Hey, welcome back to Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. I'm Pat, I do the spirit stuff at Binny's, and these chuckle nuts drag me in here to drink beef broth today, or something like that. We're talking about savory cocktails. Who else is here? Roger, so I do seltzer, hard tea, everything beer adjacent, and when I'm lucky enough, beer. Hey, I'm Chris, I handle wine, and I also curate the beef broth section of the store. Yeah, what the hell, guys? Let me explain what happened. So one of our spirits buyers was presented with a drink mix for a drink called the Bullshot, which is a variation on the Bloody Mary that uses beef broth. Yes, that's right. You heard correct. Beef broth. So after reading the ingredients list complete with an ungodly amount of sodium, it just made me start thinking about savory cocktails in general. We've done a little bit on the Bloody Mary, kind of talking about brunch cocktails, but we haven't really given the idea of cocktails that are necessarily just completely savory but things that incorporate savory ingredients as an all-encompassing category. So I thought that it deserves some do. So we'll get to this bullshot abomination at some point, but let's take a couple steps back and maybe just talk through. When I say savory cocktail, I would imagine most people, one of the first things that would pop into their mind is the Bloody Mary. Because it's such a ubiquitous cocktail. Like somebody is talking about something that's not necessarily sweet or that has a real savory character to it. It's that thick, rich, spicy, tomato-y based cocktail that's such an easy cocktail to do riffs on. So I figured we could hit some of those today. There's a lot of cocktail culture that involves incorporating fresh herbs into stuff. So I know Chris and I, we love using garden fresh herbs. The garden is going nuts right now. I've got tons of fresh herbs. So I definitely want to talk about that and what you can do with those. Roger pitched this idea. So I looked up a few things on one of my favorite drink websites, punchdrink.com. Shout out to those guys. They do some really cool cocktail work. I find a lot of good recipes on there. They got a great Instagram page too. So that's where I got the things I'm going to be making today. So what do we mean by savory? I think one of the essential things is obviously the sense of umami, that deep savory richness that comes from glutamate. And you may have tasted monosodium glutamate, but it occurs naturally in tomatoes and aged cheeses and fermented beans and things like that, mushrooms. So it's a deep beefy savoriness that everybody's familiar with. It's an essential part of tasting. I think that is a major component. But like Roger said, it doesn't necessarily have to have a ton of that to fall into the savory camp, because like as you mentioned, I'm going to do something that has some umami, but also a lot of herbaceous, you know, and just generally the in But yeah, herbaceous, vegetal, salty, right? All counter savory. And tomatoes are both sweet and savory at the same time. So you can see how those can co-exist and taste delicious together. For sure. I have a lot of friends that whenever I'm making cocktails, they're kind of just, you know, they might not have a vocabulary for like specific drink names that they, you know, want to try. But if I ask them to describe to me what they're looking for, I would think more often than not, people are looking for something that's on the drier side as of late, or they associate cocktails in general with stuff that's just too sweet for them. So they don't get cocktails as much. So I think it can be a nice combination of the two. Yeah, let's start off by talking about the Bloody Mary a little. So, Chris, everything you listed is pretty much in Bloody Mary. So they really do double down. You've got Worcestershire sauce in there, which is like the best condiment in the kitchen, hands down. It doubles down on just depth of flavor, glutamate. It just is like the Swiss Army knife for cooking and. No doubt that anchovy base is just loaded with savoriness. And then you get that tangy tamarind. Yeah, it's quite a thing for cocktails and cooking. So the Bloody Mary, I'm sure a lot of people are used to it as just being kind of like a hangover cure, hair of the dog type thing. A little tiny quick history on this. Like most cocktails, of course, it's this hotly debated, very convoluted thing. But it originated sometime around the 20s. If you believe the most kind of purported story, it was created at Harry's New York Bar in Paris. There's lots of different mixes out there. We sell a ton of them. Obviously, the key components here, tomato juice, Worcestershire sauce, some sort of hot sauce, celery salt. Then you can keep riffing as far as that goes. But I would say that's the standard base as far as if you were going to build it from scratch. There should be a little horseradish in there as well. I would say cracked black pepper too. Black pepper, yeah. Yeah. Horseradish, some citrus juice. Of course, the Bloody Mary starts to birth all these different variations. The story that I always got to chuckle out of is that the Bloody Caesar, or just the Caesar cocktail, is the official drink of Canada. I don't know why, but I always just got such a kick out of that. A Caesar, we're going to let Chris, I believe, is going to make one of these. You can take it from here and just discuss what exactly a Bloody Caesar is and how it came about. Yeah. The Caesar cocktail is a Canadian invention. Canada became the epicenter for the consumption of clamato, which is the main ingredient in the Caesar. In 1969, Walter Shell