Sawyer

It has been just shy of two years since the first cocktail appeared here and today I have for you the 50^th!  I will be the first to admit it has taken entirely too long to get here, but we made it.  As you can see by the diagram to the right, I have a propensity towards drinks that call for bitters; today’s delightful little treat not only follows that path, but takes it to an extreme!

The Sawyer is another recent creation and a variation on the Gimlet, but takes the use of bitters over the top by using three varieties and nearly thirty dashes.  The drink was created by bartender Don Lee and named after the daughter of gin-loving chef Wylie Dufrense.  I’m going to use my artistic license again and assume that little Sawyer Dufrense was named after one of the greatest characters in American literature.

This one is simple to make but complex across the tongue, don’t be alarmed by the bounty of bitters, just try it.  In a shaker, start with two ounces of beefeater gin, add one half an ounce of lime juice, one half an ounce of simple syrup, fourteen (yes one-four) dashes of Angostura bitters, seven dashes of Peychaud’s bitters, and seven dashes of orange bitters.  Fill with ice, shake this baby up and strain into a chilled cocktail glass, no garnish necessary.  After your first sip, you’ll be making them for Becky and Huck too.

Sawyer

2 oz gin

½ oz fresh squeezed lime juice

½ oz simple syrup

14 dashes angostura bitters

7 dashes peychaud’s bitters

7 dashes orange bitters

Combine all ingredients in a shaker, strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

Simpler Simple Syrup

While finding an empty bottle, a measuring cup, sugar and water seems like a fairly simple task, there are occasions where shaking up a batch of simple syrup is impractical. For those instances where you are craving an Old Fashioned or a Daiquiri and need an ounce of simple syrup posthaste this is the solution for you!

In addition to sugar and water all you need is a glass (or shaker) and your jigger. Start with your empty mixing vessel add sugar in the same amount called for in the drink (one ounce of simple syrup means one ounce of sugar), add the same amount of warm water and swirl until the sugar is dissolved. From here I add the rest of the ingredients and stir, then fill with ice and shake or serve. You now have a fine cocktail for one without having to make simple syrup.

Country Gentleman

There is something about the flavor of calvados that reminds me of fall. Maybe it is the apples being harvested, the apple pie on the table or maybe just the bite to match the chill in the air. Whatever the reason I have a handful of calvados cocktails to share with you. The name also inspires images of an Englishman returning to a one of the quaint villages of the Cotswolds after a day in the field for a drink with his mates.

There is no history to be found on this cocktail which leads me to believe that it is a recent creation, but with other recently coined concoctions covered here, it follows in the traditions of cocktails of decades past.

Begin by donning your finest tweeds, then add one and one-half ounce of calvados to an ice filled shaker, add three-quarters of an ounce of Cointreau, one-quarter of an ounce of fresh squeezed lemon juice, and a teaspoon of simple syrup. Shake vigorously and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with a twist of lemon and serve speaking with your best English accent.

Country Gentleman

1 ½ oz calvados

¾ oz cointreau

¼ oz lemon juice

1 tsp simple syrup

Mix all ingredients in an ice filled shaker. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with a lemon twist.

Sazerac

Imagine yourself in pre-Civil War New Orleans; walking down the street you have the sudden urge to wet your whistle. You come upon the Sazerac Coffee House. Similar to its use in Amsterdam today, coffee house was a kind euphemism, except in the mid-1800s the drug of note was alcohol. Once inside you belly up to the 125 foot long bar and one of the dozen or so bartenders would have gladly made you a Sazerac cocktail. A bold cocktail, not for the faint of heart; the intense flavor rivaled only by the difficulty in making it.

The bar’s owner’s, Antoine Amédée Paychaud, had started his life in the Big Easy in the late 1700s as an apothecary, after migrating from the West Indies. In the 1830s, Pharmacie Peychaud’s proprietary cure all, Peychaud’s Bitters, quickly became a very popular ingredient to his late-night patrons. The Sazerac was initially made with an imported cognac named Sazerac de Forge et Fils, hence the name, but overtime the cognac was replaced by locally produced rye whiskey. Also of note is Peychaud served the drink in egg cups known to the French as coquetiers, it is believed that the word cocktail derived from the inability of most Americans to pronounce this word properly. Recognizing that he was onto something, Peychaud opened his “Coffee House” in 1852.

