Taste Buds: Craft Cocktails and Whiskey Ribeye Steak

Stanley. Oh. Can you sit? Sit. Speak. Okay. There you go. He does love a good apple. What are we making first? You ready for it, Taste Buds? Let's go. Taste Buds, it's time for a craft cocktail episode. First, we're going to meet Leah from Sweet Haven Tonics. She is making very flavorful tonics that make both mocktails and cocktails, and she's opened a cocktail room which is super fun then we're going to go to J Carver Distilling and meet my friend Gina they're one of the original grain to glass cocktail makers and we're going to go to my house because you can use spirits in recipes we're going to make a whiskey shallot cream sauce with a ribeye steak that's going to be fantastic and then i'm going to take leah's tonic and i'm going to use it in a salad dressing are you ready for it taste buds let's find leah we have arrived in New Ulm Minnesota to meet my friend leah from Sweet Haven Tonics Can you describe what a craft tonic is? So the tonics are basically everything that you need in one bottle to make a great cocktail. This well-balanced, beautiful tonic with spirits or just with soda water for a really lovely mocktail. I want to see where the magic happens, where you are the alchemist, where you put all this magic together. I want to show you my kettle. So to make all the tonics, I designed this kettle to basically emulate what I was doing on my stovetop. all this basket holds all of the fruit and the herbs and then we submerge it and all the magic happens yep and then we can pump it out into the barrel yeah and look at all these barrels of flavorings yep these are all the tonics okay or they get bottled having a product that is shelf stable because of my love of apple cider vinegar yes means that i can leave it in here until i know exactly what the order is and where it's going to go. So you just literally like do that. You pop it under there. You fill this guy up. I've got my little step stool over there so I can climb up and fill this from the top. And we have plans to grow, but until the necessity drives us to that big investment, we're going to just use this little guy. I kind of love how homemade it is too. Yeah. Okay, we've moved from production to the bar, which is where I'm most comfortable. Welcome to it! We have seen a real shift too in trends lately. We've added a whole new class of customers with mocktails and people that aren't drinking alcohol but still want flavorful, social, fun beverages. When I designed my menu it was really important to me that they were represented too. This is just a super simple spritz that's just taking Sweet Haven and soda water. Keep in mind that has been crafted with real cranberries, real juniper berries, lemongrass. And And the apple cider vinegar that we preserve all of these with does some really fun things to your palate that alcohol does. And it gives the same little bite. Let's do things to my palate. Let's do things to your palate. Wake up the rosemary by breaking those membranes and roll it in our hands. And then I'm gonna take just a couple pretty cranberries on the top. Cute. And there you go. Yum. Oh, it's got like a little acidic citrusy bite on the end. you still get that rosemary smell doing crazy things in your brain while you're swallowing. Does that make sense? Yeah it does and it really draws out the juniper notes to it too and the earthiness of the lemongrass. Yum. Okay so this next one is a little more complex. This next one I'm going to take you through a little mocktail class. Okay. I'm going to use a non-alcoholic spirit. Seed lip is delicious. When it comes to a nice gin replacement this is like a cranberry gin fizz and then we're gonna take the sweet haven cranberry juniper and lemongrass a little bit of cranberry juice and then we're just gonna do a little squeeze of lemon and then my secret ingredient a foamer so you could either do an egg white to give that foam finish or i use a fee foamer so it's a foaming agent that you put in like bitters i probably don't ever let my egg foamed cocktail hang around too long not long enough oh that's pretty and then i'm gonna do a little lemon peel over the top to really bring out those bright lemon flavors oh i love the i can smell the lemon oil and the rosemary yum it's cranberry forward because we added the juice but then you can still taste the lemongrass and the juniper and there is a little more lemon oil almost like a cosmopolitan feeling from mocktail to cocktail we're gonna make my number one selling cocktail with my number one tonic which is the old-fashioned i am going to use this lovely spirit which is heather manley's crooked water king's point bourbon i love it the spiced cherry and orange this has cinnamon cloves star anise nutmeg ginger root tons of oranges tons of cherries bartenders love the big ice cube in a whiskey drink why is that this makes the dilution happen slower so if you get a drink with a bunch of little cubes it's because it's bright and refreshing you're going to drink it down this is more of a sipper this will allow it to stay in its best form for longer we're just going to pop a nice dehydrated orange and then a yummy cherry if you want to add a little note on the top optional but i love bitter cube and their cherry bark vanilla bitters just a couple drops it's all about what lands on your nose cheers cheers oh it's so much better than a regular old-fashioned thank you for turning me into an occasional whiskey drinker i feel so proud of knowing you through this whole journey from being a teacher to having this gorgeous building to ramping up production to helping people discover their inner cocktail goddess but also helping people that are not drinking with the mocktail side of things because people like being able to have super flavorful mocktails and not just having a diet coke yes so cheers to not just