In this episode we discuss some of the most popular cocktails, how to make them at home and what kinds of booze you need to make it happen.
In this episode we discuss some of the most popular cocktails, how to make them at home and what kinds of booze you need to make it happen.
Nick Boban (00:01):
This is the housemade podcast. We're your hosts, Nick Boban and John Vieira. We're here to cover your questions about home bartending. Let's get into it.
Nick Boban (00:22):
This week we want to talk about your home backbar set up. What's the, uh, what's the kind of quintessential package of things that you need to execute a wide array of drinks at home. So we're pretty much going to go under the assumption that you've listened to our previous episode, you've bought your shaker tins set, you bought a strainer, you bought a jigger, you bought a spoon. Now we need four or five bottles worth of booze, a couple extra ingredients and let's see what we can, we can roll with.
John Vieira (00:54):
Yeah. And obviously there's going to be some variance here with people's, you know, booze preference, favorite drinks, stuff like that, where we're kind of just doing this, uh, generally speaking, "Hey, I'm going to have a few people over, not really sure what they're into, what they want to drink." Here's a couple of really good choices that are going to cover a lot of your bases.
Nick Boban (01:15):
So just with owning the bar, what we wanted to do is take our top five selling drinks and we'll dissect them, look at what the spirits are that go into them and the other ingredients. And then with that, what else can we make off of it? Okay. So our top five drinks, or actually our number one drink, that we sell just slams everything else out of the park is an Old Fashioned
John Vieira (01:42):
Which is, I mean, a lot of you guys may have had these before. A surprising amount of people are not familiar with them. They're a really simple drink, but I'm here to tell you that the more simple a drink is, the less ingredients that there actually are in it, the more of a delicate balance that there is, right? So you need to have this, balance of ingredients down. Otherwise it's just gonna, it's just going to be weird. It's going to be like crazy syrupy sweet, or it's just going to be like drinking straight bourbon on the other side of that spectrum. So, um, we'll of course give you the general recipe for it and let you know kind of what you'll need at home to pull it off.
Nick Boban (02:17):
Yeah. Okay. So Old Fashioned number one. Margaritas. Those are super popular. Lemon drops. Lemon drop variations.
John Vieira (02:25):
Lemon drops are huge. And there's so many variations. Like it's like the ultimate platform, especially for those people that enjoy, clear spirits, especially. So like vodkas, gins, silver rums, anything like that. I mean, you can do so much with this platform.
Nick Boban (02:43):
Also, whiskey sours and mules. So those are the top five.
John Vieira (02:47):
Yeah, for sure. Mules are great for summer too so we are kind of, sort of getting close to that time of year. So that might be a super important one.
Nick Boban (02:57):
Yeah. Okay. So take us through, John. Then take us through the spirits that we need to execute those cocktails.
John Vieira (03:02):
Okay. So there's this, conception that people seem to have, where you need to have like the best bourbon in the world or something to make a proper old fashioned or even a whiskey sour, right. Something you're gonna use bourbon in and that's not really true. What we're trying to do in making a cocktail is take something that tastes fine. It's not trash, not gonna make you feel awful, but we're trying to turn it into a tasty drink. There's really no need to use like super crazy, expensive, whiskey for this. And that goes for any spirit. So what we use at the bar and what I think is a really, really great, bourbon for most of these drinks anyway, if it's available to you. It may not be, but there's something similar, surely. It's a Buffalo Trace product, It's called Ancient Age. We've been using that to great success at the bar. It's a really, really great platform. It's 80 proof, so it's not overly hot. It's got that nice bourbony sweetness to it and it's pretty cheap. I mean, what does it go for?
Nick Boban (04:10):
It's $11 for a 750 milliliter bottle, which is like your standard size.
John Vieira (04:15):
So how many drinks do you get out of that?
Nick Boban (04:18):
Okay, so, well the old fashioned recipe that we use is two ounces of booze, half ounce of simple syrup, and then two dashes of Angostura. So out of a 750 milliliter bottle. There's 25.4 ounces in it. Like roughly what it converts to, so you can get 12 drinks, essentially 12 old fashions out of a bottle.
John Vieira (04:41):
So that's pretty good for an $11 bottle.
Nick Boban (04:43):
Plus a little bit extra that either sip or accidentally spill.
