My Wife's Favorite Drink

Hey dads, hope you're having a good day. It's been a long one for me and I'm ready for a drink. But today actually is a special day because I'm not just making a drink for myself, I'm making one for my wife. So your wife, husband, significant other, whomever, may enjoy this drink if they like something citrusy and refreshing, especially good on a hot day. So let's get into it and let's make the bramble. So if you're new here, welcome. I'm Ben Sullins, the Cocktail Dad. I've been making drinks for family and friends and just been generally obsessed with mixology for about the past 20 years. And what I wanna do is try to show you how to elevate your drinking game with simple and approachable recipes and without getting too fancy, you know. Some of these cocktail channels, I absolutely love them, but I just watch them knowing I'm never gonna do that. So these are ones that I hope that you can actually make yourself. Today we've got the bramble. It's a gin-based cocktail and it actually introduces one of the key concepts in making cocktails, making drinks that I love, and that is the sort of golden ratio. It's called the 2-1-1 ratio. You have two ounces of a spirit. In this case, we're doing gin. I have Hendricks gin, which is my wife's favorite. And then you have one ounce of a citrus. In this case, we're doing lemon. And then you also have one ounce of a sweetener. In this case, we're doing simple syrup. Now I made this. You can also buy simple syrup, whatever you prefer. You know, there's different ways to do it. Maybe I'll do a video on it down the road. Let me know in the comments if you want that. But essentially we're gonna combine these three ingredients and make a very refreshing, beautiful cocktail. And I'll show you kind of three different ways, the traditional way, the way my wife likes it, and then the way that I've kind of served it for more friends. Okay, so to start, we're actually going to muddle some fruits in a shaker glass. So for this drink, you'll need an actual shaker. You see the shakers that have the little cutesy little tops that look all fancy there? Those, I think, are called cobbler shakers. That's not the one that most bartenders use and not the one I recommend. This is called a Boston shaker. Maybe I'll put a link down in the description. You kind of shake it around like this and then you pop it off. So this is the one, if you're making more than, say, one drink, is the one you're gonna want. So for me, I don't like to have a ton of extra gear or just go overboard. So this is where we go here. I start in the little cup here and I'll drop in three little blackberries. So blackberries are the traditional thing used in the bramble. That's where the BR, the bramble part of it comes from. And we're just gonna muddle these. So I'm just gonna just kind of squash these down. You'll need a muddler, maybe the back of a spoon or something. You don't have to go crazy with it, but enough to where you kind of get a paste going and you have something in there that looks kind of like jam or jelly. All right, so we've got that. I like to go with the citrus next. So here I have my lemon and I'm also going to actually take a garnish off of this before I cut it. So to take the garnish off of this, what I'm gonna do, I actually use this cheese slicer thing. You know, this is like for doing, but I saw someone do this on the internet. You know, that's where I learned things. That's probably like you. I don't know if it's gonna work, but let's try. You kind of want a thick slice of it. So let's see. Okay, that was actually great. So here's what it looks like. It has the pith on it. That's that white part. Some people will get upset about that. We're making home cocktails here. We're not at a fancy bar where you're paying $25 for this. So let's get some citrus going here. So I'm just gonna cut a lemon after I've taken off. Now, normally if I were doing a bunch, I would take a bunch of garnishes off, but here, you know, I'm just doing it for the YouTube, doing it for the gram, and I want one ounce of this. So I'll get my little cup here, and I actually like to do this into like a Pyrex container. That way I can not make a mess of it, but I actually have this special, super cool juicer that I absolutely love, and I'll put a link to it down in the description, where the juice goes inside of this little container, and it has a little pour spout right on the side where you just kind of dump it out once you're done. So I absolutely love this thing. Some friends of mine had this story that they told me years ago that like their great aunt found it in a ship in a World War II thing. I don't know if any of that's true, but you just kind of squeeze it, and when you do, it's really cool. Oh, it kind of pops out a little bit, but it just keeps the juice in there so you don't have to really worry too much about it. We've got a little trash can down there. I'm gonna do one more because we're gonna be making