having a diet coke sweet haven cheers to that thanks all right taste buds we have had a blast at sweet haven tonics from here we're going to go to J Carver Distillery and meet my friend gina they are one of the first distilleries to take us all the way from grain to glass. We came all the way from New Ulm and I drove down to Vaconia to see my friend Gina and we are at J Carver Distillery to keep this tour going. You are like the original person in my brain that brought us, meaning all of us alcohol enthusiasts, into the movement from grain to glass. Yes, we know where the ingredients are coming from which means quality as we distill. Everything that the farmers put all of their passion into, we put our passion into the distillation process and then the cocktails. And I know you have a whole room full of barrels. Do we get to go in there? It's smell-o-vision! Oh my gosh and this room is so beautiful. We've got a lot of 53 gallons that are resting here for years. I do want to point out this barrel gin. When we make it it's the same process as bourbon so I do the distillation and then we put that clear spirit that clear gin into oak barrel and we call that our whiskey lovers gin it's just really like a whole next level roll out the barrel, we'll have a barrel of fun on whiskey Haha, whatever Steph wants, Steph gets today, we are going to make Minnesota Bakers breakfast inspired old-fashioned, okay cuz we love drinking at breakfast, we do we're gonna take two ounces of Brickyard then this lovely syrup I made, the tea bag syrup I'm only doing about a third of an ounce of this simple syrup stuff so it's not so sweet and when you make a simple syrup, you're using just sugar water and that tea, okay yep and then coffee infused local maple syrup and a a little dash, a lot of people kill an old-fashioned with too much bitters, okay what we're doing here is we're chilling we're diluting and then we're incorporating all the flavors, we're expressing some of the oils from the orange of course, everybody loves their Luxardo cherry and this is our bacon breakfast old-fashioned and then this is local bacon, I took a coffee rub with some rosemary and guajillo peppers Okay, this is gonna be quite the breakfast I think you're gonna just have a waft of loveliness right in your face. A waft of loveliness right in my face. And this is our bacon breakfast, old fashioned. I think you're gonna just have a waft of loveliness right in your face. A waft of loveliness right in my face. Very delicious. And it's everybody's fave call it sugar and spice and everything nice, what is next is a bee's knees, you love your bee's knees so two ounces of Steph's favorite barrel gin and now we're gonna do three fourths of an ounce of freshly squeezed lemon juice this is the honey ginger simple syrup, shake shake shake and another little twist take some of your lemon and just do a light swipe and then some sugar i like that that's pretty thoughtful actually because some people don't really like the sugar rim so by doing a half and half it really gives you the choice look at that loveliness the french barrel aged gin really gives it a beautiful color and i was going to keep it that pristine for you okay yum that uh oh yum i got the hint of the ginger which i haven't had before that is really nice and and really compliments the barrel-aged gin. This is not like a piney, botanical situation. It's really more along the line of an oaky, kind of whiskey, warm. Like we're saying, that whole grain-to-glass approach. Wheat, corn, rye, and then 14 botanicals. You are really doing it right. Cheers, Gina. Thank you, Steph. Taste buds, we've got one more cool woman to visit. It is my friend Heather Manley, and she is the owner of Crooked Water Spirits. She is making ready-to-drink cocktails that you just pour over ice. Should we go visit her in her brand-new special in-home bar? Let's do it, Taste Buds. I am in my favorite house in the Twin Cities. This is my friend Heather Manley. Heather and I have been friends for a very long time. I first met you when you started your spice company. Yep. Heather's Dirty Goodness. I'm still very enamored with your spices. Thank you. What made you decide to go into Crooked Water? This is like cooking, but with liquid. So to me, this seems just as easy if you know profiles, if you know how to taste. Some of these are just ready to pour. Sometimes you just want an easy button. And I throw a lot of parties. You know, you've been at these parties. I don't want to be sitting and making cocktails in the back kitchen. So I've always batched. And it made sense to make some ready to pours. We were the first ready to pour that launched in Minnesota in, I don't even know, 2015, which seems crazy. I know it does. It's one of the biggest categories right now. And that was with our old-fashioned. All right, let's taste some of your spirits because you have a new one that I haven't had before on the daily Yes, we worked with a tasting company to help make a mixer for it. That is like an Arnie Palmer Mix it with our citrus vodka and it's boozy But i'd say it's still low ABV which I think a lot of people want and we make it into a spritz Which I think you know, we made this for the women's PGA event in june And we're going to actually be turning this into a canned cocktail later in 2026 but if you're going to be on the golf course you want it to be you know bright light poundable and then I'm also a tangerine junkie so there's tangerine clementine in here lemon and black tea I can absolutely taste it, I can kind of taste the tea too, right and then the citrus vodka just amplifies it so it's just really bright and really shiny, all right, so next up we have something that I tend to drink in the fall I don't know why but I do, it kind of has Negroni vibes for me, it yeah Well, it is a Negroni. Okay, so what is Negroni? No, seriously. What it is is