Grab a Glass. We're Drinking Rye on Fire
I put my bartending skills to the test by making a drink for the bar owner. Plus, skulls, sheeps and Detroit's 'Black Ghost'
Happy Friday, y’all. We made it to Cocktail Hour!
I’m super excited for this week’s drink. It’s one of my all-time faves: The Rye on Fire from Detroit City Distillery.
I spoke with DCD co-founder Michael Forsyth about the drink’s origin and his tips for home bartenders. Plus, I joined him at the distillery to make a Rye on Fire for him.
Can my home bartender skills stand up to the pros? Watch below to find out!
Ok. Let’s get to it!
WHAT I’M DRINKING: Rye on Fire
Detroit City Distillery is one of my favorite bars in Detroit. They make all their own spirits and have a chill vibe, with diverse patrons and staff, and excellent music. It also has an adventurous cocktail program that isn’t fussy. It’s a drinking person’s bar.
And my favorite cocktail there is the Rye on Fire. The base spirit is DCD’s Homegrown Rye, which, like any good rye, is spicy and dry. A ginger cordial ramps up the spice, while a habanero tincture adds the flame. All of that is softened and sweetened with a honey-mango sauce and a splash of lemon.
I wanted to learn how to make it at home, so I asked DCD co-founder Michael Forsyth if he’d give up the recipe. He kindly obliged and told me the drink’s backstory.
“So, you know, Detroit City Distillery is a very creative, open place,” he says over drinks at the distillery. “If you've got a crazy idea, we’ll try it.”
So when their then-barback (now distiller) Steve Orzechowski approached them with an idea for a spicy drink named after the metal band High on Fire, the team told him to go for it.
“Steve is an incredibly creative guy,” Forsyth says. “And at the time, I was doing a lot of market research on all the drinks and all the spots, right? And heat was not something that really came into the equation here in Detroit.”
Orzechowski bought some mangoes and habaneros at the Mexican market near his home and began experimenting while he juiced lemons and ginger and other citrus as part of his job as barback. When it came time to add some sweetness, he realized he could use honey from the beehives that the nonprofit Bees in the D tends on the distillery’s roof.
“The basic rules of Detroit City Distillery is we make what we want to drink,” Forsyth says. “And we make stuff from our surroundings.”
The drink was a hit when Orzechowski brought it to the team. But they did worry about whether it was too spicy.
“And then we were like, Who cares? Do we like it? Yes, we love it," Forsyth remembers. "People have become obsessed with it. If we take it off the menu, people would be pissed.”
I know I would be. Thankfully I now know how to make it at home. Though, my kitchen still doesn't have the DCD vibe. That's the thing about drinks at home: You can recreate the flavor, but never the full experience and energy of community.
Still, it's fun to see if I can match the masters. You should try, too! It's not too hard; it just takes time. The habanero tincture, for example, takes a month to infuse. So plan ahead.
How are my home bartending skills? I went to Detroit City Distillery to make a Rye on Fire for Michael. Watch the video to find out what he thinks!
Rye on Fire
2 oz. Detroit City Distillery Homegrown Rye
½ oz. fresh lemon juice
½ oz. ginger cordial
½ oz. mango-honey sauce
Dash habanero tincture (increase or decrease to taste)
Directions: Pour all ingredients into a shaker with ice. Shake hard for ~20 seconds. Strain into a rocks glass. Serve with lemon peel garnish.
Ginger Cordial
Large chunk fresh ginger
Cane sugar
DCD's Directions: Peel ginger and mince it with a knife or food processor. Squeeze the pulp through cheesecloth, collecting the liquid in a bowl. Pour the liquid into a saucepan with an equal volume of cane sugar. Bring to a boil and then simmer until all of the sugar is dissolved into the ginger liquid. Let cool. Store in the refrigerator.
My Adaptation: I made it the DCD way, but ginger is really hard to chop fine and squeeze. So for my second attempt, I decided to go faster and easier by creating a classic simple syrup. It gives you a very similar – though less potent – flavoring.
Peel and chop enough ginger to make 1 cup. Dump into a saucepan with 1 cup water and ¾ cup cane sugar. Bring to a boil then simmer until sugar is dissolved. Cover the pan and let simmer on low for 15 minutes to keep infusing the ginger into the liquid. (Can go longer for more ginger flavor, just be sure you don’t run out of liquid.) Strain into a bowl. Let cool. Bottle and store in the fridge.
Mango Honey Sauce
1 quart honey
1 quart water
1 lb. frozen mango (or 2 fresh)
DCD's Directions: Place honey, water and mangoes in a saucepan. Cook over medium heat for 30-45 minutes, stirring to combine. When everything is well mixed, take off heat and puree with an immersion blender. Strain well and bottle. Store in the refrigerator. This makes a thick sauce, which gives the drink a nice texture.
