The Perfect Manhattan

Hello everybody, it's Friday again, happy good Easter Friday, like some of you out there. I started good Easter early, or Good Friday early this year, started my happy hours a little bit earlier today to catch up with some friends over in Europe. So I'm feeling great. The interesting thing is that from lessons two weeks ago about the old fashioned, that's where has drinking today. Today we're going to make you perfect Manhattan. Now the perfect Manhattan is actually a type of Manhattan, although I think it is the perfect Manhattan.

Manhattan's are super easy to make, kind of, like, old fashions. In fact, Manhattan's may be even easier to make. At the end of the day, all of Manhattan is is two parts whiskey, one part of sweet vermouth, some bitters, and usually a cherry or something like that, but even that's not necessary. Interesting fact about Manhattan's is that there is no consensus on whether Manhattan be made with rye or bourbon, either way.

In fact I make my Manhattans with both, depending on the mood I'm in. If I want something a little bit spicier, I'll use rye. If I want something a little bit sweeter I will use bourbon. Typically, Manhattan's, it's really whichever whiskey you want. I mean, all ryes are whiskeys, all bourbons are whiskeys, not all whiskeys are rye or bourbons, right? But the first actual known written recipe for a Manhattan was in a book called the bartender's guide, written by

Jerry Thomas in 1887, and in that recipe Jerry actually uses right so the first written recipe for Manhattan actually used rye whiskey, but you can get them with either. In fact if you go out to a bar, they'll usually ask you like, hey, look, what kind of whiskey do you want, either way it's fine. Like I said, rye a little spice here, bourbons typically a little bit sweeter, a little bit more retail or carnal to pay down the bourbon, but that's fine. So I'm going to do as a disclaimer at the top of this particular session, one, I've been drinking since one o'clock so forgive me if I slur more than normal or if my instructions are a little bit off, to one of my dearest friends Brian Weber, who loves a Manhattan just as much as I do.

He and I have a religious debate around how to make a Manhattan. Most people stir Manhattan, I like to shake my Manhattan. As a general rule of thumb, for the shaking versus stirring thing, shaking is really good if you have fruits or juices or things like that, because shaking the drink actually aerates what's in there a little bit more. The flipside of that, and the reason why some people think it's heresy to shake a Manhattan, is that it could dilute the Manhattan, right? Because you're shaking it in ice, you're spilling more water into the Manhattan, essentially, so you're diluting it, and possibly a potential a little bit more. I have found that unless I'm making a

Manhattan that's this big, it's never made a difference to me, right, but it could make a difference, right? So everything I talk about, shaken, stirred, doesn't matter, dealer's choice, right? Same with the whiskey, whiskey dealer's choice, like I said, rye, bourbon, either way. like I said, normal Manhattan, to parts of whiskey, one part sweet vermouth, and some bitters, that's about it, right? The perfect Manhattan's a little bit different, okay so, Brian chagrin, I'm

going to shake mine, but even if I didn't, you want a big glass or a big tumbler even if you're going to stir your Manhattan, because what you'll do is heels ice, you'll use something like this to put ice in there, you'll stir it and then you want to strain that out. Okay, you typically don't serve Manhattan's over ice, I guess you could, but I've never seen one served over ice, right? We've got a glass for that. So perfect Manhattan, get my shaker ready. So Brian, if you're watching this, suck it. So the first thing I'm going to do is I'm gonna make this with rye, because I haven't had a rye Manhattan for a while, to be quite honest. And I, I mean, you just, this Basil Hayden's two by two rye, if you have not had this, it's really good, it's a super good rye, super clean, nice and spicy.

Oh man, in fact I'm gonna take a little taste of it right now. In just, in general, if you've never had the alcohol you're putting into a drink, you should always try it first. You'll find some real losers out there that you'll probably never want to do, so here's this, okay Basil Hayden two by two, right? Hmm, oh, that is really good, nice spicy rye, has a very nice tail to it, has just a little bit of sweetness, almost like a vanilla.

It's a very tasty rye. So, shaker, ice. Remember, Manhattan, ever, in fact, every drink I make has at least two ounces of Booze it right, Japanese shaker, 2 ounce, 1 ounce, let's go, 2 ounces of rye, there we go. Now, a perfect Manhattan, like I said, most Manhattan's are two ounces and whiskey and an ounce of sweet vermouth. If you have a really good bourbon or a really good rye, typically I will back off on the vermouth a little bit and not use a whole ounce, but with a perfect Manhattan you're actually gonna use a half an ounce of sweet vermouth and a half an ounce of dry vermouth.

