Love a sidecar. My favorite cocktail is actually a bourbon sidecar made with equal parts buffalo trace, cointreau, and lemon juice. Really needs a good ripe lemon, but that probably goes without saying.
Thanks for this "extended edition" of Cocktails after dark! Fascinating stuff, and good food for thought in-general about the modern trend of complicating drink recipes (i.e. "ultimate" or "perfect" versions) and whether its necessarily a good thing.
Great deep dive. Glad you took the extra time for the separate side by side of the parts of the drinks. Would be curious if changing the brandy on the modern Sidecar would bring it closer to the earlier version.
My "go to" cocktail, the sidecar. I usually go for a 3 part cognac, 1 1/2 C part Cointreau, 1/2 lemon (sneaking in some sugar syrup sometimes); but the 1:1:1 intrigues me. I was in a hotel bar just south of Nantes in France and had to explain to the bar tender what a Sidecar was (the Cognac region was only a couple hours away). Thanks Glen and Julie for an educational look into this drink...
@@honthirty_ Yep, that's why I mentioned it. Seems they might have known about a Sidecar using a local spirit. But then France isn't known for mixed drinks plus I always think of Sidecars as more American...
I think next weekend the wife and I will be enjoying recipe #2, might just make us a pitcher of them, and have some folks over for dinner. This is a great channel, and "subchannel". Glen is a true renaissance man.
I just made sidecars for the first time this Christmas. They turned out great, but I changed the proportions to taste. It’s nice to know that I reinvented the Harry’s Bar version.
Great cocktails 👏👏👏👏 . Absolutely love your friend! She always brings great enthusiasm to the videos and that beautiful smile ! She’s just delightful 👏👏👏👏👏👏😘
Allow me to preface this Glen by saying the wife and I are BIG fans! Love the show and what you're doing, keep it up! With that said... the wife and I invented a new drinking game in your honor while watching this episode. Take a shot every time Glen says "Bokers Bitters". 3 minutes in and you'll be sitting pretty 🤣Wishing you and Julie the very best in all your future endeavors!
Interesting that you both found the equal parts Sidecar to be good. Sensitivity to citric acid is very different for people, and for me an equal parts Sidecar would be undrinkably sour because I am very sensitive to specifically citric acid. That is why I never make Sidecars because they are all too sour for me unless I use twice as much Cointreau as lemon juice, or add simple syrup.
What a way to spend an afternoon! 😂 This reminds me of a college story I have ... apparently one of my friends who was pledging a fraternity though I was a good mixologist ... more like the best mixologist he knew which wasn't saying much. So he invited me to a special party to mix once special drink for the night. The special drink was the Kamikaze (vodka, triple sec, lime juice). The challenge is that they wanted it mixed in volume not one drink at a time. So yes I was mixing it in a bathtub with a boat oar. 😆 By the time I got the proportions correct there wasn't one person who could stand straight other than me! I have to say I was a legend in my own time! 🤣
Love the channel, love the After Dark series in particular. Personally, I think it would have been a much better experiment to use the same brandy and the same orange liqueur for all three recipes. The experiment here has too many variables to make a reasonable decision on which proportions are best to use as a framework. This is one of my all-time favorite cocktails. For people at home, I recommend trying three or four (or more) differently proportioned recipes using identical base ingredients-after which one might explore which spirits will enhance those proportions for ones own taste. (And as noted below: express the oils from the twist!)
The E&J was my college drink of choice. I've come to prefer Korbel brandy, you should definitely try it if you haven't yet. It is pretty inexpensive too.
My first Sidecar experience was at a Mexican restaurant. They called the Sidecar the "American Margarita" and it was brandy, triple sec, and Rosie's lime juice served up in a margarita glass with a sugared rim.
To be fair there is a Cosmopolitan in 1934, Pioneers of Mixing, that uses gin and raspberry syrup... So not really 1988 being the birth of the "Cosmo" Cocktail history is SOO like a fisherman story.
