Raising the Bar - Recap

Now an adult, Alton sits on his couch and remembers a bit of his childhood: his father coming home, kissing his mother, dropping his hat on Alton’s head and then mixing up cocktails. That clinking ice signaled that the workday was over. These days it seems the workday is rarely over, but Alton intends to keep the cocktail tradition alive anyway. Master just three drinks and you will know most of the mixology you will ever need.

First Alton delves into a bit of history. In 1764 England’s King George passed the Revenue Act which heavily taxed Madeira, then a favorite drink in the colonies. This tax and others eventually led to a famous tea party held in Boston. It also fostered the rise of cocktails – the word is from the French coquetel, meaning “mixed thing.” Within a century barmen concoct hundreds of new drinks. In 1920 the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution and the Volstead Act forbade alcohol, which made drinking... more popular than ever! Two wars later the mixed drink reached its nadir with the umbrella drinks of the 1970s. In the early 1990s folks rediscovered Frank Sinatra and his signature refreshment, the martini.

That brings Alton back to the present and the Good Drinks bar (last seen in “School of Hard Nogs”). There Alton reveals that the home mixologist doesn’t need most of what he’ll see in a commercial bar. Alton proposes a simple bar setup that starts with four kinds of glassware:

1. Highball glasses are cylindrical glasses lacking stems, appropriate for iced drinks.
   
2. “Old fashioned” glasses are a taller version of the highball glass and also work well with iced drinks.
   
3. Cocktail glasses are the traditional glass used for a martini. Their conical vessel rests on a stem and a wide base. Because the stem does not transfer heat from the user’s hand to the glass, these work well for drinks that aren’t iced.
   
4. Champagne flutes are also stemware. They have a narrow barrel shape: slightly wider in the middle and tapering to the top and bottom.
   

Good tasting iced drinks need good tasting ice. Ice cools the drink and helps blend the ingredients. Alton freezes filter or bottled water and then seals that in plastic bags to keep freezer funk out. For large parties, he buys bag from the food store or chips ice from a block “Sharon Stone style”.

Alton believes the well equipped bar needs just three pieces of gear:

1. A jigger/pony combination measure. Many people have seen this device that looks like two slightly different sized truncated cones stacked point to point. The larger size measures a jigger (1½ oz) while the smaller measures a pony (1 oz).
   
2. A Boston shaker. This is two tumblers most often made of stainless steel. One of them may be inverted and fits into the other. Stacked in this way the combination is sufficiently liquid tight to permit mixing a drink by shaking.
   
3. A julep strainer. This large spoon shaped sieve has coarse openings suitable for filtering larger flavorants once their work is done.
   

Many people know the traditional bar strainer, a perforated metal plate bordered by a spring that holds it in a glass. Alton recommends avoiding this type of strainer because it is hard to clean and the spring tends to snag ingredients.

A cocktail, Alton continues, is like a musical chord. A spirit or occasionally wine provides a base for the drink, the first note of the chord. A mixer adds harmony; this category includes a staggering number of ingredients including flavored syrups, juices, fortified wines, colas and many more. Highballs stop at these two notes. Most people know scotch and soda or rum and coke; both are examples of highballs.

Its name suggests that gin and tonic should be a highball, but it actually has three notes. The third note or “accent” is a dash of lime juice. Accents notes are where the bartender shines or fails. Usually powerful flavors, they must be used in moderation to suggest rather than overpower. Citrus, bitters, and other strong flavors fall into this group.

Sometimes drinks with fewer ingredients are more complex. Alton demonstrates by filling the order of a shadowy icon who has entered Good Drinks from the sixties to request a “vodka martini…shaken, not stirred.”

Alton starts by chilling a cocktail glass by shoveling ice into it while he builds the drink. When he’s ready for the glass he’ll pour the ice out (since the drink uses no ice). An alternative would be to keep the glassware in the freezer. Despite his guest’s request, Alton prefers to build a martini from a base of gin. Gin and vodka are commonly fermented from the same grains; gin contains herbs and juniper that vodka lacks.

Martini aficionados sometimes argue over the proportions, and whether to use sweet or dry vermouth. Alton starts with a cup of ice in the bottom of the mixer and a half pony (½ oz) of dry vermouth. He sloshes that around to coat the ice and then pours any vermouth that doesn’t stick to the ice down the drain. Then he adds a jigger and a pony (about 2½ oz) of gin. Again breaking from the request, he stirs this drink. Shaking chills a drink very cold, and that will reduce the contribution of the aromatics in the gin. Shaking is appropriate for ingredients that are hard to mix or cloudy. Once Alton finishes stirring he adds the olive to the glass first and then pours the drink over it. This allows the drink to take up some of the brine from the olive.

Alton offers the drink to his customer and offers several variations to the viewer: substitute a black olive for a buckeye or a cocktail onion for a Gibson. A shot of Scotch makes the drink a smoky martini, and a few drops of olive brine produces a dirty martini. Alton even sometimes adds a few flakes of smoked sea salt.

The drink satisfies Alton’s customer. But when he learns the secret is gin he calls Alton a joker. Annoyed, Alton responds that he never jokes about his work, and then spears a large red “eject” button with a finger, sending the customer through the roof of Good Drinks.

Early sugar refiners used an inefficient technique that left behind a lot of molasses. Rum was born when someone discovered a yeast that could ferment this thick liquid. Nutritional anthropologist Deb Duchon enters Good Drinks in search of a daiquiri – and not one of those “neon sissified slushies, either.” Like the martini, the daiquiri is a three note chord. Alton chills a cocktail glass and then puts a pint of ice in the shaker and begins laying down the “chord.” The first note is light rum. Slightly aged golden rum also works but spiced or dark rum will not yield good results. Lime juice provides the harmony. If it comes from a bottle you will be disappointed. It should come right from a lime. If you’ll be making a lot of drinks squeeze and strain limes into a squirt bottle before the evening begins. The accent is sugar, but not granulated sugar. Alton demonstrates how to create simple syrup from water and sugar. This syrup mixes effectively with cold liquids when granulated sugar will not. Because the drink contains cloudy ingredients, Alton shakes it, demonstrating the Boston shaker.

Colonel Bob Boatwright drops by to finish the episode with a mint julep. He explains that some of the oldest cocktails were prepared by apothecaries – early pharmacists – who mixed roots and herbs to make medicine, then added a dash of sweet liquor to make it go down more easily. Perhaps the mint julep was born this way.

People argue over mint juleps – not about the ingredients, about the construction. Colonel Bob offers his technique and advises those who don’t like it that he doesn’t much care. He puts ten mint leaves go into a glass (or other vessel) along with superfine sugar. You can make this kind of sugar from ordinary granulated sugar in the blender. Then he grinds the sugar and mint together with a kind of pestle. The sharp sugar granules tear the mint apart and liberate the flavors. This is called “muddling” and it’s important to the quality of the drink. A shot of seltzer loosens the paste. Then he adds ice and bourbon. Another shot of seltzer and a couple of stirs finish the julep. The julep strainer takes the mint leaves out.

With a few basic mixing techniques one can serve most guests, and for those still not satisfied, these techniques and ideas help make other drinks as good as they can be.

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