Splificator

Actually, in my experience a shaken Julep will frost up pretty nicely if you let it sit for a bit--the frosting is a function of the large amount of ice you can pack into a glass if it's made very fine more than of any particular mixing technique. I prefer to fish out the mint so that I can shake the drink with a certain amount of vigor and not end up with bits of mint floating in it. I could simply reserve it and put it in at the end, but it's kind of bedraggled after pressing and mint is cheap, or free (if the squirrels haven't gotten to it, or whatever it is that keeps snacking on my mint bed).

Fortunately Jerry Thomas was not the only nineteenth-century bartender. Most descriptions of bartenders actually making Juleps call for shaking or other vigorous mixing, as in this example from the Brooklyn Eagle in 1884, wherein the bartender has just asked the reporter if he would take something mild in the line of a seltzer lemonade: Note the recycled mint; personally, I like it better if the mint is removed before shaking and new mint added at the end.

I use a souvenir mini-Louisville Slugger, but Sam's grasped the essence of the thing. If using a cat, I find that it's best to have it declawed first. I should also note that I use the Lewis bag for any ice going into the cocktail shaker--it really makes a difference in the temperature and texture of the drink. Wisdom of the ancients, what what.

Funny, that's what I keep telling my wife.

It is in fact essential. Lacking a huge block of ice to shave, I rely on the ol' Lewis bag or one of a number of canvas sacks I've managed to accumulate (Tony Abou Ghanim's new TAG Bar line has a great one--bigger than the Lewis, but not so large as to be unwieldy). Just put the ice in and whack the bejeezus out of it. You want it to become as fine as snow, with lumps no bigger than 1/4 inch or so.

Well, ok, I kid. But they really do want to turn it into something great. It was pretty creaky in its old format, having grown form a quick what-do-I-mix site to an archive of cocktail lore, and they want to show it off.

There are a few historical artifacts that keep it on, but I don't think it has legal standing any more. The E.U. followed the French in using the Gay-Lussac scale (abv), not the British Sykes scale (abw).

For "is" read "was." In the UK, proof used to be measured as alcohol by weight, not by volume. A proof spirit was 50% alcohol by weight. Since alcohol is lighter than water, this yielded a spirit that was 57 to 58% alcohol by volume. The degrees of proof you saw on those old bottles were the percentage of that 57% by weight that was in the bottle. There are plenty of conversion charts for this on the internet. In general, when I see a spirit in the 114-116 proof (ABV) range, that tells me it's pretty old-school. I like.

Not any more, although in the case of those older bottles it would be by weight. So they used to be stronger than the puling, weak stuff they peddle now (Gordon's, the leading gin in the UK, used to be 47% abv; now it's 37.5; a shame). As always, the taxman is to blame.

Too strong? No such thing. What with the water used for dissolving the sugar and leaving room for the berries and pieces of orange, the 12-oz glass seems to fill up pretty well. And with shaved or finely-cracked ice, the liquid seems to go pretty much all of the way up the glass. I don't get the 'dry' crushed ice effect, even when I make these in pint glasses. But there's definitely a lot of water blended in with the booze; back then, this would've been a kindness--their brandies were stronger than the universal 80 proof we get now. But even with that 80-proof, these don't come off as weak.

Good point. My old shaker is from the 1880s, when they were available in different sizes, and it's probably the largest. The "large bar glass" JT used in the 1860s was, as far as I can determine, in the 12-oz range, while the "small bar glass" held 6-8 oz. These things don't seem to have been fully standardized, though, until later.

← While Embury was a fine mixologist, his historiography leaves something to be desired. The Remsen Cooler was in fact a gin drink, named after a member of the Union league Club in New York; the Ramsay Cooler was a Scotch drink, based on the whisky of that name, made at Port Ellen, on Islay. But in this error Embury is simply following Harry Johnson.

It will be back up a little later this year, with greatly expanded "functionality" (that's the word the web folks used; I nodded my head and smiled as if I understood it). Should be cool, though.

Thank you. Grand Marnier is an old-school orange curacao, based on (young) cognac as many were, rather than neutral spirit. This is important for reasons of texture--young or not, that cognac will be a pot-stilled spirit, with a nice thickness of texture, while most of the orange curacaos available today are based on neutral--i.e., continuous still--spirits, and hence have to get their texture from extr sugar and glycerine and suchlike.

