You're listening to Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. This is The Quarantini Sessions, episode three. I'm Pat, I do spirits at Binny's. I also drink a lot of hams. With me today is Greg. Hey, Greg, do communications at Binny's. I drink a lot of, I don't know. Everything. I don't know. All right. Also in the room with us today. Roger, I do beer, and I'm Chris. I'm a very promiscuous drinker myself. Cool. Chris, you haven't been on one of our Quarantini episodes. Number one is, what is number one? What was number one? That was that random bullsh** where I made that crappy cocktail and I was using the Mostel or something. Oh yeah, you used that dog s**t Mostel. Anyway. Yeah, it was gross. All right. And then number two. They were like classic cocktails. Yeah. And then number two, we focused in on the Quarantini Martini, which was, you know, that was a winner, I think. We all learned a little bit about ourselves. We taught people about the history of the martini and encouraged them to use sweet vermouth instead of dry. Yeah. And a close listener will remember Pat insisting that we all take our honey and make honey syrup from it so that we could do the first of the featured cocktails for Quarantine episode three right here, which is The Gold Rush. The Gold Rush. Finally, everyone listen to me. There's gold in them hills. So Roger text me or called me or something. Either way, Roger got a hold of me. I was regretful of the whole situation entirely, but Roger was happy to talk. And sometime after this quarantine episode, he's like, hey man, I've been telling everybody about this Gold Rush and everyone loves this cocktail. And we could do all this. And then of course Roger rogered it up and added pimento dram or, you know, some kind of weird to it. And I was like, listen, bro, you took a three ingredient cocktail and you gave it the Roger treatment and made it totally inaccessible. I'm sorry, excuse me. There's probably a jackfruit in it somewhere or something like that. Right. So we're here today. We're going to make a couple of different variances on the Gold Rush, I guess. I'm just going to use different based spirits. Roger's going to do whatever the hell Roger does. And Chris Spears with us today and he's just going to take it to a whole other level and everyone will drink it, but no one will make it. And I think that's where we stand here. Right. Can I tell you the only Gold Rush I think I've had is actually the ones from Craft House? Yeah, that was a good Gold Rush, man. It's a kind of shame that they kind of faded away there, but Craft House Bottled Cocktails was a thing for a while, and they had a Gold Rush that was their fourth release and it came out after the main stuff and it was pretty good, but it's like- Pretty solid. Yeah, pretty solid. But the Gold Rush is super easy to make at home. First thing you got to do is make a honey simple syrup, which is three parts honey to one part water. Heat it up on the stove until it's fully together and let it cool down and keep it in the fridge in the last a few weeks. Before we move on, let's talk about what kind of honeys we used. The honeys we used? I used bear honey. Honey bear honey. Greg used basic bitch plastic bear honey. I bet it's fine. I bet it's really good. Even just honey bear honey is like the work of a thousand bees. Bro, he's going to mix it with some high proof whiskey and lemon juice. You think you're going to taste the difference in honey at that point? I did an experiment this weekend and honey matters. I'd also like to show you the color of my honey syrup. Look at that. Well, your video is not working right now. That is. Pat, you poked the bear and it's a honey bear. Yeah. It's Roger. I used some somewhat local honey, I guess. I got it at a local grocery store by me. It's from Reed Root Farms. I don't know. It's the same honey I always buy from this local shop. Do you know the flowers? Is it clover? No, it doesn't say. It just says Reed Root Honey, R-E-I-D. I get it at Reem's Meat Market in Elburn. I used a honey in the raw, but this past weekend, I used a eucalyptus honey. It was part of a honey gift set that I received for Christmas. You would receive that. Yeah. It was the bomb, so I got to try to figure out where I can get more eucalyptus honey. That's pretty cool. Where was that produced, Roger? It was from Trader Joe's. Trader Joe's goes out there and finds the good products for you. Seems like it would be South American eucalyptus honey. Yeah. I don't know. Maybe Australia. It's probably American. Could be. They do eucalyptus even in Italy, I think. Speaking of which, I use an Italian raw honey. It's Mille Fiore, meaning a million flowers or wildflower honey. It's organic. It's from Abruzzi. The producer is Adi Apicultura. Really, really great Italian wildflower honey. You know we're making the Gold Rush, right? Hey, better ingredients, better cocktails. Totally agree. Papa John's. A lot of things to choose from. I almost went with an acacia blossom honey. I like acacia honey. I've got some of that. God, why is this turning into a Roger Fruit episode already? Okay, these guys are pretty mix-theirs, but I haven't mixed anything yet, so will you walk me through making this cocktail, please? Okay, basic Gold Rush. You're going to take two ounces of your spirit of choice that's technically bourbon, although I think we're going to try some new things today. So two ounces of bourbon, three-quarters of an ounce of lemon juice, and three-quarters of an ounce of the honey syrup. Super easy, right? Seems like a lot of lemon juice. Hey, you know what? It's really at its core. This is a riff on the whiskey sour. So it makes sense that you're using a lot of lemon juice. You said before, it's like a cold hot toddy. Yeah, it's a cold toddy. That kind of seems right. Yeah, honey, lemon, bourbon. You ever put tea or green tea in your hot toddy? That's delightful. I have, yeah, when I'm sick. But when I'm pretending to be sick and just looking for an excuse to drink bourbon