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Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. If you've been to a bar or restaurant lately, you've probably seen all kinds of variations of cocktails from interesting to the absurd. Some believe the demand for espresso martinis may have gone too far, but does anybody really need chicken soup added to their favorite spirit? I don't know. There are ways to expand on the classics according to Carrie-- Casey Jones and John McCarthy. I gave you guys new names. Sorry about that. Casey Jones and John McCarthy. They have a new book out called Every Cocktail Has a Twist: Master 25 Classic Drinks and Craft More Than 200 Variations.

For example, the chapter on Manhattans, here are the options. It says Manhattans. I'd like a Manhattan straight up and delicious or classic Manhattan. I'd like a Manhattan [unintelligible 00:01:00] French, the foggy do. I'd like a Manhattan for the holidays. That's where you get the Cran-Hattan. There's a chapter for takes on eggnogs and cobblers. What's a cobbler, you say? We will find out. Carey Jones and John McCarthy Joining me to talk about their book Every Cocktail Has a Twist. Thank you for being with us, and sorry about the mistake with your names. I ran from studios and didn't have a chance to settle down. I'm here now.

John McCarthy: No problem.

Carey Jones: Thanks so much for having us.

John McCarthy: Thanks for having us.

Alison Stewart: Listeners, are you for some ways to use the booze in your house? You want to jazz up your gimlet or martini, maybe you're having a gathering and want to know what to serve, or maybe you just want to shout out your favorite holiday drinks? Our phone lines are open. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. You can call in and join us on air or you can text to us at that number. Also, we're available on Twix and Instagram @allofitwnyc. This is the second book you've written together. Your first was Be Your Own Bartender. Carey, how does this book build on the last one?

Carey Jones: Our last book was a really fun journey through cocktails, through the lens of flow charts. We like to call it the world's first flow chart cocktail book. That was a book where you could turn to the whiskey chapter or the rum chapter, and you're presented with a series of questions. Do you want to drink in April or one in December? Is it for you? Is it for a party? Things like that. It was really developed for the home bartender, everything we do is, and it was all about getting you to a drink that you knew you would like. In a way, this book very much picks up that theme.

It's centered around 25 classic cocktails. Some of them are classics in the Barnard traditional sense like the martini and Manhattan, others are just things people enjoy drinking like a Bloody Mary or as you said, an espresso martini. Very popular right now. People tend to know if there's one drink or another they favor. The idea of this book is that you can go to a drink you're familiar with, really learn about it, learn how to perfect it, and then there will be 5 or 8, or 12 other drinks that you'll probably like quite a bit too.

Alison Stewart: Listeners, we'd like you to join this conversation. Are you looking for some ways to use some of that booze in your house? Maybe you've been gifted some and you want to know what to do, or you want to jazz up your gimlet or martini, or your eggnog, or you're having some sort of gathering and you would like to know what would be great to serve. 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC.

My guests are Carey Jones and John McCarthy. The name of their new book is Every Cocktail Has a Twist: Master 25 Classic Drinks and Craft More Than 200 Variations. I love this book. This book is so much fun. John, you started the book with the essential tools you need to make drinks. We'll start on the budget. Let's say you have a budget, you have a small space. What are some absolute essentials?

John McCarthy: The thing we think is essential is to start with a drink that you know you like and get the booze for that. A lot of times when people are setting up their home bar, you get one of everything, and then you end up not using it. It takes up space. It's expensive. What we say is if you're a margarita drinker, explore tequila. Find tequilas that you like, find orange liqueurs that you like. The important thing there is fresh juice.

Alison Stewart: Yes, you are a fresh juice advocate. Explain why for somebody's who's like, hey, I don't have time. Make the case to make time.

John McCarthy: If it's from concentrate and it's been pasteurized, it's not going to have the fresh, bright acidity that really lifts a cocktail and makes it vibrant.

Alison Stewart: You also have a list of tools you say are nice to have. Why is an ice bag and a mallet, that's on your list, nice to have?

John McCarthy: They're fun. When you can take a little canvas bag, fill it up with ice, take a mallet and just smash at it, it's therapeutic and lots of fun. Then you can make a snow cone, basically, inside your glass that then you fill up with your cocktail.

Alison Stewart: Carey.

Carey Jones: That's especially great for drinks like juleps or cobblers where you want that crushed ice without having to pull out a machine or go to a specialized shop. You can just whack away and get all the crushed ice you want.

Alison Stewart: Carey, what is your secret weapon, the thing you use over and over?

