Grasshopper Cocktail
The Grasshopper Cocktail was apparently created by Philibert Guichet Jr., the owner of Tujaque's bar in New Orleans. As the story goes, it was submitted as an entry to a New York cocktail contest which was held, amazingly enough, in 1928 just before Prohibition was repealed. It is reported to have won second place. (Source: Roy F. Guste, Jr. "The Restaurants of New Orleans") Some other sources refer to the contest happening in 1919 however, just prior to Prohibition. However since one of the reported judges was Walter Winchell, who's career didn't really start until 1920, it is more likely that the contest happened during Prohibition.
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Recipe:
1 oz green crème de menthe
1 oz white crème de cacao
1 oz cream
Instructions:
Shake well with ice.
Strain into a cocktail glass.
Source: Philibert Guichet Jr. - Tujague's, New Orleans
Harvest Moon Cocktail - The Cocktail Spirit with Robert Hess
The December 1934 edition of Esquire Magazine includes a list of the "Top 10" most popular cocktails. The list starts with an Old Fashioned, and ends with a Daiquiri. The rest of the drinks on the list are reasonably well known. One of them, The Harvest Moon, appears to be MIA for most bartenders. It is described as being a "applejack sour with orgeat".
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Recipe
1 1/2 oz applejack
1/2 oz lime juice
1/2 oz orgeat
Instructions
Shake with ice.
Strain into a cocktail glass.
Blood and Sand Cocktail - The Cocktail Spirit with Robert Hess
In 1922 Rudolph Valentino starred in the movie "Blood and Sand", a movie that shortly before his death in 1926 he declared as the part he liked the best. He had just undergone a touchy surgery for appendicitis and gastric ulcers and told the gathering press "The part I like best was my role in 'Blood and Sand'. If I had died, I would have liked to be remembered as an actor by that role -- I think it my greatest." He died a few days later from peritonitis. It is unknown who actually created the recipe for Blood and Sand, but its first appearance seems to be in "The Savoy Cocktail Book" by Harry Cradock in 1930. There it lists the recipe as equal parts of all three ingredients, but I feel that the recipe works better by boosting the scotch.
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Recipe:
1 1/2 oz blended scotch whisky
3/4 oz sweet vermouth
3/4 oz Cherry Heering
3/4 oz fresh orange juice
Instructions:
Shake with ice.
Strain into a cocktail glass.
Garnish with an orange twist.
Algonquin Cocktail - The Cocktail Spirit with Robert Hess
This cocktail was named after the Algonquin Hotel, which opened its doors in 1902 in one of New York's most fashionable neighborhoods. The hotel gained its greatest fame a few years later as the home of the Algonquin Round Table, the repeating literary lunch in which Alexander Woollcott, Harpo Marx, Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley, and their compatriots held sway on New York's cultural scene. There were in fact several drinks named after this historic venue, but this recipe is the one currently served by the hotel's bartenders.
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Recipe:
1 1/2 oz rye whiskey
3/4 oz dry vermouth
3/4 oz pineapple juice (unsweetened)
Instructions:
Stir with ice (otherwise the pineapple juice will foam!).
Strain into a cocktail glass.
Americano Cocktail - The Cocktail Spirit with Robert Hess
A beautifully simple and refreshing drink, the Americano was popularized by American tourists in Italy in the 1960s. Try one with your antipasto!
1 oz Campari
1 oz Sweet Vermouth
soda
INSTRUCTIONS
Stir Campari and Sweet Vermouth with ice.
Top with soda.
Red Hook Cocktail - A Modern Classic - The Cockaill Spirit wit...
Red Hook Cocktail - A Modern Classic
Beginning with the “Manhattan”, a trend developed of naming cocktails after cities, places, and neighborhoods. In 2004, Vincenzo Errico, while working at Milk & Honey in New York, created a riff on the Manhattan and named it after the “Red Hook” neighborhood in Brooklyn (as opposed to the town of Red Hook, which is also in New York).
Where a Manhattan uses, essentially, any “sweet vermouth”, the Red Hook calls for Punt e Mes, which is a specific brand off vermouth that has a more robust and slightly bitter flavor than your run-of-the-mill sweet vermouth. Maraschino liqueur is added which, while slightly sweet, adds a distinctive funkiness which tends to dry out the drink a little bit.
