Episode 51: Clover Club

• 2 ounces gin

• 1/2 ounce lemon juice

• 1/2 ounce raspberry syrup * see note

• 1 large egg white

• Fresh raspberries, for garnish

In a cocktail shaker combine the gin, lemon juice, raspberry syrup, & egg white. Shake vigorously (without ice) for 10 seconds. Add ice and shake until frosty cold. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with a skewer of 3 fresh raspberries. Serve and enjoy.

*Note: To make raspberry syrup combine 3/4 cup of water and 1 cup of sugar, 1 cup of raspberries (fresh or frozen) and mash the raspberries up into a pulp. Strain out the seeds before using.

According to "The Old Waldorf-Astoria Bar Book," the Clover Club was first created in the late 1800s at the bar of the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel in Philadelphia. This popular hangout drew crowds of writers, lawyers, and titans of industry, who would meet and talk over cocktails, and the elegant Clover Club made with gin, lemon juice, raspberry syrup and egg white was a favorite among them.

The cocktail slowly grew in popularity, eventually becoming a nationwide sensation by the late 1910s and early 1920s. After prohibition though, it basically faded into obscurity, and by the 50s was largely forgotten. This is probably because A) nobody used raspberry syrup anymore and wanted to use grenadine instead, and B) there was another cocktail, the pink lady, that was taking the clover club’s place. A pink lady is essentially a clover club made with a mix of grenadine and applejack instead of the raspberry syrup. It sounds like the applejack adds something interesting to the drink that you would lose if you just used grenadine. According to "Gaz" Regan in "The Joy of Mixology," you have to use real raspberry syrup to make a Clover Club, because "without it, this drink isn't much to talk about."

Thankfully this delicious cocktail is popular again today, thanks largely to its inclusion in Gaz Regan’s 2003 book, “Joy of Mixology,” and the 2008 opening of a now-famous cocktail bar in Brooklyn named after the drink.

Episode 29: The Knickerbocker

• 2 ½ oz gold rum

• 1 teaspoon orange curacao liqueur

• ½ oz raspberry syrup (see below for recipe)

• ½ oz fresh lime juice (save lime “shell” for garnish)

• Fresh raspberries for garnish

Combine rum, curacao, raspberry syrup, & lime juice in a cocktail shaker with ice and shake until frosty. Strain into a rocks glass filled with crushed ice.

To garnish, flatten a squeezed-out half lime shell into a “cap” and place on top of the drink, then top with a few fresh raspberries before serving.  

Raspberry Syrup

• 2 cups of demerara sugar

• Pinch of salt

• 1 cup of water

• 12 oz raspberries (fresh or frozen)

Stir sugar and water over low heat until sugar has dissolved. Turn off heat, add raspberries, and stir and crush the raspberries until they’re broken up into a pulp. Strain into a jar and refrigerate for up to a week.
Any syrup not used within a week can be frozen for later use.

In 1809, Washington Irving published “A History of New York, from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty”, under the name "Diedrich Knickerbocker".

The name Knickerbocker originally came from a style of pants that Dutch settlers wore, but thanks to this book, the word came to signify an upper-crusty New Yorker who could trace their ancestry to the original Dutch settlers. Before long though, people just started using the word to mean anything and everything New York-y.

City leaders started naming streets and landmarks “knickerbocker”. Businesses across the city started naming themselves things like Knickerbocker Magazine or Knickerbocker beer, there’s a Knickerbocker hotel, and even the name of the New York Knicks is short for knickerbocker.

It’s not surprising that the name also attached itself to a cocktail. The new drink started being mentioned in newspapers in the 1850s, and then Jerry Thomas published the first written recipe for the drink in 1862. It’s made with golden rum, orange curacao (triple sec), lime juice, and raspberry syrup, which was basically the grenadine of the 19th century.

There are a bunch of variations on this cocktail now with a ton of added ingredients, but this version is almost identical to the original Jerry Thomas recipe.  

