You are listening to Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. I'm Roger, I do beer and cocktail enthusiast. Greg, I do communications at Binny's. I'm Pat, I enjoy vermouth neat. The only guy in the world who would rather just drink vermouth than mix it in with bourbon or- Totally, just give me the vermouth. Do you really drink it neat, or do you drink it with soda? I usually just drink it on the rocks, actually. Not even a splash of soda? No, I don't usually keep soda in the house. Savage. Makes sense. Yeah. You're drinking still water, like a heathen? Oh yeah. I don't like bubbly water. I don't know, it tickles my top of my palate too much. He's got the cellar palate these days, it's got to taste a little bit like copper or it doesn't taste right. Too fancy for Pat. welcome to Quarantini, Part 2, Electric Boogaloo. We're going to be drinking some more quarantine cocktails today. I suggested, if you are an avid Barrel to Bottle listener, you might remember our episode where we featured the illustrious Manhattan cocktail, and each of us talked about what our preferred method of preparation was. Today we're going to talk about martinis. Everybody keeps saying that they're drinking quarantinis. That's kind of become a generic term for any cocktail that you make at home. Out of basement gym. Yeah. Out of whatever you have laying around. A can of PBR. But thankfully, Binny's delivers. So you can make some of these cocktails with us at home by obtaining some of these ingredients that we have today. We're going to talk a little bit about the martini and how it's changed over the years. Arguably, there is no other cocktail that's gone under... I mean, if you walk into a bar and say you want a martini, you could be served one of a hundred different things. It's really changed quite a bit over the years. So, a little bit of background. The martini is like a lot of classic cocktails. There's a lot of arguing over when exactly it originated, who invented it. But in its simplest forms, the martini really came into fashion and in vogue in the late 1800s, early 1900s. Unlike a lot of today's martinis, which are made with vodka, the original martinis were made with gin, and there was quite a bit of vermouth in there. It was essentially a gin and vermouth based cocktail. Originally, the gin that was used in a martini was sweet vermouth, which might seem extremely strange to martini drinkers today. I'm going to make one. Sounds kind of gross. Oh, yeah, of course. It's going to be awesome. I'm going to enjoy going back to the original martini here. I'm not usually a martini guy, but if you talk about an old, old school martini, I do like those every once in a while. Like many cocktails, people give you 20 different renditions of how it started, where it started, how to properly make one. The important thing with martinis is to go back to when they were, you know, really hit their fashion, which was the late 1800s, early 1900s. At that time, it was a gin based cocktail that featured gin, vermouth, and typically a dash or two of bitters. The bitters that they would use are oftentimes orange bitters, garnished with some sort of citrus, usually lemon peel. So this is definitely a cocktail where the quality of the ingredients you're putting in it definitely matter. There's really no mixer in here. It's just all straight booze. So, something that has definitely influenced the popularity of martinis over the years. The martini glass went from being essentially a cocktail coupe to the fish bowl that it is nowadays. Fish bowl? Yeah, I mean. Oh, you mean like the bright red or blue or green martinis that are out there? No, I just mean size-wise. I mean, that's the thing with a lot of martinis these days. You go to a place that's, you know, there could be four ounces of vodka in it. I actually brought these out for this one. Should I not use this? This is my typical glass triangular martini class. No, that's good. That's classy. That's not, I'm talking about like a TGI Fridays, like comically large. I think I might have something for this. My buddy bartended a cheesecake and I think he told me that a cheesecake martini has like four ounces of vodka in it. It's always cracked me up. People are just getting hammered on these things. Well, at cheesecake though, they're following it up with like 7,500 calories of an appetizer, followed by 10,000 calories of a main course. That's just the Caesar salad. Yeah, they're soaking it up. There's plenty of butter drenched croutons to soak that baby up. Right. It's definitely a cocktail that strangely has devolved, if you will, over the years. Being such a simple cocktail, it's usually talked about in ratios. For those of you that don't normally look at bartending books or haven't bartended, it's usually one of those cocktails where if you describe how to make it, they would say, all right, I want a vodka martini or a gin martini. The typical ratio originally was two to one. Two parts gin to one part vermouth, and then if you wanted to add some bitters, you'd add a dash or two of bitters to it. Over the years. That sounds surprisingly similar to the recipe I brought to the table today. Many would argue that that's something you should mess with, but vermouth, and Pat can jump in here and talk about this. As we've mentioned many times in the past, it's definitely