Hello and welcome to Behind the Bar with me Cara Devine.
If you saw last week's episode you now know all about the bitter delights of Amari.
If you haven't seen that yet there is a link below,
and now it's about time I showed you how useful these can be in cocktails.
Amari can be substituted in for easy twists on classics or used in modern
drinks for an interesting pop of flavor, and make sure you stay tuned until the
end because I'll be showing you one of the very first original cocktails I ever came
up with. It got me a job when I arrived here in Melbourne and I've never actually named it.
So the best suggestion in the comments will be what it's known as forevermore.
By the way, we will release longer versions of all the cocktails we're making here
and in those episodes I'll go into the history and products and ingredients in
a little bit more detail and my favorite part do some tasting and flavor notes at the end.
The White Negroni seemed like a good place to start because it's one of my favorite
spring or summer aperitif drinks. A bright light and herbal take on
the classic Negroni that still packs a punch and scratches that bittersweet itch.
So this one has a grapefruit twist and I would do lemon over orange if you don't have a grapefruit,
but it is just one of those you know little things which does kind of pull
it all together. Obviously completely up to yourself, you can trim it down,
because we're serving it on a block I'm just going to leave it nice and chunky
and then into our mixing glass here we're going to go 20 mils of Suze.
And then 40 ml of gin.
And 30 mils of Lillet blanc.
Now we're just going to fill our mixing glass up with ice give it a little stir.
I haven't had one of these in ages. They're so good.
So we're gonna do this one over a nice big block of ice
then use your julep strainer to hold the ice back and just pour it on in.
Just give your twist a nice fold over the top of the drink, then you can give it a little rim
around the glass and then you can just sit it in there. But it does look really nice with the kind
of peachy orange and the yellow there as well. White Negroni.
Now it's time to move over to the dark side from this sunny aperitif to an inky digestif.
White Negroni, Black Manhattan, you can probably see a theme here. Switching different Amari into
classic cocktails is a really easy way to start playing around with flavors and make sure that
you don't get bored of your favorite drinks. Averna is actually fairly sweet with really
juicy citrus notes and so it substitutes in nicely for the vermouth in a classic Manhattan
to create a close to perfect night cap. First we're gonna get our garnish ready. So just
gonna take a little coin, it really doesn't have to be very big, off the side of that and then just
make sure that you have your cherries to hand. And then we're going to go in with a dash each
of our bitters, so one dash of orange bitters, one dash of Angostura Bitters.
20 ml of Averna and then 60 mils of whichever American whiskey you're planning on using.
Before we fill with ice, a quick reminder that you can find this and all of the
cocktails we've ever made at withCaraDevine.com There are even downloadable recipes and lots of
pretty pictures to get you salivating. You can also sign up for our newsletter
there which will let you know about all things behind the bar including new merch,
yes, if it's not here already it's on the way very soon so we're pretty excited about that.
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All of those links are below so make sure that you check them out
but for now we've got a drink to chill so I better get some ice in this glass.
Delicious.
Now we're just gonna hold your julep strainer back. This is usually served up same as a
Manhattan. You can absolutely serve it on the rocks if you prefer, and it's usually in a coupe
glass but I just quite like this little fat boy whiskey glass. We're gonna go for that today.
Give your lemon a quick little fold over the top.
And that can get chucked away and then we're just gonna pop a little cherry in the bottom.
Nice little surprise for you to find at the end of your drink when it's thoroughly soaked through.
The Black Manhattan.
As much as it's easy to think of Amari as bit players
they can absolutely be the main act as well.
The rum may come first in the name but this sour is all about the Montenegro.
On the more approachable end of the amaro category it has converted many a drinker
to the bitter side. In a classic sour it's fresh and approachable with the rum
just providing a slightly boozier backbone to the citrus and spice of the Montenegro.
So first we're going to get our egg white ready just give this a little tap
and filter out your yolk. Now I just like to give
it actually like almost a little chop just because it makes it a wee bit easier to pour.
And then we're gonna do an orange twist garnish, so just take a nice
thick strip off your orange. Trim off all of your white pith
and then you can absolutely leave it rustic. I'm just going to trim this one down slightly,
and then in our tins we're just going to go a little 15 mils of rum.
And then 45 mils of our affectionately named Monty.
So literally just about five mils of sugar syrup, if that.
It's really personal preference. Montenegro is fairly sweet.
And then we're going to go a full 30 mls of lemon juice, it's really nice and bright and citrusy.
And your egg white.
Then we'll pop these together give it a bit of a shake,
so without ice to emulsify the egg. Make sure you hold your tins tightly.
See it's all nice and foamy. So we'll add some ice and shake again until it's chilled.
Delicious. Then we're
just going to use our Hawthorne strainer to hold the ice back.
Got a nice little block of ice in here already. Let's just pour through the fine strainer.
I do always like to fine strain when you've got egg white in there because
it just gets all the little ice chips out that might sort of ruin your nice foamy head.