If you want to truly impress your friends while introducing them to a true piece of American history all while getting them highly inebriated, read these instructions carefully, this will quickly become your go-to cocktail for the fall. Start with two old fashioned glasses for each cocktail you wish to make. Pack one full of crushed ice and let it sit. Take the other glass and add ¼ ounce of simple syrup, three dashes of Peychaud’s bitters, and two ounces of rye whiskey. Many recipes call for only 1 ½ ounces, but my good friend David Embury suggests 2 to 2 ½ ounces, and I like his style. I have been using High West’s Rendezvous Rye with favorable results. Next add ice to the glass containing the mixture and stir to chill. Going back to the first glass, empty the crushed ice and add ¼ ounce or so of absinthe and swirl around, coating the glass with the green fairy and dispose of the rest. Strain the contents of the second, whiskey filled, glass into the absinthe glass and garnish with a twist of lemon. Embury suggests serving the cocktail with an ice water chaser, but I say drink it strait.

Sazerac

2 oz rye whiskey

¼ oz simple syrup

3 dashes peychaud’s bitters

¼ oz absinthe

Place the first three ingredients in an empty old fashioned glass, add ice and stir to chill. Pour the absinthe into a second, chilled old fashioned glass, turn to coat the glass, and pour off the excess. Strain the whiskey mixture into the absinthe-coated glass and garnish with a lemon twist.

Angostura Sour

To round out the month I have a truly unique cocktail experience for all of you. As you may have realized I have quite a fondness for bitters, most drinks call for a couple of dashes of bitters, in this one, bitters is the dominant ingredient. As I was making this I was struck by the lack of a well know spirit and was concerned where the prerequisite kick was going to come from until I looked at the bottle of biters and realized that it is actually just about forty-five percent alcohol, slightly higher than the bottle of Plymouth gin I also had on the counter, so my fears were quickly allayed. As I said this is a very unique drink, but not overly bitter as one might assume. It is a drink that allows you to truly taste the herbs and other flavorings in the bitters. On top of the taste the deep red color of the bitters makes for a visually stimulating experience as well.

As far as history goes, the best I could come up with is a reference to an Angostura Fizz in Charles Baker’s, Gentlemen’s Companion from the 1930s, this slight variation has been claimed by a handful of bartenders as their own. I am not nearly as concerned over who actually created it as I am over why I have not tried one before! The actual creator of this drink is a true genius and will be praised by high school kids everywhere when they realize that they can walk into any grocery store and procure all of the ingredients to make this drink without having to show any form of identification.

To make this drink, start with an empty shaker add one egg white (be sure that your eggs are not on the recently recalled list) and ¾ ounce of fresh lime juice. Shake until the egg is frothy. Add 1 ½ ounces of Angostura bitters plus one ounce of simple syrup. Fill the shaker with ice and shake again. Strain into your favorite cocktail glass and prepare for sensory overload.

Angostura Sour

1 ½ oz angostura bitters

1 oz simple syrup

¾ oz fresh lime juice

1 egg white

Shake the egg white and lime juice in a dry cocktail shaker. Add the bitters and simple syrup. Fill with ice, shake and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

Daiquiri

No treatise on rum would be complete without discussing the Daiquiri. I am not talking about the cheap rum spiked slurpees so popular at every all-inclusive resort south of the Mason–Dixon Line, I am talking about the sophisticated concoction that was a favorite both John F. Kennedy and Ernest Hemingway. Forget everything that you think you know about a daiquiri and read on for a brief education on a true classic.

It is difficult to pin down the exact origin of this godly nectar, as sugar, lime and rum were combined in various ways throughout the Caribbean and South America since the beginning of time. For the purposes of our discussion we will focus on the Cuban origins. Daiquirí is the name of a beach near Santiago, Cuba, as well as an iron mine in the same area. Around the turn of the century a group of American mining engineers were in the Venus bar in Santiago and they are credited with inventing an early variation of this drink that was served over ice in a tall glass. Over time the drink evolved into one that was made in a shaker and served in a cocktail glass. The drink spread to the US early in the 20th and slowly gained popularity.

David Embury lists this drink as one of his six basic cocktails and there is little need to diverge from his original recipe. In a cocktail shaker start with ¼ oz of simple syrup, add ½ oz of fresh lime juice and 2 oz of white rum. Embury calls for a Cuban rum, but unless you have some pre-embargo stuff lying around we will need to use something else. Basic Bacardi is prevalent and will make a passable cocktail. As this is drink is almost all rum though, consider using something a little nicer such as Cruzan Estate Light Rum. Fill the shaker with ice, shake and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Serve this with the smugness of knowing that you will never again stoop so low as to consume the common bastardization of such a great cocktail.

Daiquiri

¼ oz simple syrup

½ oz lime juice

2 oz white rum

Mix all ingredients in an ice filled shaker. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

The Old Cuban

August has become the month of rum for me and I have a handful of libations for your late summer indulgence. The first of which is the Old Cuban. Think of this as a more sophisticated mojito, a drink fit for a heavily compensated leader of a banana republic.