a misunderstood beverage, especially for American pallets. A lot of people who were ordering martinis in bars, they were getting some pretty crappy vermouth, either just the brand itself or the bar had, God only knows how long they had had that bottle open for. That's definitely the problem. Oh yeah, for sure. Everybody's first vermouth is the cheapie. Then, right, they keep it open for six months in their fridge if you're lucky. Yeah, no, it's a Tribuno bottle just sitting underneath the neon lights and the, buried behind the Jack Daniels bottles on the back bar. Yeah. So I think, you know, even though cocktail bars nowadays have made an effort to bring back some forgotten cocktails and some of these more interesting ones, there's an argument that just making really good proper martinis with really nice vermouth is an underappreciated cocktail that you just don't see so much anymore. So, you know, instead over the years we got less and less vermouth added to martinis. So they went from 2 to 1 to 4 to 1 to 8 to 1 to the point of a lot of people's dry martinis involved almost no vermouth at all. They might do a rinse or a spray into the glass and that was it. So that combined with the fact that vodka started getting substituted for gin, the martini devolved into essentially, I want a very large glass of chilled vodka with a garnish is essentially what. Yeah. When did that happen? I mean, that was the, I think the 80s was about the pinnacle of just, there's no gin in it, there's no vermouth in it, and it's just chilled vodka with a lemon or an olive or a citrus peel. Sounds pretty good for a couple of go-go 80s Reaganauts like you guys. But again, we're here to try to resurrect this cocktail a little bit, give it some of the disrespect it deserves, take it out of the chocolatini, appletini garbage land that it's fallen into, and get you thinking again about the type of gin you use I'm definitely more interested in making that OG martini that uses sweet vermouth. Now, this, and you've said bitters too, and if it's gin and sweet vermouth and bitters, first of all, it kind of sounds like a gin Manhattan. But it also then sounds like a Martinez. Is Martinez and martini, like did they come from the same place, or is the ratios in a Martinez a little different? So yeah, that's definitely one of the theories as far as how the martini came to be was that it was the offshoot of the Martinez cocktail. And the Martinez cocktail would involve definitely a healthy serving of sweet vermouth. Some recipes are equal parts, which is what most of the original martini recipes are. I've even seen some recipes, though, for Martinez where there's more vermouth than there is gin. I've seen some that are around like two to one, or maybe not quite two to one, but the Martinez should definitely highlight sweet vermouth. Can I go first since I'm doing the classicist, the classicist of martini recipes? Are you? I think you're doing the most, or the most nouveau, aren't you? Is it? I'm doing two to one with a dash of bitters and an olive. Oh, okay. I thought you were, you said you wanted yours dirty. I thought you were using like olive juice. I mean, not that dirty. Filthy. I could put in some olive juice too. It all depends, you know, if the olive juice is oily, and if you need, if you don't have the brininess. Actually, part of it is this bomb-ass vermouth is enough to carry its own. And if I was using like a cheaper vermouth, I would want something else to fill in some of the space. The bomb-ass vermouth he is referring to is Montanaro Vermouth de Torino Extra Dry. Extra Dry. And it is awesome. Yeah. We'll start with the classic and then build from there. Once again, I got my shaker pint shaker. This is Quarantini Actual Martini Edition. So fill it up with the ice. Just accidentally threw something away on my desk. It doesn't matter. The jigger here. My gin today is St. George Terroir gin. Just thought I'd mix it up a little bit from the, so I used them last time. St. George Botanivore gin. I like St. George Terroir. It is foraged botanicals from all over Northern California. They were trying to get like the alpine woodlands of Northern California distilled into a bottle of gin. If you like piney, it is piney. Not gonna lie, it smells pretty piney. Then the Montanaro Vermouth de Torino extra dry. That's two to one ratio. I'm gonna hit it with the Peychaud's bitters. I think I like the aromatic complexity with the gin. It is slightly pink because of my pate shows. And I'm going to drop in two olives. Do you guys have an opinion about olives? Greg, I have an opinion about everything. I know you do, Roger. So I didn't want to pick up the, I like blue cheese olives, but I don't like them in a martini. There's something about cheese floating around in booze. I just don't like, and I figured that would shock you guys. Yeah, I wasn't aware you met a cheese you didn't like. So I got my two plump, plump, pimento stuffed olives, Binny's brand. It's a value. And there you go, guys. Look at that. It's kind of a weird pink color though. I don't know that I've seen a regular dry martini with a pink hue to it. Okay, so the lighting in my basement and the webcam quality is really bad. It's actually incredibly pink. It's not coming across, but it's the bitters. The bitters just give it like this extra lift. So the pininess