rocks. Many people can’t tolerate a Negroni after it starts to warm up. If a drink can’t tolerate watering, like a martini, serve smaller portions up, and don’t let them sit around.
When I serve a drink on the rocks, I actually serve it on the rock—a single large cube, inefficient enough not to dilute my drink too quickly but efficient enough to keep it pleasantly cool.
HOW COLD IS TOO COLD? MANHATTANS VERSUS NEGRONIS
Temperature dramatically affects the way a drink tastes. Some drinks completely fall apart when they are chilled too much, including most drinks with aged and oaked spirits, like the Manhattan. Other drinks can be chilled quite deeply without losing their appeal but go out of whack when they get too warm, like the Negroni. In this last stirring experiment, you’ll make two Negronis and two Manhattans at different initial temperatures and compare them as they warm up.
INGREDIENTS FOR 2 DRINKS OF EACH TYPE MANHATTANS
MAKES TWO 41/3–OUNCE (129-ML) DRINKS AT 27% ALCOHOL BY VOLUME, 3.4 G/100 ML SUGAR, 0.12% ACID
4 ounces (120 ml) Rittenhouse rye (50% alcohol by volume)
Fat 3⁄4 ounces (53 ml) fine sweet vermouth (16.5% alcohol by volume) 4 dashes Angostura bitters
2 brandied cherries or orange twists NEGRONIS
MAKES TWO 41/4-OUNCE (127-ML) DRINKS AT 27% ALCOHOL BY VOLUME, 9.4 G/100 ML SUGAR, 0.14% ACID
2 ounces (60 ml) gin 2 ounces (60 ml) Campari
2 ounces (60 ml) sweet vermouth 2 orange twists
EQUIPMENT 4 metal shaking tins 4 piles of ice
2 hawthorn or julep strainers 4 coupe glasses
Freezer PROCEDURE
Mix the rye, vermouth, and bitters together, then divide the mix into two equal
volumes. Do the same with the gin, Campari and vermouth. Stir one of the Manhattans and one of the Negronis for about 15 seconds with similar quantities of ice, strain them into covered containers, and carefully place them and the coupe glasses into the freezer for 1 hour, during which time their temperature should drop by 5° or 10° C.
Now stir the second Manhattan and the second Negroni, strain them into coupes, pull the first two coupes out of the freezer, and give all four drinks their garnishes. Taste them. At this point, both Negronis should taste great: they are both in their prime serving zone. The Manhattans should be a different story. The fresh one should be round and inviting. The one from the freezer should, by comparison, taste flat and closed, with too much oak. Keep tasting over the next 20 minutes or so. You will notice that as they warm up, the freezer Manhattan becomes your favorite Manhattan, while the “fresh” one remains a decent-tasting drink. The freezer Negroni will remain
a good drink, while the fresh one will become increasingly difficult to drink.
UPSHOT: Temperature is an important ingredient in your drinks, and colder isn’t necessarily better. Almost all stirred drinks are in their prime between −5°C (23°F) and −1°C (30°F), while some drinks can stand being warmer and some colder.
After you stir a Negroni and a Manhattan, put them in the freezer for a couple hours. Then taste them next to the same drinks, but just stirred. Keep tasting all four as they warm up. This will give you an idea of how different drinks respond to temperature changes.
Built Drinks: The Old-Fashioned
You make a built drink by pouring it over ice in its serving glass and giving it a quick stir. These are the least-diluted cocktails. The old-fashioned is the prototypical built drink, a simple concoction of whiskey, bitters, and sugar garnished with a twist. Like many simple things, the old-fashioned is a study in nuance. With so few ingredients, each one makes a big impact. Order up an old-fashioned and you’ll have a good indication of your barkeep’s sensibilities. (For a history of the old-fashioned, and some lengthy arguments about its proper contents, see Further Reading, here.)
The best way to make an old-fashioned is not necessarily the way that’s most original or “authentic” but rather the way you like it best. I use simple syrup instead of granulated sugar—anathema to many. The only old-fashioned rule you must adhere to:
produce a minimally diluted sipping drink that isn’t too sweet and that tastes heavily of its base spirit. While I’m all for doing what makes you happy, don’t put smashed fruit into the bottom of your drink and call it an old-fashioned. Smash your fruit and name the drink something else! Let us proceed with a variant I particularly enjoy.
Building the Cliff Old-Fashioned
The Cliff Old-Fashioned is named for my friend Clifford Guilibert. Cliff and I were making coriander soda for an event. Coriander soda is similar to ginger ale, refreshing and spicy, giving a hint of warmth to the back of the throat. After making a batch of syrup for the soda, Cliff suggested we use it in an old-fashioned. Brilliant idea!