I'll have to track an original that book down - most contemporary cocktail history points to Toby Cecchini as the originator in '88: Vodka, Cointreau, lime, Cranberry, and simple syrup. So many tall tales and misdirects in cocktail history; we could work forever to untangle them.
My favorite cognac cocktail is mentioned in Imbibe! but has no agreed upon name. It’s somewhere between a Brandy Crusta and a French 75. I use 1 bar spoon syrup, bitters, .25 oz orange liqueur (curaçao style, not triple sec style), 1.5 oz of Cognac, VSOP preferred, then topped with sparkling wine and a lemon twist. I like to use a Spanish Cava which are apple-y and heavily carbonated. Per Wondrich this was once called a Saratoga, although some in New Orleans insist on using brandy in their French 75s which yields a very similar result.
I will never buy or make any of these drinks mainly because I rarely if ever drink alcohol but I still love watching these videos because I do love history and between this and your Sunday morning recipes I love the way you weave so much history into what we consume.
So every Vintner and Distiller put their own stamp on a vintage. The number of good ones are in the hundreds if not thousands and you're mixing a number of them together to get that perfect drink for your pallet. Considering taste changes with age you've a lifetime experiment at the minimum.
Glen, I read recently that in old cocktail books a dash of anything except bitters in a recipe typically meant to add 1/4 oz. I think that would make the crusta recipe closer to the others in balance.
I located Joseph Santini's great great-granddaughter. Santini invented the Brandy Crusta in New Orleans. She shared a photo of Santini with me among other things. She visited Nola and I made her first Brandy Crusta. Cool, huh?
Your observation about the Cognac brings up an question I have. What is it in 2 broadly similar spirits that makes one very pleasant, and the other obnoxious. I was given a bottle of Writer's Tears Irish Whiskey for Christmas, and it felt like needles in the tip of my tongue, with very little actual flavor. I would have sworn it was higher than 80 proof based on how it burnt my tongue. Meanwhile, a Redbreast at a higher Abv. was smooth. Is there a food science explanation, or is it just the nuances of distilled spirits? Sorry for the rather involved question. Cheers.
Especially with whisky, there’s a huge number of degrees of freedom at various points during production that will contribute to the end result. In the end, it’s just very complicated chemistry. At certain points in the process, different chemical compounds can be created, depending on the initial ingredients, conditions during production (e.g. temperature, pressure, time, or treatments like smoking) and the conditions while aging (e.g. type of wood, the previous content of the barrel). And then there’s also blending as well … All those things interact with each other and can create very different results in terms of taste and flavour, but also in terms of whether you perceive a whisky as smooth or harsh (even with the same ABV). And then there’s of course your personal preference in terms of what flavours you actually like or dislike
I don't know what you drank at Dance Cave, Glen but my go to was the vodka and cranberry. And I definitely could not picture Tom Cruise behind that tiny bar pouring my $2 cocktail lol.
Ha - Parts of Cocktail were filmed at the Dance Cave (they made it look like a Reggae club), though I don’t think Tom was behind the bar in those scenes.
Very interesting! Thanks for this comparison! One question: I thought if you garnish with citrus peel, you also express the peel over the drink to add the citrus oils. Do you only express if it's explicitly stated in the recipe?
It's my opinion you should always express the oils from the peel. There are many recipes which call for expressing the oils and discarding the peel (including some recipes for the Sidecar), but I am not aware of any recipes which explicitly call for it not to be expressed over the drink. If it is only there for decoration, one might as well use orange paper.
In my experience, there two things to note: 1) Expressing the oils of a citrus peel over a cocktail that is already heavily flavored with the juice of the same fruit is pointless. The subtleties of the oils are overwhelmed by the taste and fragrance of the juice already in the drink. 2) ON THE OTHER HAND, expressing the oils over a cocktail that otherwise would not have a citrus element is crucial. A favorite drink around my house right now is an Espresso Martini. There’s no citrus in the drink, but the recipe calls for a lemon peel to expressed over the top and discarded, and it makes BIG difference. The cocktail loses it’s initial brightness and “lift” if the lemon oil is omitted.