Actually, the Boston Shaker as thing, if not as name, goes back to the 1840s. And the old mixing tin I have perfectly fits a modern pint glass. There were smaller sizes, though, which fit an 8 oz and a 12-oz glass. So that pint-sized Julep would not have caused eye-goggling or undue comment. And I'll add that I've tried peppermint more than a few times in Juleps but found it too pungent for my taste. If you really, really like mint, you'll really, really like peppermint. i like mint well enough, but I guess not that much.

Thank God it wasn't the procedure! I find there's no substitute for plain old American spearmint in these. After all, the Julep really isn't about the mint, no more than the Old-Fashioned is about the bitters. In honor of the harmonic convergence yesterday--Cinco de Mayo and Kentucky Derby--I made Tequila Juleps yesterday, following this procedure but using a reposado in place of the cognac, substituting a little Grand Marnier for some of the sugar/water and adding a teaspoon or so of lime juice. Not bad, IMHO.

Everything you say is true. The authentic Julep is a drink from the Heroic Age of American Tippling, and as such is not for novices. That's perhaps the chief reason it's fallen out of favor in these weak-livered times. One possible solution is to offer a nice Sherry Julep to those unable to withstand strong drink--that way, they'll be able to share in the ritual in a kids' table sort of way without succumbing to its very real adult dangers.

To quote Woody Allen, "you say that like it's a bad thing."

Actually, it's 115-proof rum. Quibble I must. And I've found that just about any bourbon on the market will make a perfectly toothsome Julep.

I'm kicking this up to let those who might be interested know that we've got a couple of slots left in our Spring course, which will run from May 20 to May 24th at the legendary Keens' Steakhouse, on 36th St in New York. It's five intense days of blind tasting (totaling a couple hundred spirits), cocktail mixing (both basic and advanced--Blue Blazers, anyone?) and absorbing bar lore and history. Application form and more details are available here: Beverage Alcohol Resource

IMHO as well--Del was working his magic there in the mid '90s, well before the classic cocktails boom. I remember talking about Jerry Thomas with him one night, back when I had just picked up a copy of Asbury's edition of the book and was goggling at what I found therein. He already had it. Better than that, though, he was, and is, also one of those bartenders who can weld a casual bunch of strangers into a social unit. One of the very best. He's working somewhere in the West Village, last I heard. Seek and ye shall find.

I've only seen the recipes collected in books. And mmm--champagne julep. This thread made me very thirsty for a proper julep, even though it's 40-odd degrees and raining here, so I had to make one of the ones described above. Lordy, lordy. One wonders how Americans got anything done at all with such temptations lurking beside the path. Edited to correct subsimian typing.

Yeah, the Brits who tasted the iced drinks at the big launch event thought the drinks were too cold and kept asking for hot water to put in 'em. Many pubs in Britain STILL don't have ice, not to speak of--they keep it in a little insulated bucket on top of the bar.

The Prince didn't make it himself, from a recipe. The Professor made it for him. And if the Professor was anything like the other drink-writers I know, he didn't just have one way to make things, no matter what his book said. Well, Thomas had a Champagne Julep in his book, but I think by that time it was an anachronism. If you look at Julep recipes in the 1840s and 1850s, they tend to be pretty stiff. Also, the Wenham Lake Ice company, which tried to export ice to England, provided codified recipes for the Julep and the Cobbler that got a wide play--they turn up, anyway, in numerous recipe books, so they might have had someting to do with standardizing things. But really, who the hell can say? 150 years down the road, it's very difficult to catch the minutiae.

Well, actually, Thomas' lead Julep is in fact a brandy Julep. I think it had more to do with blockades during the Civil War interdicting the Southern brandy supply, the ever-improving quality of American whiskey, increased American self-confidence and then Phylloxera. And again, the essence of the Cobbler was gentility; it was always perceived as a gentlemanly (and also female-friendly) summer refresher. An Absinthe Frappe was a hot-rails-to-hell distillation of the sporting life, a glassful of pure decadence. With these things, as with all drinks, you have to look at the culture as much as you look at the mixology. Oh, and peach brandy? Interestingly enough, in the late 1930s and early 1940s, Lem Mottlow used to distill the stuff and market it under the Jack Daniel's label, along with an apple brandy as well. This, as far as I know, was peach brandy's last gasp as a commercial product. Then the costs got too high and he was forced to concentrate on his whiskey. A Georgia gentleman of my recent acquaintance told me that his father still makes some, as do various and sundry other individuals in the state. None for commerce, though, not as far as I know. Pity. Is Matthew Rowley still around here? He'd know more about the non-commercial aspects of this, as he's just published an excellent book on home distilling.