The Cocktail Spirit with Robert Hess

As you’ll come to see through future episodes of The Cocktail Spirit, bitters often play an important role in making cocktails. I have dozens of bottles of bitters at home, and unlike most of you, go through them quite regularly! :->

Great episode!
Love the part about the cherries.
Luxardo is exporting Marasca cherries into the U.S. as of a few months ago. My prefered treatment is to soak them in Maraschino liqueur. They are very distinctive.

Greg, glad you liked it and thanks for the tip about Luxardo, I’ll check with them to see if they are distributing in my area.

-Robert

Great episode, Robert!  I was wondering if you were also aware of “The Boothby Cocktail” named and created by William “Cocktail” Boothby in San Francisco in 1908?  I’m told it’s more or less a Manhattan (minus the twist of orange) with a Champagne float…

Well done episode, especially the coverage of the bitters.  The Manhattan is one of my favorite winter cocktails but Iv’e been omitting the bitters, the next one will include them!  Iv’e been using the Italian amarena cherries and reducing the amount of sweet vermounth with excellent results.

Hi Ted & Robert,

I’ve just finished putting up a complete copy of the 1907/1908 edition of William “Cocktail” Boothby’s The World’s Drinks & How To Mix Them here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dinah/sets/72157603645295415/

I have tagged all the recipe names so just search by name in my Flickr pictures and you should find what you’re after.

Nothing labeled “Boothby Cocktail” in this edition, so all I’ve got to go on is that San Francisco Chronicle article about the historical society presentation on it. Time for more Boothby scholarship, I say! Sic Wondrich on it, right?

- Dinah

Thanks Dinah… I’ll check with John Burton about the Boothby cocktail and see if I can get him to post some details here.

-Robert

Robert,

Watched this, went downstairs and followed your recipe exactly with Rittenhouse Bonded.  Wow!  It is a killer.  I’m curious to know whether the various bitters you have available change the character much.  Seems like Fee Peach Bitters would be awesome with Maker’s Mark.

Cheers!

Blair

Blair,
Using different bitters will add subtle differences to the final drink. I’ve never tried it with Peach bitters however, might be interesting.
-Robert

Re: Angostura Orange Bitters

I just heard back from Angostura USA, they said that their shipment is “on the water”, with expectations to reach the warehouse by the end of this month. He expects country wide distribution in April and May.

-Robert

Huzzah!

I believe this calls for a drink, eh?

The links to the video have been lost.

Do you mean the “download” link? Works fine for me…

Here is an interesting use of bitters: Food Guru - $50 Mac and Cheese

There ain’t no way I’d pay $50 for Macaroni & Cheese!  An original Trader Vic Mai Tai, yes!  But, mac & cheese, never!

Robert,
I don’t really have any other way of contacting you (I can’t find an e-mail address for you anywhere and Drinkboy.com is down). I have a question that maybe you can help me with. I bought a bottle of Fee’s Lemon bitters the other day from Kegworks and the shaker cap was stuck to the screw on cap. I pried it out of there with a knife, but now the shaker cap won’t attach to the bottle anymore. I don’t really know how I can attach it on there (I really don’t want to glue it). I could always transfer it to another bottle, but I don’t have one.

Any suggestions? Thanks.

Matt… a quick fix, would be to use a thin “sip straw” (which hopefully you have on hand). Simply dip the straw into the bottle of bitters, then cover the open/top end with your finger, and pull the straw out. This will extract some of the bitters as well. Then just hold this over your mixing glass or cocktail shaker and release your finger to release the bitters.

A better option, but one which will take some legwork, is to find a herbal/health store which sells empty “eye dropper” type of bottles, and then simply fill it with the bitters and use it to add bitters to your drinks.

As seeon on the “Traveling Mixologist” episode, I use such eye-dropper bottles to keep bitters with me when I think I might be out on the town and need some…

-Robert

Robert:

New to the show. I’m enjoying it very much.  You do a great job exposing the details that turn a good drink into a great one.  Your comment about the bitters was spot-on.  The Manhattan is one of my favorites, and it’s consequently one of my “test drinks” at a new place or with a new bartender to gauge the talent behind the bar.  I can always immediately tell if the bartender left out the bitters, and this tends to be the ingredient that determines whether the drink passes or fails the test for my palate, more-so than the choice of spirit.

As a fairly young boy (around 15 or so) I was introduced to mixing some classic cocktails by an old friend of my grandmothers, who recently passed away at the ripe old age of 92.  His recipe for happiness and long life included a good cocktail, scotch, or whiskey, and the occasional puff of a fine cigar.  At the time he taught me how to make some of these classics, (I was just barely sipping them to taste them, and not actually drinking them at my young age!) I didn’t care for them, but now, some 20 years later, I’m a big fan of these drinks.

This brings me to my question about a certain detail you didn’t cover in your making of the Manhattan:  He always insisted on chilling the glass first with ice before pouring.  I always still do this today, out of tradition, even though I don’t know why, and I’ve certainly had many Manhattans served both ways. 

Since you are such a detail-oriented student and teacher of cocktails, I was wondering what your thoughts on the matter are.

Thanks.

Joel, a great Manhattan really is a thing of beauty, and one which we shockingly find so few bartenders that really understand. They usually just have “the” recipe which they’ve been told to use, without really understanding any of the ingredients that go into it, or the roles they (or the methods used) play. Sad…

As for chilled glassware…

My freezer contains just ice and cocktail glasses. Periodically the odd bit of frozen food might make an appearance, but since I never used processed frozen foods, and almost always cook with fresh vegetables, my glassware usually is the sole occupant. Which makes using properly chilled glasses ever-so-easy.

I SHOULD however spend some time talking about that in a future episode, as well as show using ice&water to nicely chill glasses when pulled from the shelves. There are a couple episodes coming up where you’ll see me chilling down a glass, but I don’t think I really talk about it much.

-Robert