John Vieira (04:45):
Right. Not to mention, you know, we obviously use the 750s at the bar, but if you're hosting a party at home, you can go buy like a half gallon of this.
Nick Boban (04:56):
So the half gallons they call them, uh, they're 1750s. Milliliters. So it's almost 60 ounces. That's like 59 and change. So, I mean, you're talking like almost 30 old fashions out of a half gallon.
John Vieira (05:09):
Right, and you're talking about a pretty good price break too when you buy those larger sizes
Nick Boban (05:14):
The Ancient Age half gallon is like $23 or something here in Idaho.
John Vieira (05:18):
Yeah, it's great. I mean, it's like I said, it's super multipurpose, so that's the long and short of it is that's going to be our bourbon pick. Now we're not necessarily going to jump into Irish whiskeys or ryes or anything like that at the moment, but beyond bourbon, things like, lemon drops, we're going need vodka, right? We use Seagrams at the bar. It's a good choice. There's lots of great choices out there. A lot of them are marketing. A lot of them are kind of smoke and mirrors and fluff.
Nick Boban (05:50):
Well, okay. So do you remember when we did a vodka blind taste test at the bar?
John Vieira (05:54):
I do. I was, my mind was blown.
Nick Boban (05:58):
So what do we do? We did Seagram's, Goose, Kettle One. Did we do Absolut? I think Absolut was the other one. And then did we do one more? Did we do five or was it just the four?
John Vieira (06:04):
No, we just did those four.
Nick Boban (06:07):
And out of those four, I think the worst, the last pick for all of us, blind taste, was Grey Goose.
John Vieira (06:17):
Yeah. It was, we had three, three different people, three different pallets kind of tasting this stuff. Grey Goose got last place.
Nick Boban (06:25):
Yeah. And it, it was cause it was like super minerally and like kind of hot if I remember right. Yeah. And it finished really weird.
John Vieira (06:34):
What I do remember the most about the taste test was, the mouth feel, the viscosity. That was the biggest difference. Cause you're talking about like essentially a flavorless odorless spirit, right? But there's a huge difference. Something like an Absolut, which I kind of prefer. Um, it has a really nice, almost like oily texture. It's got like this really pleasant, it's something that you're familiar with. That texture, I guess if you drink drinks like an old fashioned, it's got that really, kind of almost viscous, just like nice pleasant, smooth mouth feel. I think Kettle One might've been a little bit on the other side of that, a little bit more medicinal. Kind of dryer. Um, it had good flavor though. I liked the Kettle for what it was, did not like the Grey Goose flavor or mouth feel and the Seagram's...
Nick Boban (07:28):
The Seagram's everybody picked as their favorite.
John Vieira (07:30):
It was, it was either the favorite or like the next one. I can't, I can't a hundred percent remember what the standings were. Yeah. The moral of that story though, is you're talking about a bottle, a liter bottle that is less than half the price of any of these other ones.
Nick Boban (07:47):
Well, I think that's just, to go along with the whole concept, just because it's more expensive doesn't mean that it's better, necessarily.
John Vieira (07:54):
Right. Absolutely. And especially in the context of a cocktail, right?
Nick Boban (07:59):
Well, cause a cocktail really is to try and make not super awesome stuff, blending it together to make it taste super awesome. Like that's what a cocktail is for.
John Vieira (08:10):
For sure. So if any of you guys are sitting at home right now and you have a bottle of, uh, say whiskey in your cabinet and you don't like it quite enough to drink on its own or sip on it, well, good news is you can turn that into some pretty awesome cocktails.
Nick Boban (08:28):
Okay. So with the lemon drop, too though, cause that's what we were talking about, you also need a Triple sec of some kind.
Nick Boban (08:36):
And for a home bar. Okay, now this is where we're going to like deviate from that rule that I just said that you can get away with cheap shit. Just buy a bottle of like, Cointreau. It's just going to do you so much better.
John Vieira (08:48):
Well, the thing is something like Cointreau, which is an orange liqueur, right? Yeah. So it's essentially, it's a, it's a spirit. This one happens to be from France, as many of them are. Um, but you're talking about a full-proof spirit. So 80 proof, um, that has just this amazing orange flavor. When you use something like this in your cocktail versus a kind of shitty triple sec, that's all sugar...