from the terroir gin is definitely front and center. But then, I don't know, this this vermouth is just so great. Super salinic, you know, it has some of the like crisp white wine qualities that you get from a good white wine and a little bit of spice and another layer of aromatic complexity from the bitters. So it's an all rounder. It's a classic. It should be mentioned that Greg definitely emphasized taste over appearance and martinis, the way they look is a huge part of the drink. So that brings about the whole debate about shaking a martini versus stirring it. And I find some mix out just get hilariously offended by this. Wait, so which side are you on? I shake a lot of drinks just because it's easier. The agreed upon pretty much preparation method is to stir them. As opposed to shaking it. Well, I usually just drink it the same way I drink my Manhattan, which is to pour it into a rocks glass and let the ice melt. But I thought you guys would make fun of me for that. So wrong again, jackass. You drink martinis on the rocks? That's pretty interesting. No, it's great. Who cares? It's not like I'm impressing anybody. Well, again, so yeah, that's a big part of whole mixology is, yeah, you can discard some of the pretentiousness of it for sure. Yeah. You want to put a grapefruit in there? You want to give it a little bit of orange juice? You want to touch it up with, I don't know, I ran out of things that I put in there. Well, so I would say culturally, it's pretty interesting that this is basically because of one person, Ian Fleming, in his novel Casino Royale with the now famous James Bond, that we have the whole associating shaking with a martini because- Even that's a Vesper and not a martini. That's a style of martini though, is it not? Yes. Yeah, but- Yeah, it's like the Vesper martini. I think I would make the argument to that there's a reason why he says to shake that particular martini versus stirring it, is that it is a massive booze bomb. If you've ever made a Vesper, James Bond says he wants three measures of Gordon's gin to one measure of vodka, and then a half measure of quinoa de l'oeil. So I mean, it's four and a half ounces of booze with nothing else. So you want to water it down a little bit? Yeah, you want to water it down some. Nothing in there to really make it cloudy in the first place. Yeah. If there's time to make a second one, I'm making one of those after this. Yeah. It's that drink, I would say too, if you do want to recreate one, which is fun, it's interesting. Just keep in mind that when you use the ingredients now, they're a little different than they were then. So I'll speak to the Gordon's gin. The proof on that has gone down some. And the vodka that they would have used back then would probably would have been 100 proof. And Lillet sucks now. And I have Pat's bottle of Coke Americano. I guilted him into giving me his half bottle that was left. Yeah. I would use that instead of Lillet, personally. Yeah, that's the replacement. So even though Lillet likes to imply they haven't changed the recipe, as Pat said, they clearly have. It doesn't have that same quinine kick that it used to. So you want to regale people, Pat, on what Coke Americano is very briefly? Coke Americano is an Americano which is a fortified, aromatized wine whose primary flavor is actually gentian root and not quinine or cinchona bark or a quinoa like that. But it's a little more woodsy and bitter, and a little less baking spice and bitter. I think Pat has described Coke Americano almost as many times as Roger has described jackfruit on this podcast. There's no way that's close. He probably just did it recently is why it's fresh in your mind. But it's an excellent product that I think your average drinker probably walks past it on the shelf. It has a pretty goofy label. It has this rooster crowing on it. And it really, a lot of people don't know what it is. I mean, it says a Peritivo, and it looks golden in color. It's near the vermouth, so people might assume it's a vermouth. I would suggest, even if you don't make a Vesper, you should try subbing it in for vermouth in a more traditional martini recipe and see how you like that, because that alone makes a pretty nice martini. But yeah, as far as the shaking goes, it's definitely an experiment worth trying at home. Try shaking, there's countless people who've done this online. Try shaking a martini versus stirring it, have them side by side. You'll notice the difference in appearance, but also you're gonna notice a difference in taste. In defense of James Bond, if you're using all booze and high proof booze, it probably makes a little sense to shake it instead of stirring it. All right, I'm doing it. So, backtracking through the ingredients. Vermouth vermouth. That's right, it's a tube martini kind of afternoon. So, Jen. Pat, when you make a martini, do you use bitters at all, Oliver? I will now. When I make a martini, it's usually not a martini. Okay. If I'm, I don't really drink vodka at all. The only vodka in our house is currently being used to make vodka sauce for pasta dishes. Seriously? Yeah, no, yeah. Oh, and you know what? When I was digging around the basement trying to find other stuff for this episode, I found a bottle of Pinnacle Cucumber Watermelon Vodka, which is a total shock that I've stashed that in a box in a