My Adaptation: This made way too much sauce for me to keep fresh, so I cut the recipe back to 2 cups each honey and water, plus a ½ pound of frozen mangoes. You could always make a full batch and freeze it in single-use containers, like an ice cube tray.
Habanero Tincture
1 pint mason jar
1 bottle Everclear or 100+ proof vodka
A dozen habaneros
Directions: Put on kitchen gloves. Cut open habaneros so the flesh is exposed; do not seed them. Loosely stuff the peppers into the mason jar, leaving two inches of room at the top. Pour Everclear over the peppers until the jar is almost completely filled; leave about ½ inch of headroom. Take a butter knife and gently work it around the inside of the jar to jostle the peppers and remove all air bubbles. Add Everclear if there’s now room at the top, still leaving about ½ of headroom. Cap and let infuse for 1 month. Shake several times a week to mix. Remember: The longer it sits, the hotter it gets. I left mine for 6 weeks. It’s real hot.
WHAT I’M READING: The Great Displacement: Climate Change and the Next American Migration
Journalist Jake Bittle takes readers around the country, looking for the human stories of climate change. It starts with the perspective that, Yes, the planet is warming, so if you’re looking for a science book about how that is measured or determined, this isn’t your book. But it is a good primer on what is happening now and what the stakes are. It brings a face to those who are already being impacted, those communities that are already being bought out by the federal government or having to consider managed retreat.
Bittle’s writing is clear and engaging as he weaves together personal narratives alongside cultural history, of, say, why the Western states water compact for the Colorado River is the way it is, or why some communities have made their lives on banks that flood. (Hint: Often times it was the only land Black communities could access.)
He spends one chapter on the area of climate change that I’m most interested in: Where everyone is going to go. We’re decades away from mass migration and we don’t have a crystal ball, but some experts are suggesting that the Upper Midwest/Great Lakes region could be the place to be by 2100. Mass migration made the region — and then unmade places like Detroit. Maybe it will take another population shift on a massive scale to rebuild. At least, that’s a theory I’m noodling on. Expect to see more about that in future newsletters.
I definitely recommend The Great Displacement. It’s a good read that handles complex issues and climate change without being a bummer.
PIECE OF ADVICE: How to Make a Bar Quality Cocktail at Home
What are your best tips for home bartenders?
The first is that you have to be curious. I would say all our best employees at the distillery have been the most curious and wanting to learn. They all started as barbacks, prepping things, because once you learn what goes into a cocktail and how to make it, then your whole world opens up in terms of creative possibilities.
The other aspect of making a drink that tastes like one in the bar is largely a matter of technique and execution. How much you dilute a drink, how long you stir or shake for, double straining — all of those things add up. But if you really want to know how to make cocktails, you learn how to make the ingredients that make a cocktail special.
What do you make at home versus what do you like to go out for?
When I'm at home, I like to keep it simple — usually whiskey in the glass. It also depends on the season. So right now it's winter and I am drinking bourbon in a glass – and lots of different types of bourbon because I like to get into the mash bill, the nitty gritty, and know what it’s made from and where the grains come from.
But when springtime comes around, I'm a gin guy. I just want to bury my face in a giant bottle of gin and roll around in a bunch of juniper and botanicals. Literally I'll go on a walk and I'll be like, Can I distill this?
Where did your curiosity come from to be a distiller?
The origins of Detroit City Distillery began in a small town called Bath, Michigan. I've known all the owners, with the exception of once, since we were 3 years old. We're all farm boys.
And I was that kid out of the group. When we were 15 or 16, the guy who bought us beer left town, so I went online — the Internet had just been invented — to figure out how to make our own hooch. And it was the jailhouse hooch recipe, right? It was grape juice, yeast and sugar. And I was like, I can buy these ingredients.
I didn’t know what I was doing, so I took that first batch and stuck it under my bed. And in two weeks it exploded all over my brown shag carpet. I was grounded for two weeks.
So then we, then we moved the operation outside and that first batch was fucking disgusting. I’d say it was more hallucinogenic than alcoholic. But we were 16 and we didn’t know any better, so it didn’t matter. We were doing this to, you know, get drunk, but also to try to get a girl, which never worked because we were all dorks.
I just remember, you know, we're all drinking this hooch and JP, who is now our master distiller, is like, I'm going to go to school and learn how to make beer. And we were like, Fuck yes! Let’s open a brewery. That will be sweet.
It was just stupid country kids doing country kid stuff because there’s nothing else to do.
Must Have: Skull Spray Bottle
Lovey and I went to New Orleans a few weeks ago with Friend Shana and The Consort, and we definitely drank more than a few of the city’s official cocktail, the sazerac (rye whiskey, sugar, bitters, absinthe). When we got home, Shana decided she needed to upgrade her home-sazerac game with better barware. Namely, this adorable glass skull spray bottle. With a sazerac, you coat a chilled glass with absinthe before pouring in the drink, and this bottle is perfect for spraying a light mist all over the coupe.
