Don't like Gin? These will convince you.

It's three stirred gin cocktails. Every single one of you at one point in your life, well, except for maybe a small minority of you, have said something not so flattering about gin. The fact of the matter is, is that about, I'd say 25 to 30% of you got into your dad's gin cabinet, got out that Seagram's gin, drank way too much of it, got sick on it when you were a kid or a teenager or a young adult, and then you just decided you didn't like gin. Well, today I'm bringing you three stirred gin cocktails, which are the most polarizing of the gin cocktails that are going to knock your socks off and change your mind. I gotta say, I think that this is my most proud moment. Like I actually finally have a copy of the book that I wrote. It took me a year and a half to write this book. I'm very proud of it. So I would just implore everyone to go buy a book. The more books you buy, the better it is for me, and then I can make another book for you guys. I'm already thinking about new books, but I'm just super proud of this. And I just hope that you guys really enjoy it. So go out, there is a Genius link below this video and buy this book. I think you guys will really like it. I worked really hard on it and I love you guys. And you love me and I love you and you love me. It's just a love fest over here, so pick up my book. Little bit ago, we featured tomato water on our channel and a lot of people sent me some tomato water recipes. This one comes from my good friend, Chris Day. It is called the Heirloom Martini and it looked so freaking good. And I had most of the ingredients, but I did have to adapt a couple of the ingredients. Most namely, it calls for clarified grapefruit. And while I did not like technically clarify this because I don't have a centrifuge and I don't really have the patience to filter this through a raft of agar agar. What I did do though, was I ran it through a bunch of micro filters over and over again until I got a clarified-ish result. Just taking all of the organic elements out of it and just leaving this really nice, fluffy kind of viscous juice. So we're gonna use that instead. It calls for a half an ounce and there's Aperol in it. I don't know if like the, you know, fully clear clarified version is really gonna matter. And then also clarified lime juice, which I don't have, but I do have this bottle that one of my good pals sent, which is the lime alternative. If you are bartending in 2026 and you're not using alternatives to traditional citrus, you should be. All right, and we're gonna do that now. So let's get into it. So first thing we're gonna do is just a couple few dashes, three of the MSG solution. This is a 20% solution. It's gonna give it a nice umami. Because we want more umami, we're gonna go in with our tomato water here and we're gonna do an ounce and a half of tomato water. Half an ounce of our filtered grapefruit juice. Half an ounce of one-to-one simple. Ooh, that just got all over me. Do I have a little hand wiper? Yeah, I do. It's like nobody wants a simple syrup on their fingers when they're bartending. That ain't cool. Half an ounce of our fake lime juice. Half an ounce of Aperol. Ounce and a half of Forge Gin. And he called for Fords, so I'm using Fords. Crack this first cube. Feel like I didn't get a good enough crack and I want another one. Oh, here we go. It's all frozen together, we might as well just use them. Seems like such a voluminous cocktail. They have high hopes for it. Tomato water and Aperol just seems like a really inspired marriage of flavors, along with gin and MSG. This could be my favorite cocktail that I've ever had ever. And just judging by the ingredients, it's a good shot it will be. I don't love like basil leaves floating in a coupe. So, you know, I think I'm gonna do is just, I'm gonna just take a bunch of basil leaves, even though I'm kind of doing this after the fact and this is the wrong way to do it. You should be doing this first. We're gonna just smack these basil leaves. I'm gonna sink this into the cocktail and I'm gonna regal stir it. I thought you were gonna do a basil bouquet. No, the thing is, is that like bouquets like that are good when the cocktail's sitting on ice in an old fashioned glass, but when it's called to be in a coupe, how do you do that? Like, I guess you can pin it to the side, but basil isn't as like sprightly as mint. So it's just gonna look all wilted and weird looking. All right, let's try this out. You know, I'm excited about this. That was a very big drink. All right, cheers. Oh my God, that is like, where have you been all my life? What's crazy is