basement and never opened it. I know. Here's the sound effect so that people believe that I'm doing this. That is my stirred martini. You didn't do much stirring there, Greg. It's definitely more clear in the glass. Pink AF. That's a much better looking drink. Definitely clearer. No frost on this one. Let's see how it tastes. I mean, it's a little more potent because there's less dilution. There you go. Yeah. Again, I've always found it funny because people get real worked up about it. But again, I think if bartending is your trade, I understand. I'm passionate about it. You got to make it look good. But in your basement, if you really want your martini to look pretty, give it a stir. Pat, you wanna go next? Sure, so if I'm gonna make an original Roger, hang on, let me make sure I still got enough ice here. That's a great cocktail name, an original Roger. It could be only one. Good band name, too, the original Roger. All right, original Roger. Hey, all right, so I'm gonna make, how about I make a Martinez? Fair enough? Cool. So I should be using, what, two parts of gin, one part sweet vermouth and a dash of bitters? Well, Martinez would have Maraschino in it. As we learned from a previous episode, he does not have that. No. By the way, two strikes against Pat. One, he's a spirits industry professional that doesn't have some of the most vital building blocks for basic cocktails in his house. And two, unlike most of us, he's only 80% quarantined and is still visiting the office once a week. Well, listen, man, I never make cocktails. If we're talking, my quarantini is a can of hams and griping at my kids, okay? I'm not actually making cocktails at home, really ever, that involve more than one ingredient over ice. So fair enough, you have all the ingredients you need for the old school martini. You need sweet vermouth, gin, and bitters. So you should do equal parts one-to-one gin and sweet vermouth, and then you should put in some bitters. I prefer putting in orange bitters. I've got your favorite Fee Brothers orange bitters here. There you go, orange crush in a bottle. Equal parts, huh? Everybody knows. I had already poured two ounces of gin, so it looks like I'm pouring two ounces of sweet vermouth now too. Sure are. I mean, I would do it that way, but... I didn't say I was going to finish it. I mean, now, should I be shaking the bitters, Roger, or do you prefer to finish a cocktail with bitters? That's a good question too. In this case, I would incorporate them into the cocktail. So what about two dashes of bitters probably? Yeah. So you just said it's one-to-one gin and vermouth, sweet vermouth and then bitters? Yes. It's really not far from the Negroni we all had. Yeah, it's a very different kind of drink. Pat, you okay there? Sounds like you fell off your chair. Yeah, almost. My shaker almost came loose. I almost had a Martinez disaster over here. Or not, I'm just making a martini, not a Martinez, my bad. This smells delightful, mostly because I'm of course using good vermouth. Wait, what's your vermouth again? This is Dolan's sweet here. You didn't say what ingredients you're using. Okay. So. Massive fail. Shut up. As we all learned, Dolan's sweet vermouth is your absolute favorite if you like all of those spices that come in the jar at the pizzeria. Yep. I got your pizza vermouth. I got two ounces of Dolan's sweet vermouth. I used two ounces of oxley dry gin with this. Which is a vacuum distilled English dry gin. And then two dashes of Fee Brothers West Indian orange bitters. Nice. That's a classy cocktail right there. It just tastes like watered down vermouth. Which I enjoy because I will drink vermouth no matter how it is served to me. But you'd rather just have vermouth. I think I'd prefer a stronger gin with this if I was going to make this again. And oxley, I like oxley a lot. Now I have two other gins here I could try. I'm going to try another one in a little bit. Okay. Yeah, you could always play around with the ratios too. I mean, that's a completely forgotten to do equal parts. I mean, nobody is making. I like the orange bitters in this though. It's got that citrus oil, bitter curacao orange kind of peel. Just on the finish though, it's really nice. And it kind of keeps the cocktail dry. Finishing bitter like that kind of takes away any kind of cloying character that the sweet vermouth gave. All right. So I'm going to make a variation on that very old school recipe. We're going to call mine a perfect martini. Not only is it going to taste perfect, it is going to utilize both sweet and dry vermouth. Little bit of sweet, little bit of. It's like a perfect Manhattan. Exactly. What we're finding out is basically all cocktails are the same. Yeah, pretty much. Switch something else here and there and you call it something new. All right. So for the gin, I'm going to utilize Plymouth Gin, one of my favorite gins. From the Blackfriars Distillery. Indeed. They've been producing gin since 1793. Got it right there on the bottle. Plymouth Gin is an AOC protected style of gin made in Plymouth, England. There's only one distillery left that's still making it. It is an earthier version, essentially earthier, less citrusy than London dry style gin. I also like that it has a creaminess to it, that they say is from the orice root that they're using in it. Yeah, it's a really, really nice