Sometimes, when we start a podcast, somebody's got that look on their face that, you know it when you see a look of, how the hell can I get out of here, look on their face, and no one has that look on their face right now. Jenna, you don't have that look on your face, right? No, the table- Even Jenna. Just to set a scene, the table looks like one of those, can you find the hidden object books? There are so many things, so many bottles, so many items of food on this table right now. It's a beautiful sight. I have no idea why there's a quart of heavy whipping cream. We will get to that. I figure I know why there's a bottle of Sazerac and a bottle of gin and cognac and such. Not sure why Pims is here, I didn't know that's a New Orleans thing. We've got Abita beer because Roger keeps trying to drag that corpse along wherever he goes. Roger and Chris made a ton of food, so we've got no less than five Tupperware containers of food. There's a giant plate of chopped up green onions next to me. We've got punch keys. If my tasting notes are off, I blame Roger. You're listening to Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. Thanks for joining us today. We have a very exciting episode, something that we're all very passionate about. It's Mardi Gras season, and we are gonna take you on a tour of the French Quarter here, and do a bunch of classic cocktails from New Orleans. We're gonna take you past just the Hurricane, and some of the other classics, the official cocktail, the Sazerac, and many more. We also have some food pairing here. I've brought some red beans and rice and etouffee. Chris brought some jambalaya. And then Jim, once again, delivers with his Poonchke order from the illustrious- Delightful Pastries. Yeah, I'm sure you've seen them on the news. They are every bit as good as the hype. So, quite a show in store for you. Here today in the studio, we have- Hey, I'm Pat from the Whiskey Hotline. I am here to be fed and entertained by Roger today. I'm Jenna. I do communications, and I'm also just here for the food and Unpleasant Company. Jim Communications, producer of this fine podcast, enjoyer of New Orleans. Punchkey Pounder. Punchkey Pounder. Punchkey Pounder. That is a fine-looking box of punchkeys, I have to say. I'm Chris. I like all things New Orleans. Music, food, booze. Give it to me. Sweet. Let's get started. We have an ambitious endeavor today. We're not only going to be eating food, we're going to be trying a bunch of New Orleans cocktails as well, so we're taking you literally on a tour of the French Quarter here. We're just going for a record for grossest podcast for Jim to edit. Mouth noises galore. We are pairing each cocktail with a punch key. So this is red beans and rice, classic New Orleans dish. That is shrimp etouffee. Obviously, Chris, you made jambalaya and creole sauce. I made jambalaya and creole sauce. It has country ham, smoked sausage. This is heavily meat. Shrimp and chicken. Is the etouffee heavily meat and also or no? No. Okay. Heavily shrimp. Okay. Yeah. Heavily shrimp. I felt bad taking three shrimps. I was like this thing is like 40 percent shrimp. Roger, it looks fantastic. Thank you. So obviously, Mardi Gras celebration here of Fat Tuesday, the beginning of Lent. So you really got to go to town and be indulgent. So we've got a bunch of indulgent food and indulgent cocktails as well. The classic beer obviously from New Orleans is Abita, and then they do a beer specifically for Mardi Gras, called Mardi Gras Bach, which ties into the German tradition of having a Lenten beer, a Bach beer. Short of I think having everybody get fall down drunk drinking Doppelbach, they went a little bit milder and brewed a Maibach, Lenten Bach. This beer is awesome with the red beans and rice. Abita is great, great food beers. They just pair chefs down there, love them for that. They pair so well with the cuisine. The bigger hit of alcohol is good with richer foods too. It is delightful. This is a Maibach style, 6.5 percent alcohol, so that's almost there for Doppelbach, to be honest. There's definitely some of the most famous ones in the world. They're right at like seven, so a little lighter in body, not as dark or rich. It's made with Pilsner and Caramel Malts, and then hopped with German Pearl hops. It's a great beer. It's clean. It's still somehow crisp, even though all those bona fides that you're saying and how it's very Bach-like in character, it's still light on its feet, and it's a clean, easy drinking beer. This is one I feel would sneak up on me. If it weren't for this heaping of rich food, I'm jamming down my face right now. Yeah, I totally agree. It has rich maltiness, but it remains refreshing, and you need that against this food. You're right. This etouffee is fantastic, Roger. It's delicious. I totally dig the fact that they're making a Bach because Lent is so much a part of that town. If America is a melting pot, there's no bigger melting pot in America than New Orleans, in my opinion, as cultures galore. I mean, obviously, the beer goes with the food, but in New Orleans, you definitely find yourself in situations where it's such a cocktail city. You're sometimes drinking a cocktail with food for sure. Loaded full of famous old bars. There are a couple of famous spots that are associated with the cocktails we're drinking today, right? Well, the Sazerac, of course. The Vieux Carré. Pat What's's Faces for a hurricane. Matt O'Brien's. Although we're going to make a much better hurricane, I assume. Oh, yeah. Pat What's's Faces. Then the Carousel Bar where you're actually on a carousel is famous for. Boy, I'm glad I skipped lunch today. This is great. Yeah. Great jambalaya, Chris. Yeah. Thank you. Chris and Roger, great food here. I made jambalaya once in the Instant Pot in it's scorched to the bottom of the Instant Pot. It became a real nightmare. That's not necessarily a terrible thing. A lot of rice dishes having a little brown bottom. Tasted great, but the Instant Pot safety features turn it off when it detects scorched though. Because the whole thing was you could put everything in at once, and your jambalaya is done in 45 minutes or whatever because it's pressure cooker. Sure. I mean, I think about this dish, it's normally done a big cast iron, something or other, and you're likely to get a little browning on the bottom when you cook it. I know I do, and I like it. That creole sauce is great. That's a nice, you don't always see that. If you go out and order jambalaya, you see that at restaurants sometimes, but they usually don't have that extra kind of. Yeah, I agree. I like it jambalaya on its own, and that's