Whether it’s tailgating or homegating, fans of the Buffalo Bills are known to be elite tier when it comes to food. Wingin’ It returns for it’s eighth season of Mad Hatter-esque recipes taking inspiration from the Buffalo Bills and their opponents.
Bisonfeather
Can you believe I almost forgot a Halloween recipe this year? My subconsicous was dead set on not allowing that. I turned to cocktails for Kansas City, having explored their culinary world once or twice a year now for a few seasons. Intrigued by the Horsefeather
cocktail, I set out to make a Buffalo version.
The Horsefeather is simple. Rye whiskey, ginger beer, a couple dashes of bitters, and a little lemon juice. How can I make that “Buffalo?” Loganberry syrup was the obvious solution but I did that for my Dawson Knox Blox.
I decided to go a little more abstract. Rather than a “Buffalo” version, I decided to go for a “buffalo” version. You with me? What might an actual buffalo look for in a cocktail? Easy. Grasses. A little wheatgrass addition raises the complexity level and makes a spooky green color just in time for Halloween. It’s not a gimmick either. The wheatgrass adds depth to an already complex drink and enhances the aromatics of the bitters.
This is intended for persons of legal drinking age and if you’re drinking, do so responsibly.
Bisonfeather
Makes: 1 drink
Active Time: 1 minute
Total Time: 1 minute
Ingredients
3-4 dashes Angostura bitters
2 oz rye whiskey
4 oz ginger beer
1 oz wheatgrass
Fresh thyme for garnish (optional)
You will need: A glass
- Add 3-4 dashes of bitters to a highball glass.
- Pour remainder of ingredients into the glass and stir, swirl, or shake like they taught you in high school chemistry.
- Garnish with thyme if you want.
- Enjoy!
Wingin’ It Tips
I added the pictures above since this is literally as easy of a recipe as I can give you. I add the bitter first because holy **** do you not want to overdue these things. If you dash too aggressively, this is your opportunity to rinse the glass and start over. I figure for this section I’ll mainly talk a few of my personal bartending choices and ingredient selection so I can add words and justify this as an article.
Let’s circle back to the bitters. The horsefeather uses Angostura bitters, which is a brand I wasn’t familiar with. I picked them up for authenticity for my bisonfeather variant and noticed the label is too big for the bottle. I looked it up and apparently back in the 1870s the two brothers running the company screwed up a rebranding effort and got the bottle/label sizes wrong. It’s 150 years later and they’re still running it that way, which is frankly awesome.
For the ginger beer, I chose a Jamaican style. I’ve been known to listen to reggae on occasion, and who doesn’t know Bob Marley and “Buffalo Soldiers.” If you’re going ginger beer, Jamaican style is always the way to go for flavor and the little nod to a “buffalo” reference — and paying homage to a historical group that was pretty bad*** is a bonus. Fun history fact since I looked up the bitters; the Buffalo Soldiers regiment was founded in 1866, which means the group was around at the same time labels were being messed up in another part of the world.
I’m typically more of a bourbon fan when it comes to whiskey and its variants and honestly haven’t dove into ryes all that much. I selected a brand that claims to be small batch made from rye grain grown in New York and it turns out that I like rye whiskey just as much as bourbon. This might be blasphemy to some, but I’ve yet to find a Scotch I really like. Discuss below.
Finally, why the heck did I add thyme? A couple reason really. The biggest is that I struggle with drink photography. It’s just a glass with liquid. A garnish can go a long way. I still don’t love the pictures, but I think the garnish adds some character. Yeah, that still doesn’t explain thyme specifically. While I have no reason to think a bison would eat thyme, it LOOKS like something they might, and branding is everything. Further, I’m a big fan of gin and absinthe and can appreciate botanicals in drinks. I’m not going to force you to buy thyme (or any of this really), but the little sprigs in the glass did add a little more flair that worked very well with the other ingredients.
One last thing. You might notice I didn’t include directions such as “shake over ice” or “pour over ice.” For home bartending I’m anti-dilution as you shouldn’t have so many bottles that cold storage is a problem. The ginger beer and wheatgrass goes in the fridge, the bitters and rye go in the freezer.
