Tag Archives: Brandy

Between The Sheets – Original Recipe

Between The Sheets
Between The Sheets

What Does The Between The Sheets Taste Like?

This is hard to describe, but The Between the Sheets tastes like a boozier, sweeter, almost all alcohol version of a sidecar. The rum, brandy, and orange liqueur balance out well for a sweet while still potent cocktail, and the small amount of lemon juice provides citrus flavor without the acidity. If you like the taste of the sidecar and enjoy drinking Manhattans or an old fashioned, you should give this one a try too.

A Short History Of The American Bar at the Savoy Hotel In London.

In 1893, The American Bar at the Savoy hotel started serving American-style cocktails in London to the British upper class. The American Bar has always been a high-end bar but what set it on the map was when Harry Craddock became its head bartender in the 1920s. Harry Craddock was a British-born bartender who immigrated to the United States, eventually becoming a US citizen and head bartender of several high-end hotel bars. Still, Harry found himself out of work with the start of prohibition in 1920. He then immigrated back to England and became head bartender of the Savoy Hotel’s Bar. Harry transformed The American Bar from a high-end bar to one of the seminal cocktail bars of the 20th century. As the American prohibition was ending, the hotel realized it should record all of its most famous recipes and the innovations Harry brought to the bar. A year later, they published the Savoy Cocktail Book. Printed in 1934, the Savoy Cocktail Book documents the bar’s best recipes from the 1890s to the 1930s and stands as the pillar of prohibition-era European cocktail innovation. If Jerry Thomas’s Bartenders Guide is the best cocktail book the 1800s gave us, then The Savoy Cocktail Book is the best cocktail book of the first half of the 1900s. I don’t think I will ever be able to drink there, though. A cocktail cost around $250 there, and they have one that’s almost $1000, and I’m not the Amazon guy, so good thing we have their recipe book.

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Between the Sheets
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Between the Sheets

0 from 0 votes Only logged in users can rate recipes
Course: DrinksCuisine: British
Servings

1

servings
Calories

220

kcal
ABV

37%

Total time

3

minutes

Learn how to make the amazing between the sheets cocktail from the 1934 Savoy Cocktail book.

Ingredients

  • 1 tsp

  • Lemon Juice

  • 1 oz

  • Orange Liqueur

  • 1 oz

  • Gold Rum

  • 1 oz

  • Brandy

Directions

  • Add Ice To Mixing Glass and combine all ingredients in the mixing glass.
  • Stir the ingredients for 20 – 30 seconds to properly chill and dilute the drink.
  • Strain into glass.

Notes

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Sangria – Classic Spanish Recipe

Sangria Cocktail
Sangria Cocktail

Sangria is a Spanish fortified wine flavored with citrus and fruit. It is a very close cousin to mulled wine. The Romans loved to drink spiced wine that they called hippocras. Though Hippocras is flavored with mulling type spices like cinnamon or cloves, somewhere along the line, spiced wine in Spain became flavored with citrus and fruit instead. Since they are no longer trying to cook the flavor out of the spices, the wine is kept cool and infused with the citrus making this a cold beverage. It’s close to the word sange, which means blood in Spanish, or sangrando, which means bleeding, but I’ve only ever heard this word describe the drink. If you told a Spanish speaker you were bleeding and used the word sangria, they would be confused. So you may notice this is a milk punch, but I use half & half and not milk. Mixing with dairy is a pain in the ass, and that’s because alcohol, like acid, causes milk protein to bind together and make cheese. What protects the protein from tying together is fat. Regular milk doesn’t have enough fat, so you will make curds and whey punch every time instead. The trick is to balance the higher ABVs with the correct fat percentage. This one comes in around 15%, and at that abv half & half works well. Something like a white Russian, which is 30%, needs heavy cream because that’s too much booze and would curdle half & half. If you use milk, you would need to add less alcohol and water it down some to hopefully not have it curdle.

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Sangria
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Sangria

0 from 0 votes Only logged in users can rate recipes
Course: DrinksCuisine: Spanish
Servings

1

servings
Calories

157

kcal
ABV

15%

Total time

3

minutes

Learn how to make a classic Spanish Sangria.