Nick Boban (09:16):
Because that's what the other end of Cointreau is, is triple sec, which is like just a straight sugary kind of liqueur of types, right? It's only like 11% or something.
John Vieira (09:29):
It's more sugar than booze. Now, the reason why this is bad is because you're already going to put sugar in your drink, so you don't need to compensate. But also when you use a premium ingredient like Cointreau, which is probably my favorite one, you get a lot more of that orange, you get a lot more of that really good flavor, that's kind of working in that cocktail. So, the bottle is expensive, but here's the thing you can buy it and liters, which saves you a little bit of money when you're only using like a half ounce per drink. So it's going to last.
Nick Boban (10:00):
I was going to say too, at least here in Idaho, the liters go on sale almost every other month and it's the same price as a 750. It's kind of hilarious.
John Vieira (10:12):
I mean, it's one of those bottles that I pretty much always keep around. There's a lot of really, really great uses for it and there's actually a lot of cocktails out there that that call for triple sec. And so to just have that on hand is really useful. Now you can make a lemon drop without orange liqueur, but it's not as good. If you are going to go cheaper on the triple sec, it's almost free. It's really, really cheap, which is great. You buy this stuff in liters, $10 a liter or something it's like super cheap. I think it's like $8 a liter. Yeah. Um, you're not using very much of it. So it is going to last a while and you can totally get away with that. We use the Arrow brand at the bar as like our well triple sec and it'll get you where you're going. It's fine, but if you're buying Grey Goose to put in your guest's lemon drops...
Nick Boban (11:02):
You might as well get Cointreau at that point.
John Vieira (11:05):
It'll last you long enough that it won't be an issue.
Nick Boban (11:08):
So with that, margarita is one of our top sellers that we need to talk about and that is the ingredient that you should in a margarita put, is the Cointreau.
John Vieira (11:18):
You really should. Um, so the thing that I love about a well-made margarita is that it's in the same family, if you will, as my favorite cocktail, which is a Sidecar. That category is referred to as a daisy. So a sour, at least throughout history is something that's gonna take a little bit of citrus. It's going to take a little bit of sugar. You're gonna mix those things in equal parts and you're gonna create essentially what we know nowadays in the shitty bar industry as sweet and sour mix. Um, but it's a lot better with fresh ingredients. You get just a lot more bang for your buck with it. However, the other drink category besides the sour is the daisy and the main difference is that instead of just using sugar and citrus, you're using a liqueur in place of just sugar.
John Vieira (12:11):
So the classic margarita recipe calls for fresh lime juice, something like Cointreau and tequila, essentially. With those three ingredients you're talking about, you know, so one thing to touch on for a moment is a lot of people are looking for skinny margaritas. Thats a term that really gets thrown around a lot and I just want to clarify real quick that there's not really such a thing, because if you make a margarita correctly, it's already a skinny margarita. It's already as skinny as it's going to get. That being said, I would understand if you went to a certain place, why you would ask for that.
Nick Boban (12:55):
Especially if they're going to put that like pre-made sweet and sour mix, cause it's just sugar.
John Vieira (12:59):
Right. So the great thing about hosting at your place is that you're in control. If a guest asks for a margarita, there's a good chance they've never had a really good one and you might blow their face off. Uh, because I got to tell you, just like a sidecar, a well-made margarita is like one of the most refreshing and boozy beverages that you can have.
Nick Boban (13:20):
But it's all about balance.
John Vieira (13:22):
It is. It absolutely is. So, um, we'll touch on this a little bit. A lot of people like to put agave syrup in Margaritas as well and that's delicious. The agave works really well as a sweetener, as opposed to like simple syrup or something like that. It's got a little bit more depth and dimension, but it can be kind of expensive. So it kind of depends on how many you're making and what your guests want.
Nick Boban (13:46):
Okay. Also so our last two on the top five cocktails, whiskey sours. Whiskey sours are huge. And up to this point, you already bought the bourbon so... And if you already have lime juice and simple syrup laying around to make a lemon drop, you just need an egg. Everybody's got an egg in their fridge. I shouldn't say everybody, but a lot of people...
John Vieira (14:16):
The, the citrus juice as well... Um, it really, if you're making lots of different drinks it's worth having lemon and lime because you can use them for separate things. However, in a pinch you can make a good margarita with lemon juice...