THE DRINK
INGREDIENTS
MAKES ONE 3-OUNCE (90-ML) DRINK AT 32% ALCOHOL BY VOLUME, 7.7 G/100 ML SUGAR, 0% ACID
One 2-inch-by-2-inch clear ice cube 2 dashes Angostura bitters
2 ounces (60 ml) Elijah Craig 12-year bourbon (47% alcohol by volume) You can use the bourbon of your choice, but choose one with lots of
backbone that isn’t too expensive. If you are made of cash, use anything you want. The best Cliff Old-Fashioned I ever made was for a charity event using Hibiki 12-year-old Japanese whiskey. We made two hundred of them that night. At $70 for a 750 ml bottle, those were some spendy drinks, but I wasn’t paying.
3⁄8 ounce (11 ml) Coriander Syrup (recipe follows) The syrup is the nontraditional aspect of this old-fashioned. You could use regular 1:1
simple syrup to make a more typical version. Many purists use granulated or cubed sugar and crush the sugar with the bitters—they like the graininess, and the fact that the sugar level evolves over time. I don’t.
Orange twist EQUIPMENT
One double old-fashioned glass, at room temperature Straw or short mixing rod (optional)
PROCEDURE FOR A SIMPLE DRINK IN EXCRUCIATING DETAIL I don’t build old-fashioneds in chilled glasses. An unchilled glass represents a
relatively large thermal mass at room temperature. When you make a drink in a glass at room temperature, you have to melt a good bit of ice to chill the glass down to the temperature of the drink. This extra bit of melting adds to the initial dilution of the drink, which I like. You can overcome this by stirring the drink more after you build it, but then the initial drink will be colder, which I don’t like. Also, while chilled glasses look great when they are fresh, they attract condensation and don’t look good on a drink like the old-fashioned, which is meant to be sipped.
Fine points like this—whether to chill a glass or not—are all a matter of personal preference. Chill your glasses or don’t, but understand the consequences.
Some bartenders build their drink directly into the glass before they add the rock, allowing them to stir the ingredients with a spoon to mix without diluting. If you work this way, you should use the time-honored practice of adding ingredients from
cheapest to most expensive. Adding the cheap stuff first means you don’t throw away the good stuff if you make a mistake while you are measuring. Almost all professionals work this way, even though they rarely make mistakes while jiggering.
The disadvantage of adding the ice last: you have to get a large, ungainly rock into the glass smoothly without splashing, and you have to know in advance that your rock is a good partner for your glass. I prefer to add the rock to the glass before the liquid so I can be certain the rock looks good in the glass. Your large, hand-cut ice cube should be given due respect. Put the ice cube into your double old-fashioned glass. Make sure the ice fits in the glass and reaches to the bottom. A rock that doesn’t touch the bottom of the glass is an abomination. If the ice doesn’t fit properly, spin it with a spoon, and the corners should melt, allowing the ice to reach the bottom. If the cube is really too big, knock the corners off with a knife first.
If you work this way—ice first—you have two drink-building options: build the drink in a mixing tin and stir to incorporate the ingredients before pouring them over the rock, or build the drink directly on the rock. Although the mixing glass is undoubtedly superior from a technical point of view, I actually prefer to build over the rock—it’s just an aesthetically enjoyable process. Be sure not to splash the ingredients on the rock; that looks foolish. Work in this order: 2 dashes of bitters, then whiskey, then Coriander Syrup; you put the least dense ingredient in first so the denser ones will auto-mix when they pass through them. Stir the drink for about 5 seconds, then express (that is, quickly wring) the orange rind over the top of the drink and wipe the rim of the glass with it. Drop the twist into the drink if you want to continue adding aroma while you’re drinking. It is shocking how much a difference adding versus discarding the peel makes; experiment side-by-side to see for yourself. Do not underestimate the effect of the twist. Try to make all your peels identical and try to express them the same way, so your drinks are consistent over time.
BUILDING AN OLD-FASHIONED: 1) If your ice doesn’t fit your glass just spin it in. 2) A rock in an un- chilled glass. 3) Dash in the bitters. 4) Add the base spirit. 5) Add the syrup. 6) Give a brief stir. 7) Express the orange peel over the drink. 8) Hold the peel stationary against the inside rim of the glass, then suavely rotate the glass against the peel and release.
HERE IS THE CORIANDER SYRUP RECIPE:
INGREDIENTS
125 grams coriander seeds, preferably with a fresh, citrusy aroma (for soda syrup, reduce to 100 grams)
550 grams filtered water 500 grams granulated sugar 5 grams salt
10 grams crushed red pepper PROCEDURE
Blend the coriander seeds and water in a blender for several seconds until the seeds are well broken. Transfer the mixture to a saucepan, add the sugar and salt, and heat over medium heat until it is simmering. Stir in the crushed red pepper. Turn off the heat and keep tasting until the spiciness from the pepper becomes apparent at the back of your throat when you taste the syrup. (It is impossible to quantify this part of the recipe because batches of crushed red pepper vary so widely.) Quickly strain the mixture through a coarse strainer to prevent further infusion, then pass it through a muslin cloth or fine chinois.
To use this syrup for soda, make the version with slightly less coriander (unless you want a version with as much punch as a ginger beer) and use 1 part syrup to 4 parts water before carbonating (or use 4 parts soda water). Garnish with lime or,
preferably, clarified lime juice (see here).
