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Hello. My name is J Rosser Lomax. I’m a bartender at Rye House and at-large. And I’ve been in the food and beverage world for about five years doing a wide variety of things. From craft beer, whiskey, classic cocktails.

Rye House is a bar and restaurant in the Flatiron district of Manhattan. We’re known primarily for our fantastic Whiskey Back Bar as well as our classic and modern cocktails. We do a lot of volume service. We do a lot of introducing people who are not necessarily big whiskey drinkers into the wonderful world of spirits and beer. And a wide variety of very interesting and very tasty liquors.

I get a chance to take people who are not necessarily big whiskey drinkers and I get to walk them into, you know, their new favorite whiskey or their new favorite drink for the night. I love nothing more than having somebody sitting at the bar, asking them what they like about a drink, a whiskey, a cocktail. And then either making something expressly for them they’re going to love, something that they may not knew they would ever have liked. Or introducing them to some of my favorite spirits. Some of my favorite flavor profiles and things like that from, you know, a wide variety of ryes, bourbons, scotches. And the funny little liquors that don’t fit into any other category.

I’ve had the pleasure of taking a lot of different classes. Whether they’re sponsored by, you know, the brands and liquor companies or through independent associations. The American Small A Association. You know, meeting distillers. Talking about the processes. Talking about, you know, the ingredients. You know, having good personal relationships with people who make your product as well as the people who sit down at your bar and consume them.

As far as drinks go, I love making classics and introducing people to wonderful, well made, time tested recipes that they’ve never been exposed to before. You know, a really well made Manhattan is one of the most beautiful things. But all the variations. The Greenpoints, the Bronx, the Red Hooks.

Anything you can do to give somebody exactly what they want. Like the platonic idea of a great cocktail is why I do, why I get out of bed in the morning. Besides the fact that my cat is sitting on my chest and it’s really uncomfortable.

And now I’m going to teach you how to taste and appreciate some of my favorite drinks.

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This is how you make a Gold Rush. This is a shaken drink with citrus, honey, bourbon and that’s it. Very simple, very straight forward. You can make it at home. Just follow along.

For my proportions I like to do three quarters of an ounce of lemon, three quarters of an ounce honey syrup, which is honey that’s had water added to it so doesn’t stick to the inside of the tin as it gets colder. You can see it’s flowing a little bit easier than regular honey. And two ounces of bourbon. Very simple.

Add your ice and shake. Separate your tins, pull out your julep strainer, add ice, close your Hawthorn strainer and pour. Cut a lemon twist. Express the twist. And enjoy.

And that’s how you make a Gold Rush.

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Pairing food and whisky is about finding complementary flavors o-, or contrasting flavors depending on how you want to go. Here we have some pork chiquitos, which are chili and coco-rubbed roast pork, smoked cheddar and a cilantro jalapeno sauce over the top. Something like that, it’s going to be like fatty, round and a little spicy. I’m going to go with a nice scotch and soda. We’ll take a malt, blended malt scotch, soda water. Just pair them up really nicely and evenly… About 2 ounces of your blended scotch…

You can use a jigger and look professional and then top it off with soda and give it a quick stir. Make sure it comes together nicely… Generally, the whisky, compared to the lemon, lemon is nice and soft. You can even get a little, quick squeeze of the juice if you want. The acidity will cut the fattiness off the pork very nicely. Just to be a little fancier, we have a filet mignon sandwich which has got smoked blue cheese and whisky-caramelized onions done to a beautiful medi rare. We’re going to pick something a little more elegant, in this case, a burger old fashioned.

So we got whisky in the onions, got whisky in your drink. Pull it out. You get the nice creamy richness of the food with the long slow finish of an old fashioned… That’s really good… . Personally I like beef jerky, the every-man food. You want something sharp and neat. Jerky is a quick food, you want a quick drink to go with that. I’m going to do some rye whisky. Pair them off… See all this nice, light, crbly jerky, . Because it’s dehydrated with grains of paradise, uh, a nice saison beer, coriander and black pepper. So you are going to want something that’s spicy, something that’s quick. Rye whisky neat, perfect.

Ah, yeah, that’s good. So when you are pairing whisky with your food you want to think combining and contrasting flavors. And also the way you are taking it. A nice pretty sandwich, big cocktail. Something light, fried and crisp. Cold drink. Soda water. Light, refreshing beef jerky. Snack on the go. Straight booze. And that’s the way to prepare whisky with food.