Nick Boban (14:31):
That not a lot of people would even know.
John Vieira (14:33):
But it's harder to make a drink like a lemon drop and a whiskey sour with lime juice. It tends to be a little bit more tart and acidic. It's not just citric acid, like lemon juice is, it's got some malic acid as well. So it's a little bit of a different thing. Um, like I said, if you have the ability to have both, I would. If you can only have one, I'd probably rock lemon juice.
Nick Boban (14:56):
Yeah. Well, okay with some making everything fresh, an actual lemon, like a good lemon, depending on the size and the time of year that it is, you can get like an ounce and a half to two ounces worth of juice out of a good, like properly squeezed lemon. And then with a lime, you can get about three quarters to a full ounce. Depending on the lime, some limes we buy are really shitty.
John Vieira (15:18):
I mean, some of this citrus goes both ways. So a lot of times when I'm at the store, I'll go over to like, uh, the lemons. And there's, there's two kinds of, uh, two approaches I should say. When you're buying lemons or limes for that matter, are you using them for juice or garnish or both? If you're using them for juice, you want to grab the ones that are nice and soft. Not like over ripe gross, soft, but you can tell that they're getting there. The skin is thinner, right? You can tell when you feel it. If you're using it just for garnish or for the oil, you want to grab those ones that have like, um, kinda like that really thick skin on the outside, they might even have some bumps. Uh, they're very firm to the touch. Those are gonna be a lot harder to juice and you're not going to get nearly as much yield from them.
Nick Boban (16:11):
Crazy amount of pith on them, usually.
John Vieira (16:14):
But when you go to peel those things. So once again, if you're planning an event of some kind and you're gonna be making drinks that require lemon juice, as well as maybe a lemon peel, something like an old fashioned, get a little bit of both if you can. You can make it work, if not, but if you have the option, I would just get both.
Nick Boban (16:39):
Okay. And then our last cocktail on the top five is a mule. And up to this point, the only ingredient we have to add to the list now is going to be ginger.
John Vieira (16:48):
Right. So here's the thing with ginger beer. There's not a lot of really good ones out there. There's been a few that have come out in the market. I know Fever Tree is a popular one and Cock and Bull is one. They get really pricey. The other issue is that you're talking about a carbonated beverage so as you open this and you use half the bottle to make a cocktail, if you do not use the other half or drink it just as a beverage, it's pretty much gonna go flat and you're gonna throw it away. This is essentially the sole purpose...
Nick Boban (17:26):
Yeah. So I mean, being a House Made podcast, that's what we do is make mixers for people and so this is just a good plug for our ginger syrup. We love it for the mule.
Nick Boban (17:45):
Specifically because it's literally ginger juice, some spices and some sugar that's made into a syrup.
John Vieira (17:47):
If you really look this under a microscope, if you were sitting there and watching us make this syrup, you might be surprised. We did a lot of research, um, other products that are on the market. Kind of what we're selling against, so to speak and most of it is ginger flavored simple syrup. So it's not real Hardy. It doesn't really have a whole bunch of ginger flavor to it, to be honest with you.
Nick Boban (18:15):
You've got to use a lot of it to get anything out of it.
John Vieira (18:18):
The way we do it, and it's not the cheapest way to do it by any means, but it's the best results and that's why we do it that way. We take ginger root. We cut it into smaller pieces and we run it through a slow speed juicer. I'm talking about one of those juicers that...
Nick Boban (18:37):
It's called a roll juicer, I think, or something?
John Vieira (18:39):
Masticating is I think the main term. So when you go to buy a juicer, those big ones with the huge, uh, feed shoots on them, that you could fit like a whole apple in and stuff. Those are called centrifical juicers. They're super high speed and they essentially just run like a cheese grater in super high speed in a circle. And whatever you throw down there just gets forced through that.
Nick Boban (19:03):
Yeah. And then it pushes the pulp to the outside.
John Vieira (19:06):
So it shoots the pulp out. But the problem is the pulp that you get out of it is super, super wet. You did not necessarily get a great yield.
Nick Boban (19:13):
Well, also with ginger, that root is so fibrous that it doesn't work. You have to, like, every two pieces you have to take it apart and clean it.
