What is BRANDY and how do you use it? 3 Great BRANDY COCKTAILS!

what's your go-to spirit people often identify as a gin Drinker or a whiskey drinker but it's more unusual for people to answer this question with Brandy it's often seen as a bit stuffy something that kind of old men and smoking jackets drink while they're smoking their cigars but it's actually a really versatile cocktail ingredient each brandies have all of the depths and complexity of other dark Spirits like whiskey or age drums but being made from fruit rather than green it does mean that they have a real juiciness to it that plays well with other fruit flavors from kind of liqueurs or um Citrus so let's dust off that bottle at the back of your cupboard and get mixing Brandi gets its name from The Dutch word brandavin sorry to any Dutch speakers out there I've definitely completely butchered that I really did try but I can't rule my eyes that hard but it literally means burnt wine and that's because Brandy is made from fermented fruit I.E wine which is then distilled into a spirit there are huge Regional variations in brandy uh brandy made from grapes is definitely the most common but most fruit producing regions will have their own version basically just uses up any kind of excess or waste fruit so for example Calvados in France is known for their apple Brandy and then actually like the southern states in the US used to make a lot of peach Brandy it's a little bit less common now um but that should definitely be brought back but that's just because that's what they grow there because Brandy is made all over the world there aren't very strict rules governing it as a general category so for instance a lot of Brandy is aged but not all of it is so for example Pisco and Grappa there are also Regional variations of Brandy of course certain places known for their Brandy places like Cognac and Armagnac they all have really specific rules around what can have their names on the bottle and that ensures a certain standard of quality for any brandies being made there you'll often see certain little letters on the bottles and that denotes how long that Spirit has been aged for so vs on a bottle stands for very special which means that the Brandy has been aged for at least two years VSOP stands for very Superior old peel not very special old product which for some reason was what I thought for years and that means at least four years of aging and then XO means extra old I mean I know it should really be EO but I'm not making the rules here and those brandies are at least six years old of course older and more complex brandies are delicious just for sipping and they make really incredible booze forward cocktails like you can just stick that and an old-fashioned but I actually lean towards younger brandies for a lot of cocktails to make the most of that fruit flavor most of the ones I'll be using today are going to be VSOP so sort of in that nice middle ground there's a really rich history of brandies being used in cocktails and of course I could do a whole video focus on one sort of sub category like Pisco so definitely let me know in the comments if you want some more Brandy based content but for now let's make some drinks [Music] foreign things about brandy is it is happy to be a team player in Cocktails so it does often feature in split-based drinks or drinks with multiple Spirits in there it adds a bit of roundness and weight without kind of overpowering everything else which is why I'm a sucker for a split based Sazerac as we have discussed previously here in this provocatively named drink which is thought to have originated in Harry's New York Bar in Paris it teams up with a white or lightly aged rum for really fruity and fun take on a sour or Daisy style of cocktail a lot of recipes including the purported original Doodle for equal parts rum Brandy and Curacao or Triple Sec with then like a half measure of lemon juice but I like to let the spirit shine through a little bit more and keep it a little bit zingier with a higher proportion of lemon juice as I mentioned a lot of wine producing regions will make their own brandies so I'm actually using a nice little Aussie one here which is from South Australia I've seen Agnes it's really quite bold and juicy it's a VSOP so it does have a little bit of age to it so it asserts itself nicely here and then I'm just going with Havana three-year-old so it has a little bit of age but yeah a lot of really nice tropical fruit characters and again nothing to full on I'd rather go for a fruitier rum here rather than anything kind of too grassy or more herbal so we're gonna go in with 25 mils of each of our Spirits here and then 20 mils or two-thirds of an ounce of an orange liqueur so curious our Triple Sec just something really nice and fresh and zingy I'm using marionette and 20 ml of freshly squeezed lemon juice this is definitely one that might take a little bit of adjustment depending on really what kind of orange liqueur you use and you know how how sour your lemon is might need just a tiny little dash of sugar but we'll shake it up give it a quick taste and see how that goes at the end of it there and for your garnish you're just going to do a little lemon twist so I've just done this with a veggie peeler and then we'll do a little spray over the top and trim it down when it's good to go foreign so that is a tiny little bit tart so I'm just going to go literally probably not even five mils just a little dash of sugar syrup give it another Shake double strain little Spritz over the top just popped out on the side of your glass there and we have it Between the Sheets it's really lovely really citrusy and Lemony if you um like a daiquiri then this is going to be a really fun one to try something a bit different there obviously a side car as well it's basically a variation on that the rum adds that little bit more of a tropical fruit kind of vibe and then you've got the Brandy in there with a little bit of kind of Darker a little bit of raziness just giving it a bit of oomph um kind of over a lot of those other more crisp kind of gin and citrus