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How to make your own cocktail. It’s actually surprisingly easy. All you have to do is consider what you have on hand in terms of ingredients and what do you want to make. Do you want make something that’s stronger, stirred, boozier? You know, it helps to have a mixing glass, some spoons, strainers. If you want to just make something grab and go, well, hey, I’ve got ginger ale. I’ve got whiskey. They go together brilliantly.

But if you really want to make your own drink and you have some of the tools, some of the knowledge on how to, you know, properly mix a drink, then what you want to think about is flavor profiles. What really blends well with what? I don’t want to say it’s a culinary concept but you definitely have to think with your tongue, and really think about optimal flavor pairings.

So if you have a whiskey that’s light, fresh, it might pair well with lemon juice. You can shake it, make a cocktail with citrus. If you want something that’s, you know, brooding, longer, smokier, you probably want to stir that. Put it together, add some bitters, add some modifiers, and really have a nice, heavy drink.

When you’re making a cocktail, really, you consider your options on hand, you think about what makes that whiskey, that base spirit, what it is, and what makes it so good. Play to the strengths of your whiskey and work with what you have.

Try a few things. Don’t be afraid to fail. Frankly, my best mistakes have been some of my best cocktails. What you want to do when you’re selecting a whiskey and making a cocktail with it, really try, fail, drink it anyway, and try again. A little bit of practice makes perfect. And that’s how you make a good whiskey cocktail.

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Whiskey has a long and distinguished history, sometimes sordid actually. Farmers have a big bumper year. They can’t sell everything locally. They can’t store, because cereals go bad in a hurry and they get really nasty when they do. It can make you really sick. There’s an incentive to take that and make liquor out of it, because you’re essentially taking a bunch of excess product, excess crops, and you’re refining it and turning it into a value added product. You’re condensing it in size making it easier to transport. And it won’t spoil.

Corn growing farmers in the southeast could take all their excess crops. Distill it. You put it in barrels so it matures and gains value over time. And you can ship it further distances. You can send it up to Mississippi, to Kentucky, to Chicago where it can go out on rails all across the country.

Whiskey was the major spirit consumed in America for a very long time, right up until Prohibition, actually, when the Volstead Act passed and we had our great experiment. Which, I’m sure you’re aware, failed miserably. You see a rise in white spirits because they’re faster. They don’t have to barrel age, so you can go quicker from the still to the market, hence bathtub gin and all those other wonderful things.

But whiskey never stopped being made in Canada. It was a bootlegger’s paradise because it’s the longest undefended border in the world. So you have people making whiskey up in Canada. Crown Royal is a great example. It’s a higher rye content, because rye grows better in colder, hardier climates like Canada. You can make your rye up there. They never bothered to stop it because there was a huge market. Scotch took advantage of this as well. You would run scotch over to Canada. Then people would fill up boats and run them down the coast, then redistribute from there.

After Prohibition was struck down Canadian whiskey had a cache. Rye whiskey had new fame. People started to go back to some of the classic American brands. But because bourbon takes as long as it takes to make, you know, it has to spend two years in its barrel, minimum, people started drinking whatever they could get their hands on – unaged spirits, moonshine. With the opening of the Soviet Union after World War Two vodka became a much bigger thing. Vodka is now the largest selling spirit in the world, biggest part of the alcohol market share.

Whiskey kind of spent a while being sort of what your grandfather drank. But bourbon picked back up starting in the fifties, the sixties. They returned to some of the old, traditional ways, and they started making newer and better products. As people started to see that they stopped drinking so much light domestic beer. There became a market for these things.

In the last thirty, twenty, fifteen years there’s been a big resurgence in microdistilleries and artesanal distilleries in America both because of beneficial tax breaks and legal codes and because people really are just out there trying to make a better beverage. They’re asking themselves, does whiskey really have to be kind of bland, does it have to just taste like the barrel. So you see a lot of people doing newer and interesting things, and we’re all better for it. Expanded market share, a rising tide lifts all boats, and that tide smells like liquor.

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How to make a Sazerac.

The Sazerac’s one of the most classic of cocktails after the Old Fashioned. It’s basically a variation on the Old Fashioned. It’s sugar, water, spirit, bitters. Only we’re going to change the bitters from old Angostura or Aromatic or Boker’s to Peychaud bitters.

We’re also going to rinse the glass with absinthe, which you can do either by putting in an atomizer and spraying it or, you know, if you’re feeling adventurous something a little more like a spit flick.

