Steve's Bespoke

Stop, so blinded by the light, love that. Song, interesting week, the week that was. Top a couple things that are kind of portending the ends of the earth as we know it, in 2020 the country can't figure out how to open up. Amidst a pandemic, which seems odd at best, you've got states that have a lot of data that are not opening up, states that have no data, they're like a weird party on everything in between.

Interesting, you know, the interesting thing, huh, Axl Rose Steve Venusian feud, that is made-for-TV [bleep] right there, that is awesome. But like that's just another sign that 2020 is the end of the world as we know it. And in a little-known kata cell today, published in some, in a scientific journal in China, and I wish I should have wrote the name, that adds a new meaning to the term safe sex, because they're actually fining that 16% of semen, or 60% of men that have had, or have covered 19, have detectable amounts of Covid 19 in their semen.

Another interesting fact, another way the disease can spread, so have super super safe sex out there, I guess, if you're planning on doing that kind of thing. Just a super interesting week for me, as you can tell, I'm kind of in a very odd mood today. It's like 80 degrees in Seattle, which is amazing, so as soon as I'm done with this, I'm gonna go out in the back deck, in the back for tea out there, and I'm gonna really get my drink on, the drink this week is super interesting, so let's talk about the bespoke. Okay, fun facts, like what is a little bespoke, so the bespoke is actually a cocktail that's totally made up.

Don't me know. When you go into a bar and you have the bartender make you a drink, right, and you say hey look, I mean this, it like that, that's a bespoke drink, right, you're talking to the bartender, you're trying to get something else from him, that's kind of out of the ordinary, might say oh, bespoke cocktails and the people that make him have been around forever, but right around the millennium in New York City, the bar scene was totally just hammered with society of bespoke cocktails, all these custom cocktails because instead of ordering off the menu was of course the cool and trendy theme to get something custom from a bartender.

And so it separated the good bartenders from the crappy ones, because the good ones could listen to what you're saying and make something really interesting for you, and the bad ones just suck and would give you like a gin and tonic, right, you know, so it was kind of encouraged to go in these bars and bartenders would say, you know, well what do you want, you want something like spirit forward, you want something little bit more refreshing, do you want it smoky, do you want a tart, do want a herb, will do one spicy, you know, do you like whisky, vodka, rum, like what's kind Of your preference, there are, you Scorpio or Sagittarius or a Leo, and they would take this information and they'd make these bespoke cocktails, right, um, with

essentially little to go on other than about 10 seconds of interaction with their patron, right, bartenders were whipping up these bartenders choice cocktails left right and center, specifically for their patrons tastes, right, today unfortunately I think the idea of a bespoke cocktail is more of a myth, because it seems they're all being monetized, like if a bartender figures out something good to make, it becomes on the menu, and then every TGIF freakin Fridays hazard, right, but I'm going to make you mine, because this, this is mine, the bespoke cocktail. So you may be asking yourself, well Steve, if a bespoke cocktail really is about the

bartender talking to you and figuring out what you like, how did you come up with this, and I can only say I talk to myself a lot, and that's how I came up with the bespoke, because I've talked to Myself about, what do I lie? Okay, right. so what do I like, I love bourbon, right, I love gimlets, we went over gimlets the other week, I hate wine, having said that, many of my friends love wine, so I'm thinking to myself, okay what can I make that satisfies all of those things, and it kind of became a lovechild between a drunk whiskey and a gimlet, and they got together and they had this love child, and the child grew up and became really sophisticated, and screwed their parents, and just started drinking wine, right, that's kind of with this where this came from, it surprised the heck out of me,

then I liked it so much, this is one of Molly's favorite drinks now, I've only Been making this for maybe two weeks, maybe three weeks, not that long, so this is a new drink in my repertoire, but I like it and I want to share with you guys, and it's super easy to make. The nice thing about the Bespoke, does a couple things are really cool about it. One, it's super easy to make. You should have everything around your house to make this already, right, comparative or relative to the drinks we've been making, this one's super easy, so that's one thing, right. The other is that it adds a flavor that we haven't had before, these wines, and that's really going to be interesting and I think you'll like it, But the third thing, that the cool thing.