Properly made, this syrup should have a Brix of 50, meaning it should be 50 percent sugar by weight, the same as regular simple syrup. The extra 50 grams of water in the recipe are absorbed by the coriander seed. At the bar we use a refractometer to
correct the sugar level.
MAKING CORIANDER SYRUP: 1) Blend the coriander and water. 2) Add the blended mix to a pot with sugar and 3) heat to a simmer. 4) Add crushed red pepper and keep tasting for adequate spiciness. 5) Quickly strain the syrup. I use two strainers—coarse inside of fine. 6) The finished product.
The last decision you need to make is whether to put a stir rod in the drink. The stir rod lets your guest add extra dilution quickly if he or she desires. Bars often use straws for stir rods because they are cheap, not because they want you to drink through them. If you go for the rod, avoid straws! They constantly move around and threaten eyes. Use the glass or metal variety, and always give your drinker a napkin on which to place it when it’s no longer useful.
Made according to my instructions, the Cliff Old-Fashioned should have a volume of 3 ounces (90 ml). Of that 3 ounces, 5⁄8 ounce (19 ml, or 20%) will be water from melted ice dilution. The alcohol by volume as served will be roughly 31%—in other words, stiff.
Take a sip. The drink should be cool but not frigid. A frigid old-fashioned loses its character. Let the drink sit and observe it without touching. After a while you should see a layer of watery liquid forming around the large ice cube. Notice there is very little mixing of the meltwater with the drink, and all changes happen slowly. Give a slight swirl to the glass to mix the meltwater with the cocktail and sip again to taste the difference. The Cliff should be cooler now and not as intense because of the added dilution, but it will still be balanced. If you constantly swirl the glass, the ice will melt much faster, as fresh meltwater is transported away from the cube and a fresh layer of alcohol is presented to the cube. Don’t overswirl: you want slow change, which is why you need a big ice cube and a lot of time. Let the drink rest a couple of minutes between sips so you can see how it evolves over time. That’s the point of this experiment (one you will likely want to repeat): to see how a drink can stay balanced for a long time over a range of temperatures and dilutions. A good old-fashioned made with one big ice cube will be pleasurable for at least 20 minutes as it slowly waters down.
Remember, the essence of any built drink is slow change over time. Built drinks should start really boozy—they are sipping drinks, not pounders. After they sit awhile and become more watered down, they become more refreshing and whet the palate for another round. Keeping in mind that built drinks must stay balanced over a large range of dilutions, we can lay out some simple rules that will help you evaluate recipes and devise your own:
• Choose liquors that taste good over a wide range of dilutions. Some
spirits are too rough to function well when they aren’t diluted a lot; these are not good candidates for built drinks. Other liquors taste great out of the
bottle but fall apart when diluted past a certain point; avoid them.
• Avoid acids. The flavors and tartness of acidic ingredients such as lemon and lime do not maintain their balance when they are diluted. A properly balanced mix of ethanol and sugar can stay in harmony as water is added or taken away, but acid doesn’t work that way. Acids used for tartness can be properly used only in drinks with a fixed dilution.
• Brighten a built drink with essential oils instead. Lemon, orange, and grapefruit twists work well.
• Take advantage of bitters. Bitters are designed to taste good over an absurd range of dilutions and to join the other flavors of the cocktail together without overpowering them.
• Take the time to make big ice cubes. If you have a lot of time and energy, make or buy fancy clear presentation cubes.
Blended Drinks and Shaved Drinks: The Margarita
I know, I know. A proper margarita is a shaken cocktail served up in a coupe with or without a rim of salt . . . but many people enjoy a blender margarita, including me. A properly made blended drink is a wondrous thing. And yes, there is a trick to them.
A blender full of ice is an extremely efficient chilling machine. It will get your drink colder and more diluted more quickly than almost any other technology.
Blenders break ice into very fine particles, increasing the surface area tremendously, and they spin very fast, providing large movement of cocktail across the ice. I don’t use blenders at the bar because they are loud. I use something better: an ice shaver.
Like the blender, an ice shaver will produce very fine ice crystals. Unlike a blender, the ice shaver doesn’t agitate your drink. With a little stirring, shaved-ice drinks are almost identical to blended drinks in terms of dilution and chilling. While blenders, especially inexpensive ones, tend to leave unblended chunks of ice in your drink, the ice shaver makes beautifully uniform pieces. Manual cast-iron ice shavers like the one I use are blessedly silent and pleasing to look at. That said, blenders work fine at home, so don’t feel compelled to give up counter space to a shaver unless you have more space than you know what to do with. Shaved-ice and blender recipes can be swapped back and forth.
Shaken drink recipes cannot be used directly in a blender. Blend a standard shaken recipe and the result will be unbalanced—overtart, undersweet, and overdiluted. You can balance a drink recipe for a blender by adding more sugar and less acid. Fixing the dilution is more difficult. Most shaken drink recipes just have too much liquid in them to blend well. What to do? Reduce the liquid!