Here at Rye House we make our Sazerac in equal combinations of rye and cognac. Cognac being the earliest way of making it. And rye being a little more contemporary. I find a one to one mixture works really nicely. Blending the sweetness and the spiciness of two liquors. Adding in the aromatics and Peychauds and a little bit of the absinthe on top to round it out.

So for the 17th Street Sazerac and that’s a cognac. Couple dashes of Peychaud, three in this case. A bar spoon of Demerara sugar syrup. Add your ice. And stir. Add your julep strainer and coat your glass with absinthe. We use an atomizer here. It’s efficient. It’s quick. It coats the glass nicely.

If you’re feeling a little more adventurous you can take a few drops of absinthe, pick it up and it will coat the glass nicely. Discard the excess absinthe and pour. I’m doing the frosted ones because it looks better. Cut a lemon twist. Express it over the glass, be sure you get the rim. Discard. And smile.

And this is how you make a Sazerac.

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Whiskey in popular culture is one of those things that everybody thinks of. You got your old wild, wild west. The X’s is how good it is, absolutely. You got cowboys slugging shots. You have the classic scotch connoisseur taking a glass.

You know, it’s funny. Because a really old, well aged scotch does actually take water really well. But, you know, dilute mineral water by the drops. The epitome of connoisseurship and class. Whiskey really runs the gambit.

But when we talk about whiskey in popular culture these days, you can’t get away from saying the words Men and/or Angry. Mad Man has changed the way a lot of people drink their whiskey. All of a sudden you’re making Old Fashioned. You’re making Manhattans. People are starting to drink something a little more, you know, flavorful. frankly. And I love to see that. It’s a beautiful thing.

So a lot of people are going to make Old Fashioneds. It’s a very simple spirit to make. You can use a jigger. You want two ounces of your spirit, sugar, bitters, water to dilute. Straight forward.

Two ounces of spirit. Two dashes of bitters. You can use Angostura. It’s the classic. Easy to come by. But your Old Fashioned can be as simple or as complex as you want. You can use rum for your base. You can use whiskey. You can use anything you like.

Stir. Always, always stir. Shaking your drink is for citrus and girls on the beach. You want a nice smooth, elegant, well blended cocktail. And for that, stirring with a spoon in a mixing glass is everything.

You’ll watch as the lines begin to rise. They’re getting better and better. Softer and softer. Add a few rocks. Strain it off the glass. Cut a nice, healthy orange twist. Squeeze it over the top and drink like Draper.

Whiskey and popular culture. Everything from the cowboys to your ad boys, to white lighting. Hillbillies and bootlegging. It’s a beautiful thing. It’s part of the rich American tapestry.

That’s a run down of whiskey in popular culture.

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What’s the best way to cure a whiskey hangover? Well, it depends.

The prevailing belief is that a hangover is caused by dehydration and the metabolism of alcohol by your liver. The most recent study I read suggests caffeine, ibuprofen or some other vasodilator which will literally make the veins in your head stop throbbing, water lots of it. Please God. But, really, how I cure a whiskey hangover? Pork fat and champagne. I am not joking. I don’t actually feel better, but God help me, I don’t feel worse.

Hangovers are a pretty common malady, affliction, cost of doing business. So a good healthy dose of pork fat and champagne, coffee, some aspirin and a lot of water. Drink a lot of water while your drinking, trust me. Just trust me. It’s a lot easier than drinking more shots. Unless your on a champagne drunk, in which case, go with God man, there’s no helping that.

And that’s how to cure a whiskey hangover.

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Shaking versus stirring. There are two ways to make your cocktail; one is to stir it on ice in a mixing glass and the other one to brutalize that ice inside of a metal tin.

Generally speaking liquor on liquor drinks are stirred, and anything that involves a lot of citrus or needs to be light and airy will be put in a shaker. Shaking is going to incorporate air into the drink whereas stirring it sort of lets everything blend together and get nice and well melded.

So depending on what you want you’re going to shake or stir your drink. An old fashioned for instance is always going to be stirred. If you see someone shaking a Manhattan you have my permission to throw things at them; they need to be stopped.

I did that once. I was at a bartending audition for a job. God help me; the manager shook a Manhattan. I thought the GM was going to pop a blood vessel. It was beautiful. You know, a liquor drink like an old fashioned or [Sassenach] can go in the mixing glass. When it pours out it’s going to be silky and even on the tongue.