usually how you encounter it. But I picked that up from Paul Perdom decades ago. Red beans, classic New Orleans dish, especially on Mondays on wash day. Women are doing the laundry and still expected to provide dinner as well. Not where I expected this to go. Jenna, what are you doing? It's a market day. Hardest worker in the house, always the woman. Nowadays, hopefully sharing the duties, but it was traditional back in the day. You needed something where if you have to be doing laundry, especially the old-fashioned way, which is a huge pain in the neck, a dish that you could have on the stove and didn't have to constantly be in the kitchen while you were doing something, allowed you to do something else. The key to red beans and rice is the beans. Red beans are, in this case, are kidney beans. But there's a company that's been around for over 100 years down in Louisiana, Camellia, and their beans are just totally a completely different level of quality. If you think you've had kidney beans, you haven't until you've had theirs. They are the real deal for sure. Kidney beans up here can be mealy, the skins can be tough. It's very unfortunate they aren't easily and readily available up here. You have to basically mail order them, but not at all surprised that Roger has mail ordered beans. Mail order bean guy. Oh, yeah. I got a mail order bean guy. And a good Southern American rice doesn't hurt either. So yeah, not only did I mail order the beans, I found the one store that carries Carolina rice up here as well. So this rice after having tried countless brands of rice over the years, is my all-time favorite just traditional white long grain rice. There's only one store that I know of up here that carries it. Now, what's the difference in rice? It's a different strain of rice or what? It's just processed differently and it makes better rice? It's an heirloom American rice. Carolina Gold is what I usually use, although they make a couple of different things. And it's just phenomenal long grain white rice. It's the thing to use for this kind of stuff, which I did not, unfortunately, for this. Roger, where is it available? It's at Heinemann's Grocery Store. So there's one in Glenview or there's one way out in like, jeez, I can't even remember. Bro, you went to Glenview for this rice? This one, yeah, pretty much. This time, I think I bought it at their other location, which is way north and way west. Again, yeah, like 40 minutes. Like Crystal Lake or something. Yeah, Marengo. Marengo. Crystal Lake or somewhere around there kind of area. It's really far away. I was looking for a specific type of ham. So I figured double duty, if they didn't have the d'Artagnan ham, they might have the, they have the d'Artagnan and Dewey, but d'Artagnan ham, eh? So the first cocktail is going to be a Vieux Carré, which means the old square, French Quarter that is, is what they're referencing. It was created by Walter Bergeron at what would become the famous Carousel Bar at the Hotel Monteleone. Bergeron? Yeah. Related to Vic? I don't think so, actually. Tom? Maybe Tom. Now, you say Carousel Bar. This is a bar that's a circle shape or what? It's literally revolving too. Do you get to ride like a novelty animal while you're drinking? Sadly, no. No, it's just a normal bar stool, but yeah, the entire bar is a carousel that moves. Very slowly rotates, so it's easy to get on and off. Let's puke to Queens. So they say. It depends on how many drinks you've had. If you sit there long enough and you've been drinking, it's a little weird because it's like the whole room slowly moving. Very, very slowly. That sounds like a recipe for disaster with a bunch of drunk tourists. Come on. Got to get your sea legs, your carousel legs back. Well, there's definitely lots of other room there to sit. Last time I was there, we didn't actually sit at the bar, so we were just bar adjacent. There's only like 10 seats, 10 or 12 seats at the bar. It's pretty much always packed. But in a reminder of that we're living in this cocktail renaissance, it wasn't that long ago that even at this famous institution, they didn't even really make Vieux Carrés. It was totally a forgotten cocktail that I came across probably for the first time in a book called Forgotten Cocktails. It's a view for a reason. Old that is. We've talked about this cocktail before on the podcast. It's one of my favorites. It's definitely a cocktail for fans of the Manhattan. I've sometimes referred to it as an improved Manhattan. The building blocks here are equal parts rye whiskey, cognac, and sweet vermouth. Essentially, you're looking at like a rye Manhattan there, but with the addition of cognac to the mix. A little bit of Benedictine, which is a treasured old liqueur of French origin made famous from B&B, the mixture of Benedictine and brandy. Yep. Which is made by the Benedictine monks. One of your first premixed cocktails. 23 herbs and spices. It's quite sweet. So you think of it as kind of like a seasoner here. Like there's only a very sparing. Some people even measure it by like the teaspoon in here. I'm using about a quarter ounce. And then it uses the traditional Angostura bitters that have been around forever. But also some dashes of Peychauds, which are the beloved French Quarter New Orleans made. Very anise forward bitter. I always add a little more Benedictine to it, Roger. So I'm glad you're doing that. Nice. So I've got all this in a shaker. Some people would argue you probably stir this drink. I enjoy shaking most drinks. It's in a lot of books as a shaking cocktail. So I'm going to do that right now. Do you garnish yours with a lime or lemon or orange? Usually an orange peel, if anything. Yes. You want to cut some? Yeah. Here we go. There's some napkins there. I'm going to need a napkin. It's a miracle that my clothes are even still presentable. I'm also going to need a napkin. Are they though? I mean, I'm looking right at you. So Roger, we were thinking about pairing this with the, I have on my list, the custard with chocolate fudge. Yeah. I think that would be good. That's a classic Poonchke and I think the richness of this cocktail will go well with chocolate. I think there's a lot of, you often see whiskey paired with chocolate. So I think that would be a good option. I'm really loving the heavy pours going on down there at the cocktail station here. I've got some, I'm going to call an Uber to get home today. Some nice orange peels here for you Roger, or do you want me to pass them around for people though? Yeah, why don't you pass them around and then everyone can express. Yeah. Right over there. Express it. Express