The Vesper Martini...classic!

Well, hello again. It's Friday at 4 o'clock Pacific time, which means it's drinking time. I don't know about you guys, but I had a craptacular week, so I'm actually pretty excited to be making the Vesper for you guys today, Mostly because it's one of the booziest drinks in my repertoire, and one of the best. So if I was not doing this, I probably having a Vesper anyhow. Glad you could make it back. Well, I hope you can follow along. We won't spend a lot of time going over the tools and stuff like we did last week, because you guys already know that stuff, but I was gonna

spend a little bit of time talking about martinis in general and gins. I know a lot of you don't like gin. I used to hate gin up until probably about two years ago, I used to equate gin to drinking a Christmas tree, really bad. The thing about it was, as I was drinking bad gin, right, it wasn't, it, gin is bad, but bad gins are horrible. So most you probably know this, but all gins start out as vodkas, right? I mean, all vodka, gin, if you go to vodka distillery, especially small

one, chances are they're gonna be making Gin, and all gin really is is vodka infused with botanicals. Most of the time you get a very strong juniper botanical, those are, some people like that, I don't really enjoy that that much, but there are some really really good gins out there, and since I started drinking good gins, I started changing my martinis from vodka to gin martinis, and boy they are, they're amazing. The cool thing about gins, you can now start to get them in all kinds of different flavors, and I don't mean flavors like strawberry and vanilla and all that weird crap that vodkas are, I mean interesting botanical

flavors, right? There's juniper, the traditional stuff, you'll get elderberry, which is super good, one of my favorites actually, I can only find in Europe, I do a lot of traveling, when I go to Europe I've been coming back through Reykjavik in Iceland just to pick up this gin right here, if you can find this in the States, get it for yourself, it is amazing. It almost doesn't taste like a gin, the botanicals are awesome, I think you'll really really enjoy. So that's gin. When we start talking about martinis, you start talking about dry martinis, and what is a driver martini. Well, a typical martini recipe calls for about two, two and a half ounces of gin or vodka and about a half an ounce of vermouth.

A dry martini is made with, a lot of people call them the silver clear vermouth, but it's just a dry vermouth, right, and I use the old martini right vermouth, right, nothing special there. It's just a Rosé vermouth extra dry, makes a good dry martini. You hear a lot of talk about a dirty martini. If you take that same recipe and add some olive brine to that, gives you your dirty martini. Having said that, about the whole adding olive brine to a martini, not my thing, but I will say when my best friends, Brian Weber, actually stuffs his own

olives, and they're amazing, he takes green olives and stuff some with blue cheese, and they're divine. I go to Trader Joe's and I get these, these are super yummy, if you want an olive in your martini, these truffle cheese stuffed olives, and it sounds nasty at first, but trust me, once you get a good martini behind you and you put the olive in there, it really enhances it. I don't think I would go as far as to put a half an ounce of olive brine in there, seems a little bit too much, but the olive does make it nice, it adds a little bit of salt to it, it's, it's super tasty, a lot of you, so this particular martini recipe doesn't call for, from with it all which is unusual, it calls for an aperitif.

And I recommend Lillet Blanc, but I also told you guys you could use this Cocchi Americano, these two different kinds, I think you'll find, so they're really good by, they're there themselves, you can just buy the stuff and drink it, makes a really good opportunity, tipping, they're kind of boozy, she has to watch out a little bit. In fact, I think we should taste testing now, let's figure out what the difference is. So the first one I'm going to try is this Cocchi Americano. Okay, well that's good, that's some good stuff.

So what you'll find with this, well you find it's very sweet with just a little bit of spice, super good. And now we'll go for the Lillet Blanc, which is one that I typically use in my best burst. Cheers. Oh dude, that's good. So this is kind of much cleaner taste, it's not as sweet as the Americano here, but it's, you know, it does taste more wine like, so if you like Wine, you may write white wine in.

particular, you may like the Lillet Blanc a little bit more. I don't really like wine that much. This is super good, it's got some spice to it that I like it, it's kind of reminds me a little bit of rye, but don't get me wrong, it doesn't taste like a rye at all, but it's super yummy. As far as gins, I kind of told you about this guy, we're gonna be using a dry gin tonight. The Vesper Martini needs that dry gin. I will say, I buy this stuff by the half gallon, Hadley and Sons, I get a total of wine, this is one of the nicest, just really good gins that I've found. It's inexpensive, I think I get that whole half gallon for maybe $30, and it's really good. It's a great gin for sipping, it's a great gin for making martinis out, or not mighty nice, but actually a martinis out of great for, I can't

remember the name the drink, maybe we'll make the drink I can't think of, next week, which is a generic ago, but super good for those as well. It's kind of my house gin, you know, I told you about my house last week, this Hadley and Sons kind of my house gin, and really really liked it. So, you know, we've talked about kind of gins in general. By the way, when you make a martini, everything I told you about, about the gins, you know, two and a half Parts of j into about a half a part of. vermouth, flip it in, just add vodka for vodka martini.

The Vesper, super interesting, and the first time I heard about the Vesper I thought it sounded really nasty because it combines gin in vodka in one martini, and the aperitif, it's 100 percent solid booze. There is nothing in it that is not alcoholic, which is another reason why I like this particular drink. If you want to, like, start the weekend, great, this is one of the best drinks you can get. So we have our the Lillet Blanc, okay, we have our Beefeaters, okay, we've got our vodka, and I'm using Tito's, got a shaker, and like I said, I'm lazy, I like the shaker with the strainer on top so I don't have to use my own strainer, and I've got my lemon.

