You'll probably agree when I say that a lot of people don't really understand
the difference between a Brandy Crusta and the more widely known Sidecar
in fact they're often served pretty interchangeably and I'll definitely
happily put my hands up and say by me until recently.
They actually started off life though as quite independent drinks despite the
similarity of the ingredients. So what is the difference?
Jerry Thomas's 'How to mix drinks' published in 1862
is basically the Magna Carta for bartenders. It put down on paper this new
phenomenon for the first time. In it he made a distinction between
plain drinks and fancy drinks. The Crusta was invented in New Orleans
in the 1850s by an Italian bartender named Joseph Santini and it fits firmly
into this fancy category with its over-the-top garnish
and yes at this point a large lemon twist and a sugar rim was considered
pretty extra which may seem odd in an era where I've
been handed a perfumed origami panda head to sniff while I drink and had an
entire frozen creme egg as the ice block in my Manhattan.
The other thing which sets this cocktail apart was its ratio.
So the original recipe adheres to the classic cocktail formulation of
spirit, bitters, sugar, water but adds a squeeze of lemon.
Now squeeze is very little probably only around 5 to ten mil
and so the Crusta was actually a spirit forward cocktail pretty much
a twist on the old fashioned and really quite different to the sours and daisies
where lemon juice makes up a much larger proportion of the drink.
And here we start to see the difference between the Brandy Crusta
and the Sidecar. Adding Maraschino cherry liqueur to a
Brandy Crusta also became quite popular at the turn of the 19th century
it's not the original but another way that a modern Brandy Crusta may differ
from the Sidecar. As a side note the Crusta could be based on any spirit
but brandy quickly became the favorite. Brandy was actually the spirit of choice
for many older cocktails and the original proportions meant it relied on
a very tasty base spirit. A combination of phylloxera which is a
root disease that absolutely gutted France's winemaking industry in the late
19th century and then prohibition made good quality
brandy pretty impossible to get a hold of in the States,
and this is where you start to see local American whiskey overtake
as the go-to dark spirit and the Brandy Crusta
fell out of fashion. It's still not exactly ubiquitous but has
certainly enjoyed a revival of sorts thanks to our current cocktail obsession.
The Sidecar's exact birthplace is debated, shocking
in the world of cocktail history I know, but it's safe to say
it gained renown after world war one at Harry's New York bar in Paris and was
inducted into the Cocktail Hall of Fame with its inclusion
in the seminal bartending book by the very same Harry,
Harry's ABC of mixing cocktails.
The name of the cocktail is also disputed
some say it was named for an army captain who used to arrive at the bar in
a motorcycle sidecar others say that it comes from the
bartending practice of pouring any excess cocktail from the shaker into a
little shot glass to the side once the cocktail glass is full.
Early recipes including Harry MacElhone's actually called
for a one, one, one ratio which makes for quite a clumsy
tasting drink. I prefer to see it as the love child of
the Brandy Crusta and a classic sour so using the flavor combination from one
and the proportions of the other to create a bright but rich and complex
cocktail which has stood the test of time. Before we get stuck into making and
comparing the two let's have a closer look at the ingredients.
Brandy as a category is really varied
it's basically just a spirit which is made
from distilling fermented fruit juice, so it's generally understood that if
something is called just brandy it will be made from grapes
but you can obviously get for example apple brandy or pear brandy it's a
massive category and the quality varies wildly from
really low grade cooking brandy right through to some of the most
elite spirits in the world. Particular regions which are well known for brandy
will have tighter regulations about what can have their name on the label
hence why Cognac and Armagnac are seen as such benchmarks.
Cocktail recipes will often call for Cognac specifically which
basically just means you need to use something good quality
but of course there are now great brandies being made in many different
parts of the world including here in Australia.
It is still a good rule of thumb though if you're unsure what to buy
and as there's some big producers there such as Hennessey and Courvoisier
you can still get something decent that's not going to break the bank.
The Brandy Crusta recipe really heroes the brandy, this drink is meant to be a
really rich and interesting sipper, so look for a brandy which has good body
and plenty to think about. I'm using Sullivan's Cove XO which is a
Tasmanian brandy and it is a little bit bougie but I've
wanted to use it in a cocktail for so long because it has incredible depth of
flavor really intense dried fruit and a little
hint of funk the same way you get with good rums.
It is XO, which stands for extra old meaning it's been aged for at least six years,
so heaps of complexity.
This is a great cocktail to try out a special bottle in, as you're still very much tasting the spirit,
but also really any decent quality brandy will do.
Because the Sidecar is brighter and more
citrus heavy I'm using a more fruit forward and lighter brandy.
Hennessy is really seen as the quintessential Cognac
and I find the VS which stands for Very Special mixes really well in cocktails.
It's at least two years old. The VSOP so Very Special(Superior) Old Product(Pale) is at least
four years old and that'll just bring a bit more spice and woody notes.
St Remy, Martell, Courvoisier and so on will all absolutely substitute in nicely
just choose your favorite.
Curacao or triple sec are just orange liqueurs and
again can be quite varied. It's good to look at what end result you
want before choosing. So for the Brandy Crusta we're looking
for depth of flavor and a fairly dry finish
I'm going to use Pierre Ferrand Curacao. This is made with a cognac
base and layered with spices and orange peel so it's really going to complement
the intense brandy we're using. For the Sidecar we're looking for
something to balance out the lemon juice and add a nice zestiness
so I'm using the old faithful Cointreau. It has a more neutral
base spirit and a little more sweetness so it won't overpower but rather just
offer a nice balance and viscosity.
