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 About this time of year I start longing for the Gin Basil Smash, but my basil is just barely getting started. My mint, on the other hand, gets established quickly, and sometimes I even have some left over from Derby Day. What to do? Make the Southside cocktail! It’s a delicious summer drink that helps you forget about your basil for a while, and it’s perfect for warm weather.
The first thing you are going to notice, besides the fact that we are using fresh mint, is that this is another gin drink. By now, you should realize that a good share of classic cocktails, or at least a significant portion that come from the Prohibition era, are made with gin. That’s because gin was about the easiest spirit bootleggers could make—it is a basic maceration of botanicals and it requires no barrel aging. Some cocktails were created in
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  This week’s Drink Of The Week is the Mint Julep. With Derby Day just around the corner and a spring that started early in the midwest, it’s time to get your mint in the ground. Even if it wont be ready by Sunday, there will be plenty of oppurtunity for you to use mint in cocktails this summer. In the mean time, pick up some fresh mint at the grocery store and I’ll show you how to make this delicious classic.
The Mint Julep is probably the oldest cocktail there is. Today, it’s a southern tradition that has been popular for centuries, and it’s also the official drink of the Kentucky Derby. That’s because the Julep we know is usually made with delicious Kentucky Bourbon, but it wasn’t always so.
Early accounts of the Julep represent this drink as a medicinal libation, or more specifically, a vehicle for its delivery. That’s not unusual as classics go, and neither is the evolution of the recipe. The word julep comes from the Persian, golab, which means rose water. There are early recipes based on gin and brandy with the first appearance in print in 1803 without a specific spirit mentioned. However, most of us today think of the Mint Julep as a bourbon cocktail, and that’s what I am sharing here:
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  Whether you are a seasoned professional or someone just getting interested in mixology, I highly encourage you to check out the BarSmarts™ program. Led by the famed team of partners of Beverage Alcohol Resource (BAR), LLC, Dale DeGroff, Doug Frost, Steve Olson, F. Paul Pacult, Andy Seymour and David Wondrich, BarSmarts™ was designed exclusively for Pernod Ricard USA and aims to deliver the most comprehensive spirits and mixology education available.
Summit Sips is Now Certified
I just completed the BarSmarts™ WIRED certification course and I thought I’d write a few words about this program. First of all, I have always been curious about bartender certification and I have a lot of respect for everyone in the trade that can successfully navigate a busy night behind the stick. Managing customers several bodies deep, staying on top of wait staff orders and keeping track of tabs and cash transactions—all while maintaining a watch on customer behavior and consumption—seems like a hectic environment to make a buck. It can be a lot to handle and comes with some serious legal and economic responsibility since the bar is often the primary revenue stream for both restaurants and drinking establishments.
Not long ago, A friend of mine completed a state-certified bartending program and felt that it was lacking in many ways. That program focused on speed, efficient technique and drink recipe memorization rather than history, product knowledge, and creativity. Although I recognize a business’s need to move product and to do so in a way that gets the job done quickly, safely and economically, I was more interested in understanding spirits, how products are made, how they compare, why one might cost more than another, the importance of fresh ingredients, how to balance flavor, and most importantly—how to build a delicious cocktail, be it a classic or a contemporary riff. This focus on quality and ingredients was much more important to me than learning how to accurately free-pour.
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  It’s one thing to be able to make this drink, but it’s something else to be able to pronounce it! For those of you who don’t speak Portuguese, we are making a kai-peer-EEN-ya this week. And if that wasn’t challenging enough, the base spirit in this drink is called cachaça, which is pronounced kah-SHA-sah. Even if you have trouble saying these words, you won’t have any problem making the cocktail. It’s one of the easiest drinks to make and you don’t even need a shaker.
The Caipirinha is the national drink of Brazil and it is common throughout that country. In the U.S. it’s growing in popularity. I really enjoy this drink because it is so easy to make, having only a base spirit, limes and sugar. Categorically, this a sour like others we have seen, but the preparation of this drink also puts it in the smash category.
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  This past week I wrote about the Whiskey Sour, a classic recipe that, if prepared properly, exhibits a lusciously smooth mouth-feel and a wonderful foamy head—not to mention an important balance of sweet and sour. There is another style of cocktail that is very close to the same drink, but it employs a slightly different method of preparation. The Whiskey Smash is essentially a Whiskey Sour when it comes to the primary ingredients, but because of how they are used, the result is a slightly different animal.
I think it’s worth trying this drink even if you are happy with the Whiskey Sour. For one thing, it skips the egg white in favor of a different flavor profile that emphasizes the essential oils in the lemon peel. This version also includes spearmint which adds another dimension to the drink. If nothing else, making a Smash instead of a Sour introduces you to another cocktail style and allows you to taste and see the difference when the ingredients are so similar.
