FORGOTTEN COCKTAILS - are they actually good?!

Hi guys. So for Christmas this year we had a new member of the In-Laws Club. The In-Laws Club is basically all of the partners of my partner's family. It's quite a big family and Christmas is a big deal to them. It's pretty full on and you know we give a lot of presents and that's really awesome. But for Andrew who was new this year, Grace's new partner, not so new now, he knocked it out of the park with the presents and he gave me a bottle of Bogart's Bitters. And what I thought was quite cute about this was on the box there's some recipes from Professor Jerry Thomas's The Bartender's Guide How to Mix Drinks from 1862. So what I thought I would do is I'll try a couple of these out using my little bottle of bitters and see what we reckon. So obviously what's quite funny with this is like a lot of the measurements are not how we would do it nowadays so we'll see if I can decipher them and you know how we go. So as far as I'm aware Bogart's Bitters has kind of been recreated by the bitter truth that was used in a lot of these old recipes and it stopped being made but they've sort of brought it back to life a little bit and I think you use it more like you would like an Angostura or you know actual cocktail bitters as opposed to an Amaro but I'll just have a little taste to make sure that I'm thinking correctly on that. Yep it's definitely very bitter so we're just going to use that in small quantities and the first one that caught my eye here is called the Japanese Cocktail. I'm not really sure what makes it Japanese because it's made with brandy but uh let's give that a little try. So it says just to build in a small bar glass so I've got that and then we're gonna go one tablespoon full of Orgeat syrup which I should have so I've got that in here I'll find that's probably a tablespoon or so and then half a teaspoon full of Bogart's Bitters so that's probably going to be a little bit trickier I've got a little teaspoon here probably use a bar spoon for that and we're gonna go just a dash I reckon that's about half there. What's next professor? One wine glass of brandy. So I'm to say that this would probably be an excessive amount of brandy I think the wine glasses must have been a little bit smaller in Jerry Thomas's day so maybe we'll try a little like tumbler's worth here. The team are doubting Jerry Thomas behind the camera here they don't think it sounds very good. All right I don't want to knock myself out so I'm gonna go probably like a double shot there I guess it's kind of like a brandy old-fashioned sort of twist. One or two pieces of lemon peel so leaving that up to me there. I'm assuming that's more of a garnish he doesn't I don't get the full uh the full kind of amount here but sorry the full technique here but I'm gonna use my bartender reasoning to assume that that's what he meant and give that a little stir then it says to fill the tumbler one third with ice and stir well with a spoon and say ice was like a little bit of a um more uh rarefied resource back in those days so I'm gonna do a pretty normal amount of ice in here. Stir. Do my couple of lemon peels let's give it a try. It's actually delicious so yeah essentially like a little kind of nutty uh and then brandy is obviously a bit fruitier than whiskey so you've got the sort of nut and fruit elements and then the bogart spitters is I would say like a little bit more delicate than Angostura. It's not coming through heaps I would honestly almost even go a little bit more um but yeah Japanese cocktail so now you know. Now let's see what other ones on here could be fun. Do I do a gin cocktail or a whiskey cocktail? I've already made a whiskey cocktail today so let's try a gin cocktail. So for this one we're gonna shake it apparently and we're gonna do three or four dashes of gum syrup which I'm assuming is just like sugar syrup. Not too sure how to quantify a dash so I might just do four little straw fills here and then a wine glass of gin. So I did actually find that down here it does have some measurements so a wine glass is 60 mils so I did it did it correctly last time and then we have one or two dashes of curacao or orange liqueur and then I should have brought my glasses for this one. Squeeze a lemon peel, fill one third full of fine ice, shake well and strain in a glass. I'm just gonna have a little taste on this one because I have my doubts I feel like I might want some actual lemon juice in here. I guess it depends what you're going for it kind of tastes like a sweet martini it's not disgusting but I don't love it so I'm gonna add some lemon juice. Sorry Professor Thomas. And wait I just realized this one didn't even have the bitters in it. I should have done two dashes of that as well. Apparently reading is not my strong point. That was quite a big dash so I'm gonna stick with that. Third time's a charm. That is delicious. So not the prettiest color in the world but I think as it is that kind of more delicate bitterness there actually balances really nicely with the lighter flavor of the gin. Not a hundred percent sold on this one still, probably won't make it again but good to try. And then this one is a delicious little twist on an old-fashioned. So thank you Professor Thomas, thank you Andrew for my Bogart's bitters. So now you know.