The true origin of this drink is much less romantic so I prefer to let my imagination wander to simpler times when the shady politicians and unscrupulous businessmen plied their trades with little government intervention and the world was none the wiser. The drink actually originated recently by Audrey Saunders of the Pegu Club in New York, not to be confused with this Pegu Club. It has the complex flavor balance of other vintage cocktails we have sampled and deserves a place among the old classics.

Start with ¾ ounce of fresh lime juice, ¾ ounce of pure cane simple syrup and six small to medium sized mint leaves in a cocktail shaker, muddle. Fill the shaker with ice, add two ounces of an aged dark rum, I like Cruzan. Top it off with a couple dashes of Angostura bitters and shake. Pour the mixture into a chilled cocktail glass and top it off with chilled Champagne, approximately 1 ½ to 2 ounces. For your first sip, close your eyes and imagine yourself as a United Fruit Company executive hopping around Central America on a Pan Am Clipper.

The Old Cuban

¾ oz lime juice

¾ oz pure cane simple syrup

6 mint leaves

2 oz aged dark rum

2 dashes angostura bitters

1 ½ - 2 oz champagne

Muddle lime juice, syrup and mint in a cocktail shaker. Fill with ice; add rum and bitters, shake vigorously. Pour into a cocktail glass and top with champagne.

Pure Cane Simple Syrup

Simple syrup is an ingredient called for is so many different cocktails that I decided to spend some time using different sugars and ratios of water just to see what I could come up with. One of my earliest experiments was using Sugar in the Raw, unrefined pure cane sugar. The result is a dark, caramel colored syrup with a distinct flavor that I think lends itself well to rum and bourbon based cocktails. There is just a hint of molasses flavor to it. I really like it in an Old Fashioned and an Old Cuban.

I like a ratio of one to one and the sugar dissolves easily enough that I find it unnecessary to heat the mixture. In a an empty 750 ml liquor bottle add one cup of sugar and one cup of water. Shake vigorously until the sugar is dissolved. Store the syrup in your refrigerator and shake briefly before each use to remove any crystallization.

Pure Cane Simple Syrup

1 cup sugar in the raw

1 cup water

Combine ingredients in an empty 750 ml bottle. Shake vigorously. Store in the refrigerator.

Old Fashioned (Well Dressed/Volstead Version)

To finally rectify my greatest crime against cocktail humanity, it is time to put up my “other” Old Fashioned recipe. As I mentioned before, I struggled with this grand predicament, but I came to the conclusion that there is a place for both. This variation is great for summer. The bright colors of the fruit contrast the deep brown of the drink and fit perfectly with seersucker, linen and madras!

It seems that the addition of muddled fruit originates during prohibition when the quality of the whiskey went down drastically and the average speakeasy patron needed something to help mask the god-awful taste of backwoods bourbon. The historical significance alone should give this variation its own place in every bartenders repertoire.

My formula for this is similar to the one I use without fruit. I decrease the amount of simple syrup by half to compensate for the addition of the fruit, and decrease the amount of bourbon slightly since I tend to serve these mid-day and nobody likes to find their guests face down on the croquet pitch with only mad dogs and Englishmen standing about. The steps to build it are much different though. Start with an orange slice, about ¼ inch thick. Peel the fruit from the inside of the slice and place it in the bottom of an old fashioned glass. Take the peel and slice it into two pieces, place these on top of the fruit; add two cherries, two dashes of angostura bitters and muddle. Pour in ½ ounce of simple syrup, an ounce of the bourbon of your choice (I suggest Gentleman Jack), stir well. Fill the glass with ice and add the remaining 1 ½ ounces of bourbon.

The garnish on this drink comes from my oldest and best cocktail companion who will remain nameless to protect his professional reputation. I fell it adds the perfect finishing touch to this drink. In order to comply with rule number two (look to the left of the screen) we need to include a cherry. It pains me greatly to write this as this is the only circumstance where I use them, but the neon red maraschino cherries work best here. You will also need a half an orange slice and a toothpick (I’ve been partial to the little plastic swords since I was a kid). Fold the orange in half around the cherry and stick the sword through to hold it all together, place it flippantly across the top of the drink and the side of the glass. Serve this cocktail with a nod to Utah for being the 36th state to ratify the 21st amendment, repealing the 18th amendment, and ending prohibition!

Old Fashioned

2½ oz bourbon

2 dashes angostura bitters

½ oz simple syrup

1 ½, quarter inch thick orange slices

cherries

Place the fruit from one orange slice into the bottom of an old fashioned glass, slice the peel into two pieces and add it to the glass. Add two cherries, the bitters, and muddle. Pour in the simple syrup, one ounce of bourbon, and stir. Fill the glass with ice and add the remaining bourbon. Garnish with half an orange and a cherry.