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Episode 22: National Guard Seventh Regiment Punch

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• 1 to 2 teaspoons sugar *see notes

• ½ oz lemon juice  

• 2 oz Brandy (preferably Cognac)

• 2 oz Catawba wine OR dry rosé wine **see notes

• 1 teaspoon raspberry syrup (recipe below)

• ¼ oz Jamaican rum (optional)

• Garnish: orange, pineapple, fresh berries 

Stir sugar and lemon juice together in a bar glass or rocks glass. 
Add brandy, wine, and raspberry syrup and fill the glass with ice (shaved or crushed preferable) 
Shake well and pour back into glass. 

Top with dark rum and garnish with fruit. Serve with a straw. 

NOTES:
* The original recipe calls for 2 teaspoons, but we found the cocktail far too sweet and much preferred it with only 1 teaspoon after some testing
** The original recipe called for a very sweet wine made from Catawba grapes. If you can’t find Catawba wine, Niagara or Concord grape wine will be very similar, or you could use any sweet white or rosé wine you like. However, we found this punch was far too sweet and much preferred it made with a dry rosé instead.

Raspberry Syrup

• 2 cups of demerara sugar

• 1 cup of water

• 1 cup raspberries (fresh or frozen)

Stir sugar and water over low heat until sugar has dissolved. Add raspberries stirring until the berries form a pulp. Strain into a jar and refrigerate. Over time, the pectin will rise to the surface and can be skimmed off.

The “National Guard Seventh Regiment Punch”  was probably around before the 1860s but we don’t know the actual origins. We just know that the recipe was published by Jerry Thomas in 1862.

This drink is named after NYC’s seventh regiment, which used to be the only regiment that made up the national guard at one point in history. They were known as a “silk stocking” regiment, meaning they were mostly made up of fancy fifth avenue blue blood types. 

During the civil war they were on their way to go fight at Gettysburg, but NYC’s draft riots broke out and they were called back. Fighting draft rioters in NYC was actually the only combat they ever saw during the entire civil war. 

This is one of the more unique cocktails we’ve ever had. The original recipe called for a very sweet wine made from Catawba grapes. If you can’t find Catawba wine, Niagara or Concord grape wine will have a very similar flavor, but you could use any sweet white or rosé wine that you like. However, we found this punch to be far too sweet for modern tastes, and much preferred it when we tried a version made with a dry rosé instead. A later reprint of Thomas’ book called for Sherry. 

Catawba grapes are a hybrid of wild grapes native to the East Coast crossed with European wine grapes. Catawba wine can be a bit hard to find today, but 200 years ago it was everywhere in the US. In fact, Jerry Thomas’ book actually has several recipes that feature it. The flavor of Catawba wine is sweet and distinctly grape-y, tasting more like Concord grape juice than wine. Posh wine snobs refer to this flavor as “foxy” and say that it also has a wild, musky, animal smell, but we just tasted juice box.

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Episode 21: Mai Tais Two Ways

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The Original 1944 Mai Tai

• 1 1/2 oz White rum

• 3/4 oz Orange curaçao

• 3/4 oz Fresh lime juice

• 1/4 - 1/2 oz Orgeat Syrup

• 1/2 oz Dark rum

• Garnish: Lime wheel, Mint sprig

Add the white rum, curaçao, lime juice and orgeat syrup into a cocktail shaker with plenty of ice and shake to combine.
Strain into a double Old Fashioned glass filled with finely crushed ice (if available). Gently pour the dark rum over the top trying to float it on top.
Garnish with a lime wheel and mint sprig.

1953 Royal Hawaiian Mai Tai:

• ½ oz Curaçao Liqueur (Triple Sec)

• 1½ oz Gold/ Amber Rum

• 1 oz Dark Rum

• ¼ oz Lime juice

• 1½ oz Pineapple juice

• 1½ oz Orange juice

• ¼ oz Orgeat syrup

• 1 teaspoon maraschino cherry juice (red) or grenadine for color

• Garnish: Orange slice, pineapple, red maraschino cherry

Combine all ingredients in a cocktail shaker with plenty of ice and shake to combine.
Strain into a large whiskey glass filled with finely crushed ice (if available).
Garnish with a wedge of pineapple, an orange wheel, and a maraschino cherry. 