Ingredients

  • 6 oz Simple Syrup

  • 8.5 oz Brandy

  • 1 Bottle Red Wine

Directions

  • Cut slices of fruit that you would like to infuse into the Sangria.
  • Combine the sliced fruit, simple syrup, and brandy together and refrigerate for 4 to 5 hours.
  • Add wine. Serve in glass filled with ice.

Notes

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Avenue – Classic Recipe

Avenue Cocktail
Avenue Cocktail

The History Of The Avenue Cocktail.

The Avenue Cocktail was first written in London’s 1937 Royal Cafe Cocktail Book. The Author, William Tarling, is credited for creating this fantastic cocktail and many other more famous ones. The first written recipe for the margarita is from the Royal Cafe Cocktail Book. Whether he is the actual creator of the margarita is up for debate, but he is recognized as the creator of the Avenue cocktail.

What Does The Avenue Taste Like?

The Avenue is a beautiful cocktail that is both strong and balanced. The gentler mix of brandy and scotch blends well with the Passion fruit, pomegranate, and orange flavors and creates an almost European tropical cocktail. William Tarling used lesser-known and exotic ingredients, and the Avenue Cocktail displays that. At 60 mLs of the European spirit and 40 mLs of exotic tropical flavors, the Avenue has one foot in Europe and one foot in the exotic. Unfortunately, this isn’t something you can order at any bar. Most bars, even high-end ones, have probably never made this before, and passion fruit juice is not a commonly held ingredient. If you want to order this out, you will first need to ask if the bar has passion fruit juice, and if they do,eed to you will also n give them the recipe. This will most likely be one you make for yourself and friends at home.

William Tarling’s Cafe Royal Book And Its Influences.

Cafe Royal is massive. I can’t find exactly how many recipes are actually in this book, and I’m not going to count, but my best guess is around 1200. William Tarling did not create most of the recipes in Cafe Royal; he was the president of the UKBG (United Kingdom Bartenders Guild) and head bartender of the Cafe Royal in London. He instead compiled some of his own bars’ top recipes and the recipes of other UKBG into a single source. In his introduction, he says he combed through more than 4000 recipes to find the best and most original ones from around England. This book is a monster, and sadly ordinary folks like you and me will probably never own it. Sure there are limited reprints from time to time, but there were only 1000 original copies made in its single 1937 edition. The book was created and sold as a fundraising item for the UKBG healthcare benefit and Cafe Royal sports club. Healthcare didn’t become universal till 1948 in the UK. We’re still waiting here in the US.

William Tarling was known for experimenting with new ingredients. He positioned the Cafe Royal Bar as more edgy and experimental in its recipes compared to other more traditional bars like The American Bar at the Savoy Hotel. Cafe Royal was an early pioneer in Tequila, mezcal, and vodka cocktails mixed with exotic fruit juices. Tequila and Vodka cocktails don’t start becoming more common till the 1940s with the Moscow mule and the margarita. It’s easy to argue that the margarita was invented at the Cafe Royal in the early 1930s as their picador cocktail. In the book’s preface, William Tarling argues that there needs to be more originality and variety. Martinis and Manhattans are great but just as one tires of eating the same dinner night after night; it’s monotonous to drink the same drinks at every party. Have some fun and try channeling your inner William and try something you wouldn’t normally drink.

Balancing The Flavors Of This Cocktail.

The most essential ingredient in the Avenue is both brandy and scotch. This is a very mellow drink, and a smoother brandy and scotch balance the drink well. The passion fruit, grenadine, and orange liqueur are not overly assertive in this cocktail, and if you use a powerful flavored spirit for the brandy or scotch, it tips the scale too much. Though this isn’t a make or break for the drink, use it if there is brandy or scotch you like. That being said, a smoky scotch will ruin this drink. Smoke, tobacco, or peat moss flavors will not mix with the other flavors.

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Avenue Cocktail
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Avenue Cocktail

4 from 1 vote Only logged in users can rate recipes
Course: DrinksCuisine: British
Servings

1

servings
Calories

190

kcal
ABV

26%

Total time

3

minutes

Learn how to make a classic Avenue cocktail.