John Vieira (19:23):
We've tried it, trust me. The slow speed or the masticating juicers are great because it's running it through a grinder essentially. So the pulp that you get out of this juicer is like bone dry. I mean, there is like no juice left in it. This is great for a couple of reasons. If you're somebody who likes to do composting or anything like that, it's really a great start, but it's also good for leafy stuff. So if you wanted to do like lemon grass, things like that, but hold on, I digress. I'm not here to sell you a juicer. The reason why we use that... No, I mean, it's good, I love them. They are expensive though. The reason why we do this whole process of running it through the slow speed juicer, it's a lot of work takes a lot of time because ginger's kind of expensive.
John Vieira (20:13):
So we get the most juice that we can, and then we have to strain it several times cause you get a lot of sediment. It's just, it's kinda gnarly to be honest with you and it's not appetizing in any way. However, once you get that strained, once you let our blend of spices kind of sit in there for awhile, and then once you heat it up, add the sugar content and bottle it, you now have a product in your hand, that's ready to use. And not only is it ready to use, it's a concentrate. So you don't have to use very much of it at all. It saves you money. It's not carbonated already. So you will have to mix it with soda water. This is great for a couple reasons because when something is carbonated, you can't shake a drink with it.
John Vieira (20:57):
It's like putting Sprite in a cocktail and then shaking it. It's going to fucking explode. It's not going to work, but also it allows you to use it for other things besides making drinks. So you can cook with it. We've made ginger carrots, you can use it in barbecue sauces, marinades, things like that. The stuff is wild. The only people that haven't liked it ever are people that don't like ginger. But this product makes something like making a mule or batching mules super, super easy because we're just going to use that and add soda water, and booze of course, and mix it up. And you've got a little bit of lime juice. Lime juice is really, really nice, but you don't have to have it. I think it makes it, we kind of did some trials with this to see, you know, how we wanted to serve it at the bar and the lime juice, definitely, It brought like a different element to it.
Nick Boban (21:50):
Yeah so the cool thing. So if you're making a mule with our ginger syrup, which you can buy at housemadesyrup.com That syrup, now, you have the ability to put it in your other kind of soured cocktails, right? So ginger whiskey sours are crazy popular for us too.
John Vieira (22:14):
They are, they're almost as popular as the regular whiskey sour.
Nick Boban (22:17):
Okay. So the recipe on a whiskey sour is we do 2 oz of booze, 1 oz of lemon juice, 1 oz of simple syrup, and then a whole egg white.
John Vieira (22:28):
Yeah. Not the yolk, just the white. Yeah, just the white, uh, for those of you that are maybe grossed out by that and have never had a drink like that, just try it, it's awesome. It's more of a texture thing. It doesn't add any sort of egg flavor or anything. It allows you to get a tight kind of cappuccino foam. It's almost like a meringue cocktail. It is. And it's just an exceptional, velvety texture. Uh, the guests that we have in the bar just absolutely live and die by it. I get maybe one or two requests a year to not have the egg white in it.
Nick Boban (23:02):
And it's usually somebody that hasn't actually maybe had it and they're just grossed out by the thought of it.
John Vieira (23:06):
Right, now, here's the thing with egg whites. You can obviously get just the egg white from a whole egg. A lot of people just keep eggs in their fridge. Super great if you're hosting a small-scale party. If you are going to be cranking out a bunch of these though, it might be in your best interest to grab like a carton of pasteurized egg whites. They're just really easy to measure. So that handy dandy jiger that you guys all bought after the last episode, you're just going to use that to measure with, and you're going to use at least, like, I'd say somewhere between 3 quarters of an ounce to a full ounce of this pasteurized egg white and you'll be in good shape.
Nick Boban (23:46):
So with the whiskey sour cocktail, uh, to make it a ginger whiskey sour, all you would do is switch out the simple syrup for ginger syrup.
John Vieira (23:55):
Which is the easiest thing ever.
Nick Boban (23:57):
So same with the lemon drop. So like we sell Not Enough Soul at the bar. It's always on the top 10 list. It is literally a lemon drop, which is 1.5 oz Vodka, .5 oz triple sec or Cointreau, 1 oz of lemon juice and then 1 oz of ginger syrup.
John Vieira (24:17):
Which totally makes sense because what's like one of the ultimate flavor affinities with ginger? Lemon.