in the afternoon, then it's just like, I don't feel so good. I'm going to make a hot toddy, yeah. No tea goes in there. It's like, honey, I had a hot toddy. I feel great. I'm pushing to him. So, are you planning on... Pat, are you shaking yours? Yeah, and yes, I am shaking mine, and that is one of the things. You have to shake the hell out of this cocktail, because if you made your honey syrup correctly, keep in mind, three parts honey, one part water, the whole point of the honey syrup at that ratio is that it gives it a nice plush thick mouthfeel, and All right, so I've got all kinds of not-control groups in mind. So my whiskey, I'm using my Rye Heavy Growler O leftovers here, which is my Infinity Jug. What are they calling them? It doesn't matter. Infinity. Infinity Bottle. Yeah. Greg's whole boat jug. Which is, it's mostly rye right now. I mean, it's a pretty cool experiment. People might actually want to try this because on one hand, you don't want all of the dregs of all of these leftover bottles, and it feels so precious and everybody saves on to the last inch of it. Yeah. Totally. You have a really nice special bottle of whiskey. You might have opened it in a special occasion, or you spent more than you normally do or something, and you're hanging on to the last ounce or two. All you're doing is letting that spirit oxidize and get flabby and crappy. Instead- And filling up your basement with all those empty bottles. And filling up your basement with empty space. So take a growler, clean it out really good, and pour all those little dregs of whiskey into a growler and have this cool infinite barrel, infinite bottle, whatever you're going to call it. Keep pouring out of it and keep pouring into it, and it's going to be fun. It's going to be a fun way to use the remaining dregs of your bottles. Or you can use my quarantine approach, which has been to just kill every bottle that's in that condition. Yeah, that's what I've been doing. You could just finish them off too. Yeah, I'm working through so many bottles with just a little bit left while I'm at home. It's amazing. So I've got my right heavy infinity bottle here. So I screwed up on the honey simple syrup. I used too much water, so it's a little more liquidy. But I have a very high rye whiskey. So I feel like the potent high rye whiskey is going to be okay with a little bit too much water. I understand it's a little less honey than people are expecting and a little bit of orange juice. And because I have, I don't want to get up and go get my shaker and because I really do prefer a cocktail on the rocks. I'm just screwing it on the rocks. Dude, you're screwing this up on so many levels. You know what a good, no good thing to do is if you don't have a shaker that I realized the last time we were doing quarantine, just fill up a Yeti cup with ice and it keeps the ice cold forever and you can mix in it and just cover up the little hole with your thumb and shake it up and it works totally perfectly. And then the lid- That's basically what a shaker is. Yeah, and the lid works as a strainer and strain it into a different cup, but then you don't have to keep going back and forth with ice and you don't have to take two parts of it apart except for an easy to get off plastic lid. It was totally simple. So Pat, you're shaking yours and you're making two ounces of bourbon. I am using two ounces of New Riff Bottled in Bond Rye. So I've been making this with bourbon. Oh, right. I wanted to try it a little spicier. First, I thought like, oh, spicier, maybe I'll get some of that hot honey. And I went to the store and the spicy honey was like $10 for half the size of the bottle. And I was like, well, I'll wait on this. So I'm using a really rye heavy rye, new riff rye, and we'll see how it goes. Another thing I'd like to point out for mixing, you can always use a mason jar to mix in. And if you're making these for like a cocktail party, it's not a bad idea to give everybody their own mason jar. I have a ball jar. A lot of the ball jars still say mason on it. You got the Yankee version of the jar. I don't know if ball or mason is... Which one's above the mason-dixon line? Well, ball is the brand, mason is the type of jar. See how this says ball mason. I'm shocked Roger has an opinion on this. That's right. Which one is best for canning jackfruit? I went downstairs to grab a mason jar from our collection of jars and it's just like the most irritating and cute thing. They were all full of buttons. That is cute, but boy would that piss me off. I know, I'm like, buttons. All right, how's yours, Greg? Mine is fine, honestly. I wish that there was a little more honey. No, you know what, Roger, sometimes I call things fine. This is good. This is fine. It's emphatically fine. Yours needs more honey, but that's partially because you screwed up the honey syrup though. Exactly. It needs a little bit more honey because I screwed up the honey syrup and the rye that I used is really, really rye, like it's 98 percent rye plus some bourbon that I mixed into the jug. So, I wish that the rye was a little less woody and I wish there was a little bit more like marmalade sweetness, vanilla from bourbon and not rye. I wish I had actually used the Clark and Sheffield bourbon on this one. The lemon gives it cut, the honey gives it sweetness, the spirit gives it backbone. This is a delicious cocktail. I could drink this every summer day. Dude, it's so easy to make too. Like you guys know and our listeners know, like every time somebody's like, oh, here's this cocktail. You literally take equal parts of these two things. And I'm like, too much work. No, drink a hams. Like this is my kind of cocktail. It's refreshing. It's got that sharp acidity from the lemon, but it's balanced by all the sweetness from the whiskey and the honey. And it's super easy to make. And I like the fact that you can make the honey syrup in whatever quantity you want and just keep it in a jar in the fridge. And it's going to last a little while. You