The Cocktail Spirit with Robert Hess

thanks for another great episode nice use of contrasting bitters woodsey spice to the warmth of reagans orange well done beautiful stemware also.lime twists have long been a favorite of mine makes one thirst for quality . cc

Hey Look! I lost some weight! Ok, not really. We just had a slight snafu with the video encoder/compressor and ended up with a slightly out-of-proportion scale for this episode.

What great timing!  I just made a Pegu Saturday night following your recipe at the DrinkBoy site which calls for just a teaspoon of lime juice and a full ounce of orange curacao.  It was delicious, to be sure, but a little on the sweet side.  Bumping up the lime juice to a 1/2 ounce and scaling back the curacao to 3/4 ounce should make for a more balanced cocktail.  As always, another great episode!

Walt,

The recipe I used in this episode follows more closely the recipe that Audrey Saunders uses at the Pegu Club in New York.

-Robert

Great looking drink, can’t wait to try it.  I don’t have any orange curacao, so I might try it with Patron Citronage to start.

Also, Robert, where did you find that glass?  It’s awesome.

Owen,

The use of Citronage, Cointreau, Triple Sec, etc. will change the profile of this drinks just a little, perhaps unnoticably for some. I find that Orange Curacao has a slightly more “rustic” flavor to it which works well with the other flavors going on here. It’s fairly in expensive, as long as you can find it, and not its “blue” alternative.

As for the glass… that is from an old antique set that I ran across. It’s always fun to keep your eyes out in antique shops for fun little options like this. There is a bar here in Seattle (Vessel), who recently switched out all of their regular glassware for various semi-random antique glasses tha the bar manager (Jamie Boudreau, who has been my guest on some previous episodes) had been slowly collecting over the last year. I love that sort of approach.

-Robert

Talk about a challenge!  You’ve thrown the glove down when you say we who do not care for gin will love the Pegu.  Just discovered your site via NYT; this is great I’d like to return the favor with a favorite of mine:

http://theerrantaesthete.com/

With great cocktails, there must be great conversation.

thanks again,

Anna

Anna,
Thanks for stopping by, great little blog you’ve got there.

Perhaps I did do a little gauntlet tossing there, but hopefully not inappropriately. The Pegu Club Cocktail is one that I countlessly make use of to illustrate the accessibility of gin to somebody who claims they don’t like it. I can only think of one occasion where it failed to prove the point.

What I often encouter is people who think there are only two gin cocktails, a Martini, and a Gin & Tonic (believe it or not, even a couple bartenders), and having tried both They have decided that they must not like gin. I love to expose them to the wide variety of other gin cocktails there are, especially those which highlight the great culinary affinity to mixing that gin povides.

-Robert

I’ve used the Last Word to introduce people (including myselft, I personally don’t care for gin normally) to gin.  Lots of my friends really enjoy it, ironically however, my gin drinking friend doesn’t care for it.,

I will have to pick up some orange curacao and try to see if I can tell the difference in flavor between that and one made with Citronage (I also have cheap triple sec and Mathilde Orange Cognac, so I have a lot of tasting ahead of me… a happy task at least )

Oh yeah, any brand recommendations on the orange curacao?

Nice cocktail, and quite new to me. I like gin, so I am keen to try it.

It looks like you were using Bols orange curacao there, which BevMo don’t seem to stock. Any thoughts on DeKuyper as an alternative, or do you think it tastes best with Bols?

Nice *looking* cocktail I meant to say, I haven’t tried it yet…

I don’t have a specific orange curacao to recommend, one issue is that in most areas there will only be one brand available, so it sort of limits your choices. Bols is what I normally have available, and it works quite well. I’ve used DeKuyper in the past as well.

one of the drinks that are really hard to balance but absolutely delicios if it is balanced with its original recipe (2:1 gin, curacao, just teaspoon lime, bitters). the secret is the curacao. bols and dekuyper are both very sweet, too sweet for this drink. a fantastic one is the curacao of curacao by the senior family because it has a smooth orange flavor and is very little sweet. the perfect effekt of the original recipe (and only of this) is the very fine taste of bitter in a very smooth gin drink with hints of orange.