Am I the only one who doesn't know it gum syrup is? Thank you, Glenn, for explaining cognac vs. brandy, and cointreau vs. curacao. You are right. It is complicated.
@@GlenAndFriendsCooking thanks, Glenn. I don't make mixed drinks excited gin and tonic, so I am not familiar with all the different ingredients. Mixology is so complex. I like watching you make these different versions of cocktails.
I'm wondering if having something like cucumber slices to cleanse your palates would make a difference? Especially when you're tasting three cocktails.
Great as ever, I know you've an old recipe video for Ramos gin fizz, but is it a topic you've considered revisiting looking more at the history and origins?
Minor correction about the Cointreau branding/labeling discussion at 13:00; I'm pretty sure it was originally labeled as a triple sec, although the difference between cointreau and triple sec is relatively small imo that the overall point you're making still stands
Cointreau was originally labeled "Curaçao Blanco Triple Sec". Curaçao originally came in four grades: Doux, Demi-Doux, Sec, and Triple Sec - So 'Triple-Sec' isn't a distinct or different thing from Curaçao, it's just one of the grades of Curaçao (and in current history the most common). There are even more historical subdivisions of this category, but none of the ribbon colours (Green, Red, and White ribbon) are used anymore.
I thought it was funny when you said that "you cant remember what's in the drinks after you mix them", when in fact it's, you can't remember after you drink the dtinks what's in them.
The Orange liqueur showdown episode needs to happen!
An explanation of all the different cocktail glasses would be interesting some time. Sidecars look good.
Definitely would love to see a taste-off of Grand Marnier, Curacao, Cointreau, Triple-Sec, etc.
We filmed that episode right after we filmed this one - you'll see it soon.
Cheers Glen!
Love a sidecar. My favorite cocktail is actually a bourbon sidecar made with equal parts buffalo trace, cointreau, and lemon juice. Really needs a good ripe lemon, but that probably goes without saying.
I myself love a "RUclips 16:94K MPEG 4", very nice cocktail.
Do you garnish that with a cherry or a chicken in a can?
@@LLavery Both
@@RazzUK Not sure what you mean. 16:9 is the aspect ratio followed by 4k, which is the highest resolution you can watch the video in.
Excellent comment, Chef Excellence.
Thanks for this "extended edition" of Cocktails after dark! Fascinating stuff, and good food for thought in-general about the modern trend of complicating drink recipes (i.e. "ultimate" or "perfect" versions) and whether its necessarily a good thing.
Love me some "Sidecar Cocktail RUclips 16:94K MPEG 4". It's nice and refreshing on a hot summers day.
Great deep dive. Glad you took the extra time for the separate side by side of the parts of the drinks.
Would be curious if changing the brandy on the modern Sidecar would bring it closer to the earlier version.
My "go to" cocktail, the sidecar. I usually go for a 3 part cognac, 1 1/2 C part Cointreau, 1/2 lemon (sneaking in some sugar syrup sometimes); but the 1:1:1 intrigues me. I was in a hotel bar just south of Nantes in France and had to explain to the bar tender what a Sidecar was (the Cognac region was only a couple hours away). Thanks Glen and Julie for an educational look into this drink...
1:1:1 is boozy and sweet. you can't drink a lot of it, but it's very good.
Nantes to Cognac is only 150 miles or 235 km apart but 2.5 to 3 hours away.
@@honthirty_ Yep, that's why I mentioned it. Seems they might have known about a Sidecar using a local spirit. But then France isn't known for mixed drinks plus I always think of Sidecars as more American...
I think next weekend the wife and I will be enjoying recipe #2, might just make us a pitcher of them, and have some folks over for dinner. This is a great channel, and "subchannel". Glen is a true renaissance man.