We’re going to start by stirring a cocktail, and we’re going to make a rye old fashioned. A rye old fashioned is simple; sugar, spirits, waters, and bitters. We’re going to put in about two ounces. I’m a professional; I know exactly how long it takes to pour two ounces out of that. I suggest you use a jigger, or honestly, it’s not a big deal. A bar spoon or roughly an eighth of an ounce of sweetener; this is [demoraris] syrup. It’s made from dark sugar that still has molasses in it, so it’s more rich, flavorful sugar as opposed to simply syrup which is made from white granulated sugar.

Bitters; in this case we have [angostura], which is a classic cocktail bitter, and two dashes should do us. You can feel free to substitute any bitters or sweeteners or spirit you like for that matter. The rye old fashioned is your classic, you know, this is how your grandfather drank, if your grandfather was a railroad baron. Mine was not.

You add ice, which you can crack or not crack depending. It’ll speed dilution if you do, but it doesn’t hurt if you don’t. And you stir it; some people say it’s 50 stirs, some people say it’s 50 seconds. I just do it until it looks right, smells right, and you know, taste everything. Taste, taste; that’s what you’re doing this for after all–and that’ll do us.

Take a nice good old fashioned julep strainer. We of course use pre-chilled glasses, because, why wouldn’t we? You can stick them in the freezer and they’ll chill up pretty quickly. Glass is a very bad thermal conductor, but once it gets good and cold it’ll stay that way.

Strain it off into the drink. You’ll notice we have avoided the brandied cherries, the orange wedge; those are options for you old fashioned. But they reflect a later period in the old fashioned’s development, one where prohibition had reduced the quality of the spirits to being basically bathtub spirits, and you wanted as much sweet floral flavor as you could get to cover that fact that you were basically drinking wood alcohol and you were going to go blind. You’re still going to go blind on this if you work at it hard enough, but it’s a lot tastier, trust me.

Cut an orange twist carefully, very carefully. Express the twist by taking it in your fingers like so, and bending it in half gently. You can’t see it in the light, but there’s a little shower of essential oil that goes on top and it gets shinier on top. Wipe it in and enjoy.

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If you’re going to make cocktails you need to consider your tools. Stirred drinks? Take mixing glasses. This isn’t just a regular piped glass, this is tempered glass, because as you go to work making your drinks, if you shake them or stir them too hard, you’re likely to break something. A regular piped glass that’s not even tempered is going to break more easily. When you’re putting ice in there, you’re changing the temperature of this glass a lot, and the faster your thermal changes occur, the more likely weak glass is to break, so look for tempered glass. It’s readily available in a lot of homewares stores, but be sure to ask.

A mixing spoon is a wonderful thing. It has a bowl for making measurements. Whenever you see a bar spoon measurement, it’s usually about this, about an eighth of an ounce when you flatten it out. The twisted spoon helps move the ice around in the glass, and the flat end can be used to pick ice depending on how you need it. It also can be used to crack ice if you want to move your drinks along quickly, and slide it back out.

When you finish your drinks, they finish cooking in the glass or finish being shaken in the tin, you have your strainers. This is a julep strainer. It’s circular and it’s perforated. It fits nicely inside the mixing glass, and it will hold ice back so you can let your spirit flow comfortably without getting any cracked or whole ice cubes into the drink.

This is a Hawthorne strainer. You can tell by the spring around the outside. It fits on top of the mixing tin nicely. Push it closed so you make sure you don’t have any of your ice chips falling out around the side, and you do your pouring like that.

This is an English-style shaker, which is to say it’s metal on both sides. It’s different from a Boston-style shaker, which would be a pint glass, well a slightly smaller pint glass, plus this.

These tools right here are the essentials and the basics in making a good cocktail, whether it’s stirred or shaken.

An incredibly important tools, especially if you’re following your recipes, are going to be your jiggers. We see 2 ounces, 1 ounce, three-quarters, one and a half, half and a whole. Whenever you see these in recipes they are generally meant to be followed. If you’ve worked long enough with pour spouts or just have a good sense for how much is coming out of the bottle, you don’t really need them, but I strongly suggest jiggers, both for the amateur and for the hurried professional on the go.

Your jiggers are going to help you get a consistent drink every time so you’ll consistently have half an ounce, 1 ounce, every time you pour. There are different schools of thought as to how far you fill the jigger. You can get a flat pour like this, and that’s a meniscus, where you see the actual meniscus forming over the top of the jigger. Different recipes may call for different amounts, so you always want to be sure if it’s a shy half, a full half, what have you, but the jigger gives you a tool by which you can measure how much is going into your drink and consistently make your drinks every time.

These are some of the tools you can use to make a good, consistent cocktail.