gin. I highly suggest checking it out. Proof-wise, it clocks in, let's see. It is 41.2. Kind of low for gin. Yeah, kind of low for gin. Vermouth-wise, I'm going to use some Dolan dry. Dolan is just, I'm a huge fan. Since 1821 on these guys, so another, it's not broke. Gin-wise, I use two ounces of gin. I'm using one ounce of the dry Dolan. And then a lot of the times I use just Dolan sweet as well, but today I'm going to use Koki Vermouth de Torino. Ounce of this as well. So that will bring us up to equal parts gin and vermouth. I'm going to do a couple of dashes of Angostura orange. Of course, he has Angostura orange, as we all should. Yep, I got a bottle of that. I actually have three bottles of orange bitters. I have that, Fee Brothers and Regans. All right, so. Roger, how are you straining? Are you just using the spoon? I'm just using the spoon. Forgot my strainer buried somewhere. All right. That is a nice looking cocktail. That is a humongous cocktail or a tiny Copa. Tiny Copa. Yeah, it's four. I mean, it definitely the ice melted and added a little volume, but it's two ounces of gin and two ounces of vermouth, so it's a four ounce. This is probably a five ounce glass. It's a healthy yellow to almost amber. I call it more of a burnished gold. Gold? It's really quite lovely. It's very different. It has a very marmalade type character to it with the orange from the bitters, obviously bitter from the vermouths and the bitters themselves. It kind of reminds me of like Christmasy. It's got some sweet spices, gingerbread kind of. But yeah, I mean, super different from anything that you wouldn't normally associate any of these flavors in this with a martini. I mean, whiskey rum drinkers would love this, even though gin is the base spirit. Which is pretty wild. So yeah, I mean, I think that's just because it's so different and so funky. It's a delicious drink. Any changes you would make to it or any substitutions that would make it even more interesting? Just from what I like to drink, I think I've had plenty of these where I don't use the driver mousse. So I essentially made what Pat made and I just do all sweet. But in a lot of ways, I probably might even like that better. But this, the spirit comes through a little more, I feel. And it's herbaceous, but there's not quite as much sweetness from the sweet vermouth, obviously. So it's a little more herbaceous and tangy and brisk, a little more refreshing, whereas the other one would be something that you'd want to sip on more. You wouldn't want the other one necessarily if it was hot out. This is still like refreshing enough. It's quite good, though. Very different. Yeah, I want to try one of those. It actually looks really good. I also, because of the quarantine, don't have any fresh citrus left. I blasted through all that. So that is a pretty important part of this. And another where you can impress your friends is when you take a big slice of citrus and then fold it and squeeze the oil all over the drink. Like that can be pretty tremendous. Express the oil? Yes, express the oil. Citrus blasted. Also play around with using other citrus besides just lemon. That's an easy way to make a variation on a martini, is use a grapefruit peel or use a pomelo. It's an interesting citrus you don't see every time. Or use an orange peel. I'm surprised you had a recommendation for off the beaten path citrus. Okay, pomelo is nothing but peel. What's the white part of a fruit? It's like mostly white part of the fruit. It's mostly pith, yes. It's the pithiest piece of pith. Why does anyone want them then? I don't know. They're really interesting. They're not as bitter as a grapefruit. Right. They're not interesting. They're not as bitter as a grapefruit. I know a guy that just eats citrus like you would an apple, and just eats the whole thing. I eat peel. I do. Peel, everything just bites into it. Peel is the most flavorful part. Absolutely the most flavorful part. It's the sweetest part on a lemon is the peel. You eat a lemon out of hand. Just take a bite out of it. No, but if you hand me a slice of lemon, I can't resist but eat the peel. Do you want to try one with just Cokey? You want to all make the same cocktail? Well, except Pat, I don't think can, because you gave him his bottle. Yeah, I might have. I drank my other bottle. Hey, what about using a red bitter with a gin and calling it a martini? I think you could do that. I mean, just try it, why not? Yeah, so a couple of reminders again, just to review with martinis, some good practices here. It's paramount that you use fresh vermouth. So again, it's a matter of personal preference and debate, like almost everything in the cocktail world. What's fresh when it comes to vermouth? So once you open a bottle, you should definitely keep it in your refrigerator. Ideally, you should use it within one to three weeks. Month is about where most people say. I've used vermouth past that and it's still okay. Again, what you want to avoid here is just putting it in your liquor cabinet and forgetting about it. So that when you have guests over and somebody wants a martini, you hand them an open bottle of vermouth that's a year old. It's fortified, but it's still wine and wine gets worse, the more air it sees and the more temperature fluctuations and the more light it sees. It can become tough too. You can't