Welcome to Common Man Cocktails, this week we’re going to do something a little different, a little out of the ordinary. It’s the season around North America and other areas where there’s cold, maybe Siberia. You might be thinking, you know what, a tropical drink just isn’t for me, I'm at a lodge I'm sitting by a roaring fire, you just came back from skiing or watching a patch game and you’re freezing. So we decided to do is what’s called a Hot Toddy, let’s take this off.
So, it’s going to use a non-traditional glass, it’s not any type of alcohol glass, it’s really just think, a coffee mug. We chose clear so that you could see all the actions just happening in front of you. We also want to try a little brandy and the trick here is that a Hot Tony can be a generic term used for anything, Irish Coffees, meaning it doesn’t have the alcohol. What we want to do now is to find the Hot Toddy, the way that we figured out how it’s supposed to be made.
There’s going to be two ingredients, really it’s going to be brandy, some honey. This time we’re going to go with the Agave Nectar. We have honey, but what I found is that the honey mix, it’s super sweet, the Agave Nectar is sweet but not too sweet and the rather have the expensive whole cloves, this is like 11.99 for whole cloves. So really if you’re going to invest in making Hot Toddy, plan to make a lot of them. And for our stirrer, we’re going to use cinnamon sticks, kind of Christmasy? And the secret super main ingredient is just kind of like a lemon, it’s not really that fancy.
Now there’s a trick to the lemon. Let’s get started, we’ll show you how to build out the lemon and then we’ll get the ingredients in here. We’re missing one key ingredient, it’s hot water. We could use tea, you could use anything that fits the season, but we’re going to go with hot water because the ingredients here, we want to keep them wholesome without tainting them yet with another flavor. So let’s get started, we’ll show you how to do this.
First we’re going to decorate the lemon. What we’ll do is we’re going to stick these cloves. Now if you’ve ever seen somebody smoking cloves, same thing, this just smells like that, the cloves’ smell. What we did ahead of time besides cut the wedge, is we put two slices in each side, right down the side here, and the reason is we got to poke these little guys, use these tiny little things in here. And if you don’t pre-slice it, even when you do it’s a pain. Stick that right in there, there’s one. Now if I could find out where I sliced it, and make sure to put like little markers on it; there’s two, now it’s nice and pretty, this is a little stab little closer right in there. It’s going to add the final taste to it and we’ll do the sugars last. Put the lemon into the drink, it looks great. Toss in some brandy, we’re going to do one ounce of brandy, small cups, so you don’t want to overdo it, just let it sit right into that lemon slice.
Now we’re going to do one ounce of the Agave Nectar. It seems like a lot, Agave Nectar actually isn’t too bad. When you go and you do this with honey, you’re going to find it taste a long time to get it out of this container, but this strip is pretty smooth. It’s not as sticky and it’s not as sweet. So there’s advantages to that. If you like super, super sweet drinks, try the honey. Not a big fan, I like it but it was not as good when I did the tests. So what we’ll do is pour some water in there, now it got to be a hot. You don’t want it to be too, too hot, well I guess you just let it cool before you drink it. That if you’re making a drink you want to be able to drink it, you don’t want it to be scalding hot. There you go, looks kind of like tea, do some stirring here. It takes a little while to stir it because you got the Agave right on the bottom. But everything kind of swirls together to this awesome concoction.
I’m going to leave that cinnamon stick right in there just to keep it building the flavor overtime. It’s not very intense, don’t be afraid that the cinnamon is just going to bombard your system, it’s really not that intense.
Let’s give it a try, taste this. You could taste a little of the brandy, you’d really get the sense of the lemon right on top floating there and the Agave Nectar is really were displace, it’s not over-sweet, not super sweet, well-balanced with the Agave Nectar with the brandy. The other trick is because you’re not using funky teas, and I don’t know what it is, but some people said that it has like a medicine taste, this recipe I don’t get the sense that I’m drinking medicine. There are people who use this as a way to remedy a cold, because you’ve got the honey or the stuff that coats your sore throat, warms you up, so I mean any excuse really. Very tasty, this was one of our writing suggestions; they want to know how to make the Hot Toddy. So there you go steamy goodness.
You can reach us at iTunes, Common Man Cocktails, search for us, rate us. We really could use some ratings. We already have a featured Podcasts, we want more comments, we want more ratings, more input. You could send me some emails, dschommereverydaydrinkers.com, if you want suggestion like this as we use a suggestion. And you know you can also just search for everyday drinkers and get all of the cool Podcasts and Audio casts. I’m Derrick Schommer for Common Man Cocktails, we’re teaching you how to drink.
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