Death & Co by David Kaplan, Nick Fauchald and Alex Day - Excerpt and Recipes

DEATH&CO.

Foreword | vi Introduction | xi How to Read & Enjoy This Book | xix Chapter One

A NIGHT AT DEATH & CO | 1 Chapter Two

BUILDING A BAR | 13 Chapter Three

BUILDING A DRINK

| 65

Chapter Four

CREATING NEW CLASSICS | 105 Chapter Five

THE SPECS | 135 Appendices | 275 Acknowledgements | 289 Index | 294

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STRANGE BREW t hom a s waug h

This refreshing cocktail pairs two of Thomas’s favorite things: juniper-forward gin and hoppy beer. What’s especially interesting about this drink is how it uses beer like a modifier: to add a spicy, aromatic flavor, enhancing the base spirit rather than overwhelming it. Thomas also did an ingenious thing with pineapple juice here. Cocktails made with pineapple juice are often flabby or overtly tiki-esque, whereas here he uses it as the focus of the drink. The resulting composition surrounds the tropical richness of pineapple with the spice of gin and hoppy IPA.

2 ounces tanqueray no. ten gin ¾ ounce velvet falernum 1 ounce pineapple juice

½ ounce lemon juice green flash ipa beer garnish: 1 mint sprig

Short shake all the ingredients (except the IPA) with 3 ice cubes, then strain into a pilsner glass filled with crushed ice. Top with IPA. Garnish with the mint and serve with a straw.

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THE SCIENCE OF STIRRING The goal of making a stirred drink is twofold: chilling and dilution. You want to mix the ingredients until they’re very cold. The ideal temperature is between 18°F and 23°F. You also want the drink to reach its ideal dilution. Water is the most underrated ingredient in a drink. Too little and the drink will taste too hot, or alcoholic; too much and it will taste too weak. A number of factors can affect how quickly or slowly these aims are achieved: the temperature and size of the mixing glass, the size and quantity of ice cubes, the ingredients themselves, and the speed and duration of stirring. We addressed speed and duration of stirring above. Here’s how the other three factors will affect the drink, along with what we’ve found to work best for us at Death & Co. MIXING GL ASS We’ll spare you the refresher course on thermodynamics, but know this: The temperature of a mixing glass has a considerable impact on the interaction between the ice and liquid it contains. Your goal should be to slow the dilution process enough that the cocktail is very cold by the time it reaches proper dilution. A room-temperature mixing glass will transfer its heat to the cooler liquid within, speeding up the dilution process. On the other hand, a cold mixing glass will chill the liquid within (at least until the two reach equilibrium), thereby diluting the cocktail more slowly, which means you can chill the drink more thoroughly without diluting it too much. This is why we keep our mixing glasses in the freezer whenever possible. During a busy shift this isn’t practical, but in that case we’re using the glasses frequently enough that they stay cold. At home, we recommend keeping your mixing glasses in the freezer. We also prefer a Japanesestyle mixing glass, as its width allows more ice to interact with the liquid than in a narrow-bottomed pint glass, helping the drink reach its target temperature and dilution simultaneously. ICE It all comes down to size. You can make a proper stirred drink with anything from tiny ice pellets up to one giant chunk of ice, and you can certainly use ice made in a home freezer, which isn’t as bad as people like to say. With different sizes of ice, what changes is how long you have to

stir to achieve proper dilution. In a working bar, the trick is to find the right balance of speed, efficiency, and control. We can chill and dilute a drink very quickly with crushed ice or tiny pellets, which puts more surface area of ice in contact with the drink, but this also makes it dangerously easy to overdilute the drink. Conversely, we can stir a cocktail over a single ice cube, which has less surface area and therefore provides a larger margin of error, meaning the drink will chill and dilute more slowly; but in this case we’d end up stirring ourselves dizzy while our customers find someplace else to drink. The happy medium is Kold-Draft ice, which we use to make most of our stirred drinks. Our machine produces pristine 1¼-inch cubes that stack in neat layers inside our mixing glasses. They’re large enough to dilute a drink slowly but offer enough surface area to keep stirring time fairly short. For making drinks at home, approximately 1-inch ice cubes will perform similarly. INGREDIENTS How much dilution a drink needs varies from cocktail to cocktail. A drink made mostly from high-proof spirits (such as a Sazerac or dry martini) needs more water and will take longer to reach dilution. A less boozy drink (such as a Manhattan or classic, fifty-fifty martini) will reach dilution more quickly.

SHAKING COCKTAILS While The Karate Kid is the best metaphor we could come up with for stirring (sorry!), Major League Baseball is the most apt we’ve come up with for shaking. In baseball, you see dramatic differences in throwing motion among pitchers, even in the most elite ranks of hurlers. Most pitchers throw overhand, a smaller subset throws sidearm, and a handful of freaks throw underhand (called a submarine pitch, if you care to know). But beyond these basic categories lie a panoply of variations and quirks that give each pitcher’s motion its signature. Some of these pitchers are poetry in motion, while others look like they’re trying to detach a snapping turtle from their hand. But all have one thing in common: they can put the ball over the plate.

building a drink  |  93

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DEATH&CO.

Some of the recipes in this book include raw eggs. When eggs are consumed raw, there is always the risk that bacteria, which is killed by proper cooking, may be present. For this reason, always buy certified salmonella-free eggs from a reliable grocer, storing them in the refrigerator until they are served. Because of the health risks associated with the consumption of bacteria that can be present in raw eggs, they should not be consumed by infants, small children, pregnant women, the elderly, or any persons who may be immunocompromised. The author and publisher expressly disclaim responsibility for any adverse effects that may result from the use or application of the recipes and information contained in this book. Copyright © 2014 by David Kaplan Photographs copyright © 2014 by William Hereford Foreword copyright © 2014 by Toby Cecchini All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Ten Speed Press, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York. www.crownpublishing.com www.tenspeed.com Ten Speed Press and the Ten Speed Press colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kaplan, David (Bartender) Death & Co: Modern Classic Cocktails / David Kaplan, Nick Fauchald, Alex Day; photographs by William Hereford; illustrations by Tim Tomkinson. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Cocktails. 2. Death & Co. (Bar: New York, N.Y.) I. Fauchald, Nick. II. Day, Alex. III. Title. TX951.K1654 2014 641.87'4—dc23 2014004245 Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-60774-525-9 eBook ISBN: 978-1-60774-526-6 Printed in China Design by Katherine Tomkinson Illustrations by Tim Tomkinson 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 First Edition

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