Jumping on the sidecar love in the thread: had several last week after reading. One bartender offered me a sidecar with rye instead of cognac and, as I remember, it was equally delicious. Unfortunately, it was pretty late at night by that point so I can't really trust my memory.

Obv time for a taste test. Having a few people over tomorrow and will run a (possibly blind) sidecar taste test with at least: brandy, cognac, and rye. TR to follow.

Quick question: how high end do you recommend going on the cognac/rye in the drinks? I have a few different types of cognac ranging from mid-line to pretty high end and a ton of rye across the spectrum. My first thought is that it's probably only a negligible improvement to use more expensive booze in a mix drink, but I'll give it a whirl if oot thinks it's worth a go.

foo,

For spirituous drinks like sidecars, Saratogas, and various other cocktails discussed in this thread, using high quality alcohol makes a HUGE difference.

Related article: http://www.7x7.com/eat-drink/spiritu...ly-new-yorkers

damnit, every time El D posts his booze cabinet I get annoyed because I can never ever find Willet up here.

Tried a sidecar last night at a place that makes really good classic cocktails (ward III in tribeca, NYC). Was a bit too sweet for me.

Bought apple jack and grenadine tonight to try a jack rose. Was ok. The second one I made with sour mix instead of fresh lime juice and I'm ashamed to say I liked it a lot better.

Also, Clare it appears "real" applejack is no longer commercially made. Commercial applejack is fortified apple brandy, rather than distilled hard cider.

I'm now considering making freeze distilled applejack myself.

Ime you have to watch to make sure they don't add simple syrup to sidecars--I think a lot of places kind of consider it a girl drink and try to sweeten it up. I don't like them w/ anything other than fresh lemon juice and no extra sugar.

The place I get them at doesn't add sugar or simple syrup but they do sugar the rim. I feel like this adds a nice contrast.

So, I'll pile on the love for the Saratoga. I had no doubt that it'd be anything other than a good drink, but I was, admittedly, a little skeptical about it being that much different/better than a Manhattan, and I thought it might be a bit heavy on the vermouth. I was wrong. Great drink, I'd say I'd prefer it to a Manhattan, and I have no issues with the proportions. Thanks, El D!

So, rolling with the bourbon+brandy blend theme, I made a cocktail with 1.5 oz each of bourbon (Buffalo Trace) and brandy (Paul Masson VSOP), 0.25 oz of lemon juice, 0.5 oz of a home made herbal liqueur whose closest commercially-available analogue is probably Benedictine (although it's not really Benedictine nor does it try to be), and a couple dashes of Peychaud's bitters. Hot damn. This is one of the best cocktails I've invented. I'm not sure what to name this yet, but it deserves a name. Bourbon and brandy are so highly complimentary that I'd consider making a "New Fashioned" that is exactly the same as an Old Fashioned except that instead of 100% bourbon or rye, use 50-50 bourbon (or rye) and brandy.

Wookie,

That sounds .v good. It's reasonably close to a Vieux Carre (minus the sweet vermouth). I would guess that it would be hard to go wrong w/ any combination of whiskey, brandy/cognac, bitters, vermouth, lemon.

Actually I had just 1 oz of bourbon + 1 oz of cognac on the rocks last night, and that was pretty goddamn good.

I've been making a lot of Old Fashioneds in the past couple of weeks. I've tried a number of good bourbons and ryes and hands down my favorite of each type of whiskey is Bulliet. Really really good. My standard recipe is two ten calorie sugar cubes, three dashes of bitters, and a teaspoon of water. Muddle the sugar, water and bitters until dissolved, then add two ounces of bourbon or rye. Then I peel an orange with a potato peeler, being careful to only get the orange part and none of the pith. I put probably 1.5 square centimeters of peel in the drink, swish it around, and then add ice. Some people say to only add a little bit of ice to the drink so it doesn't get diluted, but this is terrible advice. You want to add a bunch of ice to the drink so it doesn't get diluted. This is somewhat counter-intuitive but it's because you want the cooling to be from the ice going from the freezer temperature to the freezing point of water and not from the melting point of ice. So for your drink to be as concentrated as possible for as long as possible you need to cram as much ice as possible into the drink. Chilling the glass you mix it in also helps.

I'm also considering making 20% bourbon by volume ice cubes for making Old Fashioneds.

The Assani Fisher is quite frequently recommended

boring post, but thanks to this thread i got the itch to try the sidecar - made a bunch with friends - it got a from all who tried it.

Sidecar taste test happened last night. 3 of us (including fellow 2+2er umterp) stared into the absyss and came out the other end drunk.

Based on feedback ITT, I went w. High end booze across the board, and made sidecars with cognac, rye, and bourbon. Thought it would be interesting to see how the strength of the liqour impacted taste, so tried several different proofs of bouth rye and bourbon.

The contenders:


From left to right:
Marquis de gensac vsop (80 proof, unused in test)
Martell cordon bleu (80 proof)
Cointreau (80 proof)
Van winkle 23.bourbon (95 proof)
Stagg bourbon (141 proof)
Handy rye (126 proof)
High west rendezvous rye (90 proof)


The lineup:


All drinks were made using 2.5:1:1

From left to right:
Classic recipe w. Martell
Handy rye
High west rye
Stagg bourbon
Van winkle bourbon
Blended (1 oz stagg, 1 oz handy, .5 oz martell)

Results were remarkably consistent at the top and the bottom. We all rated the classic recipe best and the stagg the worst. I think the stagg is just too much for drinking in this format. Really needs to be sipped slowly with a little ice: overall, kind of a waste of awesome bourbon. That said, all the variations were "good" and I'd order any of them if I was put somewhere.

Choices for the middle of the pack were pretty varied, and mostly personal choice vs one drink being considerably better than another. I really enjoyed the handy version as the spice in the rye came through. The high west version was nice for sipping, but stood out as being noticeably weaker (in terms of strength, not taste) than the other variations. The van winkle was universally enjoyed and I'd consider "smoother" than some of the other options. I was the only one who really liked the blended version, but everybody noted that the blend was surprisingly less harsh than the straight stagg option.

Overall, a good time was had by all. And we ended up hammered, which I guess isn't surprising given the strength/amount of booze we consumed.

After taste test, this happened until umterp got in trouble with his wife and had to go home



Note what happens when somebody who's had 2 sidecars and a few beers tries to sugar the rim of a glass by just dipping it a bag of sugar