yourself. Oh yeah. So a little squeeze of orange oil. Obviously, Poonchke not a New Orleans thing. Why are we doing this? It's a North meets South celebration. It's a Chicago thing. So yeah, growing up, my family was always really all about Poonchke Day. Huge in the Polish community, local bakeries. It's like I always feel sorry for the women and men who have to make 20 times the number of donuts that they normally do. This is a really nice pairing and I feel like it has no business being a nice pairing. Well, the drink is nice. The drink is very nice. That's a good start. It is a very, I would not have thought to put these two things together, but yeah, it works very well. It works. Well, that orange and chocolate and the spices that are in the Benedictine, I think works well with orange and chocolate. I know. Good point. I think this is very New Orleans too in its construction with the two different base spirits and particularly including brandy. I feel like we should just quit right now. Only because I don't think anybody is paying that much attention. We're just all eating and drinking. We kind of are, yeah. Boy, this is good. It's hard to pair anything with a doughnut. I mean. Sounds like a challenge, Pat. Except my lifestyle. Liquor and chocolates, I think, was what inspired me. You think of those, at its worst, those little wrapped up bottle ones, but when they're done well, like. Yeah, a little Grand Marnier inside a chocolate. Yeah, like a really good chocolate covered cherry cordial is delicious. Again, not always the readily available ones, but. Who is the Punch, the Punchkey source today? Delightful Pastries, up in the Punchkey district of Jefferson Park. Oh, the Punchkey district. Porter's, the Hammock district. An interesting bit of cocktail history here. Pimms, which we've also mentioned on the podcast before. Uppity Wimbledon thing. But a delightful drink. The reason you should embrace Pimms and not think of it as just a pinky out beverage. The Cocktail of Colonialism. It's only 25% ABV. We are of course going to rectify that by adding gin to it. But if you wanted a Lowell cocktail, this is the classic option out there. It also is worthy of mentioning that in the world we live in now, where we're being inundated with what we call RTDs, ready to drink, this was the first one. This was essentially, we're going to take a gin sling, premix it for you in this bottle, and then all you have to do is add some weak mixer to it to your liking. Soda water or whatever. Yeah, soda water, ginger ale, ginger beer, and lemonade are probably the most popular ones and common ones. The way I like them, I like to make them with gin in addition to the Pimms. So I do like two to one, two ounces of Pimms, two an ounce of gin. And then I top it off with both ginger beer and mineral water, like a seltzer water. So again, it's not strong by any means, but it definitely, it adds, you know, a little bit of making it a taller drink. The other thing that the Pimms cups are famous for is that some people really go to town with the garnishes. So you might be served a Pimms cup with something as simple as a cucumber, which is what we're going to do today, or it can be more like a sangria almost, like pick something and it chop it up and put it in there. A fruit fap. Yeah, exactly. I'm on board, Roger. I do the same thing when I make a Pimms cup. I always add a little gin. Sometimes I don't for others if they want a softer beverage, but I like that extra little kick and it's gin based already. So I am also a ginger beer guy, but I don't stretch it with water. What's the gin we're using today, bro? We're using Roots of Ruin from Castle and Key Distillery. So it's the distillery that is now occupying the space of the former old Taylor Distillery, and they grow a lot of these botanicals on site in some of the ruins of one of their warehouses that had collapsed during its long dereliction. And the punch key we have is the rose petal punch key to pair with this. Yeah, I think that would be nice. Rose petal is classic. Get your rose petal punch key. Yeah. Yeah, rose petal jelly or- Like as much as I'm a meat and potatoes guy with my regular food, I'm just as much a vanilla and chocolate guy with my dessert foods. Try to get some of the rose petal jam in there. It's not evenly distributed. Yes. A very traditional punch key. I'll leave the real jammy one for Roger. It's a jammy guy. This is a cocktail that's strongly associated with Britain, but there was a New Orleans version. It's the house cocktail at the Napoleon House. Right. Exactly. Well, Jenna, you of course know the Napoleon House, right? Yeah, naturally. Who doesn't know the Napoleon House? They do it with half lemonade, half 7-Up and just a cucumber, unlike that fruit cup. So it's the Wisconsin old-fashioned of the Pimms Cup? Pretty much. In Britain, you're much more likely to see sparkling lemonade, I think. Yeah, or you could do a bitter lemon too. That would be another option. How would you describe the flavor of Pimms, Roger? It's herbaceous. There's definitely a woodsy, licorice-y element to it as well. This rose Poonchke is very floral. That rose jam, what is it? Rose petal jam? How do they make that? Rose petal jam. Wow. You can definitely tell that's what it is. So berries are real popular in this. Usually, they'll chuck a few strawberries in there or blueberries, but it's always got to have cucumber or if you're in jolly old England, lovage. Yeah, lovage. What? Lovage, it's an herb. Usually, you'll see mint here more often than lovage by far. Yeah. Only shot. In fact, if you ever find lovage in a, maybe some cocktail bars do it. Yeah, it's minty and herbaceous, like winter greeny, and it's interesting. How is it with the Puntki? Where's the filling in this guy? I know. Roger. There's one on the, Roger. Yeah, I have. Chris needs some too. It's like unequal distribution of the Rose Jam. I'm not good at that. Time for the revolution. Oh, but they pair very nicely. This pair is awesome. Wow. It seems kind of obvious with the floral, how floral gin and- Sometimes an obvious pairing is the best pairing. You don't want anymore Rose Petal. I do, but I'll wait because we have so many more. I honestly can't tell where the Rose Petal Punchkey ends and the Pimp's Cup begins. Yeah. Wow, that worked well. Rose Petal, yeah, very traditional Punchkey flavor, but there's a ton of bakeries that start making Punchkeys this time of year, but you have to seek out one that- Yeah, you're not going to find this at the local grocery store. Go to the Polish neighborhoods. That's your best bet. Yeah. You're Jeff Parks here. It is weird how