Jason OBryan

It was named the official drink of the Kentucky Derby in 1938 (just 5 years after Prohibition was repealed), and has since become so enmeshed with the event that one intrinsically suggests the other, like turkey and Thanksgiving, or Taco Bell and gastric distress. Full conclusions below, but first, the best Mint Julep: Mint Julep 2.5oz Four Roses Small Batch Bourbon 0.5oz – 0.75oz simple syrup (to taste) If you’d prefer to avoid violence entirely, you can (1) likely buy it at a local ice company, or (2) every Sonic Drive-In restaurant in the country sells 10lb bags of pebble ice for something like $2. This is wheated, like Maker’s Mark, so I expected it to soft and mild, but it’s not: there’s, again, a weird graininess that seems to run concurrently to the flavors of the cocktail and never integrate, which on the finish mutates from weird to straight-up bad.

As no self-respecting drinking club could be without its own drink, a Clover Club cocktail was needed. I tried grenadine vs. raspberries, dry vermouth vs. no dry vermouth, tweaking ratios, and did several blind trials with 16 different gins, which reduced to 8, then to 4, then to a winner. Booth’s 1908 recipe calls for grenadine but adds that raspberry syrup “will answer the purpose” while a 1909 recipe calls for raspberry syrup, but says grenadine will work if raspberries aren’t in season. Vermouth vs. No Vermouth: NO VERMOUTH Very smart and talented people claim that a spot of dry vermouth improves the drink, and indeed, dry vermouth shows up in some of the earliest recipes.

In a busy bar, you’ll often batch liqueurs, syrups, or even base spirits together to make service more efficient, turning a 5 pour drink into a 2 or 3 pour drink. Thus, for something like the Mane of Needles, say: 2oz Rye                                 — becomes —          2oz Rye 0.75oz Carpano Antica                                        1.75oz batch 0.5oz Campari                                                        dash orange bitters 0.25oz Benedictine 0.25oz Fernet dash orange bitters Easier, no? But it’s probably a good idea to not batch your bitters, and to add them à la minute to each drink. This wasn’t interesting enough to put in the body, but in case your curious, these are the cocktails I chose because the ingredients had widely disparate sugar & alcohol levels, and were of different colors.

Soda Water or Club Soda: water, carbon dioxide, and small amounts of added sodium salt and/or potassium salt. just water alone — 6 rounds as Americanos — 3 rounds as Lillet + Sodas — 2 rounds as Tequila + Sodas — 1 round as Gin + Sodas — 1 round as Vodka + Sodas — My homemade soda + a crack of salt made the best tequila soda, but when bittersness came in, it was only 4th best at an Americano. Q Soda and Mineragua in particular are salty as hell, but in bitter drinks they make the flavors pop because of that salt + bitterness thing we mentioned earlier.