hooking up with another raver, well, that’s even better by the tribe. So lose yourself in your too-short Esther garb with more timely bevs:

Drinks for a Purim Rave

Esther’s a Silvester

This cross-dressing drink will make you see rainbows. Technicolor Jell-O Shots plus your Purim poison of choice. Cans of whipped cream set up for the daring and you’ve got yourself an evening.

But if you don’t dig hoof, I’m sure an alternativerecipe uses none of it if you can figure it out.

Haman’s Nuts

If you’re lost on what to do with the tub of Nutella in your cupboard that you’re not eating, get that baby on a double boiler and dilute your bottle of Grand Marnier.

For the rest of us, here’s what you need to shake and serve on ice:

1 shot Chocolate liqueur

1 shot Hazelnut liqueur

½ shot Grand Marnier

2 cherries

Mordechai’s Wire Whiskey

This is a night to celebrate. It’s the good Jewish boy’s version of a lucky hustler on a binge. Say it with me: tonight’s the night. Break out the good stuff. If you can’t get yourself on a plane to Chicago’s Delilah’s, stock your place with their specials–because a whiskey good enough for a cheap bastard on a St. Paddy’s rampage in Lincoln Park is good enough for this party. Do it all weekend.

Daily Specials

Friday: Maker’s Mark

Saturday: Four Roses

Sunday: Benchmark

Ahashverous’s Insomnia

We might have to admit to that tinge of sad when a limit on the Kinsey scale of American drinking habits was found in 4Loco, formerly sold next to the Franzia. So practice your freedoms if you’re a good American and have a nice legal time.

(Sugarfree) Redbull

Pomegranate 5 Hour Energy

Flask of vodka

Pocket the ingredients, unless you’re rockin a Camelback. Conducive to staying on the go, even the busiest of bodies can celebrate as the king of his oyster.

Build-Your-Own-Grogger

Grogger? Just another word for beerbong. If you build it, they will come. So get the party started and pour all that valuable homebrew down the drain.

1 funnel

1 meter rubber tubing

Tape

Skillz

The post Haman’s Nuts And Other Purim Drink Recipes appeared first on Jewcy.