Ingredients

  • 1 oz

  • Passion Fruit Juice

  • 1 tsp

  • Grenadine

  • 1 tsp

  • Orange Liqueur

  • 1 oz

  • Scotch

  • 1 oz Brandy

Directions

  • Combine all ingredients in the shaker and add ice to the shaker.
  • Vigorously shake till the shaker is ice cold and frosted.
  • Strain into glass to remove ice shards.

Notes

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April Shower – Recipe

April Shower Cocktail
April Shower Cocktail

This is an Old Fashion style drink even though it is unique to the other Old Fashion types I have included. It’s still very booze forward, but the orange juice cuts the sharpness substantially. Think of this as a powerful Screw Driver.

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April Shower
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April Shower

3 from 1 vote Only logged in users can rate recipes
Course: DrinksCuisine: American
Servings

1

servings
Calories

243

kcal
ABV

22%

Total time

3

minutes

Learn how to make the April Shower Cocktail.

Ingredients

  • 2 oz

  • Orange Juice

  • 1/2 oz

  • Benedictine

  • 2 oz Brandy

Directions

  • Combine all ingredients in the shaker and add ice to the shaker.
  • Vigorously shake till the shaker is ice cold and frosted.
  • Strain into glass to remove ice shards.

Notes

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Champs Élysées – Original Recipe & History

Champs Élysées Cocktail
Champs Élysées Cocktail

The History Of The Champs Élysées Cocktail.

Champs Élysées is French for Elysian Fields and is named after the famous French avenue that terminates at the Arc de Triomphe. The earliest record of this cocktail comes from the 1925 book “Drinks Long and Short” by Nina Toye & A. H. Adair. I love this drink, and while I have never given that book more than a passing glance, this recipe is a standout hit from it. Most people will know this cocktail recipe from the later Savoy Cocktail Book printed in 1930. The Savoy Cocktail Book is regarded as one of the best European cocktail books to come out of the period, and it’s fitting that it includes this recipe. It is an example of how cocktails changed during the American prohibition era. Even though it was first printed in the 1925 book “Drinks long and short, ” the Savoy helped introduce Americans to cocktails made with less common liqueurs and aperitifs such as Chartreuse, which were more familiar with European cocktails.

What Does The Champs Élysées Taste Like?

The oaky wine flavor of the brandy is perfectly balanced by the herbal flavor of the Green Chartreuse, and the acidic citrus is cut perfectly by the syrup. It tastes like an herbal brandy sour, but its proportions make it balanced and tasty. If you have never had this, you don’t know what you are missing—one of the top 5 drinks I have ever had.

The Most Important Ingredient

The most essential ingredient in the Champs Élysées is the Green Chartreuse. Its unique green herb flavor shapes the drink. Any ordinary brandy will work, and in fact, I wouldn’t use a lovely sipping one. It would be a waste since the Chartreuse becomes the primary flavor. Fortunately, there is only one Green Chartreuse, so you can’t make this wrong since it’s a pretty short list of ingredients. Unfortunately, Green Chartreuse costs around $60 a bottle, making this a pretty pricy drink to make at home.

Who Were Nina Toye & A. H. Adair?

Nina Toye and A. H. Adair are very mysterious, considering they wrote a book with the first appearance of a few famous cocktails. Simple google searches bring up almost nothing, and even trying to thumb through some digital archives brings up very little. One source says that Nina Toye & A. H. Adair was a pseudonym for J. E. Plowman. I did locate a former WWI British officer named J. E. Plowman but nothing else on the name. The online source also says the book’s french translation “Petits Et Grands Verres” uses a different pseudonym of Philibert Le Huby, but I found that book still lists Nina Toye and A. H. Adair as the authors. Every reference I found to J. E. Plowman seems to be a copy-paste/scrape of the same information. Another lead brought me to American author Ann Huston Miller whose nickname was Nina, who eventually married English music critic and educator John Francis Toye. I could not find any books published under the name Ann Huston Miller, but I did find several other books under the name Nina Toye. A book in 1916 called “Death Rider,” A book in 1921 called “The Shadow of Fear,” and a book in 1935 called “The Twice Murdered Man.” A. H. Adair was a British food critic and food writer whose full name was Alec Henry Adair. So to me, it appears that an author and food critic without prior bartending experience but with a passion for cocktails came together to produce this one-off cocktail book.