drinks that um you quite often see so just something with a little bit of interest and a little bit different to try Between the Sheets I actually have a bit of a grudge with a sculptail because when I was a nervous baby bartender and I was by myself in the bar for sort of the first time some fellow Hospital folks came in and they ordered a round of Classics so I've been studying and I knew most of them but one of them asked for a Harvard and that wasn't something that I'd ever heard of before so I had to do some frantic Googling to look like I knew what I was doing but it's basically a brandy Manhattan so a very old cocktail back from when academic institutions would have rather more refined cocktails than the kind of diesel type concoctions that I used to drink in my student union and you can Google the diesel it is actually a drink and it's disgusting uh the 1895 recipe calls for a splash of soda water in there and it really does work to just lighten everything up and make it a bit more approachable even if it seems a bit unconventional for a stir down I also like to use cognac because it's generally very soft and smooth and so makes a harvest a good gateway to this style of sort of stirred drone and more stiff drinks and it actually makes it work quite well as an aperitif so we're gonna go in with 45 mils of our cognac again I'm using the VSOP but honestly you could use vs in kind of any of these um cocktails as well that was just these are what I had to hand today then 20 ml of sweet vermouth I've got the little 1757 chinzano so a little bit richer than your regular chinzano you could definitely use kind of any of your usuals Antica formula or something with yeah a little bit of a vanilla know it works quite well then a couple of dashes of our trusty angostura bitters okay we're just gonna fill up our mixing glass with ice and give it a stir so this one obviously is going to get that little splash of soda water in there so you don't want to go overboard with your dilution you're really just kind of trying to chill it down and get it to the point um that it will just sit nicely in the glass sort of just when you can start to feel a little bit of Chill on the outside there and for this one it's generally sort of a martini glass or a cooked glass um but I'm gonna go kind of a bit of the more old school Brandy balloon because I had one and it seemed fun given the subject you can pretend we're professors with a little leather arm patches on you know then just about 30 mils are kind of a scoosh of soda water maybe even a little bit less and then this one just gets a little orange twist so pop that over the top and then trim it down and there we have our Harvard now being perfectly honest I haven't had one of these in quite a while also I'm interested to see uh if it matches up to what I remember yeah it's really interesting because it's got that real Christmas cake Vibe especially with the orange over the top there you're expecting something really quite rich and intense but then just that little like spritzer bubbles kind of leads you into something that's actually um a bit softer and way more approachable I think than most kind of Rye based Manhattans and things like that yeah delicious I'm glad that one worked out [Music] of course a lot of Brandy cocktails play with the fruitiness of um of the spirit and so you know do more similar to the between the sheets we just made with different kind of syrups all the cures a lot of stone fruits get used but I like this one because the chartreuse adds a really awesome contrasting herbal Edge that makes it really interesting I'm gonna stick with the French theme here and use cognac again but again any good quality age Brandy will work so we're gonna go 45 mils or one and a half ounces of your Brandy then 15 mils of the green nectar chartreuse 20 ml of lemon juice about 10 mils or a third of an ounce of sugar syrup say welcome to adjust that according to your own taste and then a couple of good dashes of angostura you'll notice a lot of uh a couple of these cocktails do have the angostura in there and it definitely just um those kind of Woody spice notes and then the fruity grippy raisiny Vibe of the Brandy is a good combination for sure then we're just gonna give that a shake thank you it's interesting my Citrus is all tasting a little bit sharp today it might just be the time of year here so I'm just gonna do another little couple of mils extra of sugar syrup otherwise I'm gonna have to take my heartburn tablets but that's why it's good to always have a little taste because you know Citrus is fruit it's a kind of living thing it can definitely vary in so it's not always going to be exactly according to the recipe double strain that into a cup or martini glass and there we have our Sean's Lizzy cocktail it's yum it's interesting make some you know because we've just used uh the exact same Brandy in another cocktail and in that one actually you know tastes quite soft and mellow and I guess the vermouth just kind of smoothed it all out and that little Spritz of soda water um in here with the chartreuse which is obviously like such a strong flavor it's like the brand is kind of risen to meet that um and so it's really quite like a juicy and kind of intense flavor and yeah heaps of herbaceousness and the angostura is definitely doing a really good job there of just kind of pinning that all together with a nice little sort of through line of Woody spice again not honestly one that I you know thought about for a while or potentially even ever had before before I was writing this script um and but it's definitely one that's going on the rotation now so there we have three fun and interesting Brandy cocktails but as I said there are so many more to explore so please definitely let me know if you have a favorite and let's bring Brandy back baby Brandy so now you know [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: Behind the Bar

Views: 18,326

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Id: DlnmUsiOkL4

Length: 13min 41sec (821 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 29 2023