necessarily open a bottle of vermouth and just smell it and know like, oh, this is a month old versus oh, this is a year. It's got a lot of funky herbs and botanicals to hide oxidation and other issues, so. That's a good point too. It doesn't just go bad and it's never going to make you sick. It just gets a little less exciting the longer it sits around. So I would recommend that when you open your vermouth, you take a permanent marker and just write on the label when you opened it. So that can be very handy. That is the best vermouth advice. That's pretty good advice. Let's talk a little bit about Cokey here again. This neat aperitif aromatized wine. They actually have a recipe on the back for a cocktail that I don't think if you went into a bar and asked for it, anyone would ever know what the hell you were talking about. Is that the classico or the Eventide? The Eventide. So Eventide is super esoteric for a lot of reasons. One, nobody knows what the hell that cocktail is. If you Google it, it's hard to even find references on Google for it. So you know it's super obscure. It also is a term that no one uses anymore. It essentially means like sunset, like the beginning of the evening. But it's very similar to what we were saying as far as an old school martini recipe. It calls for one and a half each of Americano. London Dry Gin, two dashes, orange bitters, stir with ice, strain into coupe, lemon twist. Yeah. Sorry. I was reading, it's weird how they refer to their own product two different ways in these recipes. They bother to say Americano bianco in the second recipe. That is weird. Have some self-respect, Koki. You're confusing your customers. Like the Koki graphic designer just copied and pasted off the Internet from somewhere. That's us. It counts. Yeah. There's a lot of Koki products. Just to review, yes, equal parts Koki, Americano bianco, the Koki, Americano, and Blonded-Eyed Gin, couple dashes orange bitters, stir, strain, lemon twist. Is that the one we're doing here? Why don't you just make whatever you were going to make. I'll make this one, unless you want to both do the same one. Well, I wanted all three of us to make the same one, so that we'd have a shared experience, but Pat doesn't have. Because I'm short on ingredients, I'm going to try to make a martini out of just gin and some amaro, because shockingly, I have multiple amaro available. I'm game to make this. I mean, it's essentially what I was going to do anyway, like I said. I don't have any orange bitters. I don't know why I never have them. Of all of the bitters, that's just not the one I go to. I have like four or five bottles of bitters here, but... I have the Brofhat and Peach and Cherry bitters here as well. Of course you do. He keeps them in a little leather pouch that he wears around his neck under his clothes. It's a bandolier. All right. I'm stirring up the even tide. This would be a good time to play some even flow. Pat's shaking something, Roger's sparing something. I'm stirring mine. So this looks beautiful. Like this really... That does look beautiful. Subtle golden hue. Kind of looks like a Vesper. Yeah, it does. That's pretty good. It's pretty bitter. I mean, you can tell there's quinine in this for sure. I mean, tonic drinkers are gonna be like, oh, there you go. Okay, same with Aperol and Campari. A lot of people perceive bitter, and you're talking about the quinine qualities, and I guess it's there in cut, but it's just so citrusy and round and sweet, and it brings like a sweet, high-toned warmth to a cocktail. What's your gin, Roger? Same gin as before? Yeah, same one. Plymouth, yeah. Yeah, I'm still using terroir. This is delightful, this cocktail. What's the recipe on yours, Greg? Terroir gin. I used the Koki Americano also. And because I don't have orange bitters, I used Angostura aromatic bitters. That's orange bitters, that counts. It's not Angostura orange, but it's still like, that's the classic orange bitter before Angostura added a secondary orange label. Well, there you go. That's why I was smart enough to use it and not just because it was better than the clove or the Peychauds or the Fee brothers, Barrel-Less, I mean old-fashioned. Yeah. That's a nice cocktail. That's a nice cocktail. It's got some bitterness on the finish there that stays with you. That's nice. But you know what? Roger, compared to the one that I had, which was briny and salinic and not sweet in the slightest, if there was any sweetness, it was from the gin. This one has the Americano, or sorry, the Americano sweetness. I can see that. Again, some kindred souls might dig this. If you are into West Coast IPAs, this actually reminds me of some of those tongue burner West Coast, very resinous, highly bitter and citrusy IPAs. It has an arrogant bastard type quality to it. Roger's bitter receptors still work. I do not. What is wrong with my palate? You assaulted daily with massive amounts of capsaicin. That is what I do, and the occasional citrus peel. Yeah, and you eat citrus out of hand because you're a savage. You know what? I really need the lemon twist in this to kick it up into the next gear. You guys want to hear about this thing I made over here? Oh yeah, Frankenstein Cocktail. So I figured I'd go two parts gin, one part Amaro. The Amaro I used is Amaro Deletna, and the gin I changed. So oxalate, I don't