welcome friends welcome back to after dark and today we're going to do a
cocktail called El Presidente and we're gonna do it two ways the first way we're
going to do it is as it was published in 1915 in a cocktail Manuel in Havana we
start it with some orange liqueur we give it two to three drops of Angostura
one bar spoon of grenadine so this is our homemade grenadine put that in an
orange twist goes into the stirring glass two ounces of dolan white and then
it asks for light Cuban rum so I've got a couple of options because I live in
Canada if you live somewhere that Cuban rum isn't available Picardie would work
just fine okay now we stir this with ice
okay dump the ice out of the glass and we pour it in and it says to finish with
a cherry
el Presidente cocktail number two is from 1929 also from a cocktail book
published in Havana and it starts out with a little bit of grenadine and then
1/2 ounce of Jolin and then an ounce and a half of light Cuban rum get some ice
and a stirrer okay so ditch the ice our cocktail glass strain and this one gets
a twist of orange and I'm just gonna run it around the rim just to see if I can
get a little bit of that orange flavor drops in and it also gets a cherry so
and goes the cherry and so there you have two versions of the El Presidente
rum cocktail okay so these cocktails are almost completely different I mean they
both have rum they both have grenadine they both have a cherry and they both
have white vermouth but the proportions are completely different and I'm I'm I
don't know what to think let me try them
hmm sharp very sharp the rum isn't even there the rum is way in the background
most of what I can taste is the Dolan which is because it's most of the
mixture and not very sweet at all at all
completely different cocktail rum for word for mouth way in the background in
both cases there's very little sweet there's nothing in there sweet to sort
of balance out the alcohol and there's no bitter to sort of bring it all
together that's something that I'm really missing from both of these
cocktails is a bitter component I wonder if a couple of dashes of orange bitters
would really sort of knock that out of the park I don't know that the Angostura
is really doing what it needs to do I don't think that it's forward enough I
might add some orange bitters on top of the Angostura just to kind of round it
out I don't know
going back to it though and this site this is something I find
kind of odd if you watch the episode where I did the whiskey cocktail and
then the improved whiskey cocktail which incidentally had 14 years between them
and these also have 14 years between them but the whiskey cocktail and the
improved whiskey cocktail went from simple to complicated and I liked the
simple version this went from complicated to simple and I like the
complicated version I definitely like the complicated version although the
simplified version has got something going for it too but I would not
consider these the same cocktail they're called the same cocktail and
they follow the same pattern and if you look at the recipes from 1915 to 1929
and there's four or five in the middle you can see how they continually
simplified the recipe to make it something easier to make probably at the
bar something that was cheaper to make at the bar so they're the same cocktail
they're from the same family but they're completely different and I think if I
was expecting this one and I got this one I'd be disappointed and if I was
expecting this one and I got this one I would be disappointed completely
different I think you should try them I think you should try these cocktails and
compare them and see what you think and also play with the rums the rum is going
to give you a completely different flavor especially in this one the newer
one where rum is right at the front so I think with this one all I did was
confuse everybody thanks for stopping by hope to see you again soon
you