that the MSG with the tomato water just makes a much more savory, better tomato water. I will take that over olive brine any day. This is the type of dirty martini style cocktail that I would wanna have. The Aperol brings in some bitterness. You have balance between that like fake lime juice that we used with the simple syrup, bringing in tartness, but also, and then grapefruit. Don't let me forget the grapefruit. The grapefruit is like in there. It's bringing in this nice viscosity. What's kind of crazy about the filtered grapefruit is that the filtered grapefruit, like it changes the texture of the juice to be more like, I don't wanna say fluffy, because it's not like you put it through a Breville and made it fluffy, but it's like, it's like a little thicker and like more subtle and less bitey on the palate, but you still get the grapefruit vibes. And then you also get the citrus on the end, but just all of these culminating into a really bright citrusy, nice cocktail with a savory element, but also nice balance between savory and sweet with bitter. And then the botanicals of the gin is like, this cocktail is like a work of absolute genius. Here it is, the Heirloom Martini. Today we're doing something a little bit different than we normally do. I was just cutting ice and I'm still wearing my gloves. I guess I'll just keep them on for the duration of the video. Oh, still in there. Don't have to set it up. So we'll put this off to the side. Oh, should I just like introduce the cocktail? No, it's usually good. Yeah. I mean, I probably should introduce the cocktail, shouldn't I? You guys are definitely familiar with the Negroni Spagliato, right? The messed up Negroni. But are you familiar with the Negroni Svegliato? The wake-up Negroni. The cocktail was first dreamed up by legendary bartender Salvatore Calabresi, also known as the maestro, for the bar Bound at the Cromwell in Las Vegas. All right, so here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna get our little Bialetti. And if you don't have a Bialetti, get one. And we're gonna fill it with vermouth up to the fill line, which is like that little release. That's a fill line on the top. It shouldn't go past that. We're gonna add our cup here. It's nice to do this with a Demitasse. You don't wanna pack it in too much. If you pack it in too much, it's too hard for the liquid to come through the grains. So you wanna keep it kind of loose in there. We're just gonna add this back in like so. All right, now we just gotta wait for this mother coffee to brew. You know what the worst thing would be though about this cocktail? Is this like, like he did this for a bar in Vegas. So what would suck is the maestro comes in and makes the cocktail, right? Creates the cocktail. Brilliant, brilliant, amazing. The Negroni Svegliato, the wake up Negroni, yay. And then the bartender that's on shift that night, someone's like, oh, I've got a birthday party. Make 12. It's like, do they just have 12 Bialetti's like all in the back, dude? Or like on little portable stoves, dude? Just like going. A lot of the thought and genius that goes into some of these cocktails, they're not very practical for just like making it in a bar. But I guess if you do it at scale, you probably just pre-batch all of it and just keep it hot. Well, you know what you could do actually is what the dead rabbit does, which is the most amazing thing ever. And use a, yeah, just what you do is you just, you make the coffee or like you make this in a big ass Bialetti, dude. Put it in a 750 and then keep it hot with a sous vide. Yeah, and then you just keep it low. You keep it at a lower temperature. So keep it at 135 degrees or 110 degrees or whatever's like. Ooh, lame. Is it supposed to do that? No, the, right here, it's starting to brew and the alcohol is catching fire, dude. It's pretty cool though. Look at that. Flaming Negroni. The flaming Negroni. This is definitely gonna wake you up in the morning. It is definitely gonna wake you up if you burn your whole house now. It's because the pressure release, it's alcohol. But who knew that there was like, who knew that you could light, that you could light a sweet vermouth on fire? Yeah, it might be something with pressure too. Make it more palatable. Yeah, I think that's it. I think we're good though. So now we're gonna turn this off and we're gonna set this aside. Now, Marius had to ask me about whether or not you're burning off the alcohol. You are 100% burning off the alcohol in the sweet vermouth, but it's the least alcoholic ingredient anyway. And quite honestly, you still got the Campari and you still have the gin and you're