The Improved Sidecar; Or, This Is Not a Brandy Crusta скачать в хорошем качестве

The Improved Sidecar; Or, This Is Not a Brandy Crusta

My palate is still a mess, and since I can't really do reviews I thought I'd record yet another cocktail video (to follow up on the mai tai one at    • Two Mai Tais   and the marcgarita one at    • BONUS CONTENT: The Marcgarita!!   ). Skip to 9:00 for the actual cocktailing part; review video on Friday, I promise! I know the sipping/reviewing crowd is only supposed to cocktail with the Old Fashioned if anything at all, but with the weather in Chicago being particularly hot and miserable this summer it's the "sour" variations that have made me rediscover how rewarding mixed drinks can be. But then there's one classic sour I've never gotten along with, namely the Sidecar. It's brandy, lemon, orange liqueur, and that's all, and I've always found it fiendishly difficult to balance: it's always just too sour or not sour enough, too sweet or not sweet enough, etc.. Now enter the modern "Brandy Crusta," supposedly a return to the ancestor of said Sidecar. Google it and you'll find myriad variations on basically the same specs, all featuring the brandy, lemon, and orange liqueur that you'll find in a sidecar but also including some amount of maraschino and Angostura bitters, then throwing the blend in a wine glass with a sugared rim and a really, really long strip of lemon peel. A quick glance at the specs makes it sound like what the Sidecar always needed, namely a bit more nuance to kick it into line. And it works! The problem is, if we're going to be strict then it isn't really a Brandy Crusta. Go back and read page 52 of Jerry Thomas' canonical 1862 book "How to Mix Drinks" (https://www.google.com/books/edition/... ), where the Brandy Crusta first appears - and then flip back a few pages to read about the Fancy Brandy Cocktail and then the Brandy Cocktail, which it refers back to. You'll quickly notice that the modern version is radically different in its proportions and ingredients: along with his 1 wine-glass of brandy, Thomas calls for only 1 or 2 dashes of "Curaçoa" and "a little" lemon juice rather than half an ounce or more of each, it's gum syrup and "Bogart's" (Boker's) bitters rather than simple and Angostura, and the maraschino is nowhere to be seen. In fact the use of maraschino and Ango more closely resembles what Thomas' second (1887) edition calls the "Improved" Cocktail (see http://www.cocktailsandbars.com/the-i... for a quotation of that original recipe, or just buy the darn book; you've more than likely seen that recipe around too, as Improved Whiskey Cocktails have also become popular in recent years). So it's maybe not as historically accurate as the hype may suggest. But the basic structure of the modern "Brandy Crusta" still makes sense: think of it less as a Jerry Thomas 1862-era Brandy Crusta "adjusted" for modern tastes, more as a contemporary Sidecar with an Improved Cocktail dropped in to balance it out and the nifty retro sugared rim/long lemon strip garnish added for show and nostalgia. And it's still a hell of a good cocktail. But the complex garnishing and somewhat dubious claims to historical continuity are just too damn complicated for my purposes, which are to make something nice to get through the Chicago summer. So let's keep the core idea - combining the difficult and often unbalanced Sidecar with the extra details and aromatics of the Improved Cocktail - while dropping the rest. Behold, then, the Improved Sidecar: 2 oz brandy 3/4 oz lemon juice 1/2 oz Curaçao-style orange liqueur (here Grand Marnier) 1 tsp/barspoon simple syrup 1/4 oz maraschino liqueur 2 to 3 dashes of bitters (I use Peychaud's, Angostura et al is fine too) (optional) 1 dash of absinthe Rub the rim of a stemless wine glass (or whatever) with your lemon husk; combine all ingredients, shake with ice, and strain into your glass; drop in a small piece of expressed lemon peel. In this video I do two of these, with different bases: one is a split of 1 3/4 oz Cobra Fire Evil Force and 1/4 Demonio de los Andes Albilla (reviewed at    • Cog/Armag/nac: Fillioux N. 83, Pomès-Pébér...   and    • A Peruvian Pisco Pageant: Barsol Acholado ...   respectively), and the other - my favorite - is Off Premise's Copper & Kings Pear Brandy pick (reviewed at    • Pear Brandies On Oak: Peach Street XO, Hub...   ). The basic structure of this recipe seems friendly to all manner of aged brandies, so have fun. Extra special thanks to my Different Spirits on Patreon (  / differentspirits  ) - Anthony Kingsbury bushcraft Rob D Steve Frazee John Halliday Jason Newquist Matthew Ruiz RumSquirrel Dallas Shatel Chris Sherman Gordon W Zach W