I just made sidecars for the first time this Christmas. They turned out great, but I changed the proportions to taste. It’s nice to know that I reinvented the Harry’s Bar version.
You two just sitting and talking about the difference between similar spirits/alcohols/boozes would be really interesting!
I love the way you explore the variations.
Great cocktails 👏👏👏👏 . Absolutely love your friend! She always brings great enthusiasm to the videos and that beautiful smile ! She’s just delightful 👏👏👏👏👏👏😘
Allow me to preface this Glen by saying the wife and I are BIG fans! Love the show and what you're doing, keep it up! With that said... the wife and I invented a new drinking game in your honor while watching this episode. Take a shot every time Glen says "Bokers Bitters". 3 minutes in and you'll be sitting pretty 🤣Wishing you and Julie the very best in all your future endeavors!
This is a great High resolution, Perfect aspect ratio cocktail! 😉
Edit: The title is fixed so my comment is Very Strange now! ...lol
Interesting that you both found the equal parts Sidecar to be good. Sensitivity to citric acid is very different for people, and for me an equal parts Sidecar would be undrinkably sour because I am very sensitive to specifically citric acid. That is why I never make Sidecars because they are all too sour for me unless I use twice as much Cointreau as lemon juice, or add simple syrup.
That look by Jules @07:59 is like why did you just put an orange peel in the drink?
I can't wait for the 8K version!
Did NOT expect this result.
No 'Day-drinking' with Glen & Jules!
What a way to spend an afternoon! 😂 This reminds me of a college story I have ... apparently one of my friends who was pledging a fraternity though I was a good mixologist ... more like the best mixologist he knew which wasn't saying much. So he invited me to a special party to mix once special drink for the night. The special drink was the Kamikaze (vodka, triple sec, lime juice). The challenge is that they wanted it mixed in volume not one drink at a time. So yes I was mixing it in a bathtub with a boat oar. 😆 By the time I got the proportions correct there wasn't one person who could stand straight other than me! I have to say I was a legend in my own time! 🤣
Your title game is unmatched
Love the channel, love the After Dark series in particular. Personally, I think it would have been a much better experiment to use the same brandy and the same orange liqueur for all three recipes. The experiment here has too many variables to make a reasonable decision on which proportions are best to use as a framework. This is one of my all-time favorite cocktails. For people at home, I recommend trying three or four (or more) differently proportioned recipes using identical base ingredients-after which one might explore which spirits will enhance those proportions for ones own taste. (And as noted below: express the oils from the twist!)
Good, good show. Enjoyed drinking with you.
I want to see you two just experiment on finding your favorite cocktail uncut :) Maybe a Livestream, lol.
One of my all time fave cocktails.
The E&J was my college drink of choice. I've come to prefer Korbel brandy, you should definitely try it if you haven't yet. It is pretty inexpensive too.
My first Sidecar experience was at a Mexican restaurant. They called the Sidecar the "American Margarita" and it was brandy, triple sec, and Rosie's lime juice served up in a margarita glass with a sugared rim.
Love this epic episode, quite fascinating!!
To be fair there is a Cosmopolitan in 1934, Pioneers of Mixing, that uses gin and raspberry syrup... So not really 1988 being the birth of the "Cosmo" Cocktail history is SOO like a fisherman story.
I'll have to track an original that book down - most contemporary cocktail history points to Toby Cecchini as the originator in '88: Vodka, Cointreau, lime, Cranberry, and simple syrup.
So many tall tales and misdirects in cocktail history; we could work forever to untangle them.
Perfect format for a cocktail!
Would love to have seen you two just try adding/altering some of these drinks.