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Champs Élysées Cocktail
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Champs Élysées Cocktail

0 from 0 votes Only logged in users can rate recipes
Course: DrinksCuisine: British
Servings

1

servings
Calories

202

kcal
ABV

32%

Total time

3

minutes

Learn how to make a classic Champs Élysées Cocktail.

Ingredients

  • 2 dashes Angostura Bitters

  • 1/3 oz Lemon Juice

  • 1/3 oz Simple Syrup

  • 1/2 oz Green Chartreuse

  • 1.5 oz Brandy

Directions

  • Combine all ingredients in the shaker. Add ice to the shaker.
  • Vigorously shake till the shaker is ice cold and frosted.
  • Strain into glass to remove ice shards

Notes

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Mulled Wine – Easy Classic Recipe

Mulled Wine Cocktail
Mulled Wine Cocktail

This may be the oldest drink in this app because it dates back to the Romans. They had a spiced wine they called Hippocras. Unfortunately, there are no actual recipes for it. At least that I could find. It was not till the 1300s that the English and French started to specify the spices to use, and it’s basically what we still use today. This is NOT a hippocras recipe; this is a more modern, more palatable spiced wine you would expect to find in a standard cocktail app.

Now the drink. Pick a medium dry wine. If it’s already sweet, you can’t add your sweeteners like maple syrup or honey. This limits your ability to add complexity. These give you room to build more of your flavors. Next up is spices. Long story short, just read my mulling spices description. It can be summed up as not adding too much and sticking to just four different spices. Think cooking; you wouldn’t add a shit ton of salt or pepper to your fried eggs. It would be too much, so you do a light sprinkle. The same thing with this: add 2 or 3 cloves, three cinnamon sticks, etc. A little bit goes a very long way.

Next up is cooking. Most folks do this in a crockpot, so I would just set it to warm. High, low, and simmer are all too hot. Alcohol burns off at 173 f (78 c), and high, low, and simmer all go to around 180 – 200 f. High gets there faster than low and simmer, but warm only goes to 160 f. You can do a slow cooker if you want, but keep in mind that you will burn off most of the booze even at a warm temperature if you cook it for a long time. I think it boils better if you do it faster in a regular stovetop pot. Turn on the fire, pour it into the pot and quickly bring it to heat. If you have a thermometer, stop around 160 or till you start to see a light vapor coming off the top. Once your hooch is up to temp, drop it to low, add your sweetener and spices, and then cook for just 20 minutes. Most of the good flavors in your spices will come out in those first few minutes. Turn off the heat, fish out the spices, add your bourbon, and serve. And that’s it. Serve it, put a lid on it, put it in a thermos, reheat it when you want more a little later, but stop the long-term higher temperature cooking. Some folks cook this stuff for hours, but I think that’s a little excessive. You won’t get any more good flavor out of it, and you will burn off the booze.

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Mulled Wine
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Mulled Wine

0 from 0 votes Only logged in users can rate recipes
Course: DrinksCuisine: American
Servings

1

servings
Calories

143

kcal
ABV

15%

Total time

0

minutes

Learn how to make an outstanding Mulled Wine.

Ingredients

  • Pick 4 or 5 of the following All spice berries, cloves, cinnamon stick, orange peels, star anise, coriander, ginger, cardamom, black peppercorns

  • 6 oz Honey

  • 12 oz Brandy

  • 1 Bottle Red Wine

Directions

  • Combine spices, honey, and wine in a stove top pot and heat to 71c (160f) or till vapor starts to appear.
  • Maintain this temperature and cook for about 20 minutes.
  • After 20 minutes turn off the heat and remove the spices.
  • Add the brandy to the mulled wine and serve.

Notes

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Philadelphia Fish House Punch – Original Colonial Recipe

Philadelphia Fish House Punch
Philadelphia Fish House Punch

The Angling Club That Helped Found America.