At one time, both Punt e Mes and Maraschino liqueur were difficult to find, making this drink in 2004 one that only a “craft” cocktail lounge could probably make. Today, both of these ingredients are more readily available, and if a bar doesn’t carry them it is only because they haven’t yet felt the need to.
As a modern classic, the Red Hook is a great contender. For people who like Manhattan’s, this is a great drink to try as an alternative. While the brand of vermouth to use (Punt e Mes) is probably the only one that is specifically important, Vincenzo originally made it using Rittenhouse Rye and Luxardo Maraschino, so you might want to start there if you can, and then see if your favorite rye or maraschino suites your tastes as well or better.
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Cosmopolitan - The Quintessential Modern Classic - The Cocktai...
Originally, the Cosmopolitan was a highly approachable yet still mediocre drink. While it followed the classic “Sour” template (Spirit, Sour, Sweet), it did so using Rose’s lime juice as a souring agent (which also includes a fair amount of sugar) and a generic triple sec as a sweetener. It wasn’t until several years after Cheryl Cook originally created the drink that Dale DeGroff and Toby Cecchini would independently realize the drinks potential and properly update it to use fresh lime juice, and Cointreau. This finally turned it into a drink which was worth taking notice of. It was in this way that the Cosmopolitan entered the annals of “classic cocktails”.
Recipe:
1 1/2 oz citrus vodka
1/2 oz Cointreau
1 oz cranberry juice
1/4 oz fresh lime juice
Instructions:
Shake ingredients with ice.
Strain into a cocktail glass.
Garnish with a flamed orange peel disc.
Simplicity and a perfect balance between tart and sweet, herbal and floral, Joerg Meyer's Gin Basil Smash certainly qualifies as a modern classic. Having won "Best New Cocktail" at the 2008 Tales of the Cocktail Spirited Awards solidifies this gin cocktails place in mixology history.
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Recipe:
handful of fresh basil leaves
2 oz/60 ml Rutte Dry Gin: http://bit.ly/ruttegin
1 oz/30 ml fresh lemon juice
2/3 oz/20 ml simple syrup
Instructions:
Gently muddle the basil to release essential oils.
Add Rutte Gin, lemon juice and simple syrup.
Muddle briefly to combine.
Add ice and shake to chill and dilute.
Double strain over ice into a Old Fashioned or rocks glass.
Garnish with basil leaves and serve with straws.
Cherries in Cocktails - A Proper Garnish for the Little Italy Cocktail
Watch as Robert discusses the differences between neon cherries and real Luxardo USA Maraschino Cherries and makes the delicious Little Italy Cocktail.
Keys to Success: Learn the Foundational Recipes
I think there is probably nothing more important for making truly great cocktails than understanding the “Foundational” cocktail recipes. By taking the time to master those cocktails which represent the basic and classical foundations, you will not only better understand all of the other cocktails which are based on them, but you will be better prepared to experiment with creating your own recipes.
In any culinary school, one of the first things that will be drummed into the students are the classic recipes. In French cooking school specifically, students are carefully taught the foundational sauces. Once you understand these sauces, you can then add additional herbs, spices and other appropriate flavorings to tailor the sauce to the specific needs of the moment.
The cocktail world is no different. The classic cocktails can often be thought of in the same light as the foundational sauces of French cuisine. The recipes I will typically encourage people to master are Old Fashioned, Sazerac, Manhattan, Martini, Whiskey Sour, Sidecar, Margarita, Daiquiri, Negroni, Bloody Mary, and Mai Tai. Even in this list, we have drinks which are based upon one another. The Whiskey Sour, Sidecar, Margarita, and Daiquiri are all very close variations of one another, with the Mai Tai being closely related. So even here, understanding how one of these cocktails is just a slightly different expression of another, and how the flavor profile changes due to those differences, goes a long way in better understanding that style of cocktail in general.
Pre-Chill Your Glassware - Rob Roy Cocktail
Key to Success: Pre-Chill Your Glassware
Have you ever gone to a bar, ordered a drink, and once you picked it up, the glass felt warm? Fine restaurants will typically pre-heat your plates before the meal you ordered is added to them. It only makes sense; if the plates were cold, then it would quickly suck the heat out of any food that was put onto it. It’s called Thermal Transfer. If Thermal Transfer can turn hot food cold, then it only makes sense that it can also turn cold drinks warm as well.
