I hate maraschino cherries. Or, rather, I like the look of them sitting plumply in my manhattan, but the waxy candy flavor is offputting and, in my view, undercuts the quality of the booze.

Fortunately, it’s cherry season right now, and the perfect time to stock up on real cherries. I pit them with the help of a olive pitter, put them in plastic bags and freeze them for when I need them in a cocktail.

Do note that frozen, they will float unless you thaw them first. But it’s worth using them. Instead of wax balls you get real cherries, with a hint of tartness.

And if the price puts you off, bargain hunters should note that Droubi Brothers market in Roslindale currently stocks them for two dollars a pound.

Margaritas are nearly as wonderful straight up as they are on the rocks. They’re even better if you make them with sour oranges. I know that I’ve been talking up various knotty, dirty looking exotic citrus fruits you find at hispanic markets. Sour oranges – or naranja agria – are worth seeking out. They’re the traditional bitter oranges used in making orange bitters (not to mention orange marmalade), and they have a nice tartness, like a lemon or lime, with a floral orange taste instead. They really shine in cocktails, and in particular the sour orange margarita is probably the only cocktail I can claim some originality in inventing. (Perhaps recreating the wheel someone else invented?) To this day, it’s my favorite summer cocktail.

It’s a simple variation. A straight-up margarita is just juice of a lime, a good portion of tequila and quality orange liqueur, maybe with a heaping teaspoon of sugar to take the bite off. Substitute sour orange juice, decrease the sugar, and trust me, you’ll have a crowd-pleaser. It’s a good occasion to wheel out a better than average tequila.

Sour Orange Margarita
Makes 2 cocktails in 5 oz. martini glasses

Juice of two sour oranges (or more if the oranges is not very juicy)
Few generous dashes simple sugar syrup, or heaping teaspoons sugar
4 jiggers (6 oz.) tequila, mid-shelf or better
1 jigger (1 1/2 oz.) Grand Marnier, Cointreau or good quality curaçao
Orange twist, for garnish, optional

Chill cocktail glasses. In cocktail shaker, add ice, then the main ingredients listed. Shake thoroughly to mix and chill. Pour into glasses and garnish.

Oh, and if you’re not a tequila fan, try an aged rum, like a nice oaky Jamaican rum. The resulting daiquiris, if untraditional, are just as good.

Sour oranges available at Hi-Lo in Jamaica Plain and at fruit stands near Jackson Square.

Having friends over yesterday evening, I wondered what I’d serve. I wanted something nice and refreshing, given the summer weather we’re having. I decided on a perennial favorite of mine, margaritas.

I tend to think of the margarita as one of two drinks. The first, is the traditional limeade-y mixed drink served on the rocks in sombrero-shaped margarita glasses. The second is a stronger cocktail version served straight up in a cocktail glass. I like both, but since the former is most people’s idea of a margarita let me start there.

For a well-made traditional Tex-Mex margarita, I’m not a purist about type of tequila (one can spend lots of money, if one wants, but Cuervo or Sauza Gold are fine with me), but I insist that the drink be made with fresh lime juice. Like I’ve said, making a margarita with sour mix is like making a screwdriver with Tang. Squeezing the limes means a bit more work, but the difference is immeasurable. It’ll take a lot of limes, too, maybe 10 or more for a pitcher, so find an affordable source. I get mine either at Hispanic markets/produce stands, at Chinatown, or at Haymarket, where you can get ten for a dollar instead of one for 75 cents.

The recipe I use is adapted from a Rick Bayless recipe. The trick is soaking the ingredients with lime zest (see photo), which gives a nice depth of flavor. His recipe is quite strong, so I highly recommend taking my proportions (which have half the alcohol), if you don’t want to be knocked on your ass. Trust me on this.

Margaritas on the Rocks
Adapted from Rick Bayless’s Mexican Kitchen
makes one pitcher (8 cups)

2 1/2 c. tequila
1/2 c. Grand Marnier
1 1/2 c. (heaping) fresh lime juice
grated zest of 4 limes
1 c. sugar
3 c. water
Lime wedges, garnish
Coarse salt (I use kosher salt) for rims

In a large non-metal bowl, combine all ingredients except garnish and stir to dissolve sugar. Cover and refrigerate for a few hours to steep. Strain into serving pitcher. The margaritas are ready to serve on the rocks, in glasses rimmed with salt, as your guests desire.