came up with this at the Calgary Inn. His story was it's essentially a riff on linguini with clams, tomato sauce, and he made it for an Italian restaurant. So that makes perfect sense. You know what would make a great beverage? Linguini with clams. Yeah. You got to think outside the box sometimes. Just forget about that pasta. Again, that's what's so great is if you've overindulged a little too much which you never condone, they always say you need to eat the next day, and you don't necessarily feel like eating. Why eat when you can drink food? It makes sense in that regard. Yeah, it's loaded with nutrition, and it will fill you up to some extent. All that tomato juice. What's funny is that this is literally the national drink of Canada, yet it's almost unknown in the US. Yeah. And if you look at Clamado sales, they're so specific to Canada. It's hysterical. They've been trying to push this on Americans for a while, and people don't seem to ever be able to get past the clam aspect of the thing. I don't know why. It's delicious. I mean, it's a nice savory flavor. I wanted to make sure that someone made this and that we told this story because I think it's going to become a drink you're going to see out because one, I've been to some bars as recently as I was up in Wisconsin a couple of weeks ago and they had a Bloody Mary bar. Clamato was one of the options. And because of the surging popularity of the michellata, which is another variant on the Bloody Mary, which is kind of substituting vodka for beer and then adding some additional spices and juices to your liking, michellatas normally use clamato. So, as much as people love those now, I think they're going to start, you know, if you want something a little stronger, you know, the the michellata is very sessionable, very like people drink them during the day and stuff. But if you wanted something like that, but stronger, ironically, kind of like reverse and going backwards, I think people are going to start rediscovering the Caesar. Yeah, it's interesting that the US just won't buy into this clam stuff, but we're surrounded by two countries who probably consume more clamato than anywhere else on the planet by a long shot. Yep. What I've got here, I actually decided to make a bloody Caesar from scratch and one using clamato just to see how clamato actually, if it's good or if you can improve on it. So what I'm doing is I took my base, which is made out of good quality tomato puree, so just tomatoes and salt, and I added a significant amount of clam juice to it. So I've got four ounces of tomato puree, two ounces of clam juice. This is utterly absurd. You made your own clamato? Yeah. I just wanted to see. It's tomato season. Where do you get clam juice? Is that like you can just get it at the grocery store? You can buy bottled clam juice as a regular ingredient in cooking, if you're making bouillon base or something. It's readily available at any grocery store. Because it's tomato season, why not make some things from scratch? Wait until you see the next drink I've got lined up for you. I think this was ambitious. One thing I will say that I noticed right away, so I just mixed them both up, clamato and then my homemade clam, which has some citrus and some seasoning and stuff in it. But the clamato is extremely thin for tomato juice. I don't know if anybody's tried this lately, but it makes a very light, refreshing looking drink. Mine is more like the consistency of tomato juice, and I added a little horseradish, a little hot sauce, little Worcestershire. I'm going to hit it with a little cracked black pepper. I also rimmed these glasses with celery salt. Nice. One thing I don't understand about this drink is like, why the hell in the history of cocktails where everybody puts like slabs of bacon and hamburgers and pizza slices? Those are the best Bloody Marys. Are you talking crap on those? Come on. No, I'm saying why can I find no reference anywhere on the internet to anyone actually garnishing with clams? So I made this little skewer of conserved lightly smoked clams and a garlic stuffed Spanish olive. And the clams are delightful. I was just talking to... And they're delightful. Look at that thing. Yeah, it's beautiful. So you got smoked clams in a can or what? Yeah. So I thought, why can't I garnish this? It's full of umami. It's lightly smoky. It seems perfect. I don't know why somebody didn't skewer them up before. So here it is. Look at that thing. Some traditional garnishes in here. A nice leafy piece of celery. There's, I don't know if you can see this. This is not a pickle. This is actually a fresh cucumber, which is, I guess, pretty traditional for the Caesar. And then I've got the garlic stuffed olive and clams. And this is my own version. So I'm going to take a sip of this. Oh, man, that's good. Wow. What liquor did you use in there? That's a really good question. I haven't put any liquor in it yet. That is so for everyone looking to cut back on their alcohol consumption, which I get that question asked all the time. And they're all like, should I drink Nene beers? What's the best Nene beer? Make yourself a Virgin Mary, Virgin Caesar. I just tasted it. I even forgot about the liquor. It was so delicious. Well, we're now a vegetarian, non-alcoholic beverage podcast. Thanks, guys. Don't worry, we'll booze it up. I'm just sticking really traditional here and throwing in some vodka, ounce and a half of vodka maybe. And I already tasted the one without the vodka in it. And it's just incredible. So I did add a little bit of sugar to the tomato, lots of clam juice and some spices. And that is a killer drink. Now, I don't know how the Clamatoe version