Laissez Les Bon Temps, Roulez. We have Paczkis... Essential ingredient. Roger really should be here for this one. He really should. Roger is our man in New Orleans. I'm literally saying that for the sake of our audience, not anyone in this room. Roger really should be in the room for this one. And he is, he's right over there. Why is the cocktail the same name as the key ingredient in the cocktail? That's always really confused me. Oh man, it is a confusing question. It's like our answer. It's a, what's when a window sees a window, or a mirror sees a mirror? That's a Hall of Mirrors, a never-ending, infinite. Recursive. It's a recursive cocktail. Sazerac is an ingredient in the Sazerac. I like to defenestrate mirrors though. Yeah, that's good. Whip them out the window. That's right. So, we're talking about the Sazerac, and that's right, this is a B2B Quick Sip. This is the Quick Sip number two. At this rate, we'll have four of them in a year. So quick. So very quick. Lightning speed. Yeah, okay. So we're here. We don't even have time to introduce ourselves with such a quick sip. Who the hell am I? Who knows? So what are we doing here? Well, we're making the official cocktail of New Orleans since 2008. It was named... The Hurricane? No. Damn you, man. You already said the name. I did. And I will answer your question now. Okay. Well, let's start with that. So this cocktail is allegedly very old, going back to the 1800s. Okay. And allegedly originally made with a Sazerac brand Cognac. Sazerac Cognac. Sazerac Cognac from France. Okay. Yeah, that's right. Sazerac DuForge, Sazerac DuForge Cognac. Is it still a thing? Not that I'm aware of. Oh, yeah. No, it's not. We have it. It's not in all of our stores. We have it in some of our stores. Look at that. Not only is it still a thing, but we have it at a lot of stores. But ironically, the story does not end there because... Historically, a lot of cocktails like this did use brandy or Cognac instead of whiskey. Because spirits used to be less great. In particular... French 75. Yes, French 75 with brandy. No, yeah, absolutely. But yeah, in particular in New Orleans, a lot of the cocktails that are no longer brandy-based were originally. Okay. And some of them still are like the Vucaire is a blend of spirits with brandy being one of them. But we're talking about Sazerac. We are indeed. So if you want me to just give you a kind of an overview, it's basically a riff on an old-fashioned. It's based on... I'm listening. Whiskey. Yeah. Sugar. Okay. And bitters. I love those things. Drag bitters. I love those things. Yeah. Specifically, Peychaud bitters, which are New Orleans bitters and often called for New Orleans drinks. It was made by Antoine Peychaud, who was an apothecary way back in the day. Came from Haiti before it was even Haiti back when I was a French colony. Okay. Opened a drugstore, made his aromatic bitters medicinally, of course. And they haven't updated the label since. No. Some say he originated the drink. Some say it was at the Sazerac Coffee House. Originally brandy, but when Phylloxera hit France hard in the mid-1880s, they switched over to rye. As you talk, Lexi is moving to create this cocktail. Indeed. Oh, yeah. Build the cocktail. So first we're going to start with our lovely Herb Saint. You're supposed to do like an absinthe rinse or a rinse with this. You can definitely measure it or use like an atomizer for sake of this podcast. In this moment, I'm not going to because we're going to double the cocktail and do it that way. Two rinses. So. Yeah, just get wild with that. And by the way, the room smells like fresh lemons. Those lemon fields are smelling pretty great, right? So do you hard H herb saint like that? That's what Jim did. So I was just roofing off of him. Yeah. I'm sure that. I don't think it is. You have to be confused with Saint Herb. It's not a British. Well. It's not British. Herb Saint. Okay. Herb Saint. Herb Saint. Yeah. My buddy Herb Saint, you know. A little background on that too. So generally, you want to put a little rinse in your glass. Lexi is rinsing the stirring vessel, which is cool. And I do it this way too because we are not all getting our own single serve cocktails we go into. This makes a lot of sense. You would build it in the glass, you're saying? No. You would stir the rest of it in the glass and just rinse the glass. Or I favor Lexi's suggestion, especially if I don't feel like the absinthe is coming through on the nose enough, which is what it's there for. An atomizer is great for a little spritz on top afterward, which I also do with things like Corpse Reviver, a lot of the absinthe based drinks that just call for an accent. Just to dabble, do you? Yeah. I think if you're ever gonna use Rose in a cocktail as well, that's another good way to use Rose is don't necessarily just dump it into the glass or dump it into the cocktail, use an atomizer to get that on the nose. Yeah. Rose water. It's a risk of making this not a Quick Sip. I was wondering that about bitters too, because making my Manhattan, sometimes, I don't know, order of operations, I throw the bitters in earlier. Am I missing out on the aromatic experience because of that? Not necessarily. Some drinks you actually top with bitters, like if you think about the Pisco Sour or a number of egg white based drinks, you will have a little decoration floating on top of the foam, and the aromatics are right there. But in this case, when you're making an old fashion, you're always muddling the sugar cube or the simple syrup and the bitters together to start. Oh yeah, right, right. So HerbSaint, doesn't the recipe call for absinthe? Yes, but again, this cocktail has been through many iterations and changes, and strangely