a bitter orange liqueur, gin, and a sweet vermouth. And then I made my own bitter orange liqueur. And that was basically screwing around on my table with herbs and letting things sit for probably a month. And then learning that of the 30, 28 of them sucked. And then the two that worked kind of just continue to reiterate them. We don't use any, like, red dye. It's vegan because there's no animal or beetle powder in it. No beetle powder. Who knew there was beetle powder? Apparently it's an angle that someone told me about. But what you're going to get is more baking spices on it. And it's like if Campari and Aperol had a baby. It's not as astringent as Campari and not as sweet as Aperol. Cheers. Cheers. And when Heather talks about having like 28 concoctions on her dining room table upstairs, I also want you to know that right now on her table upstairs are two vats of chickens. eight chickens to be. Like real chickens. Chicks. Because she has a coop out in the back. And I didn't realize that the little chickens can't live with the moms for a while until they can assert themselves. Yeah. Or like picked to death. Yeah. It's a tough world. Cheers. Cheers to the chickens and surviving. Yeah. I drink this in the fall. Don't know why, but it's what works for me. There's a little extra cinnamon in it. It's super delicious. I am enamored with everything you do. You're the only woman I know that worked a full-time job and got a job at Restoration Hardware so you could get the discount on furniture. Boom. Yeah, very smart. You're very savvy. Thanks, Heather. Cheers. It's been a blast. Spuds. I love women-owned businesses, and it's really fun to be able to showcase their products. Drinks are great, but I also like to use these products sometimes in recipes or in savory treatments. So we are going to make two things today. We're going to make this delicious cranberry apple feta salad with walnuts and the Sweet Haven tonic. And then we're going to make a ribeye with the whiskey shallot cream sauce with the Jay Carver whiskey. It's going to be tasty taste buds. As our base lettuce, I've just got a box of spring greens. And then we're going to use some radicchio. I'm going to go ahead and cut out the core, cut it in half and just give a nice shred it will give us delicious peppery flavor throughout our salad and then cut up a green apple i like to keep these a little bit chunkier because again i think it adds a nice texture to the salad stanley oh can you sit sit speak okay there you go we're gonna start our salad dressing and i always make salad dressing in a mason jar sweet haven has the cranberry, juniper, and lemongrass tonic. We're going to have two tablespoons of this flavoring. We're also going to use cranberry sauce. This is cranberry sauce that I make homemade. We're also going to use mustard and that's going to help emulsify the dressing and that just means give it some thickness. A little bit of salt, a little bit of pep, and then lemon zest and some lemon juice. Whenever you use a lemon, make sure you zest. A lot of the flavor of a lemon is in the skin in the oil. We're going to add a third of a cup of olive oil. Shake it, shake it, shake it. Look how good it looks though. Delicious. I've got walnuts that I've toasted, dried cranberries. In this salad, I like the feta because that balances the tartness of the dressing. A little salt, a little pepper, and that is our delicious salad. I got a little toasty walnut right away, a little feta on the end, the apples crispy, and then you get to the delicious cranberry dressing. that lemongrass comes through just a tiny bit the juniper gives it a little bit of like something foresty the whole salad is really delicious so we've got our salad all dressed and i'm gonna put it on our table while i quickly flash fry a ribeye steak and then make a whiskey cream sauce with shallots that's gonna be out of this world so let's just start by seasoning our steak with a little salt and pepper you want to get a nice crust on it ribeyes are a pretty fatty cut which is why i like them fat equals flavor okay i think i got a good crusty crust let's give her a flip you've got that nice crusty edge i'm gonna let it go and i'm not gonna look at it i'm just gonna let it brown because i'm a very impatient person when i cook and you can kind of tell when you press the meat how rare it is i've got a good crust on the back can you see it so i'm I'm gonna go ahead and put my meat on my clean plate and let it rest for a minute while I finish making my sauce. I'm gonna turn my pan down, a tablespoon of butter, and then I'm gonna add my shallots and I'm gonna saute them. I'm now going to add two tablespoons of tomato paste. It caramelizes in the pan and really enhances the flavor. I have one cup of beef stock. And at this point, I'm also gonna add the whiskey. And then I'm gonna bring it to a boil And that whiskey is gonna cook out the alcohol flavor, but leave the bourbon, whiskey, smoky flavor behind. So for about 15 minutes, we've been letting the sauce boil. And our next step is gonna be to add a half a cup of cream and we'll let it boil until it coats the back of a spoon, which will mean it's thick enough to pour over our steak. The flavor on this sauce is incredible. I'm just gonna take one little tiny piece. Mm, mind-blowing. Like so absolutely delicious. Creamy, salty, savory, really enhances the flavor of the steak. And that whole bite together is just ambrosia. This is so good. Oh, this was such a great day, spending it with women makers, doing what they love best. And then at my house making what I think is one of my favorite recipes. It is the ribeye and the whiskey cream sauce, so good. And then of course we use Leah's Tonic our cranberry salad with apples and feta you guys these are some great recipes and we'll have more great recipes for you next week on Taste Buds thanks for watching