is this is the drink where I figured out how to make a really good float, and a float is a layered drink, okay, and so when I get to that part I'm going to kind of bring the phone down, I'm going to show you how to do stuff, but let's talk about the ingredients, right, simple syrup, lemon juice, we've got stuff right. For the bourbon, I mean, you use Eagle Rare, I really like this stuff, it's probably, like, I think we talked about this a few weeks ago, this always comes in as one of the top five bourbons on there, like 30, 35 bucks, if you can find a bottle, of grab it, because it's really amazing. The one I'm gonna use, I'm not a wine person, well I picked this out for me, it's the Great America, it's by the great American wine company or something like that, it's a red blend, I kind of like a more, like if I'm gonna

drink wine, it's got to be fruity, because I have no taste in wine at all, so that's the, the red wine we're going to be using, but the, the wine and the bourbon is really a dealer's choice, so super simple, bourbon, lemon juice, simple syrup, we're going to make this kind of like a bourbon gimlet, we're going to use the shaker to do that, then we're going to pour that out over there, over rocks and a highball glass, and we're going to then make a float in this, okay, one of these I told you to get was a spoon. If you have a bar spoon, here's a bar spoon, we're going to use this to make the float. If you have a regular spoon, that's fine too, you might find it, might be a little big.

We're going to use a spoon to kind of diffuse the wine when you pour it in there, so you kind of see how the spoon is a lot smaller than glass, because it's going to pour over that, that the back of the spoon, to get in there to make that nice flow, so that's kind of the spoon you're gonna want, so let's get going. Shaker nice cold, you guys know that, especially on a day like today, I don't know where you guys are.

Man, it is gorgeous here, I showed you, it's nice, let's start with all the kind of non-essential stuff. I've got lazy today and I did not squeeze fresh lemon juice, even though I've kind of whole bag of lemons, I'm just grabbing this, so there you go. Normally I would squeeze some fresh lemon juice in my, you know, crappy little squeezer, but this week I'm just going lame, so we're going to take a half an ounce of lemon juice, okay, that's the first thing, very careful, okay, you got a half ounce of lemon juice, we're going to pour that in there.

Okay, now we're gonna grab our simple syrup, and this is just regular old simple syrup, so we've used like Demerara, there's a Muscovado sugar that I found, I think we may make it to Kela drink with that later on because I find it's really good, there's a bar stuff we used before, but this is just regular old simple syrup, and we're going to use anywhere between about a half an ounce and three-quarters of an ounce of this stuff. I'm gonna go closer to 3/4 of an ounce of this, well, might have a little bit much there, but that's okay because I'll pour more perfect than I probably should.

So we've got the half an ounce of lemon, about three quarters of an ounce of simple syrup, I'm gonna add two ounces because remember, we don't make drinks with less than two ounces of booze, on a pour, 2 ounces of my Eagle Rare in here, maybe just a skosh more, just any tiny bit more, there we go, okay, now here, this is kind of the gimlet part of the drink, this is the easy part, right, so we're just putting stuff in a shaker.

Okay, nice and cold, see that, okay, usually we stop there and pour it in the glass, in this case we're gonna get it super cold so the float actually hold a little bit better, so we're gonna put more ice into there, okay, now let's bring you downtown a little bit so you can see what's going on with this, okay, there we go, perfect. Okay, we're gonna pour this drink in here, okay, I got a little too much ice in there probably, so I'm gonna drink a little bit of this off, mmm, oh boy, a little more, just a tad more, mm-hmm.

I mean that by itself is actually pretty good, so what we're gonna do is we're gonna take an ounce to an ounce and a half of the red. Okay, now this is work, it gets maybe a little tricky, I pour that into my jigger because I find it's a lot easier to control this and pour this over the spoon, so I'm gonna take an ounce and a half a red, pour it in there and now I've got, we've got a really really really cold drink. Take your bar spoon in the back of the bar spoon face up, you're gonna pour it over slowly, look at that, bad boy.