Oliver,

Yes, the first published recipe for the Pegu, from Harry MacElhone’s 1927 “Barfiles and Cocktails” was:

Pegu Club Cocktail
1 dash of Angostura Bitters
1 dash of Orange Bitters
1 teaspoonful Lime Juice (Rose’s)
1/6 Curacao (Orange)
2/3 Gin

Which I personally like a lot (although of course with fresh lime juice instead of Rose’s). If you look through various old recipe books, you’ll see several other slight variations that the recipe as gone through. I intentionally used one similar to how they make it at the “Pegu Club” cocktail lounge in New York (http://www.PeguClub.com), which has breathed a new life into not only this cocktail, but many other classic drinks.

-Robert

I made it with the recipe in the video, and thought it was a little too sour for my taste (using Plymouth gin and DeKuyper curaçao). Something needs to have a big kick to balance the lime and the other ingredients don’t seem to have what it takes. Maybe I should a gin with more punch than the Plymouth? I’ll try Beefeater next time maybe…

I’m just trying an experiment using lemon juice instead of lime. I like the result, but I’m finding the sweetness of the curaçao comes through quite strongly. I think I would try the same experiment next time with 3/4 oz of lemon juice and 1/2 oz of curaçao and see how that turns out.

As far as the authentic curaçao mentioned by oliver, I wonder where that could be obtained from?

Ian,
Have you tried the alternate version of the recipe I just listed above? It has more of a “citrus backbone” then it does a “sour nature”. So it might be more to your liking.

As for the original curaçao, I’ve never even seen it, much less have a chance to try it, so I don’t know how it compares to the Bols or DeKuyper curaçao which is commonly found.

More details about it can be found here:
http://www.curacaoliqueur.com/

-Robert

(for Ian, and others)
I should point out when reading the alternate “recipe” I listed above, it lists “Roses” as the lime juice in use… My recipe instead uses fresh lime juice instead.

Rose’s is best saved for the Gimlet, or nothing at all.

-Robert

I will try the alternative recipe, but my drinking habits extend only to 1 drink a day, so it will have to wait for another day As it happens, I didn’t have a fresh lime to hand today, but I did have a lemon, so I experimented.

If I scale up the alternative recipe (multiply all quantities by 3), I get as follows:

2 oz gin
1/2 oz curaçao
3 tsp lime juice
3 dashes orange bitters
3 dashes Angustura bitters

Google tells me that three teaspoons is 1/2 oz. Does that sound about right?

If so, then it’s like the video recipe only with less curaçao? Of course, I can reduce the amount of lime juice and see how it goes.

Of course, I’ve just realised that “2/3” is probably not 2/3 oz, but what would it be then? (Showing my ignorance...)

Yeah, sometimes that “2/3” stuff can be confusing. Here is a good recipe to try, based on the above listed one, but with slightly different ratios:

Pegu
2 ounces gin
1 ounce orange curaçao
1 teaspoon lime juice
1 dash Angostura bitters
1 dash orange bitters

-Robert

Robert,
I am crushed that I took a hiatus form blogging, both writing and reading, when you did this, still better late than never!
Since I write a small blog (killingtime.com/Pegu/) devoted to expanding awareness of the Pegu, I can’t thank you enough for doing this video.
Of course, it wouldn’t be half as fun if I agreed with everything you did!
I like a ratio of 3:1:1, which still is enough to tame the ginniness, but gives a drier, more elegant cocktail. And while I fiddle with the lime juice, bitters, and (especially) with the kind of Gin, I always use only Cointreau.
Finally, I like to shake! Sometimes I add a teaspoon of egg white, as I learned at the American Bar at the Savoy, which makes shaking necessary. But even when I don’t, my tastes run to the shards of ice and cloudier look.
People should try both ways!

When I give a party I will use any of these recommended recipes for The Pegu.
Bravo !

Robert,

I was lucky enough to have my local spirits store order me some Curacao of Curacao.  It makes a fantastic Pegu with Plymouth or Beefeater.  Still waiting for the Angostura Orange Bitters to become available.  At the moment I’m using Fee’s.

Blair

PS - Finally procured an Ebaloy!  Hurray!

I’m struck by the similarity of this drink to the Stork Club cocktail, which to me seems to differ only in calling for orange juice instead of orange bitters.  I’m going to have to try a side-by-side comparison, once I can find orange bitters in my local stores.

I wonder if it’s just coincidence, or whether one club was trying to recreate the drink of another?

BTW, I’ve really enjoyed the series.  It’s prompted me to start mixing drinks again, which I haven’t been doing for a while.