a lot of these, or I might be making a lot of these if things go well. Okay, so I have now my juice. I'm gonna drop one ounce into my muddled blackberries. Easy day. Set the rest of my juice aside. Now I'm gonna do one ounce of my citrus, one ounce of my sweetener. Got that. And then two ounces of a gin. Mess around with which kind of gin you like. This is Hendricks gin. This is one that my wife likes the most. It's a pretty smooth flavor. It's pretty popular all around the world. People that are gin experts may love it or hate it. I don't know. You find the one that's right for you. Don't go crazy, though. You're mixing it, right? So you're not gonna really be tasting it as much as you would if it were like a really fine, fine spirit. So you get the gin. You get all the other ingredients there. I'm gonna throw some ice in here. I got so many complaints about grabbing the ice with my hand. I'm using the tongs. You guys are so picky. All right, so you're gonna, if you've never done this before, it kind of has an angle to it. And I'm gonna pop it down. And then I'm gonna shake it. It's gonna get extremely cold. And then I'll show you how to pop it open because sometimes it'll actually get frozen and stuck on there. Okay, so then once it's there, it's kind of frozen and it's kind of stuck. I'm gonna put my hand flat against it like this. And actually just kind of in the back with the fingers and pop it this way. And it'll knock it sideways. And then you just pull it right out. Now we need to put it in something. And this drink is typically served with pebble ice. So if you have pebble ice or even kind of shaved ice or anything like that, kind of experiment with it. At the grocery store by me, there is a bag of pebble ice I can buy or you can buy a machine that does it, whatever. So glass chilled pebble ice. Okay, so I've got my glass with the pebble ice in it. Now I'm gonna dump the drink on it, but I'm not filling it all the way because it can overflow very easily. And I'm going to double strain it. I don't like chunks of fruit in my cocktails. So this is your Hawthorne strainer, I think it's called. This is like the one that goes on top of your shaker. Usually you'll buy these together. And then this one gets all the little tiny bits. So see how it's a really fine mesh wire kind of thing. And so this will actually make sure there's nothing in there. It will get a little clogged up because of all the fruit chunks. And see, had I filled that thing to the brim with cut with pebble ice, it would be completely impossible right now. It would actually be overflowing. So next I'm gonna fill this up just with a little bit more on top. Just like that. And we're almost there. We have the drink made. You may want to do some kind of like blackberry on top, something like that to make it more appealing, a little garnish. And of course you want to do lemon. So the lemon, we're gonna express this. Drop that guy in there. And you have the traditional bramble. Take a sip to make sure it's good. It just reminds me of summer. This is like the perfect refreshing, maybe it's hot outside or you just don't want to drink something heavy that kind of feels like fall or winter. This is the perfect cocktail for that. So if it's summertime, make a batch of these. I'll do another video on batched ingredients. This is your traditional bramble. Now I'm gonna show you the way my wife likes it, which is just basically the same thing but with one different ingredient. Okay, so for the one my wife likes, she basically likes the same drink but with strawberries. You could call it a stramble if you like. We always say bramble, meaning strawberries because you have to know what she's actually thinking despite what she says. I'm gonna cut a couple of strawberries and then muddle them in my container just like before. Do your best to find ripe ones. These are a little under ripe, but you get the idea, right? You know what we're going for here. Again, make it into a nice little paste so you can kind of get all the flavors out of it. Drop that guy down. Now we're gonna drop the lemon juice, which we've already squeezed into our wonderful, beautiful, awesome container that you absolutely need to buy. Can't tell you honestly how amazing this thing is. Then I'll drop in my simple syrup. One ounce if she likes it sweeter. If you like it sweeter, go for a little bit more. No harm, no foul. Remember, it's a 2-1-1, so you're doing two ounces of a spirit, one ounce of a citrus, and then one ounce of a sweetener. And again, you'll figure it out. You'll figure out what kind of style you like. Drop it in here. How about throw some ice in there first? Shake this bad boy up. And you want to see the frost on it. You want to see kind of like, like you can kind of see the frostedness of the shaker. That's how you know it's good. And then pop your hand on the back. Bang it. Let that guy sit. While this guy is sitting, we'll go get our glass with our Pebble Ice. All right, got our