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So what is Canadian whiskey? Well, it’s whiskey made in Canada. Generally speaking, Canadian whiskey is, people think, Crown Royal, and that’s really where it stops. Canadian whiskey was very popular during Prohibition, because it was legal to make in Canada, and then you could just sort of make sure it got across the border in the middle of the night.

It tends to have a higher rye content, because rye is a very hardy grain that grows well in cold climates and with people who say “Aye” a lot. You have rye whiskeys, and you can also do more artisanal, smaller productions with higher wheat contents, depending on what you can source.

It’s not very much different from American whiskey, except that American whiskey has a wider variety of styles, has some illegal history, and has more people making it. While it has a fairly long, if undistinguished history, much like Canada itself, it’s a delicious, light, easy sipper, and, Lord knows, if you want to tip one back to Dimebag and have a sip of Crown, you do that. It’s whiskey made in Canada. It’s not bad. At least they do that right.

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Bourbon.

Bourbon is an American liquor. It’s made from at least 51 percent corn. It has a wide variety of different legal controls on the manufacturing process.

Bourbon is the classic American spirit. It takes the things that we’re best at, like growing corn and shipping things, and turns it into booze. It’s made mostly from corn. None of them make it 100% from corn because that’s terribly nasty. Everything moderates a little bit with wheat, rye, barley.

And you get a variety of different small manufacturers, artisan distilleries, and big industrial monoliths that run stills continuously then barrel age and put them into rickhouses and all those fun things. It’s like an industrial cooperative. There are a handful of very large stills and then a few very small producers.

They do most of the distillation all in one place in one general area of Kentucky. Then people will buy the juice, barrel age it themselves, and put it through different legal definitions in order to make different things. You have bourbon, which comes directly from the still to the barrel, sits there for two years, has given proof requirements which is to say how much alcohol is in it. Then at the end it can be watered down to proof or barrel aged cask strength.

There are two different qualifications for bourbon. There is straight bourbon, which is the two year, and there’s Kentucky straight bourbon whiskey which means that it is distilled, and barreled, and bottled in Kentucky, although sometimes they age it in Indiana just because the real estate’s cheaper. It’s an art of blending, because when you take them off the still, depending on where in the warehouse you put your bourbon barrels, they’re going to evaporate at different rates. Higher up it’s hotter. You’ll lose more of the alcohol. Lower down it’s cooler, but you won’t get as much of the barrel flavor because you won’t have the same expansions and contractions of the wood. So, it really takes a master distiller’s hand to blend them together and get a consistently excellent product.

Some bourbons, whether they’re Kentucky straight bourbon whiskey, some are doing more interesting things these days. Once it’s legally qualified to be Kentucky straight bourbon whiskey, for instance, this one’s finished in port barrels afterwards to give an extra nuance of flavor to the ending, mitigate a little bit of the heat of the alcohol.

An interesting thing about the bourbon barrels is they can only be used once. Legally it has to be new charred American oak. It started as something to protect the coopers union, not the one downtown, the coopers union in the southeast that actually makes the barrels. Once a barrel’s been used for bourbon it can’t be reused to legally make bourbon. They ship them off to a lot of other places around the world to use as barrel aging. Generally not for wine because it’s been charred and it tastes oaky and burned on the inside. But a lot of liquors around the world are made with used bourbon barrels.

Bourbon is a wide style. It’s a good one for people who are just trying to get into drinking new liquors and trying new things, because you can tell a good bourbon from a bad bourbon real quick. But, in the end there really is no such thing as bad bourbon. My favorite bourbon is generally the one in front of me, or all of them in front of me in fact.

And that’s a quick summary of bourbon, corn whiskey.

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What is light whiskey? Light whiskey is a legal term that was built in the ’70s for people who wanted to distill their whiskey straight to proof, generally 80 proof, rather than distilling it to a higher proof and then watering it down to proof. It’s lighter. I’m told it’s easier drinking. I’ve literally never seen the stuff. I don’t even know who makes it. It’s sort of a style that’s fallen out of favor. I don’t even know if it’s actually ever in style, frankly. But the ’70s were a weird time. What can I say? So I’m told. Pretty sure I wasn’t dead yet. Or alive yet. And that’s a quick summary of light whiskey.

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The Old Fashioned is the most classic of classic cocktails and it’s also
the simplest and, in many ways, the most elegant. Sugar, water, spirits, and bitters. That’s it. The earliest Old Fashioneds were actually with Cognac. And it does make a wonderful drink, but I find adding sugar to Cognac can be a little too sweet for my tastes. I like it a little bit more dry, a little bit more bracing, so I drink rye Old Fashioneds. Bourbon Old Fashioneds work wonderful, rum. Stay away from gin. White spirits don’t usually take so well to the old fashion
treatment.