The iconic Philadelphia Fish house punch is believed to have come from the oldest angling club in the United States named the “Colony in Schuylkill.” Initially located in Fairmount, Pennsylvania, the club opened a clubhouse at the foot of the Schuylkill River Falls (The Club eventually changed its name to the Schuylkill Fishing Company and has moved several times since its founding and is now located in Andalusia, Pennsylvania). Playing a pivotal role in the revolutionary war, the governing members of the Colony of Schuylkill helped form the First Troop Philadelphia City Cavalry. The First Troop Philadelphia City Cavalry is still the oldest active and most decorated unit in the US Army today. George Washington & the Marquis de Lafayette often stopped at the clubhouse during the war, where they became honorary members. The Club would hold gatherings for military victories and, to celebrate, would mix up a special punch it served from their baptism bowl. These celebrations are the birthplace of the Philadelphia Fish House Punch.

The famed fish house punch did not stay in the clubhouse long and quickly became a well-known American punch. The oldest printed recipe for this cocktail is in the 1862 Bartender’s Guide by Jerry Thomas.

  • 1/3 Pint of lemon juice
  • 3/4 pound of white sugar
  • 1/3 pint of peach brandy
  • 1/3 pint of cognac brandy
  • 1/3 pint of Jamaican rum
  • 2 1/2 pints of cold water

Here is the punch recipe updated to use more convenient units. The single-serve recipe is below.

  • 3/4 cup of lemon juice
  • 1 1/2 cups (1/2 bottle) of simple syrup
  • 3/4 cup of peach brandy
  • 3/4 cup of cognac brandy
  • 3/4 cup of Jamaican rum
  • 6 1/3 cups (2 bottles) of cold water

A pint is the equivalent volume of a pound of water, so it’s good enough to use pound and pint interchangeably. Even the Mount Vernon historical estate recognizes this as the correct recipe, and I’m confident they know what they are talking about. But not all recipes use water. Some use black tea. The black tea recipes taste great and add a nice earthiness to it, but water is the original ingredient.

Peach Liqueur Is Not Peach Brandy.

Another ingredient that can cause an issue is peach brandy. Brandy is a catch-all name for any spirit distilled from fruit. However, the word brandy is synonymous with specifically grape brandy distilled from grape wine; any fruit wine can be distilled into brandy. To differentiate the other fruits, it specified which fruit, so apple brandy is from apple wine or pear brandy from pear wine, peach from peach wine, etc. And these other fruit brandies are typically dry, 80-proof, un-aged spirits.

The problem is peach liqueurs, and peach schnapps will be marketed and sold as peach brandy when they are entirely different from real peach brandy. Again real peach brandy is dry and strong, almost like a peachy white rum. Real peach brandy is nearly impossible to find, making the issue worse in stores. I’ve only ever seen dry peach brandy as small craft distilleries in house stores. Christian Bros Peach Brandy is the closest I’ve found in most liquor stores. It’s pretty good. It’s brandy infused with peach flavors, but it’s pretty dry, 35% ABV, and the closest you will get taste-wise to an absolute peach brandy. That being said I really like this made with peach schnapps.

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Philadelphia Fish House Punch
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Philadelphia Fish House Punch

0 from 0 votes Only logged in users can rate recipes
Course: DrinksCuisine: American
Servings

1

servings
Calories

192

kcal
ABV

19%

Total time

3

minutes

Learn how to make a single serving of the iconic Philadelphia Fish House Punch.

Ingredients

  • 4 oz Water

  • 1/2 oz Lemon Juice

  • 1 oz Simple Syrup

  • 1/2 oz Peach Brandy

  • 1/2 oz Gold Rum

  • 1/2 oz Brandy

Directions

  • It’s best to chill the ingredients beforehand to minimize dilution, but at least make sure your water is cold.philadelphia fish house punch
  • For a single serving, combine every ingredient in a serving glass and stir to combine.philadelphia fish house punch
  • For a punch, combine every ingredient in a large container, stir to combine, and add a block of ice to keep it cool.philadelphia fish house punch

Recipe Video

Notes

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Ampersand Cocktail – Original Recipe & History

Ampersand Cocktail
Ampersand Cocktail

The History Of The Ampersand Cocktail.