much affinity, just eating them separately, eating the Punchkey and then drinking this, not even pairing them, how similar the flavor program is. Yeah. Wow, wild. It brings out a- You're two for two on donut pairing so far. I did not expect that to be a thing with these cocktails. Especially New Orleans cocktails that tend to be very strong. They can be overly herbal or they can be overly sweet. Wow. Nice. So, Chris, why don't you give a little background on the hurricane for everybody? Oh. Was I supposed to know that? Just sing that Bob Dylan song. Ruben Hurricane Carter was falsely accused. You know the story. Do I invented at Pat What's His Name? Pat O'Brien's. Yeah. Pat What's His Name is exactly. Bro, I don't care about other Pat's. Come on. It's rum based, which is not unusual for New Orleans, but they tend to do a lot of cognac and whiskeys. I think most traditionally it was a lot of cognac, but I'd say nowadays with the tropical sweeter tinge to a lot of their cocktails, I agree, it's very rummy. This is a latter day cocktail. Out of necessity. It wasn't by choice that they made this rum cocktail, was that they wanted to buy whisky and there was such a glut after Prohibition was repealed of rum, that they had essentially been rum running to the US, that the story was somewhere around the lines of, if you wanted a case of whisky to accept like 10 cases of rum to get rid of it. So they needed to figure out a way to use up all this rum. So they basically were like, all right, how can we make an insanely strong cocktail that's still balanced enough to be drinkable? That's a good point because not every hurricane you drink is going to be balanced. A lot of them are way too sweet in my opinion. But if the history of what you've made so far is any indication, we're going to have a very balanced cocktail. Now, Roger, what are you putting in your hurricane there? Yeah. So this is probably one of the most maligned drinks out there. No thanks to the originator of the drink because if you go to Pat O'Brien's, you're handed this bright red- A vase. Here's a hurricane lamp in drinking vessel form filled with high C and rum. That's really what it tastes like. No, that is what I mean. It's delicious. But yeah, there's no real juice in it at this point. It's hangover liquid. I mean, if you're wandering the streets of New Orleans and you have something in your plastic cup, you could do worse. You're drinking it out of a three-yard plastic cup. Yeah. Yeah, I think you hit the nail right on the head with it being hangover liquid. I mean, this is for sure. A lot of people go to New Orleans. They might not. I mean, you go there and you eat and drink nonstop. So it's probably more than a lot of people are used to. So then the next day you're like, oh God, how am I going to do this all over again? You sit in that beautiful courtyard and you have two hurricanes. You just consumed eight ounces of booze. You're probably like back on track. Yeah, you're like, woo, ready to go. Now, a traditional hurricane is just going to be passion fruit syrup, lime juice, and rum, right? Am I missing something? Orange juice. Yeah, it's all over the map. So it's one of those cocktails where you just can make it the way you see fit. We're going to go back to what is the supposed origins of this drink. We're simply balancing rum, usually a darker rum, so like a black rum, so things like goslings. You brought RL Seals, which is a perfect example of that. It's a 12-year-old rum. RL Seals 12-year Barbados Rum. That's from Foursquare. It's a pot and column distilled blend. It's 46% alcohol, added free. No added sugar, caramel, or anything. The bottle is very oddly shaped. It has an outy belly button. Yeah, it's got a dumb pirate bottle button. But it should be a perfect hurricane. Yeah, absolutely. This is a tiki drink, right? I mean, it's essentially, Raj? Yeah. It's a tiki drink, right? I think it counts. If it's tropical juice and rum, I'm calling it tiki, no matter its origin. I've always associated with tiki. Yeah. I mean, it certainly fits in the regime. You got citrus, you got passion fruit. It's in our Lord and Savior BeachBone Berries app, so therefore it counts. Is that how Lindt happened? Yeah. Yes. We're going to pair this with the passion fruits. Punch it with again, might be an obvious pairing, but we'll see. This is a passion fruit, obviously a non-traditional punch key. Not known for their passion fruits. Also, for a very, very high alcohol drink already, we're using a passion fruit liqueur instead of passion fruit. Instead of syrup, yeah. So, Roger, as usual, bringing it up to another level. Friend of the pod, Chanola. Yes, indeed. So, Roger is using RLCL's 12-year rum, Chanola Passion Fruit Liqueur, which isn't going to be quite as sweet as a passion fruit syrup. Also, with the added benefit of putting a lot more booze in your drink. A lot of cocktail historians swear that this was originally just lemon juice, and I've made it that way, and I just don't like it as much with just lemon. So, I like mixing lemon and lime, or just using lime and omitting the lemon altogether. But in the spirit of the original, we're going to do some lemon. So, I will do a mix, equal parts. Any grenadine going in here, Roger, or do you assure that? No. You really need very legit grenadine, and I don't really care for it anyway. If you want that red color, what I've always done is use a little creme de noyel, because that really is a classic tiki flavor to introduce some almond. So, I like that idea. It's a good idea. Also, it's pretty common with hurricanes too to add pineapple juice. Again, since we're doing a history, going back in time here, I just wanted to let you try this as is. But if I'm making hurricanes, a lot of the time it will be fresh lime juice, pineapple juice, rum, and then some creme de noyel. Then, now that passion fruit chanola is available, that's good before that. Literally, I would order, get ready. Oh, no. I would order passion fruit syrup from Auntie Lily Koi in Kauai, Hawaii. My favorite auntie. That was thanks again to this Forgotten Cocktails book and the whole cocktail community of people like Robert Hess, and Jeff Barry. Now you can get liquid alchemist passion fruit syrup and most Binny's Beverage Depots can be ordered at any Binny's Beverage Depot. A 375 bottle costs like $14.99 and it's great quality syrup. And when Roger says fresh squeezed juice, we literally watched him squeeze these limes. We sat here and ate Asian food while he squeezed citrus. We watched and made commentary about the act of him juicing these fruits while not helping at all. Roger's juicing