Can you use Cointreau or an other orange liqueur? Certainly, and I often do depending on what I have available, but I think the brandy notes of the Grand Marnier work best. In any case, stick to the twenty-dollar a bottle rule and avoid the cheap triple sec if you can.

The homemade version of the margarita, done right, is such a wonderful, sublime drink that it puts to shame much of what Boston bars and restaurants serve under the name. In fact, I almost never order the drink out.

Angostura bitters are a wonderful ingredient – a necessity for any home bar and an item not used enough these days. But in the original days of the cocktail (pre-Prohibition) a number of proprietary bitters were on the market. Today, a couple commercially produced bitters remain… Angostura, Peychaud’s (most famous for its use in the Sazerac) and orange bitters. Angostura is available in the supermarket even, Fee Brothers orange bitters you can get at a couple places in Boston (Marty’s and I believe Liquorland), while Peychaud’s isn’t sold here.

Well, it turns out making bitters at home is not all that difficult. All you need to do is to infuse a high-proof spirit with a combination of citrus, spices and herbs, then dilute to get to a reasonable proof. Much like making limoncello. It probably won’t have the same shelf life as a store-bought bottle (I keep mine in the fridge), but its freshness will be noticeable.

The easiest place to start is orange bitters. Traditional recipes may call for spices, I don’t know, but I used simply the zest of the sour orange. For some reason these fruit aren’t generally popular, but Hispanic markets stock these (I get mine at Hi-Lo Market, or at the fruit stands near Jackson Square in Jamaica Plain).

Orange Bitters
Makes scant 1/3 cup
Zest of two sour orange (naranga agria)
4 T. 151-proof rum, or high-proof spirit of choice

Macerate zest and spices in liquor for a week, covered in the refrigerator. Strain into small jar. Add a two tablespoons pure water to dilute.

The result? The bitterness was accentuated over the Fee Brothers, but more importantly the floral scent of the orange was fresher and more powerful. I definitely prefer the homemade.

Even more successful was a grapefruit based recipe I created and called Jamacian bitters, not because they’re actually a Jamaican recipe, but because the spices and flavors are those you’d find in Jamaican cooking.

Jamaicain Bitters
Makes scant 1/4 cup
Zest of one grapefruit
one slice fresh ginger
few berries allspice
few whole cloves
1/2 in. of true cinnamon (canela) stick
1/4 t. black peppercorns
3 T. 151-proof rum, or high-proof spirit of choice

Macerate zest and spices in liquor for a week, covered in the refrigerator. Strain into small jar. Add a tablespoon or so of pure water to dilute.

A note on spices: you can improvise on the ingredients, of course, but be careful not to overwhelm with any one note. Ginger, for one, can be overpowering if too much is used. And use in moderation, if you can find it, true cinnamon (soft cinnamon, or canela), whose flavor is far milder than the Red-Hot-tasting cassia bark that’s sold in the U.S. as cinnamon. Hispanic markets like JP’s Hi-Lo and International sections of supermarkets sell whole canela; or, check out Polcari’s in the North End.

How to use these homemade bitters? Well, you can use the orange bitters in any recipe calling for them… I use a tad more in the recipe than I would with storebought, as the flavor is less saturated. But if you want a drink to really let these shine, particularly the Jamaican Bitters, I’d recommend the simple summer highball, the Gin Rickey.

Gin Rickey

1/2 juicy lime
1 jigger dry gin
Club soda
Several dashes citrus bitters

Fill highball glass with ice. Coat ice with bitters. Squeeze lime and drop in spent shell. Add gin, then top with club soda. Stir briefly.

As is, the rickey is a lovely mixed drink, the unfairly overlooked homely cousin to the gin and tonic. The bitters are my addition, not traditional, but try them and I think you’ll find that they pick up an understated drink and take it somewhere interesting.

