Episode 63: Brown Derby

  • 2 oz. bourbon

  • 1 oz. fresh grapefruit juice

  • 1/2 to 3/4 oz. honey syrup (to taste, see note)

  • Optional garnish: Grapefruit twist

Combine bourbon, grapefruit juice, and honey syrup in a cocktail shaker and fill with ice. Shake until well chilled, about 20 seconds. Strain into a chilled stemmed cocktail glass. Pinch grapefruit twist over top of glass to express oils and add twist to drink. 

Note:
Honey syrup: simply mix equal parts hot water and honey, stirring or shaking until dissolved, and let cool completely before using. Syrup will keep, refrigerated, up to 2 weeks.

According to Dale DeGroff’s 2002 book, “The Craft of the Cocktail,” the Brown Derby was created at the Vendôme Club in Los Angeles in the 1930s, and it was named for a popular Hollywood Haunt called the Brown Derby. The Brown Derby was a diner chain in LA with domed buildings built to look like brown derby hats.

While the recipe for the Brown Derby cocktail appeared in the book “Hollywood Cocktails” in 1933, it turns out that an identical cocktail called the De Rigueur was published in England’s “The Savoy Cocktail Book” in 1930. There’s no way to be certain if the Brown Derby was ripped off from the De Rigueur or if they were both just invented independently of one another. Either way, the Brown Derby became way more famous and popular than the De Rigueur.

A bartender and cocktail authority Jeffrey Morgenthaler said,
“Honey is this weird ingredient that can tie flavors together when you need it to. And by some miracle it sits in this perfect place between bourbon and grapefruit.”

Episode 47: the Hot Locomotive

Make 2 cocktails

  • 16 oz (2 cups) dry red wine

  • 2 egg yolks

  • 1 oz honey

  • ¼ tsp Ground cloves

  • 1.5 oz dry curaçao (or triple sec) 

To a large mixing glass, add egg yolk, honey, cloves, & curaçao. Mix well with a small whisk or fork.  Heat up red wine until steaming hot but not boiling (don’t burn off alcohol). Whisk wine into yolk & curacao mixture. Serve in heat safe glasses.

hot locomotive

The Locomotive is a surprisingly delicious recipe from Jerry Thomas’ 1862 bartenders guide. Essentially, it’s a bit like mulled wine, but it’s sweetened with honey, fortified with curacoa, and enriched and thickened slightly with egg yolks.

The instructions for this 160 year old recipe are as follows: “Put two yolks of eggs into a goblet with an ounce of honey, a little essence of cloves, and a liqueur glass of curacoa; add a pint of high burgundy made hot, whisk well together, and serve hot in glasses.” 

For anyone trying to make this recipe today, this description may seem a bit vague, so we’ve done our best to interpret it to create the recipe we posted above. High Burgundy essentially just meant dry red wine, as many English and American reds at the time tended to be sweet. You can use whatever dry red wine you like. 

Essence of cloves was likely an alcohol based tincture Thomas would have used in his bar, but he doesn’t provide a recipe. Home bartenders would only need a small amount anyway, so we opted to just use a bit of ground clove instead. This isn’t exactly authentic, but we think it tastes delicious.

As for how much a “liqueur glass” of curacoa measures out to, thankfully David Wondrich has done the math for us and determined that a liqueur glass is equal to 1.5 ounces.

Episode 31: The Penicillin

  • 2 ounces mild blended Scotch

  • 1/2 ounce ginger syrup *see note

  • 1/2 ounce honey syrup **see note

  • 3/4 ounce fresh lemon juice

  • 1/4 ounce Islay single-malt Scotch

  • Garnish: Candied ginger 

Combine blended Scotch with the honey syrup, ginger syrup, and lemon juice in a cocktail shaker with plenty of ice.
Shake until frosty and strain into a rocks glass filled with one large cube. (or regular ice cubes)
Gently pour the Islay Scotch over the top and garnish with candied ginger. 

Notes:
*To make ginger syrup, combine equal parts fresh pressed ginger juice and sugar, and shake or let sit until the sugar dissolves. Don’t heat it to dissolve the sugar. Refrigerate until use. Best used within 24-48 hours.
If you don’t have a vegetable juicer, you can grate the ginger with a grater and then press the juice out through a strainer or cheesecloth. If you live somewhere near a juice place you might be able to have them press it for you, and I think some places sell bottled ginger juice.

**To make honey syrup, combine equal parts raw honey and water. Stir or shake until combined. Refrigerate until use.

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The Penicillin was created in 2005 at a bar in the Lower East Side called Milk & Honey. One of their most popular cocktails was a whiskey sour made with honey, which they called a Gold Rush. In 2005, a 22 year old Australian bartender named Sam Ross decided to tinker with the Gold Rush recipe. He cut the honey syrup in the recipe with fresh pressed ginger juice sweetened with sugar, and then decided to swap the bourbon in the recipe with a mellow blended scotch.

Then, to play with the aroma of the drink, he added just a ¼ oz of a smoky single malt scotch over the top, so the smell of smoke from the Scotch would hit your nose before you ever tasted the spiciness of the ginger, the tartness of the lemon, and the sweetness of the honey. It was complex, a little weird, and played with your palate in a really interesting way. He named it a Penicillin because honey, lemon, & ginger are flavors we commonly see together when we’re sick. Like in cough drops, medicine, and hot toddys.

At first the Penicillin wasn’t even on the menu, but was still creating a buzz at Milk & Honey as a secret, off-menu special for New Yorkers in the know. By 2006, it was blowing up, and the next thing you knew, it was everywhere. Within just a couple years, it was appearing on cocktail menus across the globe, and one cocktail historian called the Penicillin “the most well-traveled and renowned new cocktail of the 21st century.”

Episode 9 - The Bee's Knees

  • 2 oz Gin

  • 3⁄4 oz Fresh lemon juice

  • 3⁄4 oz Honey syrup*

  • Lemon twist for garnish (optional)

Combine gin, lemon juice, and honey syrup together in a cocktail shaker with plenty of ice. Shake until frosty and strain into a chilled coupe glass. Garnish with a lemon twist if desired.

*To make honey syrup, combine 2 parts honey and 1 part hot water and stir or shake to combine.

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Interesting fact: The bee’s knees was likely invented during prohibition, with the strong flavors of honey and lemon juice meant to mask the flavor of poor quality bathtub gin.
At the time of the cocktail’s creation, the term “Bee’s Knees” meant something was great, or the best. Oddly enough, long before the phrase took on that meaning, it once meant something very very small, as in the size of a bee’s knee.