Fold your orange twist over the top of the drink to expel some oils and
then we're just gonna pop in our orange twist and there we have a Rum Monte Sour.
As delicious as the Rum Monte is, it does look a little bit rustic
compared to the glamour of this next drink.
Described by its creator Joaquin Simo of Death & Co in New York as the bastard love child
of a classic Last Word and Sam Ross's Paper Plane, conceived in the mountains of Oaxaca,
this drink has become a modern classic in its own right thanks to his easy formula
which combines unusual ingredients to make an intriguing but amazingly fresh cocktail.
There's no garnish necessary for this one because the color is awesome but a
dehydrated lime wheel does kind of finish it off nicely so I'll keep that ready to the side here.
We do need some fresh lime juice so let's get that ready.
So we're going to go 20 mils of Aperol
20mls of QuiQuiriQui. Fun to say fun to drink.
20 ml of yellow chartreuse.
And 20 ml of lime juice.
Then we're going to fill our shaker tin up with ice
and shake it
Decided to go for some early naughties
glassware here and do a little martini glass rather than my coupe.
And yeah such an awesome bright color that it's pretty kind of
garnished as it is but you can just drop a little dehydrated lime wheel on there to finish it off.
The Naked and Famous. Now from one excellently named cocktail to another.
Everyone loves a good pun every now and again.
I love this drink because it's quite a surprising use of Cynar, the artichoke amaro.
Most drinks which use it are quite boozy and brooding and sort of take themselves a bit
seriously, whereas this is actually really tropical, as much as it still packs a punch.
It's a great example of how amari can really add a layer of complexity to
basically any style of drink, and bartenders love playing with them
for an unusual edge where the drink would be a little flat otherwise.
Just a bit of fresh lime juice to get us started here,
so many ingredients it actually feels like a proper tiki drink.
I don't know where to start, so we'll go with the orgeat at 15 mils of that.
15 mils of elderflower liqueur. It's interesting like how those
kind of floral notes just meld really nicely with Amari as well.
And then just a little five mils of your old-fashioned traditional dark plantation.
Then 20 mils of Pussers.
And finally our hero of the day 25 mils of Cynar.
Not finally finally we still need the lime juice. Penultimately the Cynar.
And finally the lime juice. 20 mls of that.
Fill your shaker tin with ice. Pop your tins together and shake as hard as you can.
And again because this is not the nicest color in the world I'm pretty happy to
have it in a little colored glass cup so just pour that straight in.
Then just grab the nicest mint sprigs you can find give them a little smack across the back
your hand, and we're going to pop that in alongside a little straw, which matches
my glass which I'm pretty happy about. And there we have the Artichoke Hold.
You may have noticed that all of these drinks are pretty modern
so I thought I may as well throw my hat in the ring as well.
At the trial shift for my first job in Melbourne it was at a bar called Lily Black's,
which incidentally claims to have the largest collection of cocktail bitters in the world so
it may well be why I'm such an advocate for them. But the manager asked me to make him a Negroni,
but not a Negroni. So something along those lines. I'd recently discovered Amaro Nonino
which remains my favorite and also Cocchi Americano which is an aromatized wine
bittered with quinine, which I also still love, especially with soda on a hot summer's day.
I combined that with a smooth rum and some cacao bitters.
It's a pretty tasty desserty take on a classic bittersweet cocktail.
I've made it again a few times for sort of requests or when people say oh just
make me something, but I've never listed it so it remains nameless.
As always we're going to prepare our twist first. I am going to assume that given that I was trying
to impress that I did actually trim my twist this time, so we might do a slightly fancy one.
Now we did two dashes of Mr Bitters cacao and macadamia bitters,
this was actually made by a couple of the guys that worked at that bar
which is pretty cool, so made here in Melbourne. And then 30 mls of Amaro Nonino.
30 mils of Diplomatico Reserve. I certainly did not use this on my trial shift because it's quite
a nice one, but now that I run the bar I can use whatever rum I want. So I'm going to treat myself.
And then 30 mils of Cocchi Americano, and I think that works quite well with
the Amaro Nonino because this is kind of a softer and slightly sweeter style of amaro.
I think with these kind of richer and slightly sweeter flavors it really comes into its own.
And we're going to fill our mixing glass up with ice.
It's been a while. it's real juicy.
Strain it over a nice big block of ice.
And then finish it off with a little quick sharp fold over the top with your orange twist
give it a little curl around so you can slot it in,
and there we have the drink which has not been named.
So now you know all about Amari cocktails and this drink,
make sure you comment below with suggestions for a name. If I find one that I love then
we'll have to edit this as a bonus video and let you all know what it's called.
International Open Academy, who helped us put together our online bartending course,
are currently having a spring sale offering massive savings.
All you need to do is use the offer code BTBSPRING
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this spring- or autumn for us in the southern hemisphere- then you're bound to find it.
We've put a link in the description below so please do check that out
and happy learning. Probably just make sure that you do it with a cocktail by your side!