This Bourbon Cocktail is Too Good to Ignore (The Clara Bow)

Welcome back, everybody. It's me, Anders. What we need is a drink. Oh, now you got my attention. A bourbon cocktail. Oh, go on. This drink's called a Clara Bow. Clara Bow is a bourbon drink that is a sour, it's also a daisy, and it's kind of a smash, and it's a modern classic. How have we not made it on this channel before? I don't know, but today we answer those questions and more on the Anders Ericsson channel. Stick around to the bar. On to the history. Full confession, I don't have my notes in front of me in paper form. I like to be analog about it, and I forgot to hit the print button. It's on my computer, which is at home, but with modern technology, it's also on my phone. History, Clara Bow, 1920s, American actress of silent film and talkies. I'm kidding, that's not how I'm gonna do it today. Clara Bow was an actress, a star, 100 years ago, back in the 1920s. She performed in silent movies, mostly silent films, but then also into the talkies as well, and she was a smashing hit. She was a success. Everybody loved her. She was actually the original It Girl. By It Girl, I mean a young woman who was popular, had some sex appeal, and had an engaging personality. Now, the reason why she was called the original It Girl is because she starred in a film in 1927 called It. Not to be confused with the Stephen King book and later the adaptations, she wasn't the It Clown that was Pennywise. She was the It Girl, and everybody kind of forgot about her years later. It's kind of sad. If you think about her box office rivals and contemporaries like Greta Garbo and Mary Pickford, they have drinks named after them. Poor old Clara Bow, she never did. Until 2009, when Lynette Marrero and Jim Kearns, I'm gonna pause right there. Make sure I got their names right. I'm sorry, because they're both still around. They're both titans in the cocktail world. I wanna make sure I get their names right. Lynette Marrero and Jim Kearns. Oh man, I nailed it. Just gotta stick the landing on this. Got together and created a cocktail called the Clara Bow after Clara Bow, and it was for the opening of Rye House in New York City. No longer there. Thank you, COVID. Whatever the case, I don't exactly know what happened, but I think it was COVID related. Anyway, long story short, they created a drink that drinks like a classic, but it's snot. It's not snot. It actually tastes very good. It's an interesting cocktail because it drinks like a classic, but it has some differences to it. Namely, one of the ingredients, which we're gonna talk about now. But first, a quick word from our sponsor. Today's video is sponsored by Helix Sleep. March is National Sleep Awareness Month, and Helix makes premium mattresses that are customized to you and delivered right to your door. Did you know one in three adults don't get the encouraged seven to nine hours of sleep per night? That's essential for cardiovascular health, immune function, and brain detoxification. 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Some of you might be wondering why I'm not moving this hand because I'm moving everything else around. This is so I know how far to pull the bottle out. Tricks of the trade. If you wanna start a YouTube channel where you're sliding bottles all the time. Here we go. To make the clair-a-beau, we'll need bourbon, elderflower liqueur, lemon juice, grenadine, and mint. The base is bourbon. That's right, bourbon. I am going with a higher proof bourbon because there are some other things going on in the cocktail, other sweet components. We've got some herbs. So there's a lot to work with. So I like a little oomph with my bourbon. This is also a high rye bourbon. I'm doing that because once again, it gives it a little spice, a little bit more character. In general, bourbons tend to be richer whiskeys and all of these other components are also kind of richer. So that's why I like the high rye. The elderflower liqueur. I think pretty soon here, I can stop saying elderflower liqueur because I'm gonna just say St. Germain. This is the standard. And this is really what makes it a modern cocktail because St. Germain didn't come onto the scene until I believe it was 2007, right in there. So right around the time that this cocktail was being incepted? No, created. So that's what gives it a modern slant. Lemon juice, freshly squeezed. Grenadine. We definitely want good tart grenadine. I will leave a recipe so you can make your own down below. If you can't make your own or you just don't want to, then go with mine. I made this in partnership with Portland Syrups. We've talked about it before. I designed this specifically with cocktails in mind. It's a delight. A tasty treat. Skip the roses. As for your mint, treat it better than I am here. All right, with that, let's build. What we need is a shaking tin for shaking. A strainer for straining. A jigger for jigging. Let's go. You look great, by the way. Okay, let's start with some mint. We're gonna want five or six leaves. Leaves? Pieces of mint? Flaps. We want five or six flaps of mint. These are pretty good size here, so I'm gonna go five, maybe six. Maybe a small one. That's okay, okay. Give it a smack. Drop it right in. The ice will do the muddling for us. Now we can add booze. So let's start with the bourbon. An ounce and a half of