Here before Glen changes the video title
Changed! We were part of history. :P
Made one tonight, delicious, Thank you
You could have got away with going for the maraschino, it was fun to watch you break out into experimentation, made it seem a bit more free-form
We need a question and answer show with you and Julie
My favorite cognac cocktail is mentioned in Imbibe! but has no agreed upon name. It’s somewhere between a Brandy Crusta and a French 75. I use 1 bar spoon syrup, bitters, .25 oz orange liqueur (curaçao style, not triple sec style), 1.5 oz of Cognac, VSOP preferred, then topped with sparkling wine and a lemon twist. I like to use a Spanish Cava which are apple-y and heavily carbonated. Per Wondrich this was once called a Saratoga, although some in New Orleans insist on using brandy in their French 75s which yields a very similar result.
I will never buy or make any of these drinks mainly because I rarely if ever drink alcohol but I still love watching these videos because I do love history and between this and your Sunday morning recipes I love the way you weave so much history into what we consume.
I enjoyed watching this video.
I love a cosmopolitan made with pomegranate juice & a splash of crème de cassis. Yum!!
Really interesting discussion! Also, how whoopeed were you two by the end of this??? LOL.
Jules likes that drink lol
You start DRINKING drinks and you can't remember what's in them!
I feel like I need to lay down....love this! Thanks for this!!!
So every Vintner and Distiller put their own stamp on a vintage. The number of good ones are in the hundreds if not thousands and you're mixing a number of them together to get that perfect drink for your pallet. Considering taste changes with age you've a lifetime experiment at the minimum.
Loved this video, but didn't you make the first cocktail with Curaçao?
That's what I saw too. Oh well, no big deal
We need a follow-up video on this topic....so interesting!!!
Glen, I read recently that in old cocktail books a dash of anything except bitters in a recipe typically meant to add 1/4 oz. I think that would make the crusta recipe closer to the others in balance.
Some of the older books list what a dash is, but it's all over the map and none of the books really conform to a standard measurement.
I located Joseph Santini's great great-granddaughter. Santini invented the Brandy Crusta in New Orleans. She shared a photo of Santini with me among other things. She visited Nola and I made her first Brandy Crusta. Cool, huh?
Your observation about the Cognac brings up an question I have. What is it in 2 broadly similar spirits that makes one very pleasant, and the other obnoxious. I was given a bottle of Writer's Tears Irish Whiskey for Christmas, and it felt like needles in the tip of my tongue, with very little actual flavor. I would have sworn it was higher than 80 proof based on how it burnt my tongue. Meanwhile, a Redbreast at a higher Abv. was smooth. Is there a food science explanation, or is it just the nuances of distilled spirits?
Sorry for the rather involved question. Cheers.
Especially with whisky, there’s a huge number of degrees of freedom at various points during production that will contribute to the end result. In the end, it’s just very complicated chemistry. At certain points in the process, different chemical compounds can be created, depending on the initial ingredients, conditions during production (e.g. temperature, pressure, time, or treatments like smoking) and the conditions while aging (e.g. type of wood, the previous content of the barrel). And then there’s also blending as well … All those things interact with each other and can create very different results in terms of taste and flavour, but also in terms of whether you perceive a whisky as smooth or harsh (even with the same ABV). And then there’s of course your personal preference in terms of what flavours you actually like or dislike
Ooooo a cherry sidecar, yes pls 😃
The Brandy Crusta sounds familiar. I think my mother may have drunk them in the 70s, along with Brandy Alexanders.
I don't know what you drank at Dance Cave, Glen but my go to was the vodka and cranberry. And I definitely could not picture Tom Cruise behind that tiny bar pouring my $2 cocktail lol.
Ha - Parts of Cocktail were filmed at the Dance Cave (they made it look like a Reggae club), though I don’t think Tom was behind the bar in those scenes.
@@GlenAndFriendsCooking I did not know that! I'm going to have to watch the movie again. Ugh.
Very interesting! Thanks for this comparison! One question: I thought if you garnish with citrus peel, you also express the peel over the drink to add the citrus oils. Do you only express if it's explicitly stated in the recipe?