You may not have heard of the Ampersand Cocktail, and that’s not surprising. The Ampersand recipe only appears in the 1935 Old Waldorf-Astoria bar book. The Ampersand was most likely invented at the Waldorf and never spread beyond their bar. By the time they printed the recipe in 1935, the key ingredient, old tom gin, had already been discontinued by Haymans. Without one of the key ingredients, the Ampersand faded from knowledge, which is unfortunate because this drink is pretty awesome. Interest in old tom gin cocktails resurged once Haymans began producing old tom gin again in 2007. Other gin manufacturers also made limited runs of old tom style gin for a bit. Still, Hayman’s is the originator and currently the only manufacturer constantly producing this style of gin. With old tom around again, the Ampersand cocktail was rediscovered and is definitely a top-tier cocktail.

The History Of The Original Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.

The original Waldorf Hotel was opened in 1893 by William Waldorf Astor of New York. Named after the town of Waldorf, Germany, the Astor Families’ ancestral home, the Waldorf was the apex of luxury New York hotels at its opening. A few years later, in 1897, as a bit of humorous rivalry, William’s cousin, John Jacob Astor IV, would open the Astoria Hotel right across the street. John built the Astoria in the same renaissance revival style and even commissioned the same architect, but made sure to make his hotel a little bit bigger than William’s Waldorf Hotel. Named after the town of Astoria, Oregon, The city founded by John Jacob Astor senior in 1811, the Astoria Hotel was an even more beautiful version of the Waldorf. Fun facts: Astoria, Oregon, is the oldest American settlement west of the Rocky Mountains and the location of the film Kindergartner Cop, starring the great Arnold Schwarzenegger. Also, John Jacob Astor IV helped develop early versions of the turbine engine, wrote sci-fi books, and was one of the most famous Americans to perish with the sinking of the Titanic in 1912.

The rivalry was short-lived, though, and the two hotels joined together almost immediately, forming the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in 1897. Opened on the Waldorf side of the hotel, the Waldorf-Astoria bar was one of the top bars in New York, serving wealthy socialites. From 1897 to 1919, the Waldorf-Astoria bar stood as a testament to the pre-prohibition elite bar scene and helped solidify many of the American classics we know today. With the closing of the bar in 1919 and many of the New York elites moving further north, the hotel’s image became dated, and its current structure and location needed to change too. In 1929 the company sold its hotel on 5th and 34th to Empire State Inc. and began constructing the more modern Waldorf-Astoria on Park Avenue. The original hotel was demolished and replaced by the Empire State Building. Hoping to preserve the legacy of the original hotel’s bar, the company’s publicist, Albert Crockett, managed to collect and publish most of the bar’s classic cocktail recipes in part IV section A of “The Old Waldorf-Astoria Bar Book.” He added popular present-day (1934) cocktails in Section B but maintained that section A of the book had all the original recipes from the hotel’s old days.

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Ampersand
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Ampersand

3 from 1 vote Only logged in users can rate recipes
Course: DrinksCuisine: American
Servings

1

servings
Calories

233

kcal
ABV

32%

Total time

3

minutes

Classic Waldorf Astoria Amersand Cocktail

Ingredients

  • 2 dashes Orange Bitters

  • 2 dashes Orange Liqueur

  • 1 oz Sweet Vermouth

  • 1 oz Old Tom Gin

  • 1 oz Brandy

Directions

  • Add Ice To Mixing Glass and combine all ingredients in the mixing glass.
  • Stir the ingredients for 15 – 20 seconds to properly chill and dilute the drink.
  • Strain into glass and garnish with an orange peel.

Notes

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If you have ever struggled with a recipe or wonder why yours are not turning out like they do at the bar then check out my simple step-by-step videos. I will walk you through how to expertly build each drink so you get consistently great results.

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Brandy Fizz – Classic Recipe & History

Brandy Fizz Cocktail
Brandy Fizz Cocktail

The History Of Fizzes.

Fizz cocktails first appear in the 1887 edition of Jerry Thomas’s Bartenders Guide and appear to be an evolution of the classic sour with egg whites/egg sour cocktail. The basic Fizz structure is very consistent. Egg whites, citrus, sugar, spirit, and soda water. This here is a basic Brandy Fizz cocktail, and while it was not listed in Jerry Thomas’s book, it’s clear that the framework can be used for any base spirit.