So a rye Old Fashioned, which we’ll be taking today, deadly simple. You have two ounces of your spirit, roughly a bar spoon worth of sugar syrup. This is a demerara sugar syrup. It’s a little more flavorful than a granulated sugar or a white sugar syrup, a simple syrup. Take roughly a bar, it’s about an eighth of an ounce, give or take. Drop that in there. Ice will be your water. It serves to both dilute and cool the drink. As you spin it around. And then stir.

Your stirring technique is really whatever works for you. I’ve seen this. I’ve seen that.
This is the most comfortable for me, but I do a lot of stirring of drinks so anything that works is fine.

Once you have your drink properly chilled and diluted, add your strainer. Take your chilled rocks glass, add ice, and strain. Garnish with a citrus twist, orange, lemon, both whichever you like. Express the twist, and smile.

And that’s how you make an Old Fashioned.

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Scotch whiskey is a very wide wonderful world with a lot of subtlety and interesting things going on in there. You have a wide variety of scotches whether they’re blended or single malts. Some things are a little softer. Some things are really peaty. And then some things are really, really peaty or lend themselves to a little bit more honey and heather. You’ll get notes of sea air, flowers on the hillside. It’s a very complex and wonderful liquor.

Anything that is that refined tends to be a bit pricier. You’re going to be hard pressed to find inexpensive scotch that you really want to drink – unlike something like bourbon where you can get very drinkable liquor at a very low price point. Scotch is going to cost you. But once you develop a taste for it most people don’t go back. I myself have turned into a scotch drinker as of late because I’m a generally insufferable human being, so if there’s something else to be pretentious about we’ll find it.

Some bigger notes of smoke come from the traditional peat drying process. Because scotch is a malt whiskey which means it’s made primarily from barley. Once you germinate the seeds, once you soak them and malt the barley seeds, you need to dry them out. You want to do it quicker than not before rots sets in. Generally you’ll dry them over a fire. Scotland being, well, Scotland, and heavily boggy, you get a lot of peat which they use as fuel. So you get peat moss. They’ll start a fire with that after it’s been dried out and use that to dry out the barley. You get very distinctive smoky notes.

It’s a really wide and rich style, and scotch making is an interesting tradition. When a lot of people think whiskey they think Scots. They think Scotsmen. They think rainy moors on a Thursday afternoon. Scotch has a rich history of being, at one point, the most popular liquor in the world, because where the British empire went it took scotch with it if you were wealthy enough to not drink rum.

And that’s a quick summary of scotch whiskey.

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Serving whiskey with water and ice, simple, straight forward, incredibly rewarding. All you need is a good sturdy glass, couple of good ice cubes, some whiskey of course, just a dash of water or soda. Give it a little body, round it out a bit. You can see it fizzes up nicely, we’re using soda water. Give it in a little spin in the glass, so you get a good and even coating. And then smile. And that’s how to serve up whiskey with ice and water.

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Selecting whiskey for use in mixed drinks takes consideration, depending on the kind of drink you’re going to make, and the kind of whiskey you maybe use. Generally speaking, I used whatever I have available, but when I’m behind the bar I have a lot more choices, and you have to be a little bit more discriminatory.

If you’re going to make something that’s going to be light, go with soda. The airy and bubbly, you’re going to want something that’s going to be a lighter whiskey, something that’s going to be a little more effusent. I like blended scotches. I like bourbons. Anything that you can sip comfortably, is going to mix well with soda, ginger ale, any of those.

You can also sodas, and things like that, to mitigate harsher, sharper flavors. Dilute some of the higher group alcohols. But when you’re picking a nice high-proof shot, it’s usually because you want to drink it neat, straight-forward. When you’re making a cocktail on the other hand, you have to consider some of the more subtle, longer flavors.

Rye whiskey, for instance, mixes fantastically in things like Old-Fashions, Manhattans. Most of your stirred cocktails will take very well to rye, whereas bourbon will be a little too round and a little too sweet once it dilutes. When you’re mixing scotch, that’s really kind of anybody’s game. Scotch and soda is a classic. Scotch mixed drinks like the Rob Roy, the Fitzgerald, those all blend well. When you’re mixing bourbon, anything goes. Bourbon is a round spirit. It’s easy-going. It’s something you can mix comfortably, or sip straight. What you want to think about are the after effects.