Nick Boban (24:23):
Yeah. It goes great.
John Vieira (24:25):
So it's an absolute no-brainer. You could, in theory... We don't do much of this, but you could, in theory also infuse a margarita with ginger, which would taste pretty good. Wouldn't be bad at all. Um, and I've actually made people old fashions using a half ounce of the ginger syrup instead of simple syrup. That one is...
Nick Boban (24:47):
That sounds a little, well, it goes good with whiskey, obviously...
John Vieira (24:51):
It tasted fine when I made it. What I was going to say is it's not as easy to make because that's a stirred cocktail and that syrup is quite a bit more viscous than your regular simple syrup you're going to make. So it might require a little bit more mixing. Yeah. So you'd have to play around with that, but it's definitely possible.
Nick Boban (25:10):
Okay. So, Oh, you know, what we didn't talk about was Angostura bitters. Yeah. Those are very important. And stupid, expensive.
John Vieira (25:20):
They are kind of crazy expensive, but the average person is not going to go through nearly as much as we do at the bar.
Nick Boban (25:26):
Totally. But even like, have you seen the four ounce bottles at the liquor store around here? They're like $15.
John Vieira (25:32):
Oh yeah. I bought one at, uh, I think Fred Meyer the other day or something. It was like...
Nick Boban (25:37):
Oh, this is a funny one too. So even though it does contain alcohol, it's considered like non-potable and so grocery stores can sell it here in the control state, which is fucking hilarious.
John Vieira (25:48):
I'm here to tell you it is completely potable though. Once you acquired the taste for it, um, you can definitely just drink it on its own. It is a very aggressive flavor. You're talking about a lot of clove and baking spice and you know, all spice and all that kind of stuff. So...
Nick Boban (26:06):
It is like, it is the crux to the old fashion. So you have to get it.
John Vieira (26:12):
It's the glue, you have to have it. If you've ever had an old fashion without Angostura bitters, you literally just had slightly sweeter whisky. It is the most important ingredient because not only does it provide the correct color, in most cases, the whiskey once it's diluted is actually not dark enough to have that nice golden Brown color. It adds a lot of color, but it's the glue that holds everything together and it does the exact same thing in like a Manhattan. Uh, if you're a fan of Manhattans, you know, that it's pretty much the most important ingredient. If you just have vermouth and whiskey in a glass, I mean, it's probably okay. But once you add Ango, it's a Manhattan, that's where it's at. Um, so yes, these are expensive, but yes, you can find them anywhere. You can find them on Amazon.
Nick Boban (26:58):
Just get it. It's the little, it's a little fucking brown bottle with a white label that's oversized for the bottle and a bright yellow cap.
John Vieira (27:07):
Yep. It's the bright yellow cap that you'll recognize. You've seen it in probably every liquor store.
Nick Boban (27:11):
You've seen it in every shitty bar too, even though they didn't know what it was.
John Vieira (27:15):
And because it's super concentrated flavor and high in alcohol percentage, you only need a couple of dashes, so you're not going to blow through this bottle. You'll have it for a long time. Unless, I mean, unless you drink the way I do, I guess, but yeah, unless you just drink it straight now, obviously at the bar, we make so many different drinks that use it. We just blow through a shit ton of it. So, uh, for home use though, you're probably good to go.
Nick Boban (27:37):
So I guess to kind of then circle back for the things that we said that you need to buy, uh, that will get you a really good start on cocktails is going to be a bottle of bourbon. A bottle tequila. And I think...
John Vieira (27:53):
Which is totally up to you guys, there's so many good tequilas out there. I'm going to vote for Blanco. At least in the margarita setting, I feel like it's got a little bit more freshness and pop to it. However, if you're going to make a tequila old fashioned, which is amazing, I would, yeah repo is kind of my favorite. I feel like once you start going too far in anejo, it's like whiskey.
Nick Boban (28:17):
Um, yeah. Uh. I lost my train of thought.
John Vieira (28:21):
Uh, so bottle of bourbon, bottle of tequila,
Nick Boban (28:24):
Bottle of Cointreau. Cause that is just the crux for a couple of these. A Bottle of vodka. And that's it, those four would make you these five drinks you'll need, you know, some lemons you'll need some limes. You'll have to make some simple syrup. Or just buy the ginger syrup. So you'll need that for the mule though. Eggs and Ango. And that's it.