Carey Jones: Oh, my goodness. In the drinking world, probably champagne, but I don't think that's a weapon. I think that's just what I tend to open over and over. In cocktails, I am absolutely obsessed with sherry. I think it's one of the most underappreciated cocktail ingredients out there. There are a lot of different kinds of sherrys. Some are lighter and drier than even the driest white wine. Some are much richer, have so much complexity. It's the thing where just half an ounce or an ounce can totally transform a drink and add so much nuance and sophistication. I also like just drinking them, but any cocktail on a menu with sherry in it, I'm going to order.

Alison Stewart: All right. You've brought us to the cobbler. John, for people who heard me talk about a cobbler. What's a cobbler?

John McCarthy: A cobbler is a drink from the early to mid 19th century. It is made with cobbled ice, pellet ice or nugget ice is what we refer to it as now. You take just a little bit of fruit, orange, muddle it up, add some sherry, a little bit of sweetener, cover it with ice, garnish it with a bunch of fruit and berries, stick a straw on it, and it is just so refreshing and lovely.

Alison Stewart: Go ahead.

Carey Jones: One really fun thing about this drink, it does date back to early mid 19th century. That was the time where it wasn't necessarily a given that a home or even a restaurant would have ice. This was one of the first drinks to really, really popularize ice in a cocktail. It also popularized the use of a straw. If you've ever tried to drink a cocktail with crushed ice without a straw, it'll end up all over your face. Just putting that little straw in there is really key to this drink. You can sip it all day.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk about ice for a second. When you're talking about using the right kind of ice, John, how do we determine what the right ice is for a drink?

John McCarthy: I think the first way to determine what the right ice is, is to know what the wrong ice is. The wrong ice is ice that's been in your freezer for two years because that ice is probably going to taste like what's been in your freezer for two years.

Alison Stewart: I'm getting some questions in here. Let's take a look. This one is from Twitter. It is from Twix. It's from Will. Will is asking, "Is it true that you should refrigerate vermouth after you open it?" What say you?

John McCarthy: Absolutely.

Carey Jones: It is 100% true. That's a great question. I would say that's one of the top three things we tell people who get serious about making cocktails is that it's essential to refrigerate your vermouth. The reason is that vermouth is wine-based, and it won't go off immediately. It certainly won't go off in a couple of weeks, but it doesn't have the indefinite shelf life that a spirit does.

A lot of people in the context of a martini or a Manhattan think they don't like vermouth. What we say is if you got it from a dusty shelf in someone else's liquor cabinet, and it's been sitting there for five years, imagine opening a nice chardonnay, putting a cork in it and leaving it on a hot shelf for five years. It's off. It's going to taste rancid. Preserving the freshness of vermouth is absolutely key in any drink with it, so yes, keep refrigerating your vermouth.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: As you can imagine, we're getting a lot of eggnog questions. Here's the first one. Love eggnog, but want to hear how your guests deal with the raw eggs.

John McCarthy: The first rule of eggs is when you open an egg, if it smells bad or looks bad, don't use it.

Carey Jones: Basic, but true.

John McCarthy: It's really basic, but true. A lot of classic cocktails use egg, egg white. We've all been drinking eggnog from the store. It's just we're making it fresh without the added pasteurization, so it's a lot lighter and livelier.

Alison Stewart: Is there a safety issue at all?

Carey Jones: No more than there would be for a Caesar salad dressing, for example. Depending on the state you're in, you may have to put one of those warning labels that says may cause foodborne illness, but there are lots and lots of contexts in cooking where you do use raw eggs or raw egg yolks. I think the thing to really remember in the context of eggnog is we're going to either whip it so well or blend it so well in a blender that the egg is fully emulsified, fully dissolved within that drink, because if you think of raw egg you're probably not wanting to get just that little bit of eggy texture. I think it's the thought of raw egg that puts people off. If you make sure it's fully incorporated, that's a great trick.

Alison Stewart: Here's a question. How does one zhuzh up a basic nog? You have a couple of really good examples in your chapter five on eggnogs. What's a way someone can zhuzh eggnog?

Carey Jones: Oh, we have so many ideas.

John McCarthy: So many. Fruit liqueur.

Carey Jones: Fruit liqueur is a great one. One of our favorite recipes in this book we call Run Run Rudolph. The idea is it's what Santa really wants when you stop and buy your house instead of a glass of milk. It's a combination between eggnog and an Irish whiskey. It's an eggnog topped off with both Irish-- sorry, an Irish coffee. It's both Irish whiskey and a little bit of coffee liqueur. It's a little bit energizing. It's really satisfying. That's an absolutely great one.

John McCarthy: Put a little pep in your step and chill you out a little bit at the same time.