not gonna be, so is it gonna be lower ABV than a regular Negroni? Probably, but you know, who cares? Who cares? It smells quite brilliant though. It's like sweet vermouth and coffee, buddy. An easier way to do this would just cut down the sweet vermouth by half an ounce and put half an ounce of coffee liqueur in your thing and ba-ba-bam, you've got a Negroni spegliato, but it's not as fun as this process, right? I mean, am I right? Am I right? I mean, maybe the heat is doing something. Yeah, I mean, maybe the heat is like caramelizing flavor, putting the coffee in there. I don't know, it definitely lit the thing on fire, so it's doing something. One ounce of Campari, one ounce of gin, one ounce of our special vermouth. The real concern here with this is that I don't want it to just immediately start melting ice and making dilution because it's so warm. So I did cool it down a little bit. It's still a little hot though, so. Okay, it's ready to roll. There was a moment in my bartending career where I decided that I would wear gloves at all times, but the only problem is that, and during COVID, a lot of people said this, you know, like doctors would get on the internet, and be like, yeah, wear gloves all you want, but it just becomes a second skin. So everything you touch is just gonna get bacteria on it, so you have to constantly change them out. And it was a real pain in the ass, so I stopped doing it. Crack the first one. And the second. Should've probably let this perfect piece of ice that I cut breathe a little, make temper a little bit. Now, when I was at Whole Foods, I forgot the orange. So you know what we're gonna do? Little Curacao, since we have it in a spritzer. So I don't have orange oils, I'll have the Curacao oil on top. I'll have the Curacao, not oil, it's liqueur, but. There we go. Give a little orangescence. I didn't wanna live without the orangescence. Let's taste it. Oh my God, fantastic. You know what's so great about this too, and I think which is kind of a genius pairing, is that you've got the bitterness and the sort of acidity of the coffee that's playing into the bitterness of the Campari and the acidity of the vermouth. Coffee is kind of a nice bridge in this. So you have the coffee, it's nice and vibrant. You get the bitterness of the Campari on the back end. The most prevalent botanical in this drink is that juniper is really kind of cutting through. And then you get some of the angelica root a little bit. It's a little bit muted because you have that big coffee flavor. And then of course you have that bitterness, but I just really love the juxtaposition of the sweet vermouth. And then the Campari that's bridged by the coffee is like very nice. Spinegroni svegliato, and then we're gonna put a little freeze-dried orange on it to garnish. Chef's kiss. I was thinking about martinis this week. And what I kind of love about cocktail history and information is that you can never really get to the bottom of it. There's so much that's unknown and so much that's being uncovered all the time that you can have one belief and then a year or two later, that belief can be challenged by something new. And so it's like ever-growing, ever-evolving and super interesting. So this week while I was doing some research on martinis, I happened upon a 1906 martini that was published by Gary Regan, Gary Gaz Regan. He wrote this book called The Joy of Mixology back in the 80s. And then they came out with a new and updated version a couple of years before he died. And this is, you know, there's the same guy that stirs in a groin. He's famously stirs in a groin with his finger. What caught my eye is that it was my favorite martini variation, but it had like one kind of twist to it that I thought was super interesting. So I thought we'd make it today. But then also the other thing about it, which is kind of cool, is that I've always maintained that this was like the original martini recipe. And then I found out, you know, years later after Robert Simonson published his book on martinis, that there were so many other different variations of martinis, but that they all utilized sweet vermouth. As if like there was a transition between the Manhattan and the martini. And there was like this kind of slow transition. Now, a lot of people think that the Martinez was the very first kind of like cocktail to make that transition. We've come to find that there's a lot of like martini variations that also had this kind of sweet vermouth in it. And that this one, as far as Gary Regan could tell, was the first one that he's ever found that utilized gin and dry vermouth. And so it kind of made me