Small Screen Network
The mint julep, that quaint essential Kentucky Derby Cocktail.
[Demo]
The Cocktail Spirit with Robert Hess
Welcome to the Cocktail Spirit of Small Screen Network, I am your host Robert Hess. It is hard to think about the Kentucky Derby, without also thinking about the mint julep. The mint julep is always associated with Kentucky Derby and it originated as a southern drink. Something you would have drinking out on the veranda as you were contemplating the rather hot day. So focusing on something that is really cold and really refreshing, that is extremely important and a properly made mint julep is going to have a lot of booze in it because it was intended to be drunk over a long time.
Over the years, a mint julep is kind of slightly evolved, it is kind of form something that is almost a quaint essential, elegant style cocktail to the point that it has even got its own cocktail cup, the mint julep cup, usually made out of silk. So the mint julep is made very simply with mint, simple syrup and bourbon. Let us take a look.
We are going to first add to the bottom of our glass, a small handful of mint. This is for about a four or five mints brigs which I pulled individual mint leaves off because it is mint leaves that have the excellent flavor to it at the mint stem, it is a little bit more in the bitter side. We are now going to add a half ounce of simple syrup. You could use regular granulated sugar and most recipes might call for granulated sugar. I prefer using simple syrup because it gets fully dissolved in a drink, plus I think it helps kind of softly model the mint rather than giving a hard abrasive model to it.
Now, we are going to take our muddler. I am actually using a food safe plastic grave muddler that is becoming very popular these days because the standard wood muddler sometimes can pick up some odors and some stuff like that, unless you are keeping them clean very religiously. Now, I will just going to lightly muddle the mint in the bottom. We do not want to muddle too hard because if you muddle too hard, the mint itself is going to start to becoming on a bitter side. What you are trying to do here is basically to create a mint infused simple syrup.
[Demo]
Here we go.
Now the next step is to take and add the bourbon. I am going to add 2 ½ ounces of bourbon. Now, we have the step that everyone thinks about the mint julep in the standpoint that it is not just a drink with ice and it is a drink with finely crushed ice. And this is where the silver cup is going to come in very handy for us. Some people might have their own electric ice crushers and stuff like that, those hand crank typed of ice crushers. Myself, I actually prefer something a little bit more in the simplistic side. It is what is called a Louise bag. It is simply just a canvas bag that we had our ice to.
[Demo]
It should be plenty. Now, just whack this ice in order to crush it down. The canvas is going to wick away any of the melting, the waters can be form by there and therefore you end up with a nice dry ice. Now, you could just kind of use your muddler for doing that with but I bet something I like a little bit better. I like a light nice mallet.
[Demo]
Clear the nice way to get out some of your frustrations of the day. Just a bit more.
[Demo]
This is a drink that is great when you are down in New Orleans, visiting Chris McMillan at the Ritz Hotel, he does the same similar thing with a bigger bag and a big ice and you just going to wheel on the sucker, plus he has a nice little poem that he reads while he is doing it. So I am not going to do that part for you. I will save Chris mc McMillan to do that.
Now, I think we got an ice here. And so we have the ice to our glass. Basically, filling it most to the way up. Now the important step here is we take a small drink, stir and we want to stir the drink up.
[Demo]
I am not sure if you can notice it quite there but the outside of these silver glass is now frosting up. It is also taking and blending in the mint simple syrup well into the glass. This is one of the reasons wh
Transcription by:
Scribe4you Transcription Services