know if because I've had it open, it's very mild and very soft. I have this old bottle of New Amsterdam. I opened that up. It's very floral and perfumey. And I had this other bottle of gin that we don't even sell anymore. I don't know if it's made anymore. It used to be made by the Ransom Distillery out in Portland or somewhere else in Oregon, and it's called Small's Gin. And it has a variety of botanicals in it, including some raspberry and star anise. And I cracked this bottle open and it is all star anise. It is just over the top. And so I was like, okay, this is probably, I think, going to compliment an Amaro the best. So I did two parts. I did two ounces of Small's Gin, one ounce of Amaro Doetna, and I just shook the hell out of it. And I didn't put any bitters in it. And it's really nice. Pat, you're under my skin. Can I tell you something? I was buying the stuff for this episode. Yeah, Alistair Nova Salus. How about try making a cocktail out of that? No, I'm not going to. I'm just going to have a glass of this when we're done. Yeah. Well, your cocktail sounds awesome. Was that the one that Roger asked, why is it so salty? Or was that the one I said it was like tasting your dad's cologne? It might have been Forest Service Bathroom. It might have been. Right. Why does it taste like cleaning solvent? What was the other thing? I need to set that to my ringtone like you guys have. That's right, folks. Those witty remarks and more in our Amaro episode. Yeah. Go back and listen to our Amaro episode. Pat, I'd like to point out that you said New Amster Jam, which I think is how I will for now on refer to that gin. Dude, it's my New Amster Jam. Totally. It's cheap as hell. It's delicious. I'm going to hashtag that on Instagram tonight. It's going to blow up. What do you see? Pat does a lot of blind tastings with our spirits consultants. New Amsterdam gin, it doesn't necessarily look that classy or anything, and it's suspiciously cheap. Suspiciously cheap. It's like 10 bucks a bottle, and it's good gin, and it consistently is like a top five gin when tasted blind. So try it. It might be your new Amsterdam. It might be your new Amsterdam. Guys, I think it's about time to give a listener 20 bucks. What do you think? I like it, they needed to buy some vermouth. express.binnies.com to place your order for delivery. That brings us to the Q&A portion of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. When we answer your question for a $20 Binnie's gift card, our question this week comes via email. Rob writes us, I have been catching up on your podcast and enjoying to discover new interesting alternatives to the hard to find beers and bourbons. My question is, what is your guilty pleasure drink that you are embarrassed about? That is a great question. It is, right? So spill it, guys. I wear my cheap beer drinking proudly on my sleeve. You're not embarrassed about hams, that doesn't count. You can't say hams, you take pride in talking about it. I also love Miller Lite. You do? Yeah, I love Miller Lite. What? Well, that counts then, because that beer is garbage. He's wearing that pridefully also. It's so much better than Bud Light and Coors Light. It's the best of the lights. What's the analogy here? Velveeta cheese is way better than store-brand cheese and Kraft Singles. You're allowed to have that opinion. Miller Lite is far less sweet than Bud Light, and Bud Light gives me a headache. Coors Light, I think, is too sweet. Miller Lite is the perfect balance of water and pretending to be beer. Yeah, don't say the word perfect. Life is too short for Miller Lite. Yeah. Take it seriously, man. Yeah, it's not as corn-heavy as PBR. Iowa boy. Well, what would my guilty pleasure drink be? I'll tell you mine right off the bat. I know it. I can tell you it. Whiskey mixed with ginger ale is awesome. You've never had a highball before? That's like one of the most famous. That's not a highball. Highball is just club soda and whiskey. Club soda and whiskey. Well, it's any kind of bubbly. A lot of people's highballs are with ginger ale. Highball is one of those words that just means anything mixed with a soda. Anyway. Dude, I've drank millions of those over the years. That's a great drink. That's not really that embarrassing. Okay. So you want to make it embarrassing? My wife came home with a 12-pack of the 7-Up Diet Ginger flavor and that is acceptable during quarantine. So you know what's a little more surprising to me is if you mix whiskey, more specifically bourbon, with Dr. Pepper. I heard that in the show Justified and was like, what? That's a thing. Wait, what? She offers the main character a drink and she goes, you want bourbon and she's like, what do you want it with? One of the choices is Dr. Pepper. I'm like, oh, bourbon and Dr. Pepper. So horrible, right? So I tried it. It wasn't that bad. I mean, you got to like Dr. Pepper to begin with. I don't know that counts as a guilty pleasure trying something once. Come on. That wasn't my entry. I'm just saying it's essentially the exact same thing as Greg just said. He said whiskey and ginger ale. No, it's not the same thing. Mine's fine. So whiskey and a different soda pop. It's not the same thing. A mixed drink that sounds gross like that, that I willfully drink on more than one occasion, Jack. What's your guilty pleasure drink? It could be