One, two, three, four.
My name is Aaron Gretzinger.
I work at Colony Restaurant in Brooklyn Heights, New York City.
Versatile, the classic cocktails, the Negroni, the old-fashioned,
and also deliver new twists with fresh fruit that we like to work with.
I played around with the rhubarb ginger daiquiri with that award.
The Strong Island cocktail that I'm about to showcase today,
which was a cocktail I created to coincide with the old-school hip-hop brunch
that Krim so famously sponsored.
It's sort of a playful take on a Long Island iced tea,
but instead of throwing a bunch of liquor together and sour mix and cola,
I actually wanted to use real tea and with a touch of fresh grapefruit juice on top.
I'm going to use two ounces of Krim rum as the base, of course.
Half an ounce of lemon juice,
because every decent cocktail needs a little acid to balance everything out.
But I'm going to take an iced tea blend.
This is a company called Serendipity that's actually based in Long Island,
so it gives sort of relevance to the name of the cocktail, the Strong Island.
And Strong Island was, of course, a name given to Long Island in the hip-hop community
that showed the island was strong.
EPMB, Joachim, De La Soul, some of my favorites from there.
So I wanted to give sort of an homage.
I'm going to add some of this Serendipity tea.
It's a blend of Assam, a little bit of chamomile and a little bit of mint.
The beauty of working with loose leaf teas is I can sort of tweak things around
to find the balance.
Assam is a black tea that you don't want to steep too long,
otherwise it becomes overpowering and too tannic.
So really a light steep on that with a little chamomile and mint
to give a little brightness and balance it out.
So I'm going to pour, leave a little half of an inch on the top there,
and then I'm going to take a fresh ruby red grapefruit, run it through our juicer.
Fresh juice, everything is vibrant and lively.
I just like to pop it.
Then I'm going to pour it over the spoon so it gives it a nice flow on the top.
That nice pink.
So another thing is there's no added sugar in this drink.
It's all natural sugar.
It's coming from the rum and from the grapefruit juice.
I'm going to find a nice little sprig of mint.
Always nice to give it a little lug tap to bring out the essence of the mint.
Just slip it in.
Pour a little grapefruit.
Come on, cooperate.
We have the strong honor.
So this is something you enjoy on your stoop or on your grandma's porch.
We're going to try and find a colony abroad.