feel a little warm and fuzzy because it like confirmed that my very first martini may have been the actual first martini that at least utilized dry vermouth in the like kind of modern martini style. We're gonna make that martini today, okay? First things first, we're gonna be doing some orange bitters here. We're just gonna do two dashes of orange bitters. What is it called? Is it called a martini? Just martini, but like the 19, is it 1906 martini or martini 1906? Whichever one you like better. Oh, here we go. Did not put them where they belong. Not surprising. We're gonna do an ounce of dry vermouth. Two ounces of your favorite gin. I'm using Martin Miller, which is not technically a London dry, but it's got a bunch of cucumber in it. And I really like it in this particular martini. And I'm using the higher proof 90.4 ABV. So it's like the, it's called the Westborn. Westborn. Did I misplace my little tongs? Didn't put my tongs away. What? Are they getting cleaned? Oh, possibly, but why would, usually they don't, but I mean, it's possible that they made it to the wash, but I cleaned everything and put it away last week. So unless it got used in between, you were correct, sir. Let's grab our spoon. Crack that first cube. That wasn't a very good crack. I'm gonna do this one. Ah, there we go. That was so much better. My new favorite glass. Pretty dope. Very elegant, perfect martini glass. Little lining came off. Orange Curacao rinse. I don't think we've ever done that before. Nope, we never have. And it's gonna give it another orange. It's gonna make it so nicely like orangey. And then of course, Curacao's got a cognac base, you know? So let's go over like a brandy base, you know? That's why they think that the Grand Marnier is so fancy, fancy, because it's got a cognac base, but I think this is just a, I mean, this is also, the Pierre Ferrand is also a, you know, cognac making family, so maybe it's a cognac base, but it's a brandy base. So it has those barrel notes. It's nice and orangey. It's gonna give this like, this martini, I'm just, I'm gonna be very disappointed if it's not my absolute favorite, because it's got all of the makings of my absolute favorite. It really does. I'm a little concerned about the ounce count of this glass though, because it's, I know it's gonna be over full, but, and then we're just gonna do a little, I guess they're all pretty thick skin, so I'm just gonna do a little lemon twist. Personally, I do like an orange twist on these, but lemon twist is pretty good too. I think we're gonna follow this theme here. Let's try not to spill it. Absolutely. Just God darn perfect. Oh man. That Curacao really just like, it's like you get the martini right up front, you just get that crisp, cold gin, the botanicals, the dry vermouth, those botanicals. It's nice and cold. And then you get the orange, just like pulling up the back end. There's this little undertone of just like orange bitterness, which is just like, and you get a little bit of that, like you can tell it's a brandy base. It's just a little bit, just a little kiss, little touch. It is the perfect martini, the 1906 martini. The Negroni Svegliato. Let's try and un-**** this a little, shall we? So you can actually see the cocktail and the ice. Today's Educated Barfly video is sponsored by the Educated Barfly. I don't know if you guys know this. Some of you do, some of you don't, but we've got lots of really good products in our store, and we are constantly adding to those products. One of our very new additions, freeze-dried garnishes. So whereas a dehydrated garnish gives you sort of like a more tea-like caramelized scent, the freeze-dried version of that is a little bit brighter. And then all the sugars, when you freeze dry it, come to the surface, and so you get a very bright, fresh orange flavor. These guys have been a real big hit since we put them in the store. We get lots of orders for them. We also have a little bit of glassware. We have our now kind of iconic Nick and Nora-style glass that we did in a regular and honeycomb pattern. This is a six-ounce glass, kind of Nick and Nora-style, and we have a brand new, more coupe-style glass. It's seven ounces. We also have the honeycomb pattern in this as well. So if you're a fan of the channel and you wanna help us out, this is a very good way to help the channel and then also get something out of it. A lot of this is the glassware that you see in our videos, and so you'll be able to recreate the same cocktails that we make in the studio at home with the best possible recipes, the best possible instructions, and now the best possible glassware and garnishes.