Crafting the Perfect Sidecar at Home

Welcome friends, welcome back to Cocktails After Dark. Today we're going to make the Sidecar. The Sidecar is generally held up as one of the six base cocktails, but if we want to talk about the Sidecar, we have to first look at the Brandy Crusta, because all of the people that say that the Sidecar is one of the six original, or the six base cocktails, all say but it comes from the Brandy Crusta. So the Brandy Crusta was first published in the 1860s in the Jerry Thomas bar manual. This copy is from 1887, same recipe as the earlier 1860s version, and it starts out kind of different than any other cocktail in this cocktail manual because it talks about garnishing the glass. So many of the cocktails in the 1880s there was no garnish, maybe a little bit of an orange peel, but that's it. So Jerry tells me to start out with a small cocktail glass like this, rub the outside with lemon and we dip the glass into sugar so we get a nice sugar rim on the outside, and then take a long lemon peel and stick it inside the glass. So we'll just set that aside while we build the cocktail. So if this is a shaken cocktail, and we're going to start out, he asks for three or four dashes of gum syrup. So I have a two to one ratio of gum syrup here. This is going to be a sweet cocktail I think. Put that in first, and next Jerry asks for a dash of Boker's bitters. So I'm going to put in one dash of Boker's bitters. Now I think Boker's bitters is significant here. Boker's bitters, they stopped making them in 1920. This is reproduction, so it's not exactly Boker's bitters, but Boker's bitters has bitter orange as one of the major flavor components. So a lot of later recipes use angostura, and then a dash of orange bitters, and then some of them just even later just switch to totally angostura. I think the orange bitters might be a big part of this cocktail. Okay the next component is two dashes of curacao, and curacao is a bitter orange liqueur. So we'll put that in. We're looking for one dash of lemon juice. Put that in. Jerry then asks for brandy. So I've got an American brandy, because by this point in the late 1880s American brandy was coming on fairly strong. There was quite a bit of it in the marketplace, and French brandy was disappearing from the marketplace because of phylloxera. So now we ice off the shake and shake. Okay glass ready and I'm going to double strain. Now later versions of this cocktail that you see in other cocktail books also include maraschino, there is precedent for an orange liqueur to be added to this as well, but we're going to go with the original from Jerry. Next up we're going to move on to what people consider the sidecar. Now the sidecar first shows up in cocktail books in 1922. It shows up in two different cocktail books in 1922, and one of them is this one the ABCs of Mixing Cocktails by Harry Mecklehon. The cocktail probably dates to even earlier than that. Most people point to World War I American servicemen in Paris ordering this cocktail and this is what they got, and of course in order to bring the whole story together the American servicemen worked or were detailed to the motorcycle units, so they all had sidecars. You know cocktail stories are a little bit crazy. Anyway so Harry's recipe for the sidecar is equal amounts of Cointreau, brandy, and lemon juice. He leaves out the bitters and he leaves out the sugar, I guess leaning heavily on the Cointreau for the sweetness level. When you get into other cocktails going into the 1930s, like this one from the Savoy, the sidecar is a little bit different in the proportions. The ingredients are exactly the same but the proportions are a little bit different, and when you get into modern day sidecars the proportions are even different again. So I'm going to make two of them. I'm going to make the original from Harry's book which is 1 to 1 to 1, and that again gets made in this kind of a cocktail glass, again with a rim. There we go, set that aside, and we'll start mixing. So 1 to 1 to 1, let's go one lemon juice, freshly squozen of course, one Cointreau, and one brandy, ice, and shake, and again I will double strain. Okay now there's no mention about garnish, but sidecar always seems to get an orange peel, so we'll set that one aside. Now we'll move to what most people would say today is what a sidecar should be, and we'll find out, won't we? So again I've got a cocktail coupe, orange, sugar rim, and we'll mix one up. So we'll start out with three quarters of an ounce of lemon juice, one and a half ounces of cognac, and one ounce of Curaçao. Could easily be Cointreau, could easily be Cointreau. So we'll ice and shake just like the other cocktails. Okay and again double strain into our cocktail glass. Hey Glenn! Hey Jules! Hey friends! Okay what three is not our usual number? No three is not the usual number, three is not the usual number. So this one still makes it more difficult. It's not an either or. No not today. Another orange peel. Okay I give you two versions of the sidecar and Jerry Thomas's brandy crusta. They look great. Okay that's very pleasant. Try them all. That's very pleasant. Try them all. It's a little orangier. Orangier? Is that a real word? Hmm. Okay on first impression which one is your favorite? I think this one. Uh me too. You know you can't always just choose it because I do. No I think that's my favorite. I find this one unbalanced. I think this one is balanced. This one has a more lemony. I get a real hit of orange on my nose when I bring this one up. That one's still a very pleasant drink. Yes. I would I would say. I want that one. I would