Alison Stewart: Love the Run Run Rudolph. We are talking to Carey Jones and John McCarthy. The name of their book is Every Cocktail Has a Twist: Master 25 Classic Drinks and Crafts More Than 200 Variations. We'll get to more of your calls and texts. If you want to call in, if you have a question about some of the booze in your house and you want to use it, or if you want to jazz up a classic cocktail, our guests are here for you. 212-433-969-221-2433 WNYC. We'll have more of your calls and your texts and more with our guests after a quick break. This is All Of It.

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This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. My guests are Carey Jones and John McCarthy. Their new book is called Every Cocktail Has a Twist: Master 25 Classic Drinks Craft More Than 200 Variations. In your book, you all write, choose the right drinks for parties, and you talk about batching. First of all, what is batching, and what are some drinks that lend themselves to batching?

Carey Jones: Batching is just bartender parlance for making a bunch of it in advance. When you think about throwing a cocktail party sometimes what people end up doing is there's a drink they're familiar with. They're used to making one or two at a time. If you're suddenly making 10 at a time, you find yourself stuck behind the bar which is not where you want to be at an event. You want to be at with your guests. There are quite a number of drinks in this book where we develop recipes to make them ahead of time. Really all you have to do in the moment is pour them out and garnish.

John McCarthy: The key ingredient when you're batching [clears throat] is adding water. When you're stirring individual cocktails or shaking into individual cocktails you're putting about an ounce of water of ice melt into the drink, which opens up the drink, adds subtlety and flavor. When you're batching, you need to make sure you add that water or the drinks are going to be pretty stiff and unbalanced.

Alison Stewart: Let's take a call. Lindsey is calling from Bedford New York. Hi, Lindsey, thanks for calling All Of It. You're on the air. What's your question,

Lindsey: Hi. we are a ginger beer-obsessed household. My teenager drinks it straight. I tend to go for Moscow mule. My husband loves a dark and stormy. What else can we do with our love of ginger beer?

John McCarthy: Oh, man.

Carey Jones: That's an awesome question. We are huge fans of ginger beer. The amazing thing about Ginger is it pairs well with almost any spirit. As you said, with vodka in a Moscow mule, dark rum with a dark and stormy. One of our favorites from this time of year is using applejack, which is apple brandy. The iconic brand actually comes from New Jersey, from Monmouth County. It's called Lairds.

It's been around since before America was a country. It was actually federal distilling license number one. If you haven't had it before, if you imagine a bourbon with the character of an apple orchard, that's what applejack tastes like. It's delicious. Just that with ginger beer, maybe a slice of lemon, maybe a little spring of rosemary, is just a fabulous two-ingredient and really, really delicious fall winter drink.

Alison Stewart: On behalf of New Jersey, you're welcome, everybody.

[laughter]

Love that home stay. This is a question, a text. How would you use mezcal in a seasonal cocktail?

Carey Jones: That's a great question. I was about to say anywhere you can use tequila you can use mezcal, but that isn't quite true. The thing to remember about mezcal is that there's just this really powerful smoky flavor that'll be a big part of the cocktail. I would say if you take a margarita with winter flavors in it such as cranberry, blood orange, and you swap out the tequila for mezcal in there, you're going to have a really delicious drink.

John McCarthy: I'd also say making a mezcal mule with the ginger beer we were just talking about would be fantastic.

Alison Stewart: See, synergy. There you go. Let's talk to Jim from Rockland County. Hi Jim, thanks for calling All Of It.

Jim: Hi, good afternoon. I have a very good friend and he is pretty knowledgeable about liquor and he had an opinion, which he shared with me, that when you're making a Manhattan, which is a great and important drink, he recommended that you buy and use low-end riser bourbons, not high label, upends. He felt that the lower-graded Manhattan via bourbon with a low label so to speak as opposed to your pricier your brands made for a better Manhattan. I always wondered about that, and finally get to ask some experts.

Alison Stewart: Thanks for calling in, Jim.

John McCarthy: I agree with your friend. Bourbon's not supposed to be expensive and now you can spend a lot of money on it if you want. There are brands that are not rock gut low low level, but really great brands that aren't very expensive that tastes like bourbon. One of my favorite brands that I work with, work behind the bar all the times is Evan Williams. The important thing is the proof of it, it's 86 proof so it has a little bit of a punch to it, but there's no need to spend a fortune to make a Manhattan. You might want to get that expensive whiskey and just pour it and eat, and put a little drop of water in it, and just sip it slowly and contemplate the fabulousness of your whiskey.

Alison Stewart: Jim, I hope that helped you out. Here's a batch. Someone texted us. My favorite is to batch negronis. One bottle of each sweet vermouth, Campari and gin, set it out with a bowl of oranges, and boom, a bunch of happy drunk people. Someone else also--

Carey Jones: Can't really disagree with that.

[laughter]

John McCarthy: Drink responsibly.