know, this is not something I have to, I don't have to take the time. I don't have to sink the time and energy into doing this every time I want one. Like, I'm going to have this jar of honey syrup in my fridge for a few weeks. I'm going to have these for a while. It's great. Yeah. It really didn't take that long to make the honey syrup. And I am definitely finding that three ingredient cocktails are like the sweet spot for me because it doesn't turn it into a production. I just keep the supplies that I need on hand. You know, you shook yours up. I stirred mine on the rocks for a couple of minutes. It's very easy, very low barrier to entry. And you can make yourself something that is world class. Now, I will say I am using fresh squeezed lemon juice. I had a huge bag of lemons from Costco and I juiced like four of them or something. And so I have this little pitcher of lemon juice next to me right now that I'm going to be making these with. What did you use, Greg? I used, shamefully, the lemon juice out of the jug. Lemon juice out of the squeeze bottle. It's 100 percent, but it's definitely from Concentrate. So I bet it would be better with fresh lemon juice. This one's not too salty, which they can get sometimes. It's not too acidic. Should we review all the shortcuts you took on this cocktail, Greg? It's fine. And I bet if I made one for real, I bet I'd like it even more. But I took shortcuts on literally all of the ingredients and the process. Well, it is the quarantine time. So I'm sure there are people that are faced with similar situations. Yeah, you're not going to leave the house just for two lemons to juice for four cocktails. That's ridiculous. And the truth is, if I'm having a cocktail, if I'm making myself a cocktail, I don't care about the clarity of my martini. I don't need it to be pretty. I would prefer to drink a three ingredient cocktail on the rocks, let the ice melt over time, let it cool, and it kind of slows me down and gives me a little bit of water, whatever that's worth. And I don't want to have to put it in a coupe. I want it in a rocks glass. I want it easy for myself. So Pat, we have this perfect three ingredient cocktail. Let's see how Roger and Chris f***ed it up. Yeah. How are Roger and Chris going to make this untranslatable to your home experience? How can you make this esoteric and difficult? So I added one more ingredient, so if that's too complicated for you, we could do that. All right, Roger, tell us how to make this better and more complicated, please. Wait, so Roger added one, and Chris, you added two more ingredients? I didn't really complicate it too much, I don't think. Chris, you used an egg white. Yes. I have three versions in front of me. I have the- Chris, you made three versions and some of them included egg white. Yes. You made this cocktail into a sudoku. No, I made it into a whiskey sour all the way. This is just a riff on a whiskey sour. It's in the broad sour family, just like the margarita we're going to try later. I just added egg white and some bitters. It is fantastic, I have to say. I incorporated the egg white using the dry shake method, if you guys are down with that, which is shaking the cocktail sans ice to create a really nice frothy foam. Yeah, if you just chuck the egg white in there with ice, it's just going to freeze to the ice. Yeah. If you're making any of the classic sours with egg white, it's nice to shake dry without ice and really build up that lattice work of protein that the egg white provides and makes the drink feel- Then do you serve it over ice? No. In this case, so I'm having the regular version over ice. This version I'm serving in a cocktail coupe, and it has that beautiful creamy mouth feel, the egg whens. Actually, of the three, I've determined it's my favorite because I really like the texture of it. It tastes delicious. The regular version is your favorite? No, the egg white version. Yeah. Chris, you should definitely sprinkle some nutmeg on top of it. You think so? I do love nutmeg. Yeah. Freshly grated, of course. Of course. There's no point in nutmeg. I mean, is there any other kind of nutmeg? Yeah. There is, unfortunately. It's not allowed in my household though. Roger, which kind of nutmeg pairs best with jackfruit? Mace, only the shell, outer shell of the nutmeg. Very nice, Roger. Yes. Mace and nutmeg from the same exact little thing. One is the outer layer, one is the inner nut, the mag. I regret asking. You have the classic gold rush poured over the rocks. Yeah, fantastic. You have the egg white version poured up in a coop. Correct. What else? I decided because we're heading towards some warm months, that I would try to make it into a tall drink, something akin to a highball. Although now that I'm drinking these others, they are incredibly refreshing because of the acidity. But what I did, and this, again, don't think it complicates the drink very much, is that I made the same exact cocktail and then just put it in a Collins glass and added some Cock and Bull ginger beer. And I think the spicy ginger beer and the honey play really well together. And the other variation I did here, my first two were made with just Makers Mark Bourbon. This one I made with a rye that was also bottled in Bond. Rittenhouse, really great value in rye, in my opinion. So, yeah, Rittenhouse rye and the other variation on this one too is lime juice instead of lemon. So I kind of did a little bit of riff. So Rittenhouse rye, lime juice, honey syrup, and Cock and Bull ginger beer. And it's incredibly refreshing. Sounds pretty good. You're veering into the darkest part of the day. In the interest of science, you have to drink all those. You're assuming I haven't been working on that already. All right. In the time it took him to break this down, I made a second three ingredient Gold Rush. Well, I was smart enough to make three in the first place. Yeah. Smart enough, bored enough. This further supports the theory that all cocktails are basically just the same cocktail with everything