pause. So yeah, I am going to add just a touch of simple syrup. I'm thinking this is going to be on the drier side, but I have a feeling you guys would prefer it that way. You can obviously like any cocktail, just very easily adjust this to your liking. So, Shinola again, I tasted it just straight up. Passion fruit is famously very acidic. So when you find passion fruit products, they're heavily sweetened. So they don't, that's not particularly sweet. It's a little sweet. So I put a little bit of Demerara simple syrup in there as well. Yeah, I think that makes perfect sense because yeah, any syrup you're going to be using is going to have a lot. And again, a good simple syrup made out of like Turbinado Demerara syrup is a very tiki tropical cocktail affinity. It mixes wonderfully with rum, obviously. I'm just going to add a little more dimension. Life's too short for plain white sugar. Unless you really think that flavor is going to get in the way. I think in the gin we might actually I might just use, I rarely use plain white sugar, but I might. So be careful with this because I made it strong, made it like normal. So like this is two ounces. There's like a whole pint of rum in that shaker right now. Yeah, it's ridiculous. So the first thing you'll notice, the color on these is, it's beautiful. Passion fruit. Passion fruit, orange. Yeah, who needs grenadine when you got a color like that? It's probably obvious, but it matches the filling of our donut very perfectly here. Oh, that is a passion fruity drink, Raj. Holy cow. That I will go out on a limb and say that is definitely the driest hurricane I've ever had. I had a feeling it might be kind of. But it's pretty delicious. So we probably should have grabbed some passion fruit syrup. I wanted to try it with chanola. So we'll just have to adjust accordingly in the future and add a little more sugar to it. I think it needs to be a little sweeter to go with the pungki a little better because the pungki is so sweet. However- Pungki does bitter this up a bit. Yeah, I haven't tried, but I think you're right. I don't see how it's going to keep up with the sweetness of a pungki. That doesn't mean it would be a bad pairing if the hurricane was a little sweeter. The hurricane as is though on its own is delicious. I'll volunteer to try it with some this etchoufei, and we'll double-check that it can be paired with. Yes. Let us know. It is a delicious hurricane though. I like the drier side. I think if you drink the hurricane and then eat the passion fruit pungki, it builds. It builds. Well, even the filling on the pungki is not terribly sweet. No, it's not. They left it pretty tart, so I could have spoken too soon. It really is. Both the pungki and the chinola really comes through. Both are. Actually, a hint more sweetness would probably be good, but it's not bad the way it is. Yeah, exactly. Because that is a tart filling. This is a nice rum choice. I think the pot still character really seamlessly melds. It's almost lost and then you find it in the finish. It's much more integrated or synergistic than sometimes at the hurricane. You're like, oh, there's the rum. There's the rum, right? With this, especially for the amount of rum in here, it really paired dovetails nicely. I agree. It folds right in. You can get it in the nose and you can get it on the palate if you're looking for it, but it is seamlessly integrated into the cocktail. As you say, that's usually not the case. All right. Solid with that, Dufay. Speaking of rum, while I work on the next drink, Brof, why don't you talk us through this rum from New Orleans and we can all give that a try. There are few and far between these days, but there are still some products produced in New Orleans that we do carry on the shelves. Chiefly among them right now is Cheramie Rum. We've talked about this on a previous podcast on the Buyer Picks. It was, I think, Brett's Pick of the Year. Yep. This is essentially an agricultural style rum made in New Orleans. They work with a local sugar mill. There's some law in America where all sugar sold in America has to be produced in America. We don't import sugar. So there is a very large sugar milling operation about like, I want to say it's 45 minutes west of New Orleans. And our friends at the Porch Jam Distillery down there started this project. They did a lot of research with Haitian Clairons. So kind of moonshine-ish rustic style fresh pressed sugarcane distillate. And it is distilled on a column still. It is, they have a, again, they work with the sugar mill. That was great. The juice and paws have turned into Thor's hammer. That really went in there too. And they get the, so they fill isotankers directly from the fresh pressings at this sugar refinery plant. And it fills an isotaker in something like 20 seconds is the outflow of fresh cane juice that they're creating there. Yeah, it's nuts. In the drive, just from the drive, in the isotanker, it starts fermenting, just back to the distillery in New Orleans. I mean, cane juice is notorious for doing that. Oh, yeah. It does actually have a cleaner character than I would have thought. I was going to say that that was the first thing I was thinking is, the nose is so clean compared to a typical rum agri-coal. It's there, but it's not over the top. Yeah. This makes an exceptional daiquiri, like just this classic daiquiri, high-quality sugar syrup, fresh lime juice, and this is just a remarkable refresher. I can believe that. And this is on the shelf under $30. I think it's on sale right now for $24.99. I've never tasted a cleaner cane sugar spirit. Isn't it great? It's so good. Remarkable. So it's Bean. Their distiller actually used to be a distiller at Beam at the Beam Boston, Kentucky plant. So Beam's known for their Claremont distillery, the larger distiller is actually in Boston, Kentucky, about a half hour north of there. And that distiller is not open to the public, and it's just the big factory distiller. And so this guy, Jason Zeno was working there, and then he moved down to Porch Jam, started making vodka and stuff. They do have other things, but now they're trying to be known for the rum. And there are some, there are very small number of barrels laid down for aging. We are going to have a single barrel from them at some point. And they do make a slightly funkier mark. That's something about, that's got some allusion to the queen or something in the name. But that's currently not available outside New Orleans. Funky Queen Rum. Yeah. If there was anyone on the planet who was funky, it was definitely Queen. George Clinton, step aside. What do you think of this, Jenna? In