enough, we're going to go back to when Phylloxera hit, absinthe became huge, right? And so we're changing from brandy to rye, because there's no more wine to make brandy out of, and absinthe is super popular. After a while, absinthe is banned in most of the world. Oh yeah. So this is the New Orleans knockoff of absinthe without the offending Thujone of the Wormwood. Okay, cool. And this has been available all along. And so it is very authentic to make your Sazerac with either. It just depends on what era of Sazerac you're talking about. And you can certainly go all the way back and do absinthe and brandy. So Sazerac rye, Herb Saint, Simple Syrup, and Peychaud's Bitters. Right. And proportions, Lexi? You've got two and a half ounces of rye. You've got four hefty dashes of Peychaud's. And then you've got either your sugar cube, half a teaspoon of water situation. Yeah. Just like in old fashion, you would use little water with your sugar cube for modeling, but we're using Simple Syrup, so we don't need the water. It's so much easier. It's so much easier. And then give it a stir. Do you know the trick to a good stir? I can see it, but you got to say it out loud. Your wrist should stay in the same spot. It's only your fingers that are moving. All right. And you would wash the glass with the absinthe. Generally so. That's when you would do your atomizer there. Got it. So yeah, we're using little plastic cups for our purposes, because we want to taste it, but we don't each need a giant cocktail. You guys, bitter, sweet and whiskey. I love this. I know. How could this not be one of your faves? I like anise a lot. My favorite pasta sauce has anise in it. Yeah, I have to smuggle it in from Omaha when I'm in town. What is that? It's a restaurant that closed, but they continue to make them. I didn't know runs are made pasta sauce. That's hilarious. It's a Mr. C's. Shout out to the Coniglia family. Oh, hey, Coniglias. Yeah. Anise and pasta sauce. Do they have a rabbit farm? It's delicious. Sounds good. Something else I feel strongly about when making a cocktail like this is, the point of the garnish is to add something to the drink. It's not supposed to just sit there and look cool. Always. Sometimes that is the point. So you want to make sure that when you use your lemon or your orange or whatever you're using, you actually squeeze it to get those oils into the cocktail. You can kind of all see them floating. Yeah. She squeezes the peel to express the oils. Indeed. I'm going to eat that by the way. Look how beautiful. Of course she will. I've heard that about you. Oh, and it is so aromatically lemon. It's part of the lemon. Okay, I'm just smelling the lemon peel only. Well, you know. Oh, it smells great. Yeah, it does. Oh man. How come I haven't been doing this? I don't know. What's wrong with me? She hates New Orleans. I don't hate it. I don't think about it. Hey, everybody listen to our old New Orleans podcast that Greg hated, Suffer Through. We made delicious foods. I wasn't in that one. Oh yeah. Because Roger made like meat soup. Yeah. Meat soup. I think they call that jambalaya. Yeah, that's what it was. Or maybe gumbo. Gumbo. Meat soup. I got to hear a classic New Orleans meat soup. Okay. So yeah, everything that I love in the cocktails that I love, which is the sweetness and it's a brighter sweetness than I'm used to because it's actual simple syrup. And the lemon too. And the lemon too. What a difference. Lifts it up. Try it with your last one. Just and then try it because we don't have an atomizer. Yeah. Smell that because it really is the backbone. I would say that if I had made this cocktail, I probably would have spritzed the top because I want a little more of that anise-y lift. Me too. I like that part of it. Yeah. I know if a lot of people hate licorice and they probably don't want to do that. Even if you don't like licorice, it's worth trying something like this. It's not the same as getting your, you know, Twizzler's Black Licorice. Oh, that's for sure. It's rounder and more subtle and there's more layers to it. Totally. I'm not a huge fan of like black licorice, but this is lovely. And this is one of those cocktails that's actually trademarked, I believe. I think Sazerac owns the trademark. I mean, it's on the bottle. Yeah. Yeah. So, I lived in New Orleans. I don't know if you do that or not. Yeah, sorry. I took a semester out of college and moved there and built a bar in the French Quarter. Built a bar? I did. Wow. I did. I learned how to hang drywall that spring. Alexi, there's so many layers to you. There are, just like this cocktail. Yeah. Wasn't making a ton of money building a bar. It was kind of a friend of a friend situation. So, I started bartending and I got a job at this jazz bar and they wouldn't let me bartend until I nailed the recipe for a Sazerac. And you had to know if someone orders a Sazerac, you have to ask them, Rye or Cognac. And it's very normal when you're working down there, if someone even French 75, if someone comes and orders a French 75. Brandy or gin? Typically, they typically mean gin, but not always. One time I ordered an old-fashioned in Wisconsin. Whoops. Well, they **** it up. Hierarchically. If Wisconsin didn't stretch their old-fashions all the time with mixers, you could think of this as a Wisconsin old-fashioned in the original recipe. It is sugar and bitters and brandy. All right. Just like the Wisconsin old-fashioned. Thank you for making this delicious, fabulous cocktail. Recipe will be on the blog. Check it out. We are all celebrating New Orleans and the holidays this time of year. Laus-ay-lay-bon-temp-ro-less. Yes. That's about right. Yeah. Yes. Barrel the Bottle. B2B Quick Sips. Thanks for listening. Back in your feed soon.