swapped out. So I just made another one and I used my standard three-quarter ounce honey syrup, three-quarter ounce lemon juice, but I used two ounces of Argonaut Saloon Strength Brandy, which is a blend of California brandies aged like two to seventeen years or something. And I think I might like the brandy version a little bit better. Yeah. That sounds pretty Wisconsin. No, it does, but it's like, it's not as a, like I really liked the rye version and I like that the spice kind of played off the honey better, but the brandy one is just really round and soft and just easy drinking. Maybe it's because it was the second running of ice or what? All right, Roger, what's your take on this one? So similar to what Pat just said, I made one with Laird's Apple Brandy. Oh yeah, America's oldest distillery, baby. Founded in 1780, so old that the Laird family taught George Washington how to distill. So when Pat told me about this cocktail and how he was digging it, I made a whole bunch of them a couple of weekends ago. So I played around with it some and I mean for the record, I love the straight up bourbon, lemon juice, and honey. And like I said before, I think it can be fun to play around with different kinds of honey because you can notice a difference. So when you're in your store, there are a surprising number of different honeys I found, even when you just go to like a pretty normal grocery store. And in some of the ethnic food aisles, there's like all these crazy different kinds of honey. Forest honey is a neat honey to check out if you want something that's super kind of boldly flavored. But for this one, since we wanted to do riffs and all, didn't want to just make the exact same cocktail, I use Laird's Apple Brandy. That's the straight one, the one that's 100 proof. And then lemon juice, the honey syrup. And then I added just a tiny bit of this stuff called All Spice Dram, which I was talking about on one of the other podcasts. It's an all spice liqueur. In a lot of ways, this is kind of like a cold toddy. And a lot of people put some sort of spices in their toddies, whether it be cinnamon, a mixture of cinnamon and nutmeg and clove. A little bit of nutmeg. So yeah, I mean, you get a very subtle bit of spice from that, and it's super refreshing. You don't taste the booze at all, which is kind of dangerous. Laird's Apple Brandy is an American treasure, man. Something that you should definitely check out if you've never had it. I like it, Roger. It's like a cold Jamaican toddy. Yeah, there you go. A Jamaican me toddy. Wait, wait, can we call it a cool runnings toddy then? For the Bob Sledding team. You know what it kind of reminds me of? You want to talk about esoteric stuff. It's kind of tastes like Switchell in a way. If you've ever had a... No, no, Switchell kind of tastes like it. Yeah. Get out of here with your weird esoterica. Jesus. Keep going, Roger. I like it. No, keep moving on. Next. All right. Switchell listeners. By the way, I know that it's like putting orange flavoring on top of orange flavoring, but like apples, apples to oranges. The Laird's Apple Brandy in hot cider is so good. So good. Yeah, I agree. Just saying. All right. He's a hot juicy boy. Hey, can we agree that Spear has to make us all his whiskey sour that he just says is the Gold Rush next time he sees us? Because that was bulls**t. Like, oh yeah, I know it's a riff on a whiskey sour. So what I did was just make a whiskey sour. It's good. He made like six different versions of it. What are you complaining about? He made your damn traditional one. Pat, the Gold Rush is going to be one of my new jams because this is like, it's so drinkable. It's so easy to make. It's so crushable. It's so crushable. Yeah, it's a good drink. Yeah. Great cocktail. All right, margarita time. You guys ready to get down with the Mrs. Versh margarita? If we handed it over to Roger, I assume he would say that the thing about the margarita is that it really got screwed up in the 80s when people put a bunch of like corn syrup into it and started blending it up. With TJ Friday's went nuts? Yeah. Flavor place for that? Yeah, and like, yeah, or yeah, like at the Mexican taqueria, the like ice, like the slushy container that's just slopping around some frozen slop and that's what they sell you for a dollar. At its heart, a margarita is a really good, relatively high spirited, strong three ingredient cocktail. What I'm about to say is a pretty classic recipe, but done in the kind of lazy verse style. Mrs. Verse likes to mix hers up in, literally, a measuring cup. She'll mix two servings in a measuring cup on ice and then pour it in the glasses for us. But I'm going to do one version in a rocks glass right here. It might be a little bit of heresy the way that I'm putting it together, but I think you'll find the ingredients and the drink balance is pretty much standard, which is two parts tequila, one part orange brandy liqueur, and a lime, the juice of a lime. So my tequila is the Milagro Reposado. I still think it's one of the best values for brown tequilas in the store. That's true. It's so good. It's so good. The Inejo is a little bit overly aged, personally. I think you can't go wrong with, what's the Pierre Ferrand Dry Orange Curacao, which is cognac based, which is awesome. I don't have that right now. I have the Grand Gala version. I love that stuff. That's one of the best values in our store. Yeah. It's crazy cheap. Grand Gala Liqueur, which is a Italian VSOP brandy based orange liqueur. I'll put half as much of that in as the tequila. A lot of people talk about sweeteners in their margaritas, but that is the sweetener. Your orange brandy liqueur is the sweetener. It's sweet enough. If you need more sweeters, sweeteners, you're not sweet enough. I'm sweet enough. Unlike the Polybians who are using the bottled lime juice on this one, as though I didn't just use bottled lemon juice before. Yeah, screw you. I got my lime. I got my lime squeezer here. Oh, I see you also bought the cheapest lime squeezer