anything. It could be Moscato de Asti. I don't have one that I go to regularly that I would consider a guilty pleasure. This is tough to answer. Hold on a second. You just said the word Jack and you were about to say- Because you kind of changed it halfway through. So a drink I have willingly consumed on more than one occasion is Jack and Dew, as in Mountain Dew. Now, you say that- That's what Dew was meant- Mountain Dew was originally brewed or- It was made to go with whiskey in theory, and it was supposed to be a whiskey mixer. Whiskey, white whiskey. Yeah, maybe. But- American blended at best. Jack and Dew sounds vomit-inducing, but it's really not bad. It sounds horrible. It's really not bad. Mountain Dew is a reference to White Lightning, to moonshine. Yeah. So it's not that it necessarily is supposed to taste like- No, no. It's not supposed to taste like it at all. It was supposed to be mixed with it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think that's just an urban legend. So how- Anything you mix with Mountain Dew. Mine is Jägermeister. That's it? I specifically like drinking Jägermeister as root beer, which again, people are like, what? I've ordered a bars before and they think I'm insane. But from what I hear, that's actually the way that they drink it a lot in Germany. But I think a lot of people hate Jäger. It gets a reputation as like this dumb college drink, which hilariously, it existed long before that. That was someone's brilliant pitch in the 80s, was to make it into this thing that kids cared about. In Germany until then, it was like this haughty old people drank it as an after-dinner digestif. Now, it became this metal biker, the whole subcultures that it appeals to. It's supposed to be tough, but it's very sweet. Very sweet. It is very sweet, but it's okay with ginger ale actually too, but I like it with root beer. I haven't had that in a long time though, to be honest, but I used to drink it more and it was something that people made fun of me pretty thoroughly for. Roger's talking about the late great Sidney Frank, who was one of the amazing spirits industry marketers. This is the same guy who brought Jägermeister to America and created its perception. Then followed up and built Gregus. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Along with that, he had this esoteric collection of Italian import wines in the early 2000s that were weird. Then he sold Gregus to Bacardi for billions of dollars. Billions, yep. I like lots of terrible German schnapps like Rumplemints and Goldschlager. Those would be guilty pointers as well. Dude, those are gross. Yeah. You're not embarrassed by that? Happy college memories. I still don't think anything any of us said, except for Roger's Jägermeister and Rupier. Is that embarrassing? Not if you own it. The one sweet schnapps that I really like is Polinkovac, which is a Slovenian thing. It's like Slovenian Malort, kind of. Yes, the silence you hear is the appropriate reaction. Yeah, yeah. I like that Turkish Anis Likur, which we already talked about. Well, Greg, you like that that bullsh** Lithuanian beer that was like... Yeah, there you go... . 13% alcohol. Oh, yeah. That's a guilty pleasure. That's... It shouldn't be embarrassing, but it's a little bit embarrassing. Yes, Greg likes the $13.79 Lithuanian beer. What was it called? Dragon? Was that Dragon Lady or something? No, it wasn't Dragon Lady. It was only marginally less offensive. I honestly... Oh, it was f***ing awesome, I think. Yeah, f***ing awesome. F***ing awesome. F***ing... I still have not walked down that aisle. Well, that wins. The lady in the leather mask, 13% alcohol Lithuanian beer. That was a terrific Q&A segment. Thank you, Rob, for your question. $20 Binny's gift card coming to you. Everybody else, write your questions to us via email at commentsatbinnys.com. Hit us up on social media, at Binny's Bev, on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook Live. We're doing a series of live events, live virtual events on Facebook Live and on Zoom. You can find info about that on binnys.com. Pat, you had one. Whiskey Wednesday. We'll probably throw that out. Here is a bonus episode one of these days. Yeah, we've got more coming up. We've got Master's Distiller from Bourbon, scotch, Tequila, all kinds of stuff. Yeah, you have a pretty good schedule coming up. People can check it out on our website. It's on the Rotator, on binnys.com. It's Rotator number 2. All kinds of stuff coming up. Otherwise, binnys.com/virtualevents. Check it out. Roger, thank you for leading us on this walkthrough of the Martini, the Quarantini, the Vesper, the old school Martini, baby. Yeah, man. For quarantine sessions, number 3, I would like us all to make a gold rush. So you're going to have to make some honey syrup first, and then it's just lemon juice and whiskey of your choice. I can do this. I can handle this. All right. Hey, hopefully this doesn't go on forever because some of us need social contact. As long as it does, we'll keep coming at you with more and more Quarantini episodes. Keep an eye out for bonus episodes from our Facebook live events and Quarantini episode 3, Attack of the Bees, Killer Bees. Thanks for listening to another episode of Barrel to Bottle, and good luck, Jim, editing this mess. Until next week, I'm Pat. I'm Greg. I'm Roger. Keep tasting.