You may recall an article I posted this past fall that featured the Gin Basil Smash. That drink is a summer favorite of mine, so if you liked that, your gonna love this:
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  For some people it’s a burden and for others it’s a joy—that time of the year when everyone is expected to exchange gifts. Whether or not you enjoy the holiday season there is one thing most of us agree upon: how frustrating it can be to try to come up with good gift ideas. Sure, there’s amazing and expensive technology out there with plenty of fun gadgets that will be obsolete by this time next year, but how about a more traditional approach? Why not give a gift that will inspire or will teach, or will assist? I’m talking about useful gifts for the mixologist in your family.
A Shopping List
I’ve written before about using good tools and technique with an emphasis on making the most of what you already own. That’s fine for the rest of the year, but this is the perfect time to consider items that can help elevate your mixologist’s skills and abilities so they (and you) can enjoy even better cocktails in the coming year. These suggestions are in no particular order, and some of the best resources for buying these items are listed at the end:
- Boston Shaker – It has to be the most useful tool for the home imbiber. The Boston Shaker is what almost every professional bartender uses to mix cocktails. It’s comprised of a large, 28 ounce metal tin and a 16 ounce pint glass. This simple tool will have your mixologist shaking in no time! They are easy to clean and usually very inexpensive. What’s that you say? They already have a 3-piece (cobbler style) cocktail shaker? Get them a Boston Shaker anyway—trust me—they will be glad you did. A 3-piece shaker might look convenient, but they are messy, they don’t seal (or don’t come apart!) and they are often just more clumsy than they need to be. Since the Boston Shaker is so cheap, you’ll want to add:
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  You can do it. I know you can, because I believe anyone can, provided they understand that the best cocktails consist of two basic elements:
- Great ingredients
- Great technique—with the equipment you have
You won’t resolve yourself to mediocrity once you realize that you’re not required to own a multitude of special tools to get the job done. Of course, using top-shelf products and fancy equipment to build your cocktails can make things easier, faster and better—but getting good results using what’s available is always the goal.
Is great technique a substitute for great ingredients?
No. As you’ll see, proper technique is closely tied to the equipment you are using, and rarely can it replace or mask a substitution or omission. Ingredients and technique are equally important, and as you face inevitable limits due to budget, space or availability, you’ll need to understand how to use what you have and make the most of it.
Great Ingredients
There’s no question that what you put into something has the greatest effect on what comes out. It’s the same with cooking a gourmet dinner. When it comes to making cocktails, there are some things you cannot substitute. Fresh citrus is definitely one of them. Don’t use the sweetened bottled lime juice available at the liquor store. Also, don’t bother with bottled lemon juice thinking you are saving time. It just doesn’t make sense when you can grab a few lemons and limes at the local market any day of the week. Besides, fruit is almost drink sized! Cut and squeeze only what you need for a drink or two. You won’t be wasting anything, and the fresh peel will often end up as a cocktail garnish, so you need to get the fruit anyway.
Some spirits cannot be substituted either. Chartreuse and Benedictine, for example, are totally unique, as are plenty of others. Yet, there are some liqueurs that can be replaced, such as subbing triple sec for Cointreau, with very little affect on the outcome. It could also be argued that light rums are similar enough, or that vodka should be flavorless anyway. Just remember that if a recipe calls for one brand, it’s usually because another might not contain some subtle flavor characteristic that is important in the cocktail. When in doubt, ask someone who knows the drink and they can suggest alternatives.
Don’t skip the bitters! You may not think a drink that calls for just a dash Angostura even needs something so tiny in the first place, but skipping the bitters is like not salting your soup. Don’t worry,
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 One thing I look forward to every spring is my own fresh herbs. I can’t wait to get my mint planted, my rosemary, thyme, basil and the rest. But by the time September rolls around, I start to wonder what I can do with all of these big healthy plants. If you’re like me, you have been pinching off the flowers on your basil plants all summer long. Just as soon as I see it start to grow those odd little flower tips, I pull them off and let the plant branch out. The leaves just keep doubling, and new tips want to flower again—so again, I pinch it off. This goes on all summer, building an incredibly full basil plant with more leaves than I can use. So, now that the summer is ending, what am I going to do with all of this basil?
Throw A Cocktail Party
Last year, an elegant bar called Le Lion – Bar de Paris, in Hamburg, Germany started serving a drink called the Gin Basil Smash. Now, I know what you might be thinking: “oh no, it’s a gin drink.” So maybe you are not a gin drinker, but perhaps you are at least a vodka drinker. Do I still have you? Good. Now, did you know that gin starts its life as vodka? It’s true. And you do like infused vodka, right? So, here’s the thing about gin. By law, gin has to be flavored with at least juniper berries, but most gins also include other herbal ingredients. Some even have cucumber and rose petals! The point is that if you object to juniper, you may need to try a good gin in a mixed drink. That’s because the infused elements of gin help to elevate the other flavors in a mix, making a drink so incredible that you don’t even realize that it’s gin.
Case in point: the Gin Basil Smash. This has to be one of my favorite summer refreshers.
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