What Does the Brandy Fizz Taste Like?

The meringue foam is absolutely delicious in this cocktail and adds a sweet lightness that makes this more of a dessert than a standard cocktail. Imagine drinking a sweet liquid brandy mousse and at 12% ABV it still packs a punch.

How To Get Egg White Right In Cocktails.

Cocktails with egg whites are difficult cocktails to get right, and anyone who says otherwise is projecting a false image. Everyone who has made a fizz has had one of these pops open on them while shaking, only to make a mess. The best advice I can pass on to making any fizz cocktail is it comes down to 2 things; Technique and chemistry. A common technique that works very well is using a dry shake. A dry shake is shaking all your ingredients together without ice first to make forming the foam easier. The foam will still form with ice, but you will work twice as hard for half the result if you shake with ice first. The first shake is only about 20-30 seconds of vigorous shaking, but this is the part that forms most of your foam. A little tip here is to wrap a kitchen towel around the seal of your shaker because no matter how strong you are or how tight your grip, it will pop open a little. As the egg whites unfold, they can expand up to 8x their original size, thus increasing the pressure inside the shaker and forcing small amounts of the sugary egg mix to squirt out. Wrapping a small towel around the shaker will catch this and keep things clean.

Next and more important is chemistry. You have to get the science right for egg whites to foam properly. Denaturing/unfolding egg protein into a meringue is more science than brawn, and a friend of mine who is a baker once gave me this advice for how she made meringue at the bakery.

  1. Keep it room temperature.
  2. Use an acid to help break the proteins hydrogen bonds and unfold it in addition to beating it.
  3. Use sugar to stabilize the foam from collapsing and to form smaller bubbles.

A mistake I made for a long time was using eggs fresh from the fridge. Even if I’m doing a dry shake, I’m still starting with cold ingredients. So take the eggs out and let them come to room temperature first. Cold egg protein is much more stable and difficult to break apart than if it is at room temperature. The next tip is to use acid. Bakers will use cream of tartar as the acid helps accelerate the denaturing process along with beating it. In the cocktail, we use lemon or lime juice. It is much, much harder to form a foam without using an acid. The last bit of advice is to use sugar to stabilize the foamed protein from collapsing. A sweet liqueur alone isn’t enough. I’ve tried making fizzes with just liqueurs for sweeter alone, and they have never formed a good foam. This needs real simple syrup. If you don’t use sugar in your Fizz, what will happen is the foam will develop, but it will collapse back into the liquid just as fast, and you will be left with a thin layer of lame bubbles on top. It will still taste the same and be good, but that beautiful foam will be gone, and for these drinks, the large foam head is the garnish. The sugar makes the water “wetter” and helps keep the suspended air inside from combining into larger bubbles. This helps form a smoother micro bubble foam.

Cocktails with egg whites are some of the most elegant and sublime cocktails, but they are not the easiest to make. Eventually, you can get to a point where you can make them correctly and consistently, but it can take a while and many failed attempts. Hopefully, the tips I gave help shorten that journey. There are a lot of tips and tricks out there for making fizzes, and I tried to keep mine reasonable and realistic, but see what works for you. I’ve been doing this for a long time, and still, I have the occasional one that doesn’t foam up well, even though I make them all the same. It’s just the nature of the egg sometimes, and I accept it and make it again.

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Brandy Fizz
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Brandy Fizz

4 from 1 vote Only logged in users can rate recipes
Course: DrinksCuisine: American
Servings

1

servings
Calories

229

kcal
ABV

13%

Total time

3

minutes

Learn how to make the classic Brandy Fizz cocktail.

Ingredients

  • 1 oz Egg Whites

  • 2/3 oz Lemon Juice

  • 2/3 oz Simple Syrup

  • 2 oz Brandy

  • 1.5 oz Soda Water

Directions

  • Combine all ingredients except for the soda water in the shaker.
  • Shake dry for 30 second – egg foams better when it is not cold.
  • Now add ice to the shaker. Vigorously shake again till the shaker is ice cold and frosted.
  • Strain into glass to remove ice shards.
  • Lastly gently add the soda water to maintain its carbonation.

Notes

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