It's my opinion you should always express the oils from the peel. There are many recipes which call for expressing the oils and discarding the peel (including some recipes for the Sidecar), but I am not aware of any recipes which explicitly call for it not to be expressed over the drink. If it is only there for decoration, one might as well use orange paper.
In my experience, there two things to note:
1) Expressing the oils of a citrus peel over a cocktail that is already heavily flavored with the juice of the same fruit is pointless. The subtleties of the oils are overwhelmed by the taste and fragrance of the juice already in the drink.
2) ON THE OTHER HAND, expressing the oils over a cocktail that otherwise would not have a citrus element is crucial. A favorite drink around my house right now is an Espresso Martini. There’s no citrus in the drink, but the recipe calls for a lemon peel to expressed over the top and discarded, and it makes BIG difference. The cocktail loses it’s initial brightness and “lift” if the lemon oil is omitted.
If memory serves, the Sidecar ratios are frequently considered "French" vs "English" styles, where French is 1:1:1 or a trinity.
I love the shake editing
Am I the only one who doesn't know it gum syrup is? Thank you, Glenn, for explaining cognac vs. brandy, and cointreau vs. curacao. You are right. It is complicated.
Gum syrup is 1:1 simple syrup, but it has Gum Arabic mixed in to make it very viscous: ruclips.net/video/Y10z7DOU3c0/видео.html
@@GlenAndFriendsCooking thanks, Glenn. I don't make mixed drinks excited gin and tonic, so I am not familiar with all the different ingredients. Mixology is so complex. I like watching you make these different versions of cocktails.
This is hilarious!
Interesting! Could get expensive! Ha ha
Glen, Please tell me this is not your pre-flight ritual!
Love the shaky-cam work.
Oooh I'm real early tonight
I'm wondering if having something like cucumber slices to cleanse your palates would make a difference? Especially when you're tasting three cocktails.
Great as ever, I know you've an old recipe video for Ramos gin fizz, but is it a topic you've considered revisiting looking more at the history and origins?
Seeing behind the curtain with the title.
Minor correction about the Cointreau branding/labeling discussion at 13:00;
I'm pretty sure it was originally labeled as a triple sec, although the difference between cointreau and triple sec is relatively small imo that the overall point you're making still stands
Cointreau was originally labeled "Curaçao Blanco Triple Sec".
Curaçao originally came in four grades: Doux, Demi-Doux, Sec, and Triple Sec - So 'Triple-Sec' isn't a distinct or different thing from Curaçao, it's just one of the grades of Curaçao (and in current history the most common).
There are even more historical subdivisions of this category, but none of the ribbon colours (Green, Red, and White ribbon) are used anymore.
Imagine ordering a "bosom caresser" at a bar.
Thank you for sharing this information!!!!!!!!!
When I used to drink I would enjoy an orange or lemon flavor in my cocktail
This was great!
I thought it was funny when you said that "you cant remember what's in the drinks after you mix them", when in fact it's, you can't remember after you drink the dtinks what's in them.
Very interesting
what in the Sam hill is gum syrup!?!
Would love to see a collab. with the How To Drink channel.
I had heard that the Sidecar name was just for the drink to be on the side of your main drink.
Anyone else just waiting for a 10 hour shaker video, and then Glen complaining about his arms being sore?
I prefer my Sidecar with more of a Vimeo 21:94K MKV vibe.
I just want the old title back
You ever thought of trying non-alcoholic cocktails for us non-drinkers?
too much lemon juice in the second recipe, I find
gin old fashioned
Title issue? Haha
"Freshly squozzen lemon juice"??? Is this some kind of Canadian English?
Yes, yes it is....
@@joantrotter3005 Glad to hear it! Language has to grow or it dies.
It's a Glen & Friends insider joke from when he made cola.
It's a Glenism and utterly delightful
Honestly I think the title is clickbait. I immediately clicked on it because I was intrigued