The World of Japanese Cocktails

mostly when we think about cocktails connected to a certain place we think of recipes developed with the ingredients found at that Locale and boasting flavors of that place and while that's certainly true when speaking about cocktails from Japan it isn't what they're most known for and it's not necessarily what makes Japanese Cocktails so fascinating what most people think of when they think of cocktails from Japan is a whole different approach to drink making one based on Precision balance Innovation and a technique all their own Japanese cocktails are more a bartending philosophy than they are a collection of recipes and I have been fascinated by this approach to drink making for a very long time it also reminds me of a stage actor's approach to movement everything that's being done is in service to the drink and there's a real economy of movement there's nothing extraneous each stage of the drink is deliberate and precise no detail is spared and the result of this labor are some of the most balanced and beautiful cocktails in the world now just as an FYI I have not been to Japan I have not been trained under Japanese bartenders and truth be told these opinions have been formed by affecting the style at home watching videos of bartenders a lot like you and executing recipes as I try to learn from the style in order to further my own knowledge however I have found this to be very rewarding and today I wanted to extend that to you so let's make a few Japanese cocktails take a look under the hood and see what we can learn the Japanese high ball is probably the purest example of a drink that encompasses this drink philosophy that we were talking about earlier especially when it's done in a certain way it is so popular in Japan that suntory whiskey created Toki which is a blend specifically designed for mixing the perfect high ball so to properly make a Japanese high ball we need to employ a technique called mizawari which roughly translates to cut with water okay so first thing we're going to do is grab our high ball glass and we're going to get this nicely cut clear ice here and we're going to put them in like so so you want ice that is going to be tight in the glass but also allow you to get your spoon in there work our spoon in like this and we're going to Stir It until the glass frosts once we have sufficient frosting on the outside of the glass we're just going to hold the ice back and we are going to strain the excess water out of the glass and I was just thinking you know I have my regular [ __ ] that I normally use but I should probably use a a Japanese style [ __ ] for this Japanese episode and we're going to do two ounces of our Toki whiskey and then we're going to stir again to combine the ice and whiskey and to chill it properly next we are going to add soda any soda water of your choice and then we're going to pour that off the ice into our glass and there you have a Japanese high ball let's take a sip that is a very pleasing whiskey high ball you get the nice effervescence of the soda water a little bit of salt enhancing the flavors of the whiskey but because we've lengthened it with soda water and a little bit of water we've really spread that flavor profile out and we can really taste the nuances in that whiskey so obviously you get the effervescence of the soda it's got a little bit of salt in it so it's enhancing the flavor profile and then the Toki is just like a really beautiful blend of Oak vanilla and honey flavors it's nice and lengthened so we can really taste the nuances of the whiskey there you have your Japanese eyeball according to the book of Pocoyo cocktails the million dollar was the drink of 1920s Japan it became famous at a place called Cafe lion in the Ginza District which was a cafe which was more famous for eating and boozing than it was what we would think of like an actual cafe coffee drinking I guess the bartender who made the drink famous was a man named shogu Hamada who went by the nickname Mr Bartender the same way that Jerry Thomas went by the professor Hamada cut his teeth at the Yokohama Hotel under the tutelage of bartender Louis eppinger who have covered many times on the show and he's the one that gets the credit for actually inventing this cocktail so first thing we're going to do here is we're going to take our tin we're actually gonna crack an egg white into it and then we're going to emulsify it for 30 seconds so first thing we're going to do is two bar spoons of pineapple juice then we're going to do one bar spoon of grenadine half an ounce of sweet vermouth and one ounce of gin next we're going to add one big rock of ice and one cheater Cube let me give this a nice Shake and then we're going to strain into a coupet which is just a smaller Coupe and then you can garnish with a small pineapple wedge or nothing at all I'm just going to keep mine clean all right here we go let's give it a taste so obviously the most dominant flavor profile in there is the gin and the sweet vermouth you got all of those Botanicals what's really nice about this cocktail is that you just get a hint of the Grenadine and a hint of the pineapple a little bit of sugar in the Grenadine a little bit of sugar and the sweet vermouth whatever Sugar's in the pineapple it's going to low in sugar but it's also nice and balanced and you have these nice bright Botanicals along with the texture of the egg white so another interesting thing about this cocktail is the egg white technique that we used we did like a reverse reverse dry shake or something we emulsified the egg white first then built the cocktail on top of that egg white then we added our big rock of ice with a little cheater Cube that little cheater cube is going to give you the perfect amount of dilution and the big rock of ice is going to give you all of the texture that you want really whipping that egg white into this nice kind of meringue style froth and it's just a really nice cocktail so here it is the million