Look at that, perfectly layered, look at that, that is a beautiful looking drink, right? It's awesome, it looks sweet, I mean just from aesthetic purposes only, like this is something to make for your friends, it's impressive. Now it's important, like I said, you pour that red wine in slowly because that will give you that nice layered effect, and the other thing is if it's drink is super cold, that's why we use ice in here, it'll actually kind of make the, the cold part little denser, so make the float easier for you. Okay, now we're gonna drink this bad boy, okay so there's a float, that's the bespoke. Now I think it's important for this since it's a float, you want to take a really nice big gulp, it's kind of like a Guinness, right, you got a big head of, from against, you want take a big gulp cuz you want to get the head, you want to get the beer, you wanting everything with this. For your first drink, take a big old gulp so you get the red wine and you get the booze.

Ah, that's good. Like I said, I'm not, I'm not a fan of red wine, but um, together with the sort of bourbon sweet, you've got the simple syrup which is sweet, you've got the lemon juice which is tart, and you've got the red wine which um, I don't consider sweet, like red wine, it's got a, a super weird taste to me, so I'm not a big red wine fan, um, but it works super well and I like it a lot, so that's the bespoke, super easy, remember we started out with kind of like a bourbon gimlet.

To answer, the bourbon, 3/4 of an ounce, simple syrup, 1/2 ounce of lemon juice, shakers, shake it up, pour that in a highball glass over ice, think about it, an ounce and a half of red wine for your float, pour it over a spoon so it goes in slowly so you get that nice float, take a nice big drink. Oh dude, this bad boy is going down. I know about you guys, but I think the pandemic has made me a better drinker, most most definitely, definitely make me like experiment on the old alcohol side of things, which is good maybe for you guys, better for me, so I've been thinking that next week, what we're gonna do for next week, and I think I have an idea for what we might do.

There's some drinks tonight that I'm going to kind of experiment with, um, my niece's boyfriend Clayton turned me on to something called the Aviation, super good, gingery. I'm working on a variant of an aviation where I'm gonna take that aviation and I'm gonna marry it with a Vesper martini, and I'm gonna get a bastard love child, I'm gonna see how that works out tonight, so that we're gonna make one of those at some point, we're gonna make a Sazerac at at some point which has absinthe in it, that will be fun, but I think next week we may go with breakfast drinks, and I don't mean, we're not talking about Bloody Mary's, because I freaking hate tomato juice, we're not going to do that, we're not going to do mimosa, we're not going to simple stuff like that, well we'll do some actual drinks.

Now I drink them in the morning, you could drink them whenever, but they're like kind of brunch-y type drinks, and one in particular is a good hangover cure, I think, although I think most of us are old enough now, or we really don't get hangovers anymore. Anyhow, that's a bespoke, super simple, it's like bourbon met a gimlet in a bar, got hammered and had a really sophisticated wine loving child, it's super tasty, I like it, the float looks really cool, it's a drink you can make to impress your friends, and it's easy, like all this stuff you should have lying around the house, right, if you don't have a bourbon in your house you're a communist, okay.

And the story, and I know that all of you have red wine because I'm positive all of your wine drinkers, or your wives, or wine drinkers or your husbands are wine drinkers, so you got red wine, and come on, simple syrup, we talked about that, it's just granulated sugar, equal parts sugar and water, boil it, it's done. Lemon juice, if your lazy ass like me you can buy some, right, but typically I juice freshly squeezed lemon, I think it's way better In fact, what I've done this entire time, say for today, is used to freshly squeezed stuff, because it just tastes better, right, and it's not quite as sugary as this stuff that you buy in store. Anyhow, that's a bespoke. Next week Mabel goes breakfast drinks, at some point we're going to try this Vesper variant that I'm working on tonight, and we'll probably also do the aviation, because I think it's a damn fine drink, and there's variants you can make of that, so that's probably where we're going. So, interesting week, I want to see this.

Steve Venusian Axl Axl Rose, for you go a little bit further, I'd like to get some a mileage out of that. I'm open for a pay-per-view, I think that would be badass. I think we could all pitch in for something that, like that, I think wow, I'm starting to slur that. It's kind of a good drink, my friends always drink on an empty stomach, by the way. It's probably the best way to do these things anyway. I will catch you guys next week, hope you had fun, hope you learned something, the drink just looks cool and it tastes really good.

So have fun, make it for your friends, safe sex, remember, 60% and all that stuff. So have a good week, guys, and I will see you same time, same bat channel, next week. Cheers.