Week 3: A Deep Dive Into The Precepts From Beta Cocktails
Recipes are guidelines, not gospel
Welcome back to week 3 in my deep dive into the transcendent and eccentric cocktail book Beta Cocktails.
Sorry to be late. I aim to get these out on Monday, but with the weather getting nicer, sometimes Sunday evening finds me sipping cocktails on the patio instead of hammering away at the keyboard!
If you would like a copy of this hard-to-find book to follow along, you can grab one here.
The Precepts of Beta Cocktails:
Week 1
P. 7: Don't knock it 'til you've tried it.Week 2
P. 2: A bar exists to serve customers, not cocktails.
P. 8: You will never serve a cocktail that makes everybody happy, so focus on making one person happy one drink at a time.Week 3
P. 6: Recipes are guidelines, not gospel.
P. 10: Share recipes. It can inspire.
I am doing the Precepts out of order, but I will list them by the week above each post with a link so you can refresh yourself on past Precepts if you like.
Hang on tight!
P. 6:
Recipes are guidelines, not gospel.
A recipe is a set of instructions to reach a specific result. Within the world of cocktails, I find that if a recipe is too specific, the resulting drink can be brittle. Exactness isn't entirely necessary; we are having a drink, not launching rockets. A drink that teeters on the edge of balance with a drop or two of this or a couple of dashes of that doesn't make for a fun experience to anyone without a Chemistry degree, and even those people need to relax at some point.
This took me a long time to accept. Honestly, I still have trouble with it. The thing is, I love recipes, and I love rules. I have always been a rule follower. I don't roll stop signs, I don't j-walk, and I don't put ketchup on a hot dog. Rules is rules.
When it came to cocktails, I was such a stickler to myself early on. If I made a cocktail out of a book and didn't like it, that meant I didn't like it, whether that was a Manhattan or a Gimlet. Sadly, I fear I missed out on years of tasty Manhattans because I don't care for the standard 2:1 ratio you find in most books. I took that recipe as gospel and until I put my foot down and said, "ENOUGH! I am going to make a drink with whiskey, sweet vermouth, and angostura bitters in a different ratio than this book says to AND still call it a Manhattan!" did things start to change.
A quote I like to keep in mind with recipes is from a letter that Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond and subsequently the notorious Vesper cocktail, wrote to the Manchester Guardian to defend his use of branding in the Bond books:
"… to create an illusion of depth, I had to fit Bond out with some theatrical props and, while I kept his wardrobe as discreet as his personality, I did equip him with a distinctive gun and, though they are a security hazard, distinctive cigarettes. This latter touch unfortunately went to my head. I proceeded to invent a cocktail for Bond (which I sampled several months later and found unpalatable) …"
People try and try to make the Vesper something more than a fictional drink that an author made up while sitting in a bar because it is in print. There is no undoing it; the cat is out of the bag, and the drink is here to stay, but even Fleming himself found it "unpalatable" when revisiting his recipe. So do people actually like a Vesper, or do they like the story? Are they wrong either way? It does make me wonder if the Bronx was originally penned for a spy novel by someone who had no business writing cocktail recipes in the first place.
Then you can go even further. Take this menu painstakingly put together by good friend and great bartender, Austin Hennelly, when he ran the show at Majordomo in LA. Those are certainly "classic" cocktails, but "classic" by name only. His interpretation makes for a refreshing take on these drinks. Sure, he could make someone whatever kind of Manhattan they want, but within the walls of Majordomo, the default Manhattan is done the Majordomo way.
The same could be said for the cocktails in 3 Bottle Bar by H.i. Williams. Vermouth is not a bottle included in the three bottles Mr. Williams likes to keep around (gin, whiskey, and dry white wine), but he can make do and whip up all the basics by substituting wine for both sweet and dry vermouth. Is his Suatini a Martini? Who's to say? But, if you are at his house, that is being served if you ask for one.
Cocktails should be individualized; because we are all different in the first place! We can all have our takes on the classics. If I am over at a neighbors house for cocktail hour, I don't want the Mr. Boston Manhattan or the Please Don’t Tell Manhattan; I want the Manhattan that Neal makes, cherries and all! If he happens to be at my house, he'd be getting my Martini, not something from a book.