could be any better. Make your own. All right, I've decided. I didn't, I actually, I honestly thought it was going to go the other way when I tasted the Clamatoe. And I'm going to eat a clam too. So just so you guys know, I'm not crazy for putting these in here. Smoky, just subtly smoked. Now, this of course could be a candidate. If you were to make this again, would you opt for vodka or would you consider tossing in, subbing in gin, Mezcal, tequila? Mezcal is on my list, so I would definitely do that. I think bringing a smoky element in to a savory cocktail is a really good idea. This is fantastic. I will write up the recipe and share it. Well, thanks, Chris. That was super informative and as usual, Chris has both the time and patience to make- Way overdone. He means it was way overdone. It took like three minutes at the most to mix up my own clam stuff. I had some tomato puree and it's just bottled clam juice and then some spices and stuff, little lime juice. Great activity if you and your significant other, you and a friend or yourself, you're just feeling ambitious, make both and do side by side and let us know what you think. Brof, mix us up a cocktail, what are you thinking? I came across this cocktail called the Edsel. Edsel is named after the much maligned Ford model. I forget when that came out. I want to say the 50s. It was one of the younger generation Fords' first car. They got to put their own personal stamp on, and they named it after their son. Anyway, it was just a complete and utter failure, and everybody hated it. It's not that terrible of a car. It's not like the Pinto or something, but it just says, kind of lived in infamy about just how much it was reviled, and it was only around for a couple of years. This is a somewhat simple cocktail. It takes an ounce of Oleroso Sherry, half ounce of Campari, half ounce of Ancho Reyes, which is a chili liqueur. I've got both the traditional Ancho Reyes and the Verde here, so I might try them both, and a half ounce of sweet vermouth, and then you top it off with sparkling wine, about two ounces of sparkling wine, and then you just build it in a glass. So let me get to this. I'm not using Campari though. I didn't have Campari at St. George Brutto Americano, which I like a bit better. That's quite the interesting combination of stuff. I could see where it appeals to you. It's very Negroni-esque, but it has some interesting riffs there. Chris, you are a huge fan of Sherry and cocktails, I know. I am, yeah. I've got some Sherry cocktails lined up for you in a few minutes, so I'm excited to see how this turns out. But I think it's going to be just like the Edsel itself. It's not a bad cocktail, but Pat's execution is going to doom it to failure. Just kidding. He said it's a built cocktail. That shouldn't be too rough. No, I'm sure. I mean, Ford invented the assembly line too, but that didn't save the Edsel. All right. Edsel, I like this quite a bit. It's got a weird combination of nuttiness, I assume from the sherry, of course, and then the Ancho Reyes is a slightly smoky pepper thing going on. Ancho Reyes isn't as intensely flavorful as you might think it would be. Then I used a Spanish sweet vermouth, Miro. I actually used a Spanish, I used a Cava too, the Fresenet Cava. Pretty Spain heavy cocktail here. The St. George Bruto Americano, of course. This is pretty damn good. What were the proportions like on everything? It was one ounce of the sherry, half ounce Campari, half ounce Ancho, half ounce vermouth. It's essentially a Negroni riff with a bit of sherry, and then two ounces of sparkling wine on top. Now, I added ice to it after I built it, just because I enjoy a cold cocktail, not a tepid cocktail. Fair enough. You're here. The sherry is dominating though, and there's a bit of that bitterness. Bruto Americano is quite bitter, and I don't think it comes to that much. I'm tasting more sherry and vermouth than anything else. Both savory flavors though. Yeah. I mean, sherry is full of umami and nuts, and all the things that you would call savory, and vermouth as well has lots of savory elements, so well done. Yeah, pretty good though overall. Yeah, it's a real interesting one. It's all over the place, the sparkling wine, that's interesting. If I were to do this again, I would probably cut the sherry down to a half ounce, I think, and then maybe up the ancho reyes to a full ounce. I think that would be more interesting. Interesting. I've never tried that, but ancho is like a deep umami-like flavor. It's not real spicy or anything. You get those dried chili characters, almost like raisin flavors out of anchos. Yeah, and it's got like, you know, like baking spice and cacao in it too, kind of. Interesting. All right. Well, that was my attempt at Savory Cocktail Number One. I am a big fan of, I am not much of a coffee guy, other than coffee beers. I primarily am a tea drinker. In the last few years, I started to finally drink whole leaf tea. And to do kind of a little infomercial here, you've never had tea until you've had whole leaf tea. Essentially, what you are drinking when you drink a tea bag is tea dust, which is the leftover crap that they're finding a consumer that is stupid enough to pay for dust. And that's us, the American tea drinkers. It's no tippy orange Paco, that's for sure. It's full of tannins because it's dust. It's so finely ground up and broken. So we sweeten it with disgusting amounts of sugar when we make tea. That's how sweet tea has become so popular, to counterbalance that tannin extraction. Do yourself a favor and go to a quality tea merchant, whether it be a brick and mortar or somebody online, and get yourself some whole leaf