dollar cocktail the next cocktail we're doing is called a gimlet high ball which was created at a bar called San lucar in the kagurazaka neighborhood of Tokyo and is the preferred drink of heart shake inventor kazuo uieda and if any of you guys are still trying to master the hard shake keep in mind that uyeda has said only one other person has mastered his shaking technique his 20-year Protege kiyoshi shimbashi so good luck so the first thing we're going to do is juice a lime but because I have a rarely seen Japanese bartenders double strain their cocktails we're actually going to juice it and strain out the pulp we're gonna do half an ounce of lime juice two bar spoons of simple syrup and an ounce and a half of gin I'm gonna put some ice in our tin and then we're going to add some nice clear spheres that we prose into our glass give this guy a nice hard shake strain over the ice and then we're going to top this up a little soda water and we're going to leave a nice healthy wash line here all right here we are our gimlet highball let's taste it it's perfectly balanced I really had my doubts but honestly it's nice and bright it's very line forward you get all of the vibrant lime flavor which is exactly what you want it's perfectly balanced with the two bar spoons of simple syrup it's nice and sharp the Gin brings in those Botanicals and then you lengthen it with soda we again spread that flavor profile out and we just have a really nice refreshing highball cocktail so here it is the gimlet high ball the yukoguni cocktail was created back in 1959 when a cafe owner named keichi iyama entered a cocktail contest being run by a company called kotobukiya an early iteration of suntory back in those days it was only big city bartenders at fancy restaurants and bars that had access to all the fancy imported ingredients but Yama entered the cocktail contest anyway making do with whatever he had on hand and he beat out 20 000 other bartenders to take first place and this cocktail has been on menus ever since so first we're going to grab our tin here so in our tin we're gonna do two-thirds of lime juice two-thirds Cointreau we're gonna do one and a third vodka and before we shake it we are actually going to rim this glass with sugar and the direction specifically request it to be right on the top which is not how I normally do it but for this cocktail I would do it I'm gonna go to little caster sugar give it a shake I'm gonna take a green Cherry here remove the stem place it into our cocktail glass like so if I were in Japan I would not be doing that by hand and then we're going to strain our cocktail into our cupet like so this cocktail is a really nice balance to it you get a little bit of the ethanol the Vodka it is very tart but it has a nice balance there's just a really nice interplay between the Cointreau and the lime juice and then that little extra bit of sugar on the rim helps you get a little bit of a sweet pop which also goes towards the balance of the cocktail so there you go the yukoguni cocktail so the last cocktail we're doing today is called the dot line it's an old-fashioned variation and it's from a bar called tigrato I'm not even sure what neighborhood uh of Tokyo it's in it's all I know is that it's in Tokyo and I have nothing on the creation of this but I really wanted to do it because it reminds me of the Negroni ristretto uh it's just such a cool technique of adding flavor into your cocktail and I think you guys can really dig it so first thing we're going to do is grab our tin and then we're gonna do one and a half ounces of Bacardi Carta blanca into a tin and then we're going to do two thirds of an ounce of umeshu which is a plum wine we're gonna do one bar spoon of Pedro Jimenez Sherry and then we'll do one bar spoon of Saint Germain elderflower liqueur and now what we're going to do is we're going to take a mixing glass and we're going to prep it with a little coffee dripper and obviously a filter and then seven grams of Kenyan coffee we're gonna give this guy a little light stir and then we are going to filter the cocktail through the coffee okay once it's done filtering I'm going to put that aside we're going to add one dash so it's about 20 drops of balsamic vinegar and we're going to add our ice [Music] we have this nice ice ball we are going to put into our glass give this guy stir ring it over our ice and here we made the dot lines let's give it a taste wow you get all this raisininess from the PX Cherry the coffee is such an intense Aroma in this cocktail you can really taste in your palette but but it gives it like almost like this burned smell to it as you drink it obviously Taste of rum you got a little bit of like vinegary kind of complexity from the the balsamic and you really taste that balsamic it's just a really nice flavor combination between the balsamic vinegar the the Saint Germain and the PX Cherry I highly recommend making this cocktail it is really fantastic it's super complex and it is very surprising it's flavor profile so there it is the dot line and so concludes our episode on Japanese cocktails this is actually the first time that I tried employing Japanese cocktail techniques sort of in a public setting when people are watching me I hope I did a pretty good job I'm sure that if I didn't you guys are gonna be poking holes and everything I did in the comments which is cool because that's how I learn and I will see you guys on another time

Channel: The Educated Barfly

Views: 227,775

Keywords: easy drinks, drink recipe, easy cocktails, easy cocktail recipes, best cocktail recipes, simple cocktails, cocktails at home, homemade, how to drink, drinks, easy, quick, tasty, nice, binging with babish, cocktail chemistry, easy recipe, top 10, top 5, steve the bartender, masterclass, master class, cocktail, cocktails, educated barfly, cocktail recipes, anders erickson, anders bartender

Id: 4DX6Qu_emPA

Length: 12min 29sec (749 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 08 2022