Alison Stewart: Also, love mezcal gin split on most gin cocktails. That's really interesting.

Carey Jones: That is really interesting. The one thing we would say about pre-batch drinks like negronis, not that there's anything wrong with a bunch of happy drunk people, but to just give people guidance for what constitutes a portion size. I think sometimes if people see something in a punch bowl or a pitcher, there's the tendency to think you're supposed to pour a big cup full of it. We've had issues with this in the past. A negroni should be a 3-ounce drink because it's all booze.

John McCarthy: We'd hate for there to be a stack of solo cups next to a punch bowl of negronis and people filling up 16-ounce negronis throughout the evening.

Alison Stewart: That sounds--

Carey Jones: Just professionally.

John McCarthy: That's a lot of negroni.

Alison Stewart: That sounds bad on many levels. Personally, professionally. Let's talk to Jay from Plainfield, New Jersey. Hi, Jay. Thanks for calling All Of It.

Jay: Sure. I recently discovered a wonderful cocktail called the pisco sour at a Peruvian restaurant. I'm wondering if that recipe which calls for an egg white would translate nicely into a margarita.

John McCarthy: Oh, wow. Absolutely. First of all, pisco sour is a fantastic drink. Have you made those at home yet?

Alison Stewart: Have you tried-- Oh, I think we lost Jay. I think Jay's just listening. He's taking his call [crosstalk]

John McCarthy: If you do make it at home, it's a great drink to make. I just wanted to let you know that if you do half lemon juice and half lime juice, that's going to get you close to what it would taste like.

Carey Jones: In terms of making it something closer to the margarita, both the pisco sour and the margarita fall into the broader category of sours as the drink category is known. There is a lot of similarity between those two drinks. If you just did pisco and the proportions that you would do tequila for a margarita, you're going to have a drink that straddles the two and should be absolutely delicious.

Alison Stewart: You have a whole chapter on hot toddies. It's definitely hot toddy weather. I made one on Sunday. You have a whole different bunch of them. Time for hot toddy that's friendly and boozy. Our classic toddy that tastes like an orchard. Jack Rose toddy featuring that applejack you mentioned, with a smoky scotch accent. The Cooper's toddy. What is another way that we can make our toddies interesting?

Carey Jones: There are so many. The classic toddy which is just whiskey or brandy with honey, lemon, and hot water is one of those just really soothing perfect winter drinks, but there's so many spirits that work beautifully with hot water. One really fun one we do in the book is with barrel-aged gin and blackberry jam. When you stir the jam into the hot water, it dissolves into this really rich fruity syrup.

The barrel-aged gin add some great weight to it. That's an amazing one. We do another one with the Freud scotch, a really intense Islay Scotch, which we cut with a bit of Amontillado sherry. That has some of the extremely intense aromatics of a highly peated scotch but with something more mellow to cut it. Those are two really fun drinks.

John McCarthy: I would say adding amaros like Campari and the like into your hot toddy will give you-- it has a little bit of sweetness in it. It'll have some bitterness and some subtle nuance as well.

Alison Stewart: For a while, aperol spritzes were everywhere, and then the espresso martini seemed to take over our area. How does that happen? How does a drink become ubiquitous like that?

Carey Jones: That's a very good question. I think it's a combination, in the case of the aperol spritz, a tremendous marketing budget and some really savvy folks promoting it. I think like any other trend, it picks up. John's the pro, so--

John McCarthy: I was making drinks when Sex and the City 2 came out. I got to tell you, I made a lot of cosmos.

Alison Stewart: [laughs] There you go. I want you each in our last minute to shout out the drink that you'd like to see become the next big drink, the next aperol spritz, the next espresso martini. Carey, you go first.

Carey Jones: I would say that following the aperol spritz, we have a drink called the dirty Monty, which is made with Montenegro, which is an amaro that has a lot of bold orange flavor, but it also has olive brine in it like a dirty martini. If you'd like that kind of savory bite that a dirty martini would have, this is just a really cool, complex, savory drink that's actually quite easy to make.

Alison Stewart: How about for you, John, the drink you think should go viral?

John McCarthy: Sidecars. Sidecar, it is cognac and lemon. It is deep and rich, and fabulous. We like to even give it a variation and add bubbles to it. I think sidecar is an underappreciated, fantastic cocktail.

Alison Stewart: We'll check back with you guys in a year and see what happens. Every Cocktail Has a Twist: Master 25 Classic Drinks and Craft More Than 200 Variations, my guests have been Carey Jones and John McCarthy. Thank you so much for taking listener's calls.

Carey Jones: Thank you. Cheers.

John McCarthy: Thank you.

Alison Stewart: That's All Of It. I'll meet you back here next time.

 

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