tea. In the world of tea, there's your oxidized dark black teas and then your green teas. Then the huge morass in between is occupied by oolong teas. Oolong is typically respected as some of the finest teas in the world, some of the most expensive teas in the world because of where they're sourced, and the process of making good oolong tea can be very complicated. I wanted to use today an oolong tea that I purchased recently that I was a big fan of. It is a 2010 Dong Hong Pao. That's right, really quality tea. You can age. I did not age this myself for over a decade. I purchased it that way. Ironically, Dong Hong Pao can be some of the most, literally the most expensive tea in the world, but it's very dependent upon where it was from, the purveyor, how it was processed. This particular tea is very affordable, is one of the more affordable teas that I've bought as of late. It just creates this really interesting tea that's got floral notes, which is famous for Oolong, some tobacco notes and a big pipe tobacco, cigar smoker, and that's pronounced not as heavy as in some teas, but it's in the background there. Then there's even some caramel and chocolate notes. There's a little bit of a sweet thing going on there as well. When it comes to cocktails, I have trouble steering away from rum. I think it's my old favorite. My default is I've made more tiki drinks. Dude, throw in some pirates and this cocktail encompasses everything Roger loves. Yeah. I'm going to make a riff on Grog today that's going to incorporate some of this Oolong. I started out with some quality Demerara Sugar. Listen to our podcast on sugar and sugar syrups. If you haven't already, it was a blast and it kind of demystifies what all the raw sugars are all about and why you should be using them. You'll need some caffeine from Roger's tea afterwards. Ha! Got me. Rum wise, I'm going just to save time with this Hamilton. It's their Navy Strength, which is kind of a cool like blend of rums. So it has a little bit of Jamaican and Guyanese blended together. So it has like a little bit of pot still character to it. And it also has a little bit of smokiness. So again, like some very complimentary flavors in this particular rum. But we don't carry this at a ton of locations, but it's around. There's a lot of excellent other rums you could use. Guyanese wise, you could go with, of course, the El Dorado portfolio, Jamaican pot still, tons of great options there. Smith and Cross, etc. Denizen, you could would make a nice sub in here as well. So got an ounce and a half of that, the sugar. And then because tea has such an affinity with lemon, I added some lemon juice as opposed to lime juice. So normally with grog, you'd use lime, but I think we're so used to lemon with tea and how complimentary and nice that can be. I'm going to stick with the lemon. Makes sense. So I'm building all of this in a teacup. And then I've got my other teacup here. Brew the oolong or tea of your choice ahead of time and let it cool to room temperature. You do not want to use it hot. You don't want to dilute the drink too much. So I've mixed it all together. Let's give it a taste. Yep. So if you've ever had grog and you thought, it's a little too sweet for me, or it's too dangerous of a drink, it's like drinking a daiquiri or it's straight booze, and you drink it in five minutes and you're ready for another one, here's a way to make a little bit of a taller drink. This rum is so complimentary with this tea. The flavors sink perfectly. Again, those earthy, there's a minerality here that Oolong is famous for, that lifts the drink a little bit. You're finding all those Oolong nuances are shining through in this cocktail. They held up, yeah. You might want to brew the tea to a little stronger strength, and you can always do that by using more tea, not more time. Put more leaves than you normally would have, not necessarily steeping it for longer. That's excellent advice, Roger. Otherwise, you're going to be back to extracting too much tannin, whereas you want that nuanced flavor without all that tannin extraction. This is Oolong tea, lemon juice, and rum, and demerara syrup. Yeah. That's it? That's it. This actually isn't too far off from a very common practice in the Caribbean, was to incorporate tea into punches. I'm not inventing anything new by any means. I'm just trying to highlight a really nice tea. We got to give it a name. I was thinking maybe Misty Mountain Grog. Oh, Zeppelin reference. Are you kidding me? You're not going to just name it a tea punch, but spelled TEA instead of TI? Oh, good on you. Come on, man. Done. It's Roger's tea punch. I've got it in a nautical tea mug. Of course you do. Nice. Commodore Perry, don't give up the ship. Chris, you're up next. Here is a riff on the Bloody Mary that I came up with specifically for summertime. So as we spoke about, the Bloody Mary is a thick, rich, umami-laden cocktail. Maybe not the most refreshing thing in the world, but nourishing. So what I decided to do was to make a classic tomato water, which is a culinary technique I learned a long time ago. Essentially, you just puree tomatoes and put whatever kind of flavorings in you want it, and then you slowly strain it through a cheesecloth and a fine mesh strainer, and what comes out is virtually clear and looks like water. Mine came out just with a slight yellow tint this time, but it has an unbelievable amount of flavor. It tastes just like tomato juice, just without the texture. I thought I'd lighten up the classic Bloody Mary and make something that looks really unusual. If you serve this to someone, they're going to see a clear cocktail, and then they're going to