Tiki culture and it’s quintessential cocktails all started in 1933 when Ernest Beaumont-Gantt opened a Polynesian-themed bar and restaurant in Hollywood called Don the Beachcomber. The restaurant featured Cantonese food with a decor of flaming torches, rattan furniture, floral leis, and carved tiki masks and wooden sculptures of Polynesian gods.

This was also the first restaurant to ever focus an entire drink menu on mixing rum with flavored syrups and fresh fruit juices, which they originally called "Rhum Rhapsodies", but were later called Tiki cocktails. These drinks were usually served in fancy glasses, hollowed out pineapples, or drilled coconuts, and sometimes even giant fish bowl sized communal glasses with long straws for sharing.

Perhaps the best known and most popular Tiki cocktail ever is the Mai Tai.

It was originally invented by another restauranteur namedTrader Vic in Oakland California in 1944. Don Beach later accused Trader Vic of stealing the recipe from him, saying that his punch, the Q.B. Cooler, which he invented in 1933, was suspiciously similar. But even if it was inspired by the Q.B. Cooler, they’re very different drinks and the Cooler has almost twice as many ingredients. Vic Bergeron later wrote in his book, "anyone who says I didn’t create this drink is a dirty stinker."

The Mai Tai became so popular that within a few years of its invention, the world ran out of the aged rum called for in the original recipe, so most recipes today call for a mix of light and dark rum.

In the beginning, the Mai Tai was a simple and rum forward drink, but In 1953, a cruise company hired Vic Bergeron to oversee their cocktail menus at their hotels in Hawaii. He reworked the drink adding orange juice and pineapple juice to make it feel more Hawaiian and to sweeten the recipe, so it’d be more tourist friendly.

The Hawaiian version became even more popular than the original and now most people think that’s what a Mai Tai is supposed to taste like. Both versions are absolutely delicious, although they’re so different that they probably shouldn’t both have the same name.

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Episode 20: The Whiskey Sour

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Makes 2 cocktails

• 4 oz. Whiskey (I prefer Rye Whiskey)*

• 2 oz. Lemon Juice**

• 1 oz. Simple Syrup**

• 2-3 dashes Aromatic Bitters

• 1 Large Egg White  (1 oz if using pasteurized egg whites)

• Maraschino Cherries for garnish

Combine ingredients in a cocktail shaker without ice, adding the egg white last. Shake vigorously without ice for about 20 seconds. This is called dry shaking, and it helps to incorporate the egg white without watering down the drink too much.
Add plenty of ice and shake again for 15-20 seconds more. Strain well into coupe glasses. Even if your shaker has a built in strainer, I like to double strain through a fine mesh strainer to remove any shards of ice or egg white.
Garnish each with a cocktail cherry.

*Bourbon is popular for whiskey sours, but I much prefer Rye Whiskey because it’s a bit less sweet and has a slight spiciness that compliments the lemon juice.
** To make simple syrup heat equal parts sugar and water until sugar is completely dissolved. Can be done in the microwave. Cool before use.
You can adjust the ratio of simple syrup and lemon juice in the cocktail to taste if desired.

The whiskey sour has a long history. It was probably developed as a scaled-down, individual version of a traditional citrus and whiskey punch.

Jerry Thomas included a recipe in his book in 1862, but even then the sour was probably a century old or more. His version didn’t include an egg white, but to me, it feels a little too simple without it. At some point people started adding soda to the recipe, but they stopped when they realized shaking the drink flattens the fizz.

The egg white was eventually added because it adds a frothy, creamy mouthfeel that really transforms the cocktail into something special. It goes down smoother and looks nicer in the glass too. We know that adding a raw egg white to a cocktail can make some people nervous, but as long as you’re using fresh, good quality eggs it really is safe for most people. You can also use pasteurized egg whites if you’d feel more comfortable.

After prohibition the whiskey sour waned in popularity for a few decades, but it came back in a big way in the 1950s and 60s. Unfortunately, this was also the era of convenience foods and food-product innovations, and the pre-prohibition era recipe that included fresh lemon juice, sugar, and egg white was replaced with sour mix.

Fortunately, in the late 1990s the craft cocktail movement began, and a vast number of classic cocktail recipes were resurrected. Since then, many bars ditched the sour mix for a recipe much like the one above.

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