a blind taste, I would not know this is rum. Yeah, it's super weird. If your only rum introduction has been, you know, historically dark rums or spice rums, this is a wild thing to taste. But what would you think it is? Because I don't know. Yeah, exactly. I mean, as Pat was asking me, I'm smelling it. I really don't know what to relate this to if I had to guess any spirit. It is so far removed from typical rum agrochole. Yeah. If Pat gave this to me and didn't tell me what it was, I'd probably think he was f***ing with me and it was like some- You always have to- Yeah, some mislabeled bottle from his desk or something. He was trying to kill me. It's a bit grassy, but it doesn't have that stewed tomato, stewed vegetable, vegetal character that many rum agrocholes do. Or rather, rums agrochole. Need some lemon peel garnishes, Chris. Oh, yeah. Yes, sir. I keep drinking these cocktails and then I remember I have to drive home. Yes, sip them. Take your time with these. You may never have been in New Orleans, but this is your crash course. It's a primah. Man, this hurricane. Jeez. I know. It's so good. It's such a sophisticated drink compared to what you might imagine. Yeah. Or what a Pat O'Brien's- What its reputation is. Yeah. Yeah. The Pat O'Brien's one, I mean, it's really just- it's sugar. It does taste like high C. Yeah. Roger's not Roger. The hurricane is no doubt what people associate with New Orleans the most. A few years ago, they decided to officially declare the Sazerac as the official cocktail of New Orleans, which I found pretty amusing. Some of the cocktail snobs actually weren't happy about that. They're like, it's not really completely unique in its conception. Talk about a group of people whose feelings don't matter. Yeah. No, for no doubt. It was splitting hairs and they would acknowledge too, it's a great drink. I would argue that it really was appropriate for it because of one of the key components as I'm doing right now is I'm rinsing the glass. I can't believe you're actually doing this. Which was originally with Absinthe, and then they started producing a product called Erbsinthe, which is essentially Absinthe, but without the Grand Wormwood. Obviously, whenever you make just like not every Absinthe tastes the same, Erbsinthe is somewhere in between. It's not quite as licorice as a pastis. That was what some people started using instead of- It's got more sugar than Absinthe for sure. But Erbsinthe is very much New Orleans and it's classic, so I'm actually using, even though Absinthe famously is legal now, once again, I'm using Erbsinthe as an homage to the true roots. You can smell it from all the way down. I'm really glad you're doing that, Roger, because this makes it quintessentially New Orleans. I usually use Absinthe, but this does drag it right into it. Do you use Absinthe with the flame in the shorter cube and when you start having hallucinations? Yeah, I totally freak out all the time. Start painting stuff. This is actually an OG old school bottle. Start walking around on my knees with the shoes, chopping your off or two. All right. All right. The first and only cocktail of today's tour. Ooh, a stirred cocktail. It's stirred as opposed to shaken. So, as I said before, completely New Orleans in origin here, I ended up doing the Erbsynth I talked about and then there's a rye that took its name from the cocktail, Sazerac rye. From this Sazerac company is what we're using for the rye. So, I mean, that's the absolute classic. If you go there today to the, what's the bar? Sazerac House. Sazerac House. You're going to get Sazerac rye, Erbsynth for the component, so the absinthe and then Peychaud's Bitters. I did a simple syrup in here. There's a whole repertoire as far as how you want to make a Sazerac. Depends on the bartender. Some people saturate a sugar cube with a little bit of water, then put bitters on it. They do some switching of glasses and stuff. I just find it easier. You don't have any grit or anything to just use simple syrup. So two ounces of Sazerac rye, the herbs in the rinse, a teaspoon of simple syrup and four dashes of Peychaud. Is it not true, Roger, that a lot of people use brandy in here to cognac? Yeah. In addition to rye or in place of rye? I think usually just sub it out. It would be cool to try it with both. I think I've done that once or twice over the years, but I usually make them with rye. But yeah, you can make one with cognac for sure. Basically, we started with an appeal and affinity, if you will, for brandies. Then as people's tastes changed, you see cocktails switch over to different. They started switching over to whiskeys and rye became the most popular of the things to mix with. It does really stand up well in a cocktail. It does indeed. Everybody has their lemon peel. Yep. Smells like Brock's jelly beans or jelly beans smell like lemon peel. Liquorice, liquorice, jelly. We are pairing this with the plum butter punch key. Wow. Another, I think, traditional one. Yep. Very traditional. That smells delightful, Roger. Anything that sounds like something your grandma would eat in the punch key is traditional. Plum butter and rose petal jam. Again, it's prune, but everyone knows prunes have the stigma, so they're wisely calling it plum butter. That is a very tasty cocktail. Well, I think this works out pretty well for a pairing. It's pretty neat. I'm trying to find something. We can't just have every pairing work perfectly. I'm trying to find something to complain about here. I think the hurricane was slightly less than perfect. Yeah. Yeah, that one wasn't perfect. There you go. This is great, though. This is great. This is really nice. And I've never had plum butter, but this is delicious. Yeah. I really like that with this filling, it's not sweet. It's very charred. I agree. It is charred, yeah. They're calling this plum butter? That's what they say, plum butter. Yeah, because it's exactly like apple butter or something that you've taken and cooked down for a really, really long time. Cooked down, added some savory spices. Yeah, there's texture to it. There's richness. These punchies are good. They're not messed around. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. That's pretty damn good. Yeah. Great Sazerac. I mean, Sazerac is one of those, people know that cocktail, but I feel like nobody orders it as much as, it's obviously not a Manhattan, it's certainly not an old fashioned, but you'll find nice, sweet, and spiritist balance in a Sazerac too. And people get turned off by the absinthe part of it, and it's really, it's just there for a layer of aromatic complexity that doesn't even come into play on the palate. Yeah. You're absolutely right. People should be drinking more Sazeracs, honestly. And they'll drink more rye whiskey in general, but- And stay tuned for a future episode where we remix a Sazerac with Malort, a Malort wash. Oh, yeah. Nice. But you're right. That's all that absent there or is just- Yeah, no, it's very subtle. Aromatics. And it's so beautiful in the nose, but it doesn't really- And isn't it wild? I mean, you guys watch me, that's literally just from rinsing the glass. Some people like to put, after they're done rinsing it, they'll just leave it in or put it in the shaker. But yeah, I just completely rinsed and that was it. I tend to go a little heavier myself. Sometimes I rinse a glass and then I have a little spritz thing. And if I don't feel like there's quite enough aromatics, I just give it a little spritz on top and then I just go. Because you really just want the aromatics not to taste, because it's such a pervasive. That's like with a lot of tiki drinks, it's kind of the secret sauce is to put a little absinthe or perno and stuff, but you have to use a teaspoon. Forget about the shot glass or jigger or anything like that. Yeah, bar spoon, teaspoon, half teaspoon. Tiny amounts. All right, last but not least, the bartenders lament. Not the hurricane, not an espresso martini. We need a room full of people shaking vigorously. There's a famous story where they had. Oh, I know what it is. 32 people in a line to keep up with demand for shaking these. And they still couldn't do it. Yep. Stop making such a visually appealing drink then. We have the strawberry cream and we have the apricot. Which one did you want to pair with that? I think we should try both. All right. Obviously. Pass the strawberry around. Does anyone have any of the good time, Jim? Does anyone have any other Pimm's Cup left? Yeah. Try that with the straw. Tiny bit, yeah. Do that as I work through this cocktail. So what Roger's doing is making a Ramos Gin Fizz, which is a famous New Orleans cocktail, that requires a vigorous shaking. Although the way he's doing it may not require quite as much. Arguably, you just need to use a mixer. Boy, Jim is just a- It's a real mess. The Punchke explodes. This Punchke, they cut it in half, or they cut it, they bisect it, and they put strawberry and cream in it. Do your best there, Jimmy. We'll figure it out. This is a Punchke sandwich. It's the hot dog sandwich of Punchkes. Yeah. If you cut from the middle outward, it should be better for you. Look at that. Look how much you've learned in that short period of time. So I'd try this one with just a secondary pairing with the Pimm's Cup, right? Roger is working like an alchemist over here. We're going to have liquid gold before we know it. Oh, that Pimm's Cup with the strawberry and cream is very tasty. That's a good pairing. Interesting. It brings out some more herbal character from the Pimm's Cup. Maybe just because the cucumber has been sitting there longer, though. Maybe. I think I like the rose better. Yeah, I think the rose was a spot on pairing, but this is pretty good, too. I think you're right, though. In the nose, I'm smelling the Pimm's Cup now. It's very cucumber. So the orange blossom water comes in a bottle without a dropper thing, so I just went to pour it and it spilled everywhere. It's pretty difficult to pour drops when you... Is that heavy cream? Here it comes. Roger has started to shake. Oh, God. And also, he's mixing the cocktail. Yeah. I need a napkin. Largely because... There's some right there. He hasn't had enough to drink today, but he's also making the cocktail. You still want me to start to stop watch? Yeah, hold on a second. How long are you gonna go, Roger? Well, this is the dry shake, so a minute or so for this. So dry shaking the egg white. Egg white and heavy cream. Yep. Yep. We're gonna get a nice frothy drink here. I remember one time when we were doing the podcast remotely, Chris was doing some sort of egg white. It was just like the sound of it was really cooler to that. The headphones are off. He's getting serious now. Go, Roger, go. Bro, you're only a third of the way to your goal. Basically, you need to like just pass it around and let everybody shake for a little bit. No way. It's all sticky now. That's the right way to do it. You know, share the burden, share the wealth. Can you even do this with a two piece shaker or do you need the three piece? No, you can, but I think it's a lot. A friend of mine owns a hipster cocktail bar in Kansas City and they're known for their Ramos gin fizz. Are they really? Oh yeah. Someone should have like a paint shaker in a bar. It was just going to say it was the electric. So before blenders, they had electric shakers. Is that the brand? So they're like what you're saying, like a paint shaker. Putting people out of work everywhere. All right, I'll admit. I don't get the Poonchke thing. I think it's a pretty second-rate donut. It's kind of dry. After all this great pairing. I mean, yeah, they pair nicely. It's some intrigue. But I don't, I think we've, it's a lesser form of donut. We've been over this before. We did a Poonchke. I brought some Poonchke before. We didn't do a straight-up pairing. Did I bitch about them then? Oh, yeah. Okay. These are great compared to some of them. Sometimes, you need to have a little bit of a- Oh, yeah. I've had way worse ones. Don't get me wrong. Dude, Roger is sweating over here trying to make us this drink. It always gets hot in this room anyways. I'll pass this around with the caveat. Be very careful because this is super full, because this is enough for all of us to have it. Shake it just to feel how cold the shaker has got. Maybe wrap a napkin around it. We're going to pair this with the apricots, jam, punchy. I almost forgot the sugar. That would have been bad. Roger, what is your secret for this one? You are using- Oh, so I'm using powdered egg whites instead of having to mess around with real eggs. That's a thing? Yeah. Powdered egg whites? Yeah. Bar sugar does have foamer in it. This is not bar sugar, it is super fine sugar, which is the only reason I can just toss it in. Joke's on you, listener, it's another sugar episode. Super fine. So, got to the point where my hands hurt now. I feel like I'm getting frostbite. Dude, that shaker is so cold. This is the Curtis Mayfield of sugars. It sounds so thick, like it doesn't sound like that ice is moving that far in that shaker. Yes, that's the way it's supposed to be. Yeah. It's going to be thick and creamy and foamy. Okay, Chris. Now, sometimes you'll see what Chris was, the visually appealing. The