The Jerry Thomas Project is the re-creation of all of Jerry Thomas’ cocktails from Jerry Thomas’ Bar-Tenders Guide: Receipts for Mixing in their purest form. Jerry Thomas is considered America’s father of mixology publishing the first cocktail book in 1862.
This is a blog post that didn’t get moved over when I moved the blog. In December, many of us celebrated a little unknown holiday called Repeal Day. For this very special holiday, I did a pre-prohibition cocktail menu and these are the drinks that were on it.
So for December 5 Repeal Day 2009 (seventy-six years to the day the prohibition was lifted) we served the Whiskey Daisy, the Brandy Smash, the Saratoga Brace up, the Whiskey Cocktail, the Martinez Cocktail, the Stone Fence, and the Santa Cruz Sour. The menu also had little prohibition lore on it like, “Which state never passed prohibition?” to which the answer is Maryland.
As for the drinks:
The Whiskey Daisy
I loved the whiskey daisy so much that I put it on the happy hour menu. It also has a more modern taste as it is well balanced with citrus and sweet. I’ve found that a lot of Thomas’s drinks that they are very sweet because Thomas will use gomme syrup but no citrus. The whiskey daisy satisfies, with a beautiful combination of whiskey, lemon juice, and orgeat syrup. Orgeat syrup is an almond syrup that we make in house using blanched almonds, sugar, water, and a fresh orange.
The Brandy Smash
The key to making a good smash is letting the mint steep long enough in the spirit to get a rich minty flavor. I really love this way of infusing the flavor and you would be quite surprised what a five-minute mint steep will accomplish. I am not the hugest fan of muddling as I believe there are a lot of other ways to impart flavors and muddling is messy and time-consuming. (As I know there are a million muddler aficionados who are cursing me right now, but take a moment and let the mint steep, I think you will be surprised.) The brandy smash consists of mint-infused brandy, angostura bitters, and gomme syrup.
The Saratoga Brace Up
This was my favorite of the all the cocktails on the list. The Saratoga Brace Up is composed of brandy, fresh lime, egg whites, and a splash of absinthe. It had a lot more depth and complexity than a lot of other of Thomas’s cocktails. I loved the frothiness and the creamy mouth feel from the egg whites, the warm vanilla tones from the brandy, and the snap at the end from the absinthe. To this point, this is my darling of the Thomas cocktail repertoire.
A quick note about brandy. I find it nearly impossible to sell as everyone thinks of it as something their grandfather drank when he was ill. I’ve done a bit of wordsmithing and started calling it American Cognac – and by jeez! Now everyone wants it.
The Whiskey Cocktail
The Whiskey Cocktail contains whiskey, boker’s bitters, and gomme syrup. I was excited to put this together because I got to use two of the hard to come by ingredients (boker’s bitters and gomme syrup). I’m quite pleased with my boker’s bitters and they could make warm piss divine. As not very much gomme syrup goes in this drink, I didn’t notice it was all the much sweeter. Very nice; it definitely needs a hard shake as the water opens it up and brightens up the bitters.
The Martinez Cocktail
(I’d be interested to know why he named it this, but there is no mention. I assume it was named after someone.)
This drink too utilizes Boker’s bitters along with Old Tom Gin and maraschino liqueur. If you are not familiar with Old Tom Gin, it is a gin that was popular in the 19th century and is more in a jenever style in that juniper is not the prevailing essence. The Old Tom Gin I use is Ransom, which is made here in Oregon and has a beautiful pink hue to it as it is finished in Pinot Noir barrels. As this drink calls for very little maraschino or boker’s bitters to be added to it – I didn’t find it to be much of a cocktail but rather more along the lines of a gin martini. The Ransom Old Tom Gin has such a demanding flavor that you really have to counter to get another flavor to pop when mixed with it. The maraschino added a sweetness that I didn’t care for, as the gin is already fairly sweet (as far as gins go). Not one of my favorites. But I really wanted to showcase the Old Tom Gin because it is so pre-prohibition and I love that Ransom is an Oregon product and this drink did just that.
The Stone Fence
The Stone Fence is probably one of the easiest cocktails I’ve made of Thomas’s. It is just rye whiskey and apple cider. We have a delicious apple cider that we use to cider brine our pork chop. This is a great drink for fall when there is cider everywhere in the Northwest and there is just an overwhelming overabundance of apples.
The Santa Cruz Sour
This is the drink that we sold the most of. The Santa Cruz Sour is a combination of rum, lemon juice, sugar, and soda water. Santa Cruz rum refers to rum from the Virgin Islands, so I used Cruzan dark (I lived in the U.S. Virgin islands so I have a certain affinity for Cruzan). I used the dark rum because it has a lot more flavor than white rum and I thought it would complement the lemon and sugar better than white rum. Thomas calls for sugar, but I ended up using simple syrup as sugar doesn’t mix well with cold ingredients. I do love Thomas’s call for garnish on this drink: orange and fresh berries (perhaps not the drink to make in the middle of the winter)
- Columbine Quillen I am a bartender and this is my blog.