Welcome to Common Man Cocktails
Derrick Schommer

Today, we’re going to do something a little classic. This is another one of my classic recipes. One of my classic like I need it, this is a Dry Manhattan, not my recipe. This is something that’s been around for years and years and we try to do lots. We do sidecar so I’m trying to do a couple of different classic ones, they tend to be simple yet kind of complex if you understand like for instance angostura bitters those are I don’t even know how to explain it, it’s kind of has a cola note to it.

You can buy this at any grocery store that you could tell because it’s got the funny label that it goes way over the size of the bottle. If you’re going to set up a bar like I know people who are saying look I just got a colleague here and I’m starting 21 and I’m looking to really fill out some sort of alcohol so I can make all kinds of drinks. Just by this keeping on hand you’ll never know when you’re going to need it.

First time ever we’re going to be doing whisky, we’re going to be doing whisky again later in the week. So that will make two, we’ve got 60 episodes and we’ve never done whisky.

This is Crown Royal, just specific recipe to Manhattan, it calls for a bourbon or a Canadian whisky, this is Canadian whisky, I don’t have bourbon. We’re going to use a little extra dry vermouth. What’s this lemon for? I just cut off a little of this lemon spills so we can make a twist because the dry Manhattan requires a twist that I didn’t make it just that how it is.

Of course it goes on a frosted cocktailed glass. We’re going to use a Maraschino cherry if you have them with stems that’s the right way to do it. If you don’t that’s fine too. This drink is going to be stirred not shaken you probably heard that before, so we’re going to use a bar spoon. Let see what else. I think that pretty much does it. There are some techniques I’ve seen used because you know I’m been in industry for million of years so I’m just loaning it from everybody else.

So we’re going to use just a little vermouth and the way that I’m going to do the vermouth now it calls for about an ounce or a half an ounce give or take how dry you want it, this is what I’m going to do and I’ve seen this done before. Poor little vermouth into your glass and roll it around, just kind of coat the glass a little bit and then pour it out just enough to wet the edges. You can pour it on yourself, if you do more on that you get a really, really dry taste. This could be the same for like I extended martini like a gin martini so that’s the technique you can use or if you really like a dry, pour half an ounce to an ounce in there.

So there’s our vermouth and what we’re going to do is throw everything else in here, and buy everything else. I need some ice because it’s hot, a little more. It got our ice. We’re going to do two ounces of the Canadian whisky pretty much what the drink is right there whisky. It makes it so classic. Two dashes of bitters, this is really suppose to be to taste one, two. If you like this stuff or you don’t know use a little more. If it’s too much next time do it a little less. You’ve seen this if you go back to our champagne cocktail we use that so if you’re looking for another way.

Now, we can also do our twist. Let’s just stir this up first. So what we’re going to do is we’re going to stir this just to get the bitters in there. Typically you’re going to stir it for about 30 seconds and in this specific case it doesn’t have to do with the mixing of the drinks per se like blending them together, it’s more than to getting the ice melted by temperature. So you do 30 second with a good stirrer to get the ice melted which brings the temperature up to what most recipes call for. I don’t remember the exact degrees. There you go.

Now, this doesn’t fit on here so I'm just going to dump that in there. That way, you can present it and let people watch you do it then you can strain it, very cool.

So we’ve got this up to the nice cold temperature from this stirrer. This should be frosted for that in here. Remember we have our vermouth all the way down the edges, so you're going to get your dryness without over doing it. If you’re serving it for guest and they ask for extra dry maybe just mix it right in. We got our swizzle stick here, we’ll do a little twist action. Now, if you don’t have one of this like I don’t know where I’m going to get that what’s that look? Multi purpose. So let’s twist this up and what I’m going to do is wrap it all way around this swizzle stick, nice and pretty then we’re going to tighten it specifically because I want to get a lot of the zest. Once you’ve actually peel one of this you’re going to see there’s little cells that start to bust opening that get shinny along it. So we can just stick that in there like that for good garnish, dump that in there. Hey I don’t think that looks too bad for Common Man Cocktail. Check it out.

Now if you want to see how I did this in case you’re curious you're going to get a zester, you just got to start digging in and slowly spin around it. Now the trick here is the zest fires up into the air something fierce and it starts to shoot little packets of lemon all over the place which also makes good additives for a drink. So there you go. That’s the tiny little twist there. It’s gets all crazy so let’s try this out. I warn you I’m not a huge whisky fan so I’m really making this for you.

This is actually better than the one I made before. What I have done last time is I mixed in an ounce of dry vermouth and it just had a little too much dryness. This might actually use a couple of extra dashes of bitters too. This is actually required for the classic mix of the recipe. But realistically what you’re getting is the whisky—if you’re into whisky you’re already in this mode, you’re already in this mode, you’re doing the whisky with the slight bitter dryness from the vermouth in it, a little lemon peel action and this is really your key ingredients to change it from just drink straight whisky. Otherwise just throw on the rocks and you’re done.

So that my friends is a Dry Manhattan, it smells pretty good.

I’m your host Derrick Schommer, we’re teaching you how to drink a Dry Manhattan.