taste it, and it's going to taste like Bloody Mary. On top of that- Look at this, Chris going a little molecular gastronomy on us. How long did it take to make that tomato water? No time at all. The longest portion of it is letting it strain through the strainer. It's got to go for a couple of hours to drip out, and you're left with a bunch of tomato pulp. Not long at all. Also, a couple of hours. Well, no, but you're not doing anything. You just put it in a strainer and walk away. If you were to squeeze it, it would color it more. You don't want to squeeze it. It will extract color. What you want out of this is for it to be clear. For the effect of the cocktail. You got to set it and forget it. When you set up your cold brew coffee, you can set up your tomato water. Right. This is what I did. I took three large beefsteak tomatoes, sliced them up, threw them in a blender. I threw in a stalk of celery. I threw in maybe a couple inches of English cucumber. It's almost like making gazpacho. I didn't have any fresh chilies, so I put some red pepper flakes in. What I wanted to do was get all of the flavors that I wanted in the final drink in the tomato water. I'm not going to be adding any horseradish or anything to mar the clear look of this. I also, this is a weird little trick, but instead of Worcestershire sauce, I used Thai fish sauce to bump up the umami in this. That's cool. Yeah, big time umami. Yeah, it's loaded with umami, and if you ever eat Thai food and you think, like, how the heck is this so savory? It's fish sauce. Fish sauce is like the secret ingredient in so much Southeast Asian cooking. Yeah, absolutely. Sorry, vegans. It's delicious. It smells very aggressive on its own. A lot of people find it relatively disgusting to smell just out of the bottle. But it's just like if you make a pasta dish where you take an anchovy fillet and melt it in some olive oil at the beginning, and it literally just melts away into it and you add some aromatics, onions and stuff, the umami punch of the tomato that you add later is just so impressive. And you don't know you're eating fish. You just know that this is ultra, ultra savory. Right. So that's what I did there. From a measurement of the sauce, what are we talking? I would say only a couple of teaspoons was enough. I think I put one in and tasted it and then put another one in. There's also shallot in there, a little lime juice and a sprig of basil. All blended together and then just sieved. All of those things have color, but it all comes out in the wash. Show us the water already. Come on. Otherwise, we're not going to believe you. One last thing about this, which is mostly when I make Bloody Sherries, I use a Monte Ato. But because I've made this clear tomato water, I wanted to use a Fino because it's clear as well. I've just got the real classic Teo Pepe, and I'm going to put a considerable amount in because this is going to be a really not a very strong drink. Then I'm going to put a little basil sprig, and I went with a slightly Spanish theme with this one for some reason. If you're having a tapas night, this could be a good cocktail option. I rim my glass in this case with Spanish-spoken paprika mixed with celery salt. So it's rimmed with that. And look how clear that is. It is impressively clear. You hand that to somebody, nobody's going to think that's going to taste like tomato, right? That's pretty unreal. Folks listening at home, it did take us 20 minutes to get a picture, a sight of this cocktail. It's quite the cocktail. It looks interesting. How's it taste? It's really amazing. Sherry is full of umami and salty, savory flavors, and it does exactly what I was expecting it to do. It's light. It's the texture of water, super refreshing, very tomato-y, tastes like a Bloody Mary or a Bloody Sherry. The only alcohol in there is the Sherry. Yeah. Is the Fino Sherry used? Tio Pepe Fino. Yeah. Okay. But you could totally make this with vodka if you wanted, or gin, whatever you want. What if you use Amatiato instead? Yeah. You definitely could. For those unaccustomed to Sherry, most people have probably tried cream. The opposite end of the spectrum of Fino and Manzanilla are very savory, green olive-y, totally different beast. Maybe don't start there, start somewhere in between. It can be challenging because it has a lot of flavors people don't know. Aldehyde is- That's a very polite way of saying they're pretty gross. I love them. They're incredibly fresh. You might love them. Yeah. I like Fino, but it is just salty and sometimes briny. It's a weird flavor. They're weird. Particularly the Manzanillas are briny. I'm going to take this one step further. All right. What is that? You see how this is yellowy? Yeah. This is the tomato water with some saffron steeped into it to just really lean into the paella type thing. I'm going to just put a little saffron tomato water on top. You're making a **** paella cocktail. Come on. Yeah. Now it totally changed color. Wow. It's a beautiful cocktail. Yeah. It almost looks like Galeana. That really makes it striking. Now, let's see what it tastes like. I mean, the smell immediately, you get the saffron. That just takes it to a whole other level. And all I put was like maybe a half an ounce in there. Really super interesting. How many saffron threads did you put into the tomato water? I would say I only made a tiny amount, maybe two or three at the most, crumbled up. So for our listeners, saffron, famously the most expensive spice commodity in the world. I think I forgot to mention the names of my clear Bloody Mary. So you did? Because I came up with a few of them, but because it's clear, I was thinking it's like