So I'm not going to quite use a half ounce of either one. He's probably about, yeah, a little bit, maybe about a third of an ounce of each. Okay, so that's the sweet vermouth, here's a dry vermouth, same thing, like I said, about a half an ounce, but I'm using a little bit more, like a third round, because I want to taste the rye a little bit more. Okay, so we've got it removed in there, now, in the perfect, I'm going to use some regular bitters, use two or

three shakes of that, and I'm just going to use a little bit of orange bitters in there too. Okay, so just right shaker, take a look at the side, you can kind of see how it's, that's good, for this bad boy in

here, another reason why some people like stirred rather than shaken drink, so you see it's actually shaken up, if I stir the drink, you're going to see that kind of gold and caramel color more prevalent, it's gonna look more like the actual bourbon than the stuff all mixed up. Now having said that, this is going to actually, you know, the reason why I like shake drinks, same with the martini, I like, if you can't really see it, but there's some super, like, ice crystals on the top of that bad boy, that's the way I like my shaking drinks, totally up to you, but it'll, it'll turn into a chronic

boxer, and then I put a nice, nice sweet cherry in that bad boy. Steve acara, one of my buddies said shame on me for not using Luxardo cherries, and he's exactly right, those cherries are amazing, if you want to spend like 20 bucks for the whole deal of cherries, they are amazing, but that's the perfect Manhattan. Okay, two ounces of rye in this case, or a bourbon, either way, half an ounce of sweet vermouth, 12 ounce of dry vermouth, some bitters, just a little bit of orange bitters, shaken with the cherry, oh man, that is friday

and a glass right there, that is heaven Okay, so I told you we're gonna say about four different variants for a Manhattan, and we are, I don't think I can drink through all four of them, cuz I've been drinking for the last three hours, so that's probably not a good idea, although some of you may argue that, probably not gonna happen so but I'm gonna make at least one other with these perfect Manhattan's, so that's the base, nice thing about Manhattan's, are like old fashions, once you have the base down you can add a lot of variants, you can play with, right, so these are things that I tend to do, I make a peach Manhattan which is super yummy.

Instead of using four muth, I use this peach whiskey, I use birddog peach whiskeys, one of those things, and a lot of flavored whiskeys, you, you find something that you like and you stick with it. There are a lot of really craptacular flavored whiskeys out there that suck, the big schwa stoker peach, I found really runs again, but this bird dog peach is super good, so to make a peach Manhattan, all you do is you replace a vermouth with the peach whiskey, so two ounces of whiskey, one ounce of peach whiskey, the bitters, shaky-shaky or stir, and you're off to the races.

Another way to drink these, besides like that, is with a port, oddly enough, so I always get like I actually enjoy port, hate wine, love port, oddly enough, but a lot of people have port around the house, like they've got a bottle of port and they drink like a little bit of it and they're like, oh, they don't like it, but they just have it laying around forever, right, it's one of those kind of weird boozes that you just

you buy to mix with something and just sits around the house, right. If you actually take the same recipe for a perfect Manhattan, right, two ounces of whiskey, 12 ounce of dry vermouth, half ounce of sweet vermouth, or sorry, forget the 4 meters, 2 ounces of whiskey, and instead of using the vermouth, use an ounce of port, same thing with the bitters and stuff, it actually turns out pretty amazing, and it adds a nice flavor, and if you're using like a bourbon, which is sweeter, like depending on the port, some ports are super sweet, some ports like a ruby or a Tawny port or a ruby port's, maybe not as sweet like a tiny port, so you can kind of play with the rye or so. The bourbon is a different types of port, and it actually is a great way to use those bottles of port that are hanging around your house for no reason. Okay, hmm, I got

me Joe the last one. So we talked about what just a Manhattan is, we talked about the perfect Manhattan, which is 1/2 ounce of sweet and 1/2 ounce of dry vermouth. We talked about to my variants that I like to make, which is peach, just put peach whiskey in there instead of vermouth, really good port instead of vermouth, actually is really good, well that's a good way to use that pour. I'm gonna make a chocolate Manhattan, which sounds kind of nasty, that was a big fan of fish, so I came up with this, this last Christmas. So but sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas, that's

like my time, like love Christmas, Christmas is my season, right, and I tend to make all kinds of weird [bleep] like drink wise, and so my wife Molly, those of you that met her, she's great, she loves those, you know, those chocolate oranges that you always get at Christmastime, she loves those, so I was trying to figure out is how could I make something like that, like a drink that tasted like that, and actually came up with it and it's this chocolate Manhattan, right. So the recipe's super simple as well, like every Manhattan, right, we're gonna start this one, I'm actually going to use Buffalo transom, use a bourbon for this.