Amazon had available. I didn't buy this, buddy. It was a Copac with the Don Julio gift set that I tore open. I said, cheapest lime squeezer available. And if you will take a look at it, you'll see that I have a metal peg that I have put in here because the original peg popped out. Dishwasher safe, folks. Why would you put this in the dishwasher? All right. So the juice of a whole lime. And I don't think you need to shake it. These guys are going to tell you that you need to shake it. But I like to mix it over the rocks. I like to let the ice melt as I drink it. I like to stir it. I don't even mind if it's a little bit stratified because, you know, it's an experience that you go through. So I'm just going to stir that bad boy up. You got fresh lime citrus. You've got a delicious value tequila and an incredible orange brandy all in a glass. That's a great margarita. Don't put anything on the rim. If you really want to take half of the lime that you just squeezed and drop it in there, then that like will at least give you something to smush up against your face and you call it a garnish. There you go, guys. Quarantini margarita. Very nice. I think I'm going to jump in here now because as much guff as you guys gave me for messing with the Gold Rush. We're going to give you more guff for using the word guff in 2020. Hey, I'm old. What am I going to do? Make a margarita. Concern it. Yeah, my margarita of choice is just as basic as yours with a few differences. I definitely like a blanco tequila. I am not opposed to reposado or enyejo. If I do those, I definitely lean toward brandy based orange liqueur like you do. But in this case, I'm using Herradura Blanco Quantro, classic triple sec liqueur and freshly squeezed key limes. Key limes. Yeah. My proportions are pretty much exactly as yours are. I do shake mine and I do not drink it on the rocks. I serve it up and I really glass with salt. It's pretty old school. That's the way I like it. It's delicious. I have to say that, as much as the margarita has been maligned and adulterated over the years, it is a truly classic cocktail and it is one of the really beautiful three ingredient cocktails. Why mess with that? Right on. Where do you get key limes? Are they just around? Yeah. You can get them in the grocery store occasionally. They always come in like a bag. You buy a whole bunch. Yeah, like a little net bag. You get a bunch of them. They're tiny. You got to squeeze a lot. They do have a different flavor. They have seeds in them too. Which is kind of interesting. You shop at the Fruit King grocery stores, you get key limes. They don't have them at my grocery store. And it's like one of these like marketplace fruit places, fruit marketplaces. Sometimes they're just not, you know, available. They're kind of more seasonal than the Persian lime. Absolutely true. Yeah, as Roger says, the standard lime that everybody uses in America is called the Persian lime and definitely different. All right, so my margarita is margaritas suck, and I made a paloma. And people need to drink more palomas. A paloma... You know what? Margaritas don't suck, but palomas can also be good. Yeah. I love a paloma, too. Margaritas do not suck, to make that clear. What I did was I actually made a spicy paloma, and I used my video cutout, so you guys can't see me now, but I used a spice called tajin, T-A-J-I-N. I have the habanero tajin, which I had a special order on Amazon. I get a two pack, and it gets fulfilled by some Mexican candy shop in Los Angeles. But this is like this all purpose spice that gets used to like zhuzh up the fruit or something. I sprinkle it on avocados. So is it like salty? It is salt and lime and habanero in like a dried spice that you like shake over something. Yeah. In Mexico, you'll find vendors who will have little fruit cups, including things like mango and jicama and stuff like that, and they'll shake tahini all over it. Yeah. So it's traditionally shaken over different fruits and vegetables in Mexico. Whatever. I like spicy stuff. Brett Pantani loves the regular tahini, that he shakes all over his avocado. The last time he was in Mexico, somebody at the Guadalajara Airport was closing out these half-gallon size shakers of tahini. He was like, It was like $2. They were like giving him away. I had it. In the Whiskey Hotline office, we have this comically large bottle of tajin that he just pours all over his avocados that he eats most days. But anyway, I like the spicier ones. A paloma is really grapefruit juice and tequila and a little bit of lime juice. So it's like the recipe that I go by is two parts grapefruit soda. So I am using of note top note grapefruit soda. So top note is a mixers tonic company, I guess, out of Milwaukee. Do we carry this? Yeah, they make good stuff. We do carry this. It is unquestionably the best tonic water available at Binny's Beverage Depot. I don't know if I agree with that, but they make good stuff. Let me finish my story. Damn it, Roger. Yeah, I prefer the fever tree, Indian. Last year, we had a whiskey hotline study group where we had 30 employees, and we opened every single tonic water that was on the shelf at the Lincoln Park Binny's at the time, and tasted them blind. And the obvious clear winner was Top Note Tonic Water, followed closely by two different flavors of fever tree, which was the Mediterranean and the elderflower, I believe. Mediterranean was definitely one elderflower. People are afraid of quinine bitterness. Yeah. But either way, Top Note is phenomenal. Absolutely phenomenal. And so their tonic water and their grapefruit soda here are available at all Binny's stores now. Like, it's awesome. It's local. It's craft. It's not loaded with like garbage corn syrup or any of that stuff. And so it is... I need to try this. Oh, Greg, you absolutely need to try this. I bet my highball game would get a lot better if I was drinking these instead of... Dude, Top Note is the business. It is so good. So I cut this... So the recipe I used here is four ounces of the Top