Headless in Seattle

Halloween season is a good time to re-familiarize ourselves with Washington Irving’s short story, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” The story was first published almost exactly two centuries ago–in 1819–and it famously focuses on a local schoolmaster (Ichabod Crane) and, of course, a headless horseman.

I am reminded of the story frequently, as there’s a community near our home called “Sleepy Hollow.” For this post I tried looking up the history of that nearby community, but I came up empty-handed. I did learn, however, that there are several other Sleepy Hollows in California, including one near Chino Hills and one near San Anselmo.

There have been many film adaptations of the story, starting with a 1922 silent movie starring Will Rogers.

…but it’s likely that you’ve only seen the Tim Burton version (1999, starring Johnny Depp) or perhaps Disney’s animated version (1949, starring the voice of Bing Crosby).

Notably, there’s a new version of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow currently being released in short episodes each week by Shipwrecked Comedy. You can watch the episodes released so far on YouTube. Here’s the trailer:

To be honest, this isn’t Shipwrecked Comedy’s best effort. Instead, I highly, highly recommend their recent “Edgar Allan Poe’s Murder Mystery Dinner Party.” Here’s the trailer:

But I digress. We were talking about Sleepy Hollow. And the reason we’re talking about Sleepy Hollow is because noted mixologist and family friend Erin Rea has developed a special cocktail for use in this monthlong Halloween cocktail experiment. Her drink is called The Headless Horseman. So, without further ado….

The Recipe: Combine 2 oz bourbon, 1/2 oz lemon juice, 2 dashes of Angostura bitters, and 1/8 tsp of activated charcoal into a cocktail shaker with ice. Shake vigorously for 20-30 seconds to really integrate the charcoal. Strain into a tall glass with fresh ice, top with 3 oz ginger beer, and stir lightly to integrate.

Yes, you read that right–“activated charcoal” is an ingredient. It’s used to create the black color of the drink. It’s sold in capsule form at CVS, as an “anti-gas” nostrum. [Insert obvious joke here.]

The Ratings:

This is our first all-black drink. The photo above doesn’t really do it justice. It’s an inky black that doesn’t look like any cocktail I’ve ever had. It might have been cool to have added a little dry ice, but it’s still striking just on its own. I’ll give it a solid 3 points for appearance.

In terms of taste: This is essentially a Kentucky Mule. As such, it’s refreshing and a little spicy. One of my favorite summer drinks is a Moscow Mule (vodka, lime juice, ginger beer, and a little ginger syrup). This Kentucky Mule uses bourbon in place of the vodka, replaces the lime juice with lemon juice, and skips the ginger syrup. The result is a more refreshing, less sharp, and less sweet drink than my usual Moscow Mule. The activated charcoal imparts no flavor, but the visual effect causes the drink to come across as perhaps a bit richer than it actually is. Notably, the bourbon is almost entirely disguised by the ginger beer. This just goes down damn easy. I’ll give the taste 3 points.

The name gets the full 2 points–The “horseman” is presumably a riff on the “mule” theme (Horse + Donkey = Mule), which I think is pretty clever. And the headless horseman, as we’ve already established, is a good Halloween story. And to top it all off, the headless horseman’s horse is almost always depicted as black.

Grand Total: 8 points.