the ghost of a Bloody Mary. So in a nod to classic Chicago ghost folklore, I named it the Resurrection Mary. You guys know the story of Resurrection Mary? No, I do not. So it's a ghost story about a young woman who's dancing at the Willowbrook Ballroom and gets into a fight with her boyfriend, walks down Archer Avenue, gets hit by a car, but then keeps appearing to drivers over the years, and she always asks to be Is this known to anybody outside of the Darien-Willowbrook area? I have a feeling this isn't a thing. No, it's a very famous Chicago ghost legend. And it goes back to like the 30s or something. Hence the ballroom dancing component. Well, yeah, of course, of course. The other one is if you could make that same drink using some clam juice and make it a clear Caesar. So I was thinking just like, I can't remember his name, but whoever the Daily Planet Editor, he used to exclaim Great Caesar's Ghost anytime anything like excited him. So I was going to call it the Great Caesar's Ghost. Oh, that's not a bad one. Yeah. Yeah, I like that. So, Chris is just mad about Saffron, bro. Mix us up another cocktail. All right, geez, finally. My second cocktail is going to take the same amount of time as my first. So, I'm going to have a bunch of three-minute segments, and Chris is going to have roughly one-hour segments. All right, here's another one that I found on the Punch website, and this is the Old Poets Smoke. So, what I'm making is kind of a riff on a penicillin, which is itself a riff on a gold rush. And it's two ounces of scotch, half an ounce of amaro, three-quarters of an ounce of lemon juice, and half an ounce of honey syrup with a dash of Angostura bitters. So, this is supposed to be essentially a highball, I guess. Yeah, it's supposed to be in a highball glass with ice, and then you top it with soda water, actually. So, I'm going to build it in this somewhat tallish, thinnish glass. So, for scotch, I'm using one of the all-time classics, Glen Fittick 12-year-old, two ounces of that. Scotch and honey, of course, famous affinity. Oh, yeah. If you've ever had your Drambuie. Half ounce of Amaro, the recipe calls for Montenegro, great Amaro. I had an open bottle that summer, I couldn't find it, so I'm using Amer-Picone, like Montenegro, kind of citrusy Amaro. And not too bitter in both cases. That you can't obtain. That you can't get here, but whatever. So, use Montenegro. We got Montenegro at every store. This is what I had at home. He's just, you know, showboating a little folks. Not really. Three quarters of an ounce of lemon juice. And then we have a half ounce of honey syrup. Love honey syrup. Interesting that this is not shaken and it uses the honey syrup. I do three to one honey to water. This recipe called for a honey syrup of two to one. Three to one is aggressive, but. Three to one is aggressive. That's my standard Gold Rush honey syrup. And then one dash of Angostura bitters. We're gonna add ice and top it off with some soda water. All right. Here is my old poet's smoke. Oh, that's quite delicious. I don't know that I consider it that savory. It's kind of sweet with the honey syrup I made and the lemon juice is interesting. Maybe if I use a smokier scotch, it would be a bit more in that savory vein. I like that the Amaro is restrained. The club soda really gives it some lift. This is kind of like a summertime penicillin almost, like just sparkly, bubbly, really light on its feet. I really, actually I really like this quite a bit. I might make another one of these later tonight. Right on. Sounds good. I might actually put more bitters in it too, just because I like Angostura bitters so much. Interesting drink. Good job, Punch. I have a riff on a Summertime Staple, a classic drink that we've talked about in the past. This is a favorite from Jolly Old England, the Pimms Cup. And Pimms, interestingly enough, was essentially one of the first, if not the first, RTD, which is in our business a term, abbreviation for ready to drink cocktail. So they essentially wanted to take a sling cocktail and make it so that all you had to do was purchase this bottle of Pimms and then add the weaker component to it, be that lemonade was a traditional thing, or ginger beer. People sub in like seltzer water, lemon lime sodas, kind of, you know, the sky's the limit. The famous thing about a Pimms cup is that it's a garnish heavy drink. So think of Sangria. It's kind of Sangria-esque in that you don't necessarily batch it ahead of time, but you often garnish it with some very similar things. Fruit wise, it might be a little less stone fruit-esque or apple-esque and lean more towards berries, but it's really, there's no rules. You can put apples, strawberries, blueberries, and literally almost anything you want. So it being the heart of the summer here where if you garden, a lot of the herb gardens are going crazy. I wanted to do a vegetal herbaceous driven Pimms cup as opposed to fruit because the quintessential garnish for a Pimms cup, regardless of whatever else you put in it, is a big slice of cucumber. So with that in mind, I also like to Pimms cups are famously a very low alcohol cocktail. So if you're looking for something, if you're looking to cut back on your alcohol consumption, which some people are these days, the COVID times are rough. A lot of people went a little overboard. Hey, you want to hear something embarrassing? I've never had a Pimms cup and I've never tried Pimms cup. You want to hear something equally embarrassing? I almost always add gin to mine because it's too low alcohol. That's exactly what I'm about to do. You can either enjoy that it's low alcohol. I have a lot of friends that have