chilled glass with the Pebble Ice. We're going to double strain our drink into over the Pebble Ice. And you'll see this one has quite a distinct color compared to the other one. It's much softer, you know? Don't fill the glass up again all the way with Pebble Ice, otherwise it'll overflow. Give it enough there. Get these guys out of the way. I failed to do another garnish earlier with the lemon, so I'll do another one here with my cheese slicer. Can't believe this works. Someone on the internet was like, no, it's the best thing ever. Here you are. Here it is. Okay, so we have our drink. I'll throw a little bit more Pebble Ice on there. Kind of fill it up, make it more drink-like. Express some oils. Pop this guy in. I like to take the strawberry here and just cut it just a little slit in it. And then I can fit that on the drink nice and easy. And I can even, if I want, tuck the lemon slice into it, or the lemon peel into it. And you have a stramble, my wife's actual favorite drink that she likes. She's not a big drinker, but she likes citrus, refreshing. That's essentially what you're going for here. Hot day out, anything, really. You can use this anytime. It doesn't have to be hot. The strawberry and the lemon make it for me. It's like a strawberry lemonade. And the gin, if you get a gin that has a good flavor, that you like the taste of the spirit, really balanced, really nice. It's dangerous because that's two ounces of gin in here, and you could just chug this thing, no problem. Now, the next one I want to make, the third way of the bramble is a little bit different. It's one I've served for a lot of friends and they really like it. So essentially same idea, just a little bit different kind of setup. So let's do that one now. This time we're using raspberries. So raspberries, I think are a little bit more tart. They just kind of make it a bit brighter than the other two versions of this I've shown you today. Same, you know, rinse and repeat style here. We're gonna go ahead and muddle these into the little Boston shaker till it looks like a nice fine jam. You know, something that you'd get from your Aunt Sue. I don't know, I'm just making stuff up. Okay, get that nice and good. Let's throw some of our ingredients in there. We have our wonderful lemon juice from before. Oh, just barely one ounce, perfect, okay. Then we've got our simple syrup, one ounce of simple syrup. Again, 2-1-1, the magic ratio, golden ratio. I don't know what they call it, magic or golden ratio, something like that. You combine any kind of spirit, citrus and sweetener with those ratios and you've got a good time. Okay, so we've got our gin, we've got our sweetener and we've got our citrus. There's some more ice in our shaker. Drop this guy in, nice and frosty. You can kind of hear it. Pop it open, let the lid sit nice and loose. Get your glass. I ran out of fancy glasses, you know, so I just use a regular low ball, low ball glass, old fashioned glass, whatever you want. You can also get real fancy with this. Let's double strain. Don't like to drink chunks of fruit, so that's kind of why we double strain. It's stuck in your teeth at a party, it's not good. Now this one created a bit more, so I'm gonna turn it around a little bit just to try to get all the extra drink out of there if I can. All right, got it. Those guys can live there. Now you can see again, the color on this, totally different, right? And I'll have them here combined side by side in a second. Now let's throw in some more ice. Fill this guy up, got it. Give me another cheese slice from my lemon. Express this over the top. Pop that guy in. I'm kind of good with that. If you want, you could like, you know, put a strawberry on a toothpick or a raspberry on a toothpick. Anything that you feel like is cool. I don't really get too fancy with it. I'm more focused on the quality of the drink. And here you have a raspberry version of the Bramble. Three ingredients, beautiful, refreshing. All right, so there you have the three different ways that I like to make the Bramble. You've got the traditional one with blackberry. You've got the one my wife absolutely loves with the strawberry. And then you have the one that I've sort of made for friends as a different variation with raspberry. You know, you throw whatever fruit you want, you get the right ratios and you're good. Now this last one particularly is my favorite out of these three. I think the raspberry just goes good with the gin and the lemon. But there's another version of this. It just has one slight variation that is probably my favorite and maybe even the best sort of fall holiday cocktail that you can make. And in order to learn how to make that, you have to go watch this video over here. Now, if that video is not out yet, go ahead and subscribe, turn on notifications. You know, get notified when it is. Otherwise, that's it for this one, guys. Let me know what you think in the comments and I'll see you back here next time. Cheers, dads.