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The Sazerac cocktail, a delightful New Orleans favorite.
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Welcome to the cocktail spirit in small screen network, I am your host Robert Hess. This episode, we are going to deal with the Sazerac cocktail, a cocktail that unfortunately I do not see people having all that often. I am not quite sure what it is or what is just how to favor, whatever to excellent drink and it comes from New Orleans.
Now, according to some history that you might read, they indicate that the Sazerac was the original cocktail. The story that they repeat talks about how Antoine Peychaud the inventor of Peychaud bitters would take and combine his bitters with some sugar and some Sazerac brandy, and serve it to his customers in a little egg cup.
Well, New Orleans obviously had a lot of French people down there and actually would call things by their French names and the French term for egg cup is one that after you had a few cocktails might actually sound like the word cocktail. The story sounds nice, it is a very nice setting story and unfortunately, it is not true.
We happen to know that Antoine Peychaud who created Peychaud bitter and therefore is a key ingredient in the Sazerac cocktail was born in 1803, which is the same date that we have the oldest currently recorded reference to the term cocktail in use. So, it is rather unlikely that a babe in swaddling could of invented this bitter much less invented a drink that use those bitters, but it is still a nice story and the Sazerac is still a great drink.
Overtime, the Sazerac cocktail evolved from just simply being a sugar, bitters and brandy to use bourbon instead of brandy, that was the new spirit coming down from Kentucky. It eventually also took and had absent added to it has a small flavoring that really I think really makes this drink well. It is kind of evolution of the cocktail that makes a lot of sense.
So, let us make the Sazerac cocktail.
To do this properly, takes two glasses. For the small glasses or the serving glasses, it is going to be fairly small old fashioned style glass. This is the traditional size for serving a Sazerac in. We are going to use another old-fashioned glass, a larger one for actually mixing the drink up.
We start off with about a quarter of ounce of simple syrup. Usually just kind of put a little puddle in the bottom of the glass. Through that, we add some Peychaud bitters. Now, a lot of people take and use a sugar cube but they muddle up instead of the simple syrup, I like the simple syrup just because it keeps the drink smooth, there is going to be no grit left on after the fact and we just add a couple of dashes of Peychaud bitters.
To that, we had two ounces of Rye whiskey and I am Sazerac Rye whiskey, a great whiskey for this drink. Hopefully, we will soon be seeing more Rye whiskeys coming on the market. Bourbon really takes over the market from the whiskey stand point from the whiskey stand point. The Ryes are starting to come up. Ryes would have been the east coast whiskey and Bourbon would have been the mid west whiskey.
Now, we add our ice, and we stir. Stirring again is a helping the ice chill the drink and soften the drink with a little bit of water and mixing the syrup. Now, we are going to take and pour it into this class but before we do, we are going to empty the ice up, and this is where the Absinthe comes in. A lot of people take and takes some Pernod or some Absinthe poured in the glass, twist it around and then dump the remaining up. I like to actually using adamizer for this step.
By spraying the inside of the glass, I get a nice coating and I do not waste any especially since I am using Absinthe. There is a nice coating on the glass, we now take our strainer. Straining the drink into the glass and we take the lemon and get a nice broad twist. Do it over the top of the glass and we twist the peel to get some of the oils into it.
Now, this point some people would drop the peel into the glass and some people do not and some people are extremely specific on whether it is in or out. For such a big peel and such a small glass, I think it would look a little cumbersome, so I am actually going to pull this out and there we have the Sazerac cocktail. A New Orleans favorite.
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