been like, oh, I'm trying some NA beers. I can't say I have any friends that are making NA cocktails, but I know it's a thing. If you want something that's delicious and it's lower alcohol, try a Pimms cup. If you want it to be a normal cocktail, just add some more gin, because gin is the base for Pimms. So I've done that. I put equal parts Pimms and gin with ice, and then all you need to do is top off with your favorite mixer. Now what I've done this time with the herbs, so I have all sorts of herbs growing in the garden right now. If you want to really up the herbaceousness, you can muddle a little bit of the herbs with some citrus or just a little bit of liquid. You could either use the Pimms. Some people add bitters to this drink as well if you want to up that component. So I just muddled a little bit of lemon with some thyme. Thyme is kind of one of my favorite herbs. I think it's a bold flavor, but you don't necessarily have to worry about overdoing it with thyme. Save it for the Roger herb ranking episode. Okay. I love thyme. I've got thyme for thyme. In an effort to get a good reaction from Brophy, I am now going to build the garnish for this, which is going to be- How are you going to top a bunch of clams on a stick? I'm sorry, but no garnish is going to live up to the first one. It would be nice if I had had clams in the shell though. That would have been better. Check out the cucumber from the garden. I mean, that's a wonky looking cucumber right there. So this thing looked like a gourd. So I used that. Now, this is like the official drink of Wimbledon, right? Yeah. Usually, the herb component here is mint or lovage. What the hell is lovage? It's another green leafy herb. Not very common in the States, but it is. Sounds like a made up word. Yeah. It's perfect for the tennis connection. It's lovage, lovage to start the game. That is true. All right. You ready? Look at this bad boy. Wow. Beautiful. Roger is holding a Moscow Mule Mug with a salad spilling out the top of it. I've got dill, rosemary, basil, thyme, and- How are you going to taste anything except those intensely aromatic herbs? It's an herb garden in a cup. This is pointless. All you're going to smell and taste is those goofy herbs. Look at him. He looks like Swamp Thing drinking that thing. So it's perfect because, and this is an argument too for that you don't even really need to muddle the herbs. The hit of the aromatics is so intense at the beginning, but then it disappears instantly. Of course it's intense. Your garnish was literally the size of your head, and it was covering your eyeballs as you drink. Just think about how much of taste is aroma or smell. If you're smelling that herb garden in your face while you're taking a drink, it's going to combine with the flavor. If you muddle all those herbs, like thyme in particular, too hard, you're going to extract some bitterness, honestly, that you may not want in your drink. But right now, the way you did it, it's all aromatic, beautiful. When we write reviews, a lot of times we talk about the initial aroma, the palate, and then our mid palate, and then the finish. All the aromatics mainly in this ridiculous garnish hit you at first and are super intense. But the taste is primarily just the drink. Again, play around with it. Don't muddle any herbs in it, and then you'll get crazy aromatics, and then just followed by a nice balance drink. Excellent, Roger. Anyway. I love a Pimm's Cup and I like your riff on it. This is why we should have recorded this in person, so we can get a picture of Roger drinking that ridiculous drink. All right, I got one other, and I was thinking about this the other day with Savory Cocktails, and I'm surprised I didn't think about this when Roger and I were initially talking back and forth about this episode. When my brother was bartending at the South Loop Binny's Bar, RIP, he always used to make a chichi kappa old-fashioned, where he'd just make a pretty standard old-fashioned, but with Del Magway's chichi kappa mezcal, which is a particularly smoky mezcal. And so I happened to search for that on the Punch website, and they've got a Oaxaca old-fashioned, but they use a mixture of tequila and mezcal. So while you guys were droning on about your gardens, I happened to whip one up here. Very nice. It's an ounce and a half of tequila, half an ounce of mezcal, two dashes of Angostura, and a bar spoon of agave nectar. And it's just in an old-fashioned glass with a big ice cube, stirred, and it's super easy. It's really delicious. And that much mezcal is just enough to make, to turn it from an otherwise kind of just sweet, simple drink, I think, into something a little more complex and earthy and smoky. I actually might go half and half of mezcal, tequila next time I make it. I really enjoyed it. And that's something that I think gets passed over too much. You don't even need that agave nectar. I mean, you can make a standard old-fashioned, just sub in mezcal or tequila, and it's really fantastic. That's an easy way to turn a lot of drinks savory. Just use mezcal, whether it's a Negroni or an old-fashioned or anything else. Bloody, yeah, for sure. Would you say that that might be a cool way, too, to kind of dip your toes into mezcal, like mix it with tequila? For sure. It makes it approachable. I mean, it gives you an idea of what you're going to be getting into flavor-wise without having to go full bore into it. It gives you a little tickle, and if you like the tickle, then you go for a little more. Chris, what do you have for us? Bring us home with your third cocktail here. All right. So, my third cocktail is a sweet, savory riff. Roger, you asked me to think