It takes very little effort to pre-chill your glass. The best bars will have specialized glass chillers so that their glassware starts its journey as cold as possible. Even if a glass chiller is more than you can muster, it is easy enough to simply add some ice and a little water to your cocktail glasses before you start mixing up the drink.
- Robert Hess
Double Strain Your Cocktails - Old Cuban Cocktail
Anyone who mixes up a drink knows that an important step is straining the drink into the glass. There are a number of ways to accomplish this, some of them better than others. Every bartender should at least have a hawthorn strainer on hand which fits their mixing glasses and tins. In many cases however, it is also useful to have a small fine-mesh strainer on hand as well. A fine-mesh strainer comes in handy for when you want to “double-strain” your drinks.
Many people always double-strain a shaken cocktail as it will hold back any little ice-shards that result from hard shaking. Some people on the other hand like the little bits of ice that will dot the top of their drink. Double straining can also be used for keeping citrus pulp or pieces of muddle fruit or herbs out of the drink; you don't want little green specks of mint on your teeth!
While not a critical step in preparing great cocktails, double straining is a technique that can help take your cocktails to a finer level of quality.
To demonstrate the double straining technique, I chose to make a Old Cuban Cocktail, first created by Pegu Club owner, Audrey Saunders.
- Robert Hess
Not All Recipes Are Good Recipes - Cosmopolitan Cocktail
Just because you see it in print, doesn’t mean it is a good recipe. Similarly to when good recipes can result in bad drinks, the flip side of that is when a recipe is just flat-out bad to begin with.
One thing that is important for any bartender (or consumer) to realize, is that not all recipes are “good” recipes. This problem is only exacerbated by the plethora of cocktail books that have come out on recent years. Often in an attempt to differentiate themselves, they go to great lengths to try to publish recipes that other books haven’t used. This can sometimes mean they are either dredging up long forgotten recipes that should never have existed in the first place, or trying to create new recipes through what often appears to be little more than a random recipe generator.
There are several ways that recipes can go bad. The typical bad recipe will start with a failure to understand the fundamentals the make for a good cocktail. There are several facets to this, which include: using quality ingredients, proper proportions of ingredients, proper usage of ingredients, and proper methodologies of making the drink. All of these are due to trying to create a new cocktail recipe before you should. Next there is just being downright sloppy with how a recipe is communicated, and leaving too much up to the imagination of the reader. And probably the biggest reason for bad recipes out there, is that many times the creator is more interested in making a drink that is “good enough” to get somebody drunk on, and not “great enough” for somebody to enjoy.
NOTE: In this video, when describing the “original” Cosmopolitan, I forget to mention the defining ingredient of the drink, the cranberry juice!
NOTE #2: And if you are interested in a “random recipe generator”, you’ll get a kick out of The Mixilator by Ted “Dr. Cocktail” Haigh. It attempts to randomly produce cocktail recipes (and names!) by loosely using the cocktail structures described by David Embury in his book “The
Product Choice is Important - The Sidecar Cocktail
I recall one of the first times I went to the liquor store to “stock my liquor cabinet”. It was a tad daunting to try to make sense of all of the different bottles of booze and understand what I was needing. And the price range, wow! At the time, I didn’t really have any true knowledge of brands and quality variations, but I knew enough to realize that just because there might be a brand that I had heard of through their marketing efforts, didn’t necessarily mean it was a good product. Since there were several different products I needed to buy, and a budget to deal with, the $20+ products became less and less appealing. Knowing that with wines, price wasn’t really a useful measure of the quality, I assumed the same could be true with spirits, and so I tried to be selective on finding “bargain” priced bottles. At first, I thought it was just the recipes I was using which were making my cocktails lackluster. Thankfully I did the right thing when it came time to replace a depleted bottle, I intentionally bought a different brand, and since I only needed to buy one or two on this visit, I was able to buy something a little more expensive. My cocktails quickly improved.
This isn’t to say that all of the good spirit choices have to be expensive ones. There are lower-cost products that you can use which can make cocktails as good, if not better than, their costlier counterparts. And sometimes, even if a more expensive product will make a better cocktail, is the difference noticeable enough to warrant the expense?