Once you start mixing your whiskeys together, you’re going to eliminate the first taste that you get from the glass and you’re going to get some more of the modifiers, the citrus, the spirits that you’re adding to it, and then you get more of the bourbon’s, or whiskey’s, or rye’s after taste.

So when you’re selecting a whiskey for a mixed drink, think about the front and the back, and then add your mixers accordingly.

And those are some notes on how to pick a whiskey for mixing a drink.

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When you’re serving whiskey you can do it in a variety of ways. Some people like it neat. Some people like it on the rocks. And some people take it with a little bit of soda, some ginger ale.

So serving whiskey neat you can do in a snifter or shot glass, depending on how you’re going to take it. Something you want to savor, though. Use a nice glass. Something you can get your hand on, warm up a little bit.

For scotchs, for instance, you might want to take a little bit of water that’s not distilled or tap or mineral water. It’s just good old east river punch. A few drops will open up the bouquet wonderfully. It spreads the oils around. It moves across your pallet a little more slowly. You get a little more enjoyment from it. You can see there’s a bit of oil on the glass. Gets a little thinner when you add the water to it. Dilutes the alcohol proof but not actually the flavor.

Serving on the rocks, on the other hand. My hands are very clean, trust me. Take a few nice size cubes. You can use your refrigerator’s ice tray but the less surface area you have on your cubes the slower it will dilute. But it still changes energy at the same rate so it’s going to cool your drink but not dilute it as quickly. That’s why we use nice, large, cold draft ice here at Rye House. And for that, you know, just pour it right on. You can give it a quick little stir to make sure it gets even contacts. But mostly whiskey on the rocks is a simple and beautiful thing.

Finally, you can make a quick and easy drink with it. Take a highball glass, a Collins glass, load it up with ice. Get some scotch, a little ginger ale. It’s been a long night. Maybe you have a diabetic problem. I don’t know. I don’t mind. It’s all soft and it’s all delicious. Make yourself a nice little highball and it’s easy.

You can also make stirred and shaken cocktails. But really, for the simple, easy enjoyment of whiskey these three will never fail you.

And that’s a quick way to serve whiskey.

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How to make a Manhattan. Manhattan is one of the most classic of cocktails. Its ingredients are simple. Whiskey, sweet vermouth, and bitters, ice and water. You can make this in pretty much any bar so as long as you have the appropriate tools. A mixing glass, a bar spoon, a strainer, a jigger, and ice. All you need is your whiskey. Here we’re going to use rye whiskey which is the more classic way of making the Manhattan but a bourbon is completely acceptable. Two ounces of your rye whiskey. One ounce of sweet vermouth. Two dashes of bitters. Angostura is your classic. You can experiment and substitute however you like. Then you add your ice and stir briskly.

There are a couple of schools of thought as to whether you serve it up which is in a coupe with no ice, or on the rocks in a glass with ice. And the cherry or the twist is the age old debate. Nobody’s right, nobody’s wrong, and much blood will be shed in the interim. I, myself, am a twist man, mostly because I love dancing. If you want to do your own brandy and cherries absolutely, but those little pink neon things, don’t even bother. That’s red number four and [inaudible 00:01:42].

Once you finish stirring your glass you add your strainer, get your conveniently and charmingly frozen glassware, hold the julep strainer with your finger in the glass so that no ice passes back out. Pour. Garnish, here we will use the cherry because that is delicious. Always wash your hands. Serve and smile.

And that’s how you make a Manhattan.

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Napoleon had a very pithy comment about champagne. “In victory, my troops deserve it. In defeat, they require it.” Whiskey’s basically the same thing. Except, take victory and defeat and replace it with today and yesterday.

You need whiskey. Whiskey loves you. Whiskey is meant to be drank. It is meant to be imbibed. It is mean to be the lubricant on an otherwise boring and quotidian lifestyle. Whiskey will be had because you read a good book. Whiskey will be had because you had a bad day. Whiskey is your friend. Whiskey loves you.

How do you drink whiskey? You drink it with your friends when you’re going out. You’re enjoying yourself. You’re having a night on the town. You have a couple of cocktails. Maybe a shot or two. Keep the moment going. Enjoy that brief and fleeting moment that you will always be young. Or remember the times when you thought you would always be young.

Whiskey is for those moments when things are going pretty terrible. Frankly, life’s a [beep] pile on fire. The only thing that’s going to put it out is power a few quick drams.

Whiskey is for 14 hours days. Whiskey is because Sunday moves just the right pace when you’re lubricating it nicely. You drink whiskey because not drinking whiskey is admitting that you’re gluten intolerant. And frankly, you’re better than that.