about doing a shrub, and I did. I guess maybe I should describe what a shrub is. So a shrub is actually several different things. It could describe a liqueur with actual alcohol in it. But in the way we're using it here, this is a way of preserving fruit, essentially, in a syrup by using lots of vinegar. And this is a great way to make a drink in lieu of using citrus. So you can have your preserved fruit syrup made all sharp and tangy with vinegar and balanced with sugar. And you can do it with anything you want. Raspberries, you know, doesn't matter. Citrus fruits, which maybe doesn't make sense. But I made a shrub. I tried to drag it as far towards savory as I could. Basically, it's cherries, fresh bing cherries, which were beautiful. And I crushed those. And most people will tell you to take the pits out. And I know, Roger, you probably would, too. But I left them in, hoping for just a subtle hint of almond to come peek through. And I like that tiny bit of I like the little buzz that a little cyanide can give you in your cocktail. So, you know, don't worry about it. I mean, if it's a short steep, I wouldn't worry about it too much. It's been 24, 30 hours right now. And I only took a little bit out and strain it. I'm still macerating. Nice. But the way I really tried to bring it over to savory was by adding a bunch of herbs. So what I put in here was four cups of fresh cherries mashed. But if you're using the pits, definitely do not puree them or break them up. Just let them steep in there. A cup of sugar. I did a half a half a cup of sherry vinegar, just because this was going to be a sherry drink. And then the other half cup was apple cider vinegar. And then I ended up adding a couple more ounces of cider vinegar because I wanted a little more tart than it came out. But then I added a couple of green cardamom pods. Oh, very interesting. Yeah, a couple of bay leaves, a sprig of rosemary, a few sprigs of thyme, and some black peppercorns. And because I had it out, I put a little saffron in there just to see if it would show up at all. And it's quite interesting. Anyway, so that's what it is, this cherry rosemary thing. And then what I decided to do with it was to make a riff on the classic sherry cobbler. And if I could find my glass. So a sherry cobbler is a really old drink, very popular in colonial days. Essentially just some amontillado sherry. Very popular with the rest of the octogenarians. No, not even, it's not even octogenarians. It's people, gourmands, esoterics, people that are interested in old school colonial cocktails. I'm going to make this cobbler using an amontillado. So I don't know if I'd describe this fully, but a sherry cobbler is essentially a couple of slices of citrus, sugar, amontillado shaken together and then served over cobbled ice, which is just crushed ice like cobblestones. So I'm putting about an ounce and a half, maybe I'm going to double that. This is mostly going to be sherry. Three ounces of sherry. Whoa. Look at this beauty. That is a gorgeous cocktail. Yeah. I've got a little sprig of rosemary, a little sprig of thyme, a fresh cherry, and then in a nod to the classic cobbler, I put a slice of orange in the glass. That's awesome. It's going to be good. Oh, yeah. The shrub is doing all the sour and sweet lifting at the same time. You don't have to have sugar, you don't have to have citrus, it's all in there. The cherry really pops out. The main thing that I'm getting on the savory side is like a cooling eucalyptus-like element from that cardamom and bay leaf, that sweet bay, a little bit of time. Rosemary hasn't popped up too much yet, but you combine all that with that super nutty amontillado. I really wish we were with Chris right now to enjoy all of his hard work. No, I wish I could taste these, yeah. I mean, that's quite a cocktail concoction there. One Roger Montefaud-Adamson wanted to record remotely today. Well done, Chris. I think that gets an award for the most well thought out and perfectly executed as far as combining all the elements of what can be savory. I think the reason that I really wanted you to maybe take the reins on a shrub is that, I mentioned before, one of the most appealing things in any beverage category is matching the right amount of sweetness with acidity. Right. And shrubs have huge potential for that. That's what makes your mouth water. That makes you want to continue drinking whatever beverage it is that you're drinking. So again, if you have some time on your hands and you're looking for some fun to explore, I think shrubs are something that's an interesting road to go down. If you're into gardening, you're into farmers markets, this is something you can just do as a countertop project, something to have fun with, with again, your friends, your spouse, look into it, it's something cool. All right, so again, thank you both to Pat and Chris for taking this stroll down the savory side of things. Hopefully we got you thinking about what you could play around with, whether it be stuff from your garden, stuff from the farmer's market. Just starting to think of non-conventional cocktails that might have more of a savory bent to them. Again, the best cocktail is what tastes best to you. So hopefully these give you some ideas, and then you tweak it to your liking. So we'll make sure to post all the recipes and what we talked about on the blog post for this. Please make sure to tell your family, your friends, your mom about Barrel to Bottle and subscribe. And if you have anything you want to hear us talk about, any questions, please let us know. Drop us a line. Until next time, I am Roger. I'm Chris. And I'm Pat. Keep tasting. Keep it salty.