Okay, I've got a peeler and I've also got a knife. What we'll do with the peelers, we're going to actually peel the, the zest off here, we're going to kind of what they call express, or get the essence out of the peel. Sometimes I do that, other times I actually just like to take a slice of the lemon, kind of depends on how much of the lemon flavor you like with it. Let's go ahead and make this bad boy, so I got, put your ice, oh hey, martini glass has to have one of these.

Now, these, check that out, man. So those of you that know my wife Molly, I love her to death, she's a klutz, she breaks stuff, so around my house we don't get nice things. This guy, look, it's like clear, super clear, hard kind of bendy plastic that she can take outside in the summer and drop these things they don't break the freaking awesome. So if you have a klutz in the house, these are awesome, I got them on Amazon, and you can pay me, and I can try to find them and getting free, but they're amazing, they will not break, this super clear, you can throw in the dishwasher, they're awesome.

So let's go ahead and make this bad boy, the first thing we're gonna do, we're gonna shake her up with ice, load that bad boy up, and I really have it, you can't, I mean, I've got that thing loaded with ice, and the reason why is when we shake this thing, the way I make my drinks is I get them to the point where they almost start, you'll, you'll start to see some ice crystals from the water form on there. I like them super super cold. So let's start measuring, remember the first, we're going to do is the gin, Beefeaters gin, okay, we're gonna take three parts of dry gin, so this is my Japanese jigger, so there's two ounces on one side and an ounce on the other, oh

boy. Oh daddy likey, so three parts of gin, we're going to take the Tito's, or whatever vodka, we're going to take one part vodka, and right about now a lot of Martini. Pierce like it, oh my god, Steve. what are you doing? Okay, I'm going to take a half a part of the Lillet Blanc, okay, got that all on a shaker. I'm gonna shake this super vigorously, the only time that I do not shake the hell out of a drink is if I have something Leafy in here, like basil or mint or time.

or something like that, and the reason why I don't is you need to be careful, because those types of kind of leafy things, if you break the leaf in the drink, the chloroform, chlorophyll, chlorophyll in there comes out and it kind of sours to drink a little bit, I think you'll Find, okay, now if you can see that, see this, China, see that, you see the ice crystals kind of falling on the outside.

This thing is done, I'm gonna pour this bad boy into my martini glass, can't see, it's kind of dark and cloudy. There, it's because part of the drink, the water part of the drink, is a little bit frozen. That's the way I like him, I like those ice crystals a little bit. Okay, so there's the boozy part. Okay, now we're going to get the, the essence of the lemon. Nice, I'm just going to take this.

I'm going to take a big ol' part of peel off of here, okay, and to get the essence that you just kind of squeeze it, you're not going to probably be able to see this if it's so tiny, but you kind of twist it in there and it sprays. Now the other way to do this that I like to do, cuz I actually do like the lemon flavor in here, is I will take a little chunk of lemon, okay, see that, just a little chunk, and I will, like we did last week with the old fashioned, I'll rim the glass with it, okay, squeeze a little bit, put that bad boy down in there.

Now we're talking four and a half shots of booze right here, four shots of actual booze and a half a shot of aperitif. Holy crap balls, that is amazing, right? I love it. I've never tried this, for the people who love vodka and don't like gin, I've never tried this with the reverse recipe, it would really change the flavor profile. I think you can experiment a little bit.

Try the America, the Cocchi Americano. for a little bit sweeter drink. You may want to try a little bit more the Lillet Blanc and a half a part, because this is, it's it's a fairly dry drink, but dude, oh my goodness, that makes it all worth it on a Friday. So Vesper Martini, super easy to do, super easy to make, really three parts of dry gin. I use Beefeaters, I hate Gordon's, but Tanqueray, there's a bunch of other kind of London style English dry gins.

Take the one that you like, take a good vodka that you like, I had Tito's on hand. There's actually a vodka called Skyy Blue which is super inexpensive, I buy it by the half gallon to mix with stuff at Total Wine, that's typically what I use, and then play around with the Lillet Blanc and in the Cocchi Americano, probably any aperitif, any light aperitif will work, that's a little sweeter. I think, you know, with those ingredients you can kind of play around, and of course you got the lemon and kind of play around, figure out what you like, and there's, you know, there's room to experiment here, but this is, probably this is by a longshot my favorite martini that I make.

Super easy to make, super boozy, like I said, usually I make one of these and split it between two people, so we'll have, if I make three or four of these, really I'm drinking two and a half, which is still a lot, but anyway, I hope you guys had fun. We'll do this again next Friday, I'm thinking. I'll probably go to one or two directions, I may go Manhattans, and we may do like a couple different kind of Manhattans. Like I make what they call a perfect Manhattan. I also make a really super yummy chocolate Manhattan, which sounds nasty

but is actually pretty darn tasty, and then there's a variant that I do which is replaces of vermouth with some peach bourbon, which actually is super tasty, so I may go that route, or maybe do like a twofer where we make two different smaller drinks, like maybe a revolver and a suffering bastard or something like that, so you can get two different tastes of two different things, but anyway that's maybe what we got on tap for next week, and until next week, cheers.

If you had a bad week like me, this makes everything better, guys. I will see you all next week and hope you learn something, cheers guys.