John Vieira (28:47):
Yeah. Just not that much stuff. Another thing with the mules though, regular, classic Moscow Mule, we're talking vodka, but for you guys that are whiskey fans, if you've never tried like a Kentucky Mule, as they call it something with bourbon in there, it could be any other kind of whiskey as well. They all have clever names to tell you where they're from. A Scottish mule an Irish mule and blah, blah, blah. You get it. Um, but we're talking to any spirit type tastes great in there because they all taste great with ginger.
Nick Boban (29:16):
So I guess even being that said, you could literally just buy a bottle of bourbon bottle of triple sec and you could make all these drinks with that bottle of bourbon.
John Vieira (29:27):
You could. Yeah. Um, now obviously the margarita wouldn't...
John Vieira (29:30):
The person that shows up asking for a margarita at your party and you give them a bourbon margarita, they might be a little miffed, but you might also turn them to the dark side. So, um, real before we go, we talked briefly about the 750 ml and the 1750 ml, a lot of these things that we're talking about, a lot of these bottles, we keep referring to the liters. So thousand milliliter options, you're going to save a little bit of money and then let's talk about the amount of ounces that you get out of there versus like the 750 ml.
Nick Boban (30:02):
So 750 ml... 25 ounces and a liter is 33 ounces. Okay. So you're talking a third more... For a lot of times, like $2. 2, 3, $4 more... It's kind of silly, like if they sell a liter you should just buy it.
John Vieira (30:20):
Absolutely. If you, and this goes for anything, if you're like a Tito's drinker or something don't ever the 750 ml, it doesn't make any sense. Now I would understand why you may not buy a half gallon. It's harder to store. They're hard to pick up. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's not as mobile, but if you're going to the store to buy a bottle and it's available in a liter, just do that, by all means.
Nick Boban (30:44):
Okay. And then, gosh, so there's yeah... So if you start with these as the base, we can maybe get into this on a different episode, but you only need a bottle or two of different stuff now, and you can start making so many cocktails.
John Vieira (30:59):
Exactly. Now maybe what we'll do in another episode is go over our method at the bar of Mr. Potato heading, if you will. So if you swap stuff out, if you have kind of this drink platform that you like or something that you've had before, but you have this bottle or you have X bottle at your house, or you're really into this spirit category, uh, we can go over a couple of really great options. Dive into those mules a little bit more. Dive into this lemon drop category, whiskey sours... We can kind of look at some of these like base drinks and talk about what we can do with them differently as you expand your back bar. Maybe you pick up a scotch, maybe you pick up a bottle of Irish, maybe you get a bottle of gin. Uh, and we can give you a few of our favorite bottles in those categories too.
Nick Boban (31:50):
Which I do feel kind of... Kind of lame leaving gin off of this list. When you look at the, like the top 10 drinks we sell, none of them are with gin, unfortunately.
John Vieira (32:00):
It's very much less common in the cocktail world compared to vodka. Um, however, if you are a gin drinker, some people are just repulsed by it. If you are a gin drinker or you think you might be, I would highly recommend that you try gin instead of vodka in almost any of these drinks. Every lemon drop variation, you could come up with a mule, um, just pretty much anything. So we even make a gin old fashioned at the bar. Oh, just killer. It's amazing. We use lavender bitters in there, which you can make at home, by the way, we can also cover that on another episode. There's a lot of things that you can do with very little. That's why we're here. We're here to give you the tools that you need and the information to move forward and basically just come up with all of your new favorite drinks that you didn't even know existed.
John Vieira (32:50):
So, um, I think that's pretty much everything we need to cover today. I was going to say, we didn't necessarily go over the recipe for each of these drinks. If you guys are interested in these recipes online. Yeah. We'll do a blog post on housemadesyrup.com and what we'll do is we'll write down all the recipes for you and then we'll do like a little instructional video on actually making them. So that way you can get, you know, if you're a visual learner, like I am, you can get a little bit more input.
Nick Boban (33:19):
Dope. Well, thanks for joining us guys. Make sure you check out our line of products at housemadesyrup.com and land on that page for any of your home bartending needs. All right. Cheers.
Nick Boban (33:29):
Cheers. See you next time.