Courvoisier, is a great cognac. Their VSOP costs, say $45 per bottle, but their VS is more like $25. A sidecar made with the VSOP will be a better drink, but will it be twice as good? If you were to compare them side by side, you’d probably pick the VSOP as the better drink, but you’d still really enjoy the VS as well. So in this case there is nothing wrong with going with the less expensive Courvoisier VS.
Cointreau is a triple sec, and most recipes for a Sid
Sour Mix: Just Say No
Sour Mix: Just Say No.
As the saying goes, when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. For bartenders, that “hammer” can come in the form of “sour mix”.
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For sour style cocktails (such as Daiquiri, Margarita, Sidecar, Cosmopolitan, etc.), the proper balance between sweet and sour is important to achieve. You can add just a quarter ounce too much tart citrus juice to a cocktail and send it over the cliff. So imagine the value of getting that “just right” balance ahead of time, in bulk, and then being able to turn out well-balanced drinks that much quicker, without having to be as concerned about getting the recipe right. One of the problems of course is that not all sour style cocktails are created equal. Even a great sour mix, made from scratch, won’t work well in multiple recipes.
Probably the only time that a sour mix “batch” is appropriate, is for a catering type of operation or event. This would be where you either know you are going to be slammed all night with people ordering a specific cocktail, or you have to use untrained staff. In such a situation you can have the “right” sour mix for the couple of drinks you’ll be offering, make it easier for untrained staff to get the recipe right, and take a little less time doing it.
Sour mix was not created as a cocktail ingredient, but as a cocktail shortcut. The next time you see a recipe that calls for “sour mix”, realize that you will be far better off looking for another recipe.
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Daiquiri Recipe:
2 oz white rum
3/4 oz fresh lime juice
3/4 oz simple syrup
Instructions:
Shake ingredients with ice.
Strain in
Bamboo Cocktail
There are several accounts of the origins of the Bamboo Cocktail. One claims the name comes from Bob Cole's 1902 hit song "Under the Bamboo Tree". William Boothby, a noted bartender of the day, says in his 1908 book "The World's Drinks" that the drink was created and named by Louis Eppinger, at the Grand Hotel in Yokohama, Japan. Either way, this is a cocktail that contains no base spirit that we think you will enjoy.
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Recipe:
1 1/2 ounces dry vermouth
1 1/2 ounces dry sherry
1 dash Bitter Truth Aromatic Bitters: http://bit.ly/19xaUUA
1 dash Bitter Truth Orange Bitters: http://bit.ly/12LONFs
Instructions:
Stir with ice and strain into a cocktail glass.
Garnish with an orange twist.
Source: Louis Eppinger (~1890)
Deshler Cocktail - The Cocktail Spirit with Robert Hess
Bitters are a hot topic here on Small Screen. Many of our viewers have written in with various questions about bitters and their use. In this episode, Robert addresses a question from Ian about the interchangeability of bitters and then makes a forgotten classic that is a variation on the Manhattan Cocktail, the Deshler.
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Recipe:
1 1/2 oz rye whiskey
1 oz Dubonett
1/4 oz Cointreu
2 dashes Bitter Truth Creole Bitters: http://bit.ly/1eKKoF1
large orange zest
large lemon zest
Instructions:
Stir all ingredients with ice.
Strain into a cocktail coupe.
Garnish with an orange twist.
Jack Rose Cocktail - The Cocktail Spirit with Robert Hess
There are various origin stories of the Jack Rose Cocktail. Some attribute it to a colorful and slightly nefarious individual named Jack Rose, others to Joseph Rose a Newark bartender who once held the title of “World Champion Mixologist”. Another story has the cocktail named after the Jacquemot Rose varietal because of its color. Regardless of its origins, it is probably the most popular cocktail which uses Applejack.
For the full recipe and instructions, watch this video on Small Screen: http://www.smallscreennetwork.com/video/719/cocktail_spirit_jack_rose/
Caesar Cocktail - The Cocktail Spirit with Robert Hess
The Caesar Cocktail was apparently invented in 1969 by Walter Chell, the restaurant manager of the Calgary Inn in Alberta, Canada and is essentially a Bloody Mary using Clamato juice instead of tomato juice. Chell supposedly spent three months perfecting the drink, ending up with the simple 1-2-3-4 recipe. This drink is very popular in Canada; at one point there was a movement to make it the national drink there!
For the full recipe and instructions, watch on Small Screen: http://www.smallscreennetwork.com/video/706/cocktail_spirit_caesar/