bourbon. To that, let's go with the lemon juice. Three quarters of an ounce of fresh lemon juice. Now I am going to add the grenadine, the world's best grenadine. Half an ounce of grenadine, and then half an ounce of the elderflower liqueur, i.e. St. Germain. Actually, there are other elderflower liqueurs out there. I'm not sponsored by it. This, this bottle, this brand. Okay, all right, can I just, I'm just gonna go off on a quick little rant here about jigging. Sorry, I can't say that, can I? Is that okay? Jigging is like dancing, so it should be fine. I just wanna say one thing about how I build cocktails. There are two main arguments for how you should build your cocktail, and I understand the first one, I really do, which is you start with the least expensive ingredient, you put that into the shaking tin, and then you work your way up to the most expensive ingredient, which in this case would be the bourbon. It's an ounce and a half of a nice bourbon. But I start with the bourbon. That's because that's how my brain works. That's actually the way that I file away cocktails. It's a bourbon cocktail, so I'm gonna put bourbon in first. I'm not thinking about the price of all of the ingredients that are going into the cocktail when I build a drink. That's just me personally. If you wanna go the other way around, that's fine. I won't stop you. The other argument is you should start with the syrup because then you can use the other ingredients to wash out the jigger. That makes a whole lot of sense. But here's the thing. I'm using what's called a double jigger. I'm using both sides of this. So what I did, if you look closely at how I built this cocktail, I started with the bourbon and then the lemon juice, where I used the large side of my double jigger. Then I moved over to the smaller side and did the grenadine and then the elderflower liqueur. If I started with the grenadine and then moved to, say, the lemon juice, I'd be flipping over the jigger and I'd be using the other side and this would be dripping everywhere with the grenadine. These are the nitpicky things I think about. I just wanted to tell you in case you cared, which you should if you're trying to make the world's best cocktails. Also, at this stage of the game, for me, I don't screw up. I just don't. I got rid of that characteristic years ago. All right, let's add ice and shake it. In shaking this, we broke up the mint. So we're gonna want to strain it. We're gonna serve this up into a chilled coupe glass. You definitely wanna double strain this because there are bits of mint in there. We'll talk about the color here in just a moment. Garnish with a sprig of mint. I actually have something to say about this garnish too, which I will. I'm on a roll. Just set this on the edge. This is gonna give it some aromatics. Also makes it look a bit prettier because otherwise this looks like a cup of brown water. Who wants that? Boom. Say hi to your mother for me. Ladies and gentlemen, there we have the Claribo. Cheers. Oops, lost my mint. Oh, that is great. That is a tasty, tasty beverage. With the stronger bourbon, you get the bourbon base. It has a nice backbone, but there is a richness, a tartness, a roundness to the drink. For me, I don't necessarily get the mint a ton until the end. I get this cooling menthol finish. And you do get the mint aroma on the nose. Although now, if you look, my mint fell into my drink, which does not make me happy. And that's my issue with this garnish. The mint sprig and the coupe are part of the original recipe. If there were ice in the drink, then you have something to plant the mint into. Or even if there was like a thick foam on top, you could set a mint leaf on top. And so after first sip, I'm going to remove the mint sprig, just for me, because it's easier to enjoy. The other thing I wanted to talk about is the color. If you were to Google Claribo cocktail, a ton of pictures would pop up and they'd all be bright pink or bright red. And that's because they're using grenadine with a lot of food coloring in it, most likely. There is no artificial coloring in this cocktail, which granted does not make it the prettiest drink, but I would rather have a better tasting cocktail than a beautiful cocktail. Oz might disagree because she has to photograph these drinks. She often tells me they just all look brown and she's not wrong, but I guess I love a good brown cocktail. I have to tell you though, I'm kind of giving it a hard time with the garnish and the color and everything like that. It is a really, really good drink. And this one is going to appease a lot of people, I think. Oz, would you care to have a sip? Sure. I am offering this to you because you do not like mint in your cocktails. Cheers. Okay, it's good. It's julep adjacent. Yes, good call. It is julep adjacent. It's also whiskey smash adjacent. It's got a lot of familiar flavors in it. So I see why people love this cocktail. I also love it. So there it is. Thank you all so much for watching. I hope that you enjoy this cocktail. A nice bourbon spring drink. Who doesn't need that? Alcoholics. They don't need that. Okay, great. Thank you Helix for sponsoring today's film. Thank you for watching. Don't forget to sign up on Patreon where we've got exclusive content and sneak peeks. Grab your grenadine. I will see all of you next time. Cheers.