Note grapefruit soda, two ounces of tequila. I used... Let me see here. Hang on. Here it is. I got a lot of bottles of tequila around me. I used El Tesoro in Yeho. El Tesoro from La Altangia. Highlands tequila made by Master Distiller, Carlos Camarena. Very nice stuff. Tijuana ground, rich Highland agave, all that jazz. And a half ounce of lime juice. So it really is grapefruit soda and tequila with a dash of lime juice. And I added some of this habanero tahini into it, like a little tiny, just like two spritzes. I don't know. How do you measure a spritz or a jus or whatever? Or what is that? What is that, a pinch? It's a shake, buddy. Yeah, a shake, whatever. I added like one shake in and I rimmed the glass ahead of time. And it is just phenomenal. So speaking of making things all fancy, that drink would likely be... Oh, my four ingredient cocktail really trumps your egg white bull from before, right? Well, I'm just saying that likely you would find fresca in place of your fancy schmancy grapefruit soda. Yeah. So in place of the fancy schmancy grapefruit soda, you could use club soda and grapefruit juice. You could use fresca. But honestly, squirt. Everyone use squirt. Give me a break. Everyone use squirt. Listen, Paloma is a sh** drink and it's a squirt in tequila. You're crazy. You're crazy because if you use good ingredients, it's just an awesome drink, man. Seriously. But like top note deserves the praise for this because their their stuff is legit. And this grapefruit soda they made is awesome. It is not like overly sweet. It's nice and tart. It's not overly pithy, though. It's just great. I'm enjoying the best cocktail here, as usual. And you guys are just a bunch of haters, as usual. If you make one, well, that's fine. I'm just saying most people, when you order a Paloma, get ready for tequila and squirt. Don't. No one's ordering sh** right now. Everyone's making stuff. This is Quarantini Episode 3, Roger. You can get this awesome stuff at Binny's. Order from Binny's. Make it at home. Ignore Roger Adamson. I actually have Top No Products at home right now, which I think is probably a rare few people that do. So pipe down, sweet cheeks. Speaking of ignoring Roger Adamson, Roger, you just made margarita in the background. Yep. I'm out of tequila, so... What? Yeah, quarantine time, man. Roger, I got so much tequila, I'm never going to drink in my house. I usually have Coralejo sitting around. I love that Coralejo Reposado, I think is a great value, great mixer. But yeah, I drank it all. So I made a rummerita instead, because I always have dozens of bottles of rum on hand. I am using a rum that everyone needs to buy. This is from Plantation. It's called OFTD, which they wrote, stands for Old Fashioned Traditional Dark. I'm going to tell you a little secret. That is not what OFTD stands for. The last... Jim, get ready with the beeps. Yeah. Oh, that's good. Wait a minute. That doesn't work. Yeah, it doesn't. Roger, you idiot. What was the story now? I know that's what it was. That's the first three. What the hell is the D for? Oh, that's dope. Dope. Yeah, dope, I guess. Delicious. Yeah, delicious. There you go. Quarantines, baby. Are you differentiating this from daiquiri by the addition of an orange liqueur? Yes. It is some of this massively overproof rum, which this stuff is in a liter bottle. It's a little more money, but it's actually super affordable for what it is. It's 69 percent alcohol, which is pretty crazy for how good it is. I mean, you can just drink this on the rocks, or I can, at least. And I mixed two ounces of this with an ounce of lime juice and an ounce of the same orange liqueur that Greg used, which you can't say enough good things about. When people use triple sec, there's absolutely no excuse when Grand Gala is available for under 20 bucks. Grand Gala, lime juice, and this rum, which this rum is just the bomb. It's a blend of a bunch of different rums, rums from Jamaica, Guiana, Barbados, I mean that right there I would argue are the three best rum producing countries. You got all three of them in this. It's no surprise that this rum is the bomb because the people that they put together to blend it are just incredible. Jeff Barry, the guy I never shut up about who's the king of tiki cocktails, was involved. The owners of smuggler's Cove and Lost Lake, Kate McGee, David Wondrich. What do these guys know about jackfruit though? I bet you some of them know about jackfruit, baby. Well, yeah, it's tasting great. I used quite a bit of an ounce of Orange the Corn here is definitely a healthy amount, but I wanted it to taste more like a margarita and not just like a daiquiri or something. But it's great. This rums the bomb. Buy it. Rum margarita. I feel like somehow, even though it had absolutely nothing to do with tiki cocktails, Roger somehow made our Gold Rush and margarita episode about tiki cocktails. That's a good point. I can't help it. Yeah, I did. I totally tikified both of them. Can't help it, man. I am a very old school. I love books about stuff, anything, but especially about. I love books about stuff. I love books about cocktails. I have way too many of them. I literally have book cases full of cocktail books. I'm almost staring at smuggler's Cove right now, a bunch of Jeff Berry books. I mean, I have books from literally three of the people that are on this bottle. smuggler's Cove, best bar I've ever been to in my life. Phenomenal bar. Every time. Every time. Yeah. We're not going to mention it and I'm not going to say that. It's deserving of every superlative I have. Hey, so Roger, I know I said I was going to make a Paloma because everybody should drink Palomas instead of margaritas. Yes. But I should make a margarita and I have the things here. I need to make a margarita. So I'm going to tell you what I need, what I have here and I want you to tell me what I should make it out of. Okay. I have tequila and I have mezcal. Which should I use? I would argue that since you're going to put sweetening in it, I think