You drink whiskey because it’s there. Because hollering at the top of your lungs to get a vodka soda. Yeah, you’re not 18 anymore. That’s a good thing. Maybe you are 18. Get off the Internet. Go do things.

How do you drink whiskey? Well, it’s a very simple mechanic, if you thinks about it. Glass. Face. Liver. You drink whiskey because, frankly, a lot of love went into making this right here. And you want to show your appreciation for that fact. Whiskey is love. Love yourself.

That’s how to drink whiskey.

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Reading the label on a bottle of scotch is actually pretty easy. All you have to do is look on there and it will tell you a few things to look out for, straight off the bat. You know, whether it’s blended or single malt and then how long it’s been in barrels.

Generally any scotch will take the time to put an age statement on the bottle. You know, 14 years and then matured in rum casts. You know, you can get a kind of an idea of what you’re going to expect from the whiskey before you even try it.

A lot of scotch is matured in used bourbon barrels because, legally, you can’t reuse bourbon barrels after their first use. So a lot of Scots will buy up used bourbon barrels from the Americans and use that to age their whiskeys. In the past they were done in port and sherry casts. You know, which has led to an evolution of flavoring in your scotch whiskeys over the years.

So, you know, whether it’s single or blended malts. How many years it’s been barrel aged and what kind of barrel it’s aged in are the major things you’re looking for when you’re reading a scotch label.

So when you see blended you know that the different malts that went into your whiskey are going to be the primary factor in how it tastes. And blended scotchs, you know, they tend to taste distinct, depending on the blender. Whereas, you know, individual single malts are going to taste more like the Terrawa, like the character of the surrounding countryside and the method of production.

Some producers are taking new and interesting tacts in terms of how they’re ensuring that their whiskeys, after being in bourbon barrels they go into sherry barrels. They go into old, used French wine barrels or Caribbean rum casts. You’ll get different flavor notes from each of them and you’ll get a little bit of the hint of the liquor that was in there before. Whereas, you know, lighter and easier blended, they’re put together for a different reason. To have different taste profile.

So that’s quick and dirty run down of what you need to know when you’re reading a scotch label.

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Jim Beam is the largest bourbon producer in America, and consequently the world. They’re one of the four major distilleries. But they actually make a lot of products besides the classic white label or the yellow label rye that you might not know. There are few of them that are smaller batch. It’s been in the hands of one family since the 19th century, continually owned and operated, except during prohibition. They make a wide variety of interesting products, of varying quality and varying price points. It’s how I started a lot of bourbon, honestly, besides, you know, Maker’s Mark. We used to go through a handle in college, call it a night. And that’s a quick survey of Jim Beam.

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Whiskey soda is a classic, wonderful thing. Seven and seven is one the first things I ordered when I was 14. Tasted like, well, tasted awful but it’s one of those things you get used to. Like anything good in life, it takes time, patience, perseverance.

It’s basically as easy as it sounds. We’ll leave out the part about lying awake at night, thinking you have a fever and you’re going to die. Whiskey and soda is a wonderful combination. Here we’ve got Clontarf Whiskey. It’s a nice Irish blend, takes the soda very nicely. Just a couple of ounces, if you don’t have a speed pourer, you know, just wash your hand, in case. You don’t want to over pour. Some soda water. If you have a mixing spoon handy, I like to get in there and just give it a little spin around. Make sure you get it thoroughly mixed. Garnish with lemon, because the softer citrus of lemon is much better than lime when you’re mixing with whiskey. It looks beautiful, huh? Yes it is.

And that’s how mix whiskey and soda.

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Tennessee whiskey, like Jack Daniels or George Dickle, is whiskey that’s made in Tennessee from a process that’s similar to bourbon, but not quite. You’ll see sometimes “sour mash” on the label, that’s part of the production process where they’ll reuse part of a given mash, which is when you put all your grains together and you get them good and hot and they start to ferment. So by reusing some of it, much like sourdough, hence the name sour mash, you get a consistent taste from batch to batch, which is one of the reasons that these liquors taste so distinctive. Another thing you’ll see in Tennessee whiskey, besides the fact that it needs to be made in Tennessee, is that it’ll be charcoal filtered which gives you a little more consistent flavor and it definitely gets a little softer. You taste the sort of tang of the sourness but no so much the heat of the alcohol. Tennessee whiskey is, with bourbon and rye, one of the other great American whiskeys. And that’s a quick rundown of Tennessee whiskey.