Old Fashioned (No Garbage)

The most glaring omission in my ongoing attempt to educate is perhaps my absolute favorite cocktail, so it has pained me greatly to let it sit idly by and not be recognized as the amazing drink that it is. The reason for my reluctance to add the Old Fashioned to the canonical record stems from my inability to decide whether the fruit belonged in the drink or not. I finally had an epiphany on this matter and am ready to pass on my wisdom (and hedge my bets). I realized that both variants have their place and that there is room in every bar for two Old Fashioned recipes, one made simply without fruit and another with fruit. I am going to start with the first, but will be adding the second in the very near future.

The Old Fashioned is perhaps the most bastardized cocktail I have ever come across. Depending on where you get your recipe you will see soda, sprite, ginger ale and many other preposterous ingredients that I refuse to even reference for fear of aiding in the destruction of one of America’s greatest inventions.

The Old Fashioned originated in the 1880s, at the Pendennis Club in Louisville, Kentucky. More importantly it is considered the first cocktail as defined by the The Balance And Columbia Repository in 1806, as spirits, bitters, water, and sugar.  Following this definition to the word, the Old Fashioned is made up of bourbon, angostura bitters, water and sugar. In lieu of water and sugar separately, I use simple syrup because it makes the drink easier to make and prevents any un-dissolved sugar from sinking to the bottom of the glass.

While many of the drinks highlighted here have many steps and tools involved this one is as simple as it gets. Start with an old fashioned glass filled with ice, add 3 oz. of your favorite bourbon (I like Woodford Reserve for this drink), 2 dashes angostura bitters, and 1 oz. of simple syrup. Stir and serve, that’s it!

This is one of those cocktails that most people have heard of, but few have tried. It can hold its own in any situation as is. If you feel the need for a simple garnish, use an orange twist. You can also use orange bitters to add a slight citrus flavor.

Old Fashioned

3 oz bourbon

2 dashes angostura bitters

1 oz simple syrup

Fill an old fashioned glass with ice.  Add the bourbon, bitters and simple syrup. Stir and serve a piece of cocktail history.

The Mint Julep

With the run for the roses taking place this weekend, I felt it only appropriate to cover the traditional drink of the derby.  The mint julep is the perfect accompaniment to the most exciting two minutes in sports, but is also just as appropriate at any summer gathering.  In the spirit of full disclosure, I have never been to the derby, but the coverage on the TV is very in depth and I love bourbon!

As with most of the drinks I have featured the number of variations is mind blowing.  I think that everyone will agree a mint julep needs bourbon, mint and sugar, beyond that it comes to individual adaptations. The mint and sugar pose the most options. My particular preference is to use simple syrup and to strain the mint. I also like bitters in mine. The funniest debate about this drink is the ice. There are more theories on the way the ice should be presented in this drink than any other I have ever researched. So to muddy the waters even more, I am inserting an additional option as my choice! The best ice for this drink is the little pebble ice that butchers put into the seafood cases. It is the perfect surface area to melting speed ratio. Sometimes it takes a little finesse to get them to hand over a bag of the stuff, but a little white lie about your grandmothers knee replacement surgery usually helps.

The preparation to this drink is the key between an okay drink and an epic drink. The first step is to put your glasses in the freezer at least an hour prior to serving. Julep cups are the traditional vessel to serve this, but if your bar does not include numerous special purpose silver cups, Collins glasses work just fine. Next is the garnish, rinse sprigs of mint and when almost dry, dust them with powdered sugar.

Now comes the actual construction.  For each drink you intend to make, set an empty old-fashioned glass on the bar and put 1 ½ tablespoons of simple syrup in each. Then drop 12-16 small mint leaves into each glass, add three strong dashes of angostura bitters and muddle together. Pour an ounce or two of bourbon in each glass and stir. To keep with the derby theme, stick with a Kentucky bourbon, I like Maker’s Mark, but Woodford Reserve is the official bourbon of the Kentucky Derby so, at least for this week, that is what I am pouring! Next, pull your frosted glasses out of the freezer and fill halfway with ice.  Strain the mint and syrup mixture into the glass and stir well.  Top the glass off with ice, fill with bourbon, and stir again. Take a garnish spring and cut the stem just below the mint leave, insert into the drink and serve.

Serve these with a couple of cocktail napkins to compensate for the cold and be ready for fast refills. If you have enough glasses, start each round with a fresh glass.  If you make these wearing a seersucker suit or jockey uniform you get extra points!

Mint Julep

¾ oz simple syrup

3 dashes angostura bitters

12-16 mint leaves, plus one sprig

kentucky bourbon

powdered sugar

Place cups in freezer an hour before serving. Rinse and dry mint. Dust garnish with powdered sugar. Add syrup, bitters and mint to mixing glass, muddle.  Stir in 1-2 ounces of bourbon. Fill frozen cups or glasses with ice, pour in mint mixture through strainer, and stir. Top with ice, fill with bourbon, and insert trimmed garnish.