Remember grandmas chocolate chip cookies? Or the tuna fish sandwiches dad made on the weekend? How about the neighbor that made the fantastic potato salad for the neighborhood cookouts? Those are their recipes, and they are special because they are unique. The potato salad recipe probably originated in a Martha Stewart cookbook, and those chocolate chip cookies came from the recipe on the back of a Tollhouse box. I have no idea where my dad got the idea to put apple in tuna salad, but I love it.
Still, through the years and after making a recipe over and over, the specifics start to wear down like the edges of ice cubes stirred in a mixing glass. You don't have to measure precisely anymore. One begins to rely on feeling over a scale or measuring cups, and pretty soon, you have your own recipe.
Good soups, sandwiches, and salads all seem to work just fine if I know the ingredients but not the amounts. It should be the same with cocktails; if you know what type of drink you are aiming for you will be successful. That isn't to say recipes don't have a place because recipes are how you share! And that brings us to:
P. 10:
Share recipes. It can inspire.
Now, please don't get mad at me for putting down recipes from books earlier; I just don't treat those books like religious texts anymore. The recipes within should spark innovation. That is why they wrote them! I used to pour over recipes looking for interesting combinations of things I would never think to pair with each other, but would rarely actually make the cocktails. I loved reading about how other people set up their bars or their philosophy on mixing. I geek out on why people do things a specific way. Recipes can be much more than ingredients. The first step in my Sazerac recipe is putting on a jazz record!
Currently, I have been filling out these recipe cards for my house cocktails, and I am even specific about which jigger or spoon I use. It is my house and my recipe! If I want someone to make the drink exactly the way I would, the recipe card will get them there. The funny thing is when I go to make those drinks, I usually wing it, and honestly, I prefer them that way.
When I would give out a recipe scribbled on a napkin to a patron that wanted to know how I made their drink, I would always include the other spirit options. "Sure, you can substitute this brand for that brand, that's actually how I make it at home, but the pour cost was too high to use it here at the bar." There are no hard and fast rules aside from having fun and making sure you enjoy what you are drinking.
I remember when recipes were a guarded secret. Still today, some establishments keep their ingredients and measurements locked away. Victor "Trader Vic" Bergeron was notorious for keeping his recipes secret even from his staff! His recipes would consist of mixing A with B and a little bit of C from unmarked bottles. What a stifling way to work, but he wanted to be the mastermind behind it all, and who can blame him with Donn Beach snooping around!
Creating a drink is hard. It is also difficult knowing that whatever you make won't supersede the classics. I didn't get good at creating cocktails until I started sharing recipes. At The Whistler, the management would meet once a week and go over everything we were working on in a very blunt critique session. It sometimes felt like being back in an art class review. It took me a while to take suggestions but realizing we all had the same end goal, make the guest happy, helped my ego get out of the way. This made for great drink menus.
That is perhaps the biggest hurdle with making original recipes—ego. Once you know the ingredients, you've tasted all the bottles, you have juiced an ocean of citrus, and you can point to Speyside on a map, you've got to put your ego aside in order to move forward. You can do that by sharing what you are working on and accepting the criticism. It will only make you better.
Perhaps what you share may inspire someone to make the next Negroni or the next Daiquiri, and what a fun story that would be to tell.
One of the reasons I write this newsletter is to inspire. I enjoy mixing up a few drinks for cocktail hour so much, and I hope reading these newsletters inspires you to make a drink now and then for you and your friends. I don't need you to make my exact recipes, but I hope they push you in the direction to make some of your own!
Here are two drinks of mine that ran during patio season at The Whistler to inspire some summery cocktails of your own:
Lido Deck
In a shaker tin with ice:
30 ml Combier
20 ml Batavia Arrack
15 ml Yellow Chartreuse
15 ml Lime Juice
Shake until cold
Strain into a rocks glass filled with crushed ice
Garnish: Pinch of salt and Orange Peel
Daggerboard
In a shaker tin with ice:
45 ml White Rum
20 ml Crème de Pêche
15 ml Escorial*
15 ml Lime Juice
Pinch of Salt
Shake until cold
Strain into a rocks glass with fresh ice
Garnish: 3 Dashes Smoky Mezcal
*Escorial is a high proof (112*) herbal liqueur from Germany. Think Chartreuse with more mouthwash going on if that helps you substitute something!
Let me know what you end up making!
Next week, lets do these two:
P. 1:
Mustaches and arm garters do not make you a bartender.
and
P. 13:
Bartending is supposed to be fun.
Thanks for reading!