you should use tequila and not mezcal. All right. In that case, I'm going to use Terra Manna Blanco because I smell what the rock is cooking. So I have lime juice. We've been over your hate on my lime juice. I have Cointreau. I have Grand Marnier. I also just have agave nectar. Should I use just the agave nectar instead of that? Then make the ultimate natural margarita? No. No. Madness. Really? Spear, what's your answer? You need the orange in there, I feel. Madness. Madnesses. Too much of a component of the margarita, there has to be a rich element. Really? You'll be shocked to hear that Brett Pontani has a strong opinion on this, and his is that it should just be lime juice, agave nectar, and tequila, which is like, I guess, the ancestral style of margarita, but at the same time, I agree with you, I think what bothers some people is that they make margaritas, I would say the most common orange liqueur that's used is Grand Marnier, which is a cognac base, which has a pretty strong flavor. Strong spirited flavor with a touch of orange, as opposed to Cointreau, which is more of a triple sex style, that has more candied orange. Yeah. If you want the tequila to shine through more and not get as drawn out and I have to compete with something, you use Cointreau. Cointreau, yeah. All right. Precisely why I chose Cointreau with a Blanco. So what should my portions be? I have a measured pour here. I have tequila. I have Cointreau. I have lime juice. What are my proportions? Personally, I like a drier margarita. So I do- Fair enough. Two ounces of tequila, one ounce of lime juice. You like a strong margarita too, huh? Yeah. Well, I serve mine over the rocks, so I'm expect a little dilution. They're too good. I don't want to drink them too quick. That's fair. I don't have a rocks glass, but I do have a shaker full of ice. I'm going to shake the **** out of this. There you go. So I have two ounces of tequila. What next? An ounce of lime juice. If you're using that plastic lime juice, I would use a little less. A little less, okay. I would use three quarters. This is the only time I would recommend leaving lime juice out of a margarita. You know what? You guys are f***ing haters. It'll still be good. Then again, since you're using that, I would go what some people might say heavy on the orange. I would do three quarters of an ounce of Cointreau. Some people might only do half an ounce, but I would say match it equal parts with the. All right. Boom, that's all you need. Some people do like it sweeter and they would put in that agave syrup now too, but I don't prefer that way, but you could put a half an ounce if you want. I know people that have used St. Germain instead of Triple Sec in Margaritas too and really love it. Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, that is a pretty pronounced toro element, but my favorite, I love that St. Germain is sometimes referred to as bartender's ketchup. I think it does good on just anything, so I totally see that. If you want to sweeten up your margarita, the agave nectar is a good way to go because it's subtle. The honey syrup that we made would be better. Even simple syrup is better than putting in something like sour mix, something that's neon green and a jug. Yeah. This is such a simple cocktail, you got to go with fresh citrus. Forget about margarita mixes, folks. They're all crap. Even the higher end ones are not worth your time. I agree. If you're buying a margarita mix, you're cutting corners. Well, I got a really nice looking cloudy white margarita here. Weird. I think Pat just died. I think it's a little tequila heavy. I mean, that's pretty standard proportions. People might say one and three quarters ounce of tequila, but I don't know that they do less than that. Yeah, two, one, one, I think is the most common way to do it. Two, one, one, margarine. It's also the easiest. When you do one on the orange, that's where I think you get into the territory of Brett. Someone like Brett would say like, oh, you're losing too much of the tequila. So, whatever, play around with it. Make them however you like. But that's what I would say the starting point is. I'm going to add some of my habanero tejín to this to zhuzh it up a bit. You keep saying that. Yeah, because that's how it works. Now, what would be cool is if you had some gusano salt. Oh, you know what? The worm comes into play. Ground up worms, chili powder, salt. My guy Ramon, who is one of the spirits guys at the South Loop Store, came back from Mexico last year with some gusano salt, and I left it in my office, man. I have a jar of that stuff and ground up dried worms with salt. Oh, it's awesome. Well, shockingly, spicy everything is better. Sounds good to me. So, I learned something today. What's that? Well, I learned that a Gold Rush is a very easy cocktail to make if... You're not Chris Spear? If I have taken the couple of minutes it takes to make a honey simple syrup, and that I have the ingredients ready to go, I think I have a new stable cocktail that I'm going to drink pretty much on the regularly, as long as I can keep the honey Look at, an anti-cocktail guy changes opinions of the mixologist of the Barrel to Bottle Crew. Look at that. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Roger and Chris were already true believers to the point that they came with variations ready to go. No, they were haters. They want to prove me wrong. No, not at all. I think the classic Gold Rush is absolutely fantastic. But I just thought we'd spice it up a little bit, try something different. It doesn't make good podcast content if we all just make the same drink and go, yep, it's great. All right. So if you want to fancy it up, make a whiskey sour. I learned that, I already knew, you want to make a good margarita, make it the classic way, make it nice and fresh and strong. Or make a Paloma. Okay. You want to give away 20 bucks? Yes. Roger does. I want people to get ingredients to make some of these cocktails, so 20 bucks is going to get them on the way. It will get you a bottle of Grand Gala, that's for sure. Boom. So that brings us to the Q&A portion of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast where we answer your question for a $20 Binny's gift card. Write your question to us at comments.binnys.com via email. Hit us up on social media at Binny's Bev on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Our question this week comes via email from Jason D. Jason writes, Enjoying the quarantine-y podcasts. Do you ever make champagne cocktails? Some of my favorites include The Black Velvet, Death in the Afternoon and Barbatage. Would love to hear more. I like this guy. I don't. You got to add the classic champagne cocktail and also the French 75. The Cure Royale. Cure Royale. Oh my God. There's so many. We should do a whole episode on champagne cocktails. Yeah. Right? Here's the reason why I don't make champagne cocktails because I don't want to have to open a whole bottle of champagne. Well, we've talked about a couple of alternatives to that. What a party pooper. Yeah. All right. Yeah. Open a bottle of $8 Cava and drop some absinthe in there, and your death will be just as timely. Just as much in the afternoon. Chris, what sparkling wine do you use for champagne cocktails? Yeah. I rarely use actual champagne for a cocktail. I reserve that for a straight tipple. But certainly, depending on the cocktail, I think fabulous alternative in the method Champenoise style is Cava from Spain. For some things, Prosecco is appropriate, but I wouldn't do it for everything because it's totally different production methods and different flavor profile. What about Saint Hilaire? That's my house brand. Yeah, Saint Hilaire. This is Blancet du Lemieux from Southern France. Great value sparkling wines down there as well. I would definitely recommend that. You can go all over France and get find really good value sparkling wines in Burgundy, Alsace, Lemieux, Vouvray even, etc. There are lots of options out there. Yeah, Saint Hilaire is a good choice. Cremate de Beaujolais. Now, Chris, when you make a French 75, do you do the, what's your base spirit? Gin is generally my base spirit, although I know brown spirit is often employed. So I like both of them, but I think I like the cognac bastardization better than the gin. Yeah. I'm a gin guy though. I drink a lot of gin. In my house, gin is pretty standard. We do a lot of gin and tonic. Martini for me would never ever have vodka in it under any circumstances. Good. Yeah. I would say that if you're looking to try new champagne cocktails, French 75 should be the top of your list and you should try it both ways. I think they both have merit. Some people get snooty about it and say it has to be gin, but you should try it with cognac, you should try it with gin. Agreed. They both have the power of the 75-millimeter gun. Wham-o. Chris, do you ever make a champagne punch? I mean, I have. Not a common thing for me, but for a while in recent years, punch was the big thing, bringing back all kinds of punches. That's like an old school one. That's like the party of my grandparents. Right. It would float a ring, an ice ring in it with some fruit or something. Yeah. It's like Hawaiian punch ice ring. Yeah. Right. Put some lime sherbet in there or something. So Chris mentioned briefly the champagne cocktail. I mean, it doesn't get much easier than that. So no, that was the classic comical misdirect. He said the classical champagne cocktail. Yeah. Then he said something else. So yeah. Well, yeah, the champagne cocktail, right? Just who has a sugar cube and bitters. Boom. Not too difficult. There you go. And again, with that, Roger has sugar cubes in his house for sure. You can experiment with different different sugar cubes and different bitters. So try one with the Demerara sugar cube. And I have some molasses content in the sugar. So it's going to be very different. And try like Peychaud's bitters versus Angostura. Like huge difference there. I totally agree with you, Roger. You can make riffs on this. You know what would be interesting is to try a basic champagne cocktail with a little honey syrup. Yeah. I like that idea too. Yeah. Well, I think we found that. By the way, Chris, you brought up bitters earlier in one of your cocktails. Which bitters did you use? Oh, that was in the egg white version of The Gold Rush. And I just used Angostura. Classic. Cool. Well, I think the way we just rattled off a million different variations there, that might be a future quarantine-y episode. The champagne cocktails? I like the idea. All right. Cool. That means thank you. Hold on. Chew it nice. That means thank you, Jason D via email. Thanks, Jason, for the question. $20 Binny's gift card coming to you. Everybody else, email your question to comments at binnys.com or social media, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, at Binny's Bev. You know the score. Thanks, guys. This is a fun one. Pretty good quarantine-y. Yeah. Good times. Good, easy cocktail. Gold Rush, new favorite of mine. Margarita, old favorite of mine. Thanks for indulging me. And Pat, thanks for suggesting The Gold Rush. It's a pretty good one. Yeah, no problem. Somebody else suggested it to me online. So I'm happy to pass it along and take the credit. No $20 Binny's gift card for the doubt. Oh, all right. And Chris, thanks for hanging out. Oh, yeah, it was great. I really appreciate being invited on. And I had a lot of fun. Yeah, man. All right. We'll be back in your feed next week with something good. Probably a bonus episode to from one of our virtual tastings. Check them out on binnys.com and Facebook. Leave us a review if you like it on your podcasting platform of choice. Until next time, I'm Greg. I'm Pat. I'm Roger. And I'm Chris. Keep tasting. Hey, Pat, do you have a 55-gallon drum of broken Corbel brandy bottles up at the cab? You know, that's none of your damn business, and I'll invite you to stay out of my personal affairs. Yeah, it's right next to the rainwater drum of crushed squirt cans.