When she asked if I wanted one, too, I believe my answer was: YAAASSSSSSSSS.
Shana filled mine with the light green liqueur and agreed to bring it to me — along with with limited-edition bottles of paczki vodka and horseradish vodka from Detroit City Distillery — at the Clubhouse (aka Castalia) when we met for drinks. She handed me the bag, and I popped it in my car and promptly forgot about it.
As you can probably imagine, this is going somewhere sad.
I never lock my car doors. Ever. This stems from driving a convertible in my twenties and not wanting someone to slash my soft top to steal the car or rummage inside it. I couldn’t afford the $1,000 to replace the top. Now, I figure, if someone wants to steal my Nissan Mourano at least they won't break a window to do so. And, honestly, I just don’t care if somebody rummages through my seats for the stray seven cents or even sleeps in it. Which has been known to happen.
But my nonchalance about locking doors runs straight into my materials-management issues. I’m known to forget things. I was once running late for the mayor’s State of the City address and didn’t notice that I left the keys in the ignition of our truck. Afterward, I hunted for them everywhere for an hour — only to discover they were right where I left them.
Let me remind you that our truck is a rusting-out 1998 Ford Ranger, so I’m certain nobody wants to take the POS (which I do love) even if I leave it practically gift wrapped for them.
Anyway, on the night in question, I forgot the bag-o-booze with my cute little skull spray bottle in the car. And unlike my keys, it walked off. Someone hit the jackpot when they rifled my unlocked car that night. Because I should also mention that the bag was a special two-bottle wine tote handmade by my mom.
So this week’s Must Have is the skull spray bottle. Thankfully Amazon makes that easy. Now I just have to get mom to sew Shana a new bag before she unfriends me.
3 THINGS I’M READING ON THE INTERWEBZ
1. “A Requiem for Detroit’s Legendary ‘Black Ghost” by Lee Devito in Metro Times
It turns out his old man was the driver of the legendary “Black Ghost,” a mysterious souped-up car that was said to appear during illegal street races in Detroit in the 1970s. After leaving its opponents in the dust, the Black Ghost would drive off into the night, only to resurface months later and do it all again.
It makes sense that he would keep his identity a secret, since he was working as a Detroit police officer in traffic enforcement at the time and would lose his job if he was caught. But the car was identifiable thanks to its flair, including the red, black, and green pan-African flag decals on its fenders, a white “bumble bee” stripe on its tail, and its “Gator Grain” vinyl roof, among other features.
2. “After Chemical Burn, Farm Owners Worry About a Cherished Way of Life” by Emily Cochrane in the New York Times
After the chemicals were released, Tina, the amiable white turkey that she bought less than a year ago for $3, was put on antibiotics for respiratory problems, and her chickens laid eggs with an unsettling purple hue, Ms. Mibuck said. Her son in California is urging her to move away, offering to build a barn on his land for her two horses, Samuel and Razor. And Ms. Mibuck, 54, who works as a custodian at a university, is seriously thinking about leaving the 14 acres that she considers a slice of heaven.
3. “Hair” by Meredith Maran in
In rooms of women, I struggle to quiet my high-beam, search-party eyes. In AA meetings and book events and parties I find plenty to look at and to like. I do what I’ve always done—what I used to do, before her. I reach for this new woman’s eyes with mine, wrap the tentacles of my longings around her, readying to reel her in.
But it’s different now. My gaze gets zero traction. My targets turn their heads to talk to their neighbors, turns the back of their heads toward me. Of course they do. I’m looking at them, seeing possibility. They’re glancing at me and seeing their mothers, if they see me at all.
WHAT I’M BINGEING: "Texas Sun" by Leon Bridges and Khruangbin
I read this profile of soul singer-songwriter Leon Bridges in Texas Monthly, which introduced me to "Texas Sun," his collab with Khruangbin. I loved the soul-country sound, so this has been on regular rotation. And I'm now diving further into his catalog and am pretty sure he's got a fixed place on my party playlist.
WEEKLY CUTE CRITTER: Sheeps!
Any time it gets cold here in Detroit, I remind myself that mom and dad have to care for their flock in the freezing temps of Montana. This week is was -18 with wind chill — which is far balmier than the -45 earlier this winter.
But that fleece keeps them nice and toasty — and in just two weeks it will be shearing season. Good thing, too, because some of them can barely see out through their tufts.
That’s it for this week, y’all. Watch out for Tuesday’s epic paczki throwdown. (And then we’ll get to Plaguesgiving. I promise!) Have a great week. See you back here on Friday for Cocktail Hour.
I can honestly say that the Rye on Fire is one of the few menu cocktails that I enjoy (normally I choose classic cocktails, e.g., an Old Fashioned, a gin and tonic, etc) and most menu cocktails (especially in Michigan?) tend to be too sweet for me - but the Rye on Fire is so good! (and I love that they offer something with a little heat).