foam sticking out the top of the glass. It's coming out like a slow pour beer. We're going to get to that. Really? Here we go. Oh, geez. This is the last stop. This is what makes it a fizz. Yeah. Right. Of course. Obviously. You thought those hands were just good at squeezing citrus? Look at those things open up a Pellegrino. After all that shaking, Roger is going to top it off with little sparkling water to make it fizzy. I can't feel my hand. Don't help him open that bottle. The man who juiced citrus. The man who juiced too much. And on the next episode. And all the favorite of mine. Why is it so dense? Oh man. It's all protein. This five ounce plastic cup weighs half a pound. It's made with heavy water. Oh my god, that is heavy. All right. Oh my god, that is extremely dense. That just means he shook it properly. This is like a cup of dark matter. It's like actual dark matter, not the coffee. What's the payoff with this drink? The visual. People order this because... It's another hangover drink. It's another like morning after eye opener. Ken, I wonder if you could float a donut on top of it because of how thick it is. Oh, you would. Almost certainly could. There's no way that donut's sinking. I mean, the other thing too you have to run into is that there's a monster amount of citrus in this. So you have to start shaking it immediately or it curdles. It is. Oh yeah. There is officially a Poujki floating atop this dense. It's a nice pairing with this Poujki. This is apricot. Very nice. Yeah. You're fine. So this is really nice, Roger. What's in here, Roger? A lot of stuff. Two ounces of gin, half an ounce of fresh lime juice, half an ounce of fresh lemon juice, half an ounce of simple syrup, or in this case, superfine sugar. I use like a half a teaspoon. Three dashes of orange blossom or flower water, which is a very obscure cocktail ingredient, which we carry at Binny's Beverage Depot. One egg white, in this case, rehydrated, an ounce of heavy cream. Do a dry shake, which means that's more important too, if you're using like actual egg whites, they just stick to the ice. But in general, it's a good practice. So you put everything in the tin, shake it without any ice for a minute, then add the ice and shake it for... I ended up doing about three minutes because I wanted to try to incorporate that egg white, but yeah, you shake it for a really long time. The last time I made these, I just did it in a blender and it works out. So if you want to try this, very much you can do it in a blender. Or I was thinking those frother things that they have for coffee. We have them here. Yeah, do that instead of screwing around with. Maya, Maya's all about the frother. Always frother. Always be frother. ABF. ABF. But yeah, the most important thing is with all that, with a full ounce, what you're doing is equal parts cream and citrus juice, so it's going to curdle instantly. The minute you put that in, you have to start shaking it, otherwise it'll curdle. Where's my apricot punch key? I don't know. They keep getting in. They keep missing you. How am I supposed to know what's happening here? It's a log jam because they start talking about the cocktail. We've actually covered dry shaking egg whites multiple times on this podcast. That's pretty great. It doesn't matter how many sips I take, it looks like a vanilla milkshake, and I'm surprised every time I take a sip of this. So this is a New Orleans classic, huh? Yeah. I had no idea. Yeah. Sure is. You wouldn't think you'd want to drink a heavy cream and egg cocktail in that swamp of New Orleans, but- Well, they like milk punch and all kinds of stuff down there. They like all kinds of gross things down there. Nutria. This is a very delicious cocktail. Very delicious. Again, think of it as a classic brunch cocktail. You're drinking this in the morning. So while it might seem a little weird, booze and cream. This and a little braised nutria. So good. Wow. This strawberry one was great with the Pimms Cup. Hello. I'm just eyeing the rest of this jambalaya at this point. I'm ready to get back in. Thinking about pouring a bunch of Roger's red beans on it. Get it back into the food proper. Yeah. We need a food cart to bring all this to the lunchroom and reheat it here. Well, this table is starting to look like New Orleans. This is a party extravaganza here. A hot mess. Yeah. Hello. Who knew that punchkeys could pair so well with traditional New Orleans cocktails? Not me. Yeah, it's pretty weird, but it worked. The food, of course, is great with these things. Of course. They're meant for each other. Yeah. You don't need us to tell you that. Or do you? Maybe you do. But if you're celebrating Fat Tuesday, Mardi Gras, whatever, grab some punchkeys, along with your gumbo or jambalaya or atoufé. This is the best fresh strawberry puchkia I've ever eaten. I've tried a lot of them over the years. Those whipped creams. Delightful Pastries. For real. Lawrence and Austin. Wow, is that good? Yeah. What were they called again? Delightful. Delightful. Yeah, that makes sense. They live up to their name. Yeah, it's funny because the first few times you said that, I thought you were just describing. Oh, no. Yeah. Not just a clever name. That's your tour day of the French Quarter here. We hope you realize there's more to Mardi Gras than just hurricanes. It's a real shame we only get a Roger episode like this, like once every trimester. Right. Shouldn't all episodes come with food. Yeah. I think they should. Remember, in New Orleans, it's like this pretty much every day. Right. I mean, you can get all of this food except for punch keys, but they have beignets. So, you know, that's true. Exactly. You just sub in beignets. Yeah. That's a fair swap, I think. Good call on the red beans and rice too, since it is Monday that we're recording this. Oh, perfect. Yeah. You didn't even think of that. Very apropos. Wash day. Wash day. Let's stop this. You guys are too much. All right. Guys, this was great. These cocktails were great. The food was amazing. Thank you, all three of you, for bringing in this stuff. Jim, you're included in that for your poonchki. Thanks for letting me and Pat freeload off of you guys and your hard work. Happy birthday, Jenna. That's what we do best. It was all for Jenna's birthday, which I just remembered was today, when she told everyone. All right, listeners, this was a blast for us. Hopefully, you enjoyed listening to it. If you did, do us a favor, leave us a review on the podcast platform of your choice. Until next week, we'll see you. I'm Pat. I'm Jim. I'm Chris. I'm Jenna. I'm Roger. Keep tasting. A lazer la bon temps rouler.