When I found out that this Mixology Monday - hosted at Kaiser Penguin was going to be devoted to mint, I immediately thought of crème de menthe and one of the classic cocktails devoted to it, the Stinger, a combination of brandy and crème de menthe. I’ve never had a stinger before, but then again am not a huge crème de menthe fan. There may be some good brands out there – I await to see what the other Monday Mixologists are uncovering – but in general, I find the liqueur too one-note, as subtle as a vial of McCormick’s mint extract. Frankly I wasn’t sure I wanted to plunk down twenty bucks on a bottle that would linger unused on my shelf.

My solution was to make my own mint liqueur. Nothing too refined, I just started with an overproof rum, a bunch of chopped mint and some simple syrup:

Simple Mint Liqueur

2/3 c. chopped mint leaves
1/3 c. 151-proof rum (I used J. Wray & Nephew overproof white rum)
simple syrup, 1:1 ratio, sugar to water

In a bowl or jar placed in the refrigerator, soak leaves overnight in rum. Strain mixture through a sieve, pressing out excess alcohol. It should measure about a quarter cup. Add enough syrup to make 1/3 c. total. (Or, if making in larger quantities, keep 2 parts rum to 1 part syrup.)

From there, a nice, subtle stinger is just a step away.

I’ve actually become fond of making a number of brandy cocktails with cognac. (Cognac is brandy, but not all brandies are cognac.) I don’t break the bank, but for 25 bucks or so, maybe less, you can get a decent, full-bodied cognac with a nice kick that far more focused than the sweet, full brandies that comprise the cheaper brands. Not what you want all the time, but here a VSOP Marquis de Gensac carried the day.

Stinger Deluxe

1 jigger cognac
1 jigger simple mint liqueur

Shake ingredients well and strain into chilled cocktail glass. Garnish if you like.

Since the homemade mint liqueur was far less cloying and sweet than crème de menthe, I feel justified in using a sugared rim and a mint sprig for garnish.

A lot of trouble, I’m sure plenty of you are saying. Or maybe you just want a full mint taste, something understated in my version. The traditional recipe, half brandy, half crème de menthe, may be the thing for you.

This ersatz English pub is odd at best. It’s ye-olde-England meets fern bar, a feeling not helped by the unwatched Arsenal matches on the TV or the deceptively cavernous dimensions of the place. On top of it all is the stranded feeling of the Financial District location, which thins out the crowd after the post-work drink hour and means that Elephant and Castle close shockingly early (midnight).

But there is one overriding reason to check out this place. It’s the only place I know in town that has Fuller’s on tap. A nice, full-flavored bitter ale, Fullers made a logical libation for the rainy weekend. Besides, it’s a great accompaniment to the deep-friend soft pretzels the bar serves.

The Omni Parker House named its retro-themed bar after the Edwin O’Connor book fictionalizing Boston politics, and true to form, drinks like the Politico fill the cocktail menu. But a lot of this is just gimmick as most of the specialty cocktails are nontraditional fruity vodka drinks – and even the intriguing Dickens Punch (”gin-based fizzy punch that Charles Dickens drank when he stayed here”) turned out upon further inquiry to be simply Pimm’s Cup.

But I was in the mood for a Plymouth martini, and Last Hurrah was able to deliver credibly. I asked for it not too dry, and got a decent balance of gin and vermouth. My only gripe was the oversized glasses combined with the mini shakers left at the table with the extra, if watered down, cocktail remaining inside. I know a lot of customers like this touch and feel they’re getting something a little extra. Me, I’d be happy with a smaller, well-chilled cocktail at a couple bucks less.

But perhaps the real draw is just that Last Hurrah is a nice, downtown bar that’s not overrun with a scene. On a quiet, rainy Friday night, sometimes nothing’s better.

The Last Hurrah is located inside the Omni Parker Hotel, at the corner of Tremont and School Streets.

I was down in Philadelphia this last weekend. Among the charms of the city was Yuengling, a local, ubiquitous beer that’s synonymous with “lager” in many of the city’s establishments. I can see why; it’s great. At least it’s the only American lager I’ve tried that actually seems like a true lager. I hear word that the beer may be branching slowly out of its regional distribution niche. If so, let’s hope we start seeing it in Boston.