say one two three. With one and two I would order a second one of but the third one I would never order again. Yeah this one that little bit of orange in this one. Well I don't know if it's a little bit but there's a little bit more orange flavor in that that gives you just a I guess two fruits are better than one. I don't know. This one just lemon? Um no it has. Oh me. You know you start mixing drinks and you can't remember what's in them right? Let me see. Sure. Uh so this is yeah so this is orange bitters brandy curacao and lemon juice. This one is. So this one just has orange bitters in it for orange flavor? Yes. Yeah. Or does it. No it has curacao. It has curacao as well. Okay. This one is one to one to one brandy curacao lemon. Okay. This one is heavier on the cognac because today okay so brandy all cognac is brandy. Okay so let's get that all all cognac is brandy is just cognac with a really good marketing department. Really what it comes down to it's from a very specific part of France and they stood up and said ours is the best it's better than all the rest and so we're going to call it cognac and nobody else can call it cognac and we're not going to call it brandy but it is brandy. We've had glands a little. It's one of those things that you know and people and I and I've had brandies that are better than cognacs. Yes. You know I mean it's so. Are you gonna make me go head to head? Yeah we'll just go head to head this is an American brandy and this is a French cognac and that could be the difference in why I think this one might be unbalanced because there's so many different flavors. I feel like I need to clean my mouth with this. Yeah well that's hot that's too hot. This one is a little sweeter. Yeah so that's the American brandy and this is the French cognac and the French cognac is hot. I didn't get that but you know. 40% alcohol so it's not and they're both they're both 40. Both 40. And I didn't am I going to be sipping. No. Regularly no. And your choice of curacao or orange liqueur will also change. Do they all have do they have the same? No. So these two have Cointreau. Which two? These two? These two have Cointreau. Okay. And this one has the Ferran Curacao. Hmm interesting. So this is sort of the if you're starting to run low. We're starting to run low. If you are you know of the current cocktail group that is the go-to curacao for most people. Oh is that a little more orangey? Yeah. It could just be that this one's almost empty. Is there much difference between them? We should do a tasting. We should do we should do a head-to-head tasting of because there's a lot of different curacao and orange flavored liqueurs. So even though Cointreau doesn't say curacao on the label anymore when they first started making in 1849. Alcohol, sugar, orange peels. It said curacao on the label and they later took curacao off the label because they wanted to elevate themselves above all of the curacaos that were crowding the marketplace. This gets really complicated. This gets really complicated. So you know and I wonder I wonder if there were later brandy crustas that had maraschino in it which is a cherry liqueur. What would that bring? Well that would add that's interesting because that would be that second fruit. Remember I said there are two fruits. Yes. I wonder if that little bit of would change it. How much do you think it needs? I don't know. And how much do you think we have in the fridge? Yeah no we don't. Well we do we do have lots but I don't think I think this video is getting a little long. And then just just to okay so because people call this the sidecar one of the six mother cocktails or six base cocktails or six you know cocktails one of the cocktails that they talk about that several people talk about as being uh the next generation the next generation is the cosmopolitan. Ah yes okay. Which is made with vodka. I find that very interesting because in this 1933 cocktail book cocktails their kicks and sidekicks there is a chapter. A whole chapter. Okay so the cosmopolitan everyone sort of agrees on the cosmopolitan because it is a later cocktail apparently 1988 is the start of the cosmopolitan cocktail. 1988 people can point to a book in 1988 and say that's it it's a total 80s cocktail you know. It is very. Big shoulder pads. It is very 80s. You can see Tom Cruise down at the dance cave mixing one up. Okay which is an inside baseball for people who live in Toronto and like the movie cocktail. Okay so in this 1933 cocktail book called cocktails their kicks and sidekicks there's a whole chapter called cosmopolitans. Interesting. And in the cosmopolitan section is a cocktail the sidecar and I have to wonder if guy. Randy Quantro equal parts. What's his name who was the anyway so the I wonder if the bartender who in 1988 coined cosmopolitan and created that drink knew about this book and the section called cosmopolitans because there's no drinks in the cosmopolitan section called the cosmopolitan. No whiskey special stinger sidecar sours orange blossom. Okay so if you take anything from this we both think that the 1922 version of the sidecar which is one to one to one with brandy an American brandy and Quantro is our favorite. The 1887 version called the brandy crusta comes a close second. Pretty darn good. And the more modern version of the of the sidecar that most people you find in cocktail books today called the perfect sidecar. Not so perfect. Less than perfect. So try different brandies different cognacs different pure sours and come up to your own conclusion I mean it's all personal choice. Experimentation. Yeah a lot of experimentation. Way