one, it'll be a little bit sweeter. I'm gonna use ounce to an ounce and a Half of Buffalo Trace of bourbon here so ounce I like a little bit more, so got about an ounce and a half there a Bourbon, okay, lemon, use an ounce of chocolate whiskey, again, like all these flavored whiskeys, find something you liked, it's good. I've had chocolate whiskeys, I've had flavored whiskeys like 15 bucks to like, you know, 60 bucks and they all run the gamut. Birddog, like because Birddog is actually good and it's pretty inexpensive, it's about, he's about 18 to 20 bucks for a fifth, right, and the flavor is really good. Like you could actually, if you dug chocolate whiskey by itself, you could just drink this stuff on the rocks. So an ounce and a half of bourbon and ounce, 1 ounce of

chocolate whiskey, okay, and the rest of it's just the same, almost just the same as the perfect Manhattan. I'm gonna take 1/2 ounce of sweet vermouth, I'm gonna do a little bit less than a half ounce, Action, more like 1/3 ounce, but use 1/2 ounce as your guide. I'm gonna do the same thing with the dry, about 1/2 ounce of dry vermouth here, so the base is the perfect Manhattan, ooh, that's good,

use a little bit too much dry vermouth there, but it's okay, it'll be something sweet. Now in the bitters that you want to use, where this is chocolate bitters, okay, this is just Scrappy's bitters, right, I mean Scrappy's bitters is all over the place, they make a chocolate flavor which is amazing. I've got this on, so a couple shakes of that bad boy, I've got this Mexican chocolate bitters which is really spicy, heady chocolate bitters, but if you like that, that is amazing stuff. What am I doing here?

Oh yeah, shaky shaky shaky. I will also say the more ingredients you put into a drink kind of easy reduce to shake, my general rule of thumb is, you know, hell, I don't have a general with them, so forget it. Okay, so now we've got a chocolate Manhattan there, the last thing I want to add is we're gonna add a little orange wedge to this thing, so we're gonna cut a little orange wedge, I use those little cutie oranges cuz it's awesome, one of those bad boys, I'm just gonna squeeze that in there, just rim the edge with a little orange there, pop that bad Boy in there, oh, freaking ain't that's

good, so it tastes like one of those chocolate orange, a lot of things you get at Christmas, it's pretty amazing, man, it almost tastes like one of those, like kind of a Werther, can remember your the candies your grandma had, those Werther's, or whatever, dude, it's like it actually kind of tastes like that. So everything is based off of that perfect Manhattan recipe, right, the nice thing about it is you can kind of mix stuff up, right, so perfect Manhattan, right, two ounces again, two ounces of whiskey, 1/2 ounce of dry vermouth, half ounce of sweet vermouth, some regular bitters, if I just Use, you know, and goose Toro, and a little

bit of orange bitters, just to shake shake that up or stir it either way, put it in your glass with a nice cherry, right, that's, that's the perfect Manhattan, everything we've talked about is a variant on the perfect Manhattan, right, the orange, or sorry, the peach Manhattan, we're just using peach bourbon in the place, I've removed, you can use port in the place of vermouth for the chocolate one, ounce of the one has two, chocolate whiskey, then you use the half ounce of sweet vermouth, half ounce of dry vermouth.

You're gonna want some chocolate bitters in there, shake it up or stir it, and then add the orange wedge and it's freaking amazing, like this is, this is some good stuff. Well, yeah, so I think I already know what we're gonna do next week. Well, I can't really tell you what it is because I don't really have a name for it, but it's a drink that I've been making for about the last month, and everybody that I've made this drink for loves it.

It's freaking amazing. And when I post the ingredients, you're gonna say this, none of this stuff goes together at all, Steve, you're high, maybe. But what do you make it in, this drink, it is amazing, it's, it's probably one of my new favorites, and one of things like I'm gonna need your guys's help with after next week, after all tried it, it's actually naming this drink. I'll tell you story behind the drink next week, but I think, I know it's a more advanced drink, there's four or five different things you're gonna have to get to of two different types of booze, you need a bourbon, some Campari, so if you got those two things, like you're halfway there, you're gonna need some orange juice, you're getting some lemon juice, you're getting some simple syrup and some fresh mint, some fresh mint leaves, the things

freaking amazing, so that's probably what we'll do next week, like I said, I'll post ingredients again, you know, sheltering in place is interesting, it sucks. I think what I figured out today is, you know, we're looking at that spread of covid 19, and my drinking over the same period of time has followed that curve. It's not a good or bad thing, but I posted this thing where some German doctor said that bourbon actually can help combat covid 19, and so god bless that doctor and lyle of science, hmm. So Manhattan's there, awesome, get the base.

recipe down. Super simple, start playing with stuff, the easiest thing to do is start pulling out the vermouth and putting in different things, and I think you're gonna love it. Super easy to drink, super tasty, the, if you like the more sweeter sides of stuff, the peach variant or the chocolate variants is really good, like if you like those chocolate oranges at Christmastime, like you will have this, right, I mean it's, it's amazing, in fact, or if you like tootsie rolls, dude, this is money. Anyway, hope you guys learned something, hope you guys pick some stuff up, hope you guys had some fun, we'll do this next week, we'll try this new drink that I've been making, I'll tell you a story behind the drink, but I think you'll all love it, and it's a more advanced drink, there's, it's kind of special, we have to make it right, there's some things that go into it, right, so come prepared next week, and I'm so happy

you guys, all four of you that showed up, showed up, but I will talk to you all next week. Be safe, be careful, shelter in place, and evidently drink bourbon, cheers guys.