Now as I've said, the garnish and the serve of this
drink is is really what it's all about it's what made it a fancy cocktail to
begin with, so we'd better make sure that we get all
of that nicely prepared now. Peel as long a twist of lemon as you can
and trim it down if necessary. You just sort of pull it towards you
in a diagonal right round from top to bottom.
Hopefully your peeler is a little bit sharper than mine, it's a bit painful,
but you should be able to get a nice long
piece of lemon like this. As I said it's up to you this has managed to stay quite
nice and thin so we probably don't really need to take any of the pith off
and it's up to you if you want to trim it down just so it looks a little bit
neater, I kind of like it being rustic so I'm just going to leave it as is.
Then we are going to take a little wedge
out of the lemon to rim our glass with as well.
Then grab whatever kind of fancy goblety glass you want
to use and just run right around the outside
with your lemon and dab in your sugar.
So I like to kind of get it all over the glass it's going to be all over your
lips even on your fingers sort of as you're drinking it,
and I enjoy that you can obviously be a little bit more restrained with the
sugar if you prefer.
Now we're just gonna
wind the lemon peel around the inside of the glass
and then we're gonna build your drink.
So we've got 60 mls of brandy.
Now I know some of you are kind of purists out there and prefer
just drinking sort of really good quality and more expensive spirits
neat and I completely respect that obviously as a cocktail bartender I love
getting to use kind of fancier spirits and I think that
you get to almost see a different side of them as well than
when you're just sipping them neat because obviously you've got those-
it's interacting with all those other flavors- um so yeah I'm pretty happy to to
finally get to use this one in a cocktail.
15 mils of our Pierre Ferrand dry Curacao.
This one has deliberately been formulated to kind of mimic the kinds of
Curacao that would have been around when recipes like this sort of came
to be, so definitely a good option.
And then just a little like even five to ten mils of mMaraschino if you're choosing to use it.
Just as that little extra dimension of flavor.
And two dashes of good old Angostura bitters.
And finally the thing that
differentiates it is a little 15 mils of lemon juice.
Then fill your cocktail shaker with ice. We're just going to do a short and sharp
shake on this one. We actually don't want heaps and heaps
of dilution, it's still pretty boozy.
And then a double strain.
I mean how fancy does that look? The Brandy Crusta,
so now you know.
Obviously we're all about minimizing wastage here on Behind the Bar,
so just going to use this lemon that I've already peeled
just to get a little coin to spritz over the top.
I just like a little spritz on most drinks to be honest I love those really fresh
lemon oils but absolutely not necessary and not necessarily
mandated in the recipe so completely up to you there.
And then we're just gonna squeeze some lemon juice.
So we're going to go 50 mils of our brandy.
20 mils of Cointreau. We did only have the
litre bottles at work and it's a bit heavy to be honest, my bartending arm is
out of practice.
20 mils of lemon juice.
Now I'm going to
do a little half sugar rim because as I say as much as
it's not actually part of the original sidecar recipe I think a lot of people
expect it nowadays and it looks really pretty so this way
if I do it halfway around then they can kind of decide whether
they want to use it or not and again I've just stuck with
something a little bit more wine glass looking but a bit more
modern sort of again as a nod to that Brandy Crusta predecessor
but absolutely just a coupe martini glass works as well.
Then we're going to fill our tins with ice
pop your shaker tins together, make sure it's a nice straight line,
and then shake as hard as you can.
Just going to do the little twist over the top.
There we have a Sidecar, so now you know.
Before I do a little taste test on these
I do want to take a quick moment to acknowledge our awesome
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All right well we now have both the Brandy Crusta,
and the Sidecar in front of me, so I should probably give them a taste and
see what I think. Start with the Sidecar because it's
going to be a little bit fresher.
It's a delicious drink because it's got all the kind of lightness and freshness
if you like those shaken um more kind of citrusy
drinks but it does you know it's still brandy
so it's still got that real kind of raisiny depth of flavor that you get
from that spirit um which is really delicious so I guess
it's kind of you know if you already like your sort of sours
maybe a margarita or that sort of thing it can be something different for you to
try, I would say this definitely needs a
sugar rim if you're not planning on doing that then
a little dash of sugar or even a little bit more Cointreau
but with the sugar rim you know it just stays quite nice and tart,
the brandy still comes through heaps it's definitely not lost in there.
Yeah nice and refreshing and then this guy you can obviously
see from the color if you can see through the frosted
glass but you can kind of tell that it's it's probably going to be a little
bit more lethal.
It's like almost kind of chewy it's got such-
yeah again just really really intense brandy flavor
and that little bit of Maraschino just sort of
you couldn't- I don't think that I would honestly be able to like taste test that
it was in there if I didn't know but it just kind of underpins it and
brings this like lovely berry kind of backbone to it.
And yeah as much as the lemon juice is in there it's almost just kind of the
same way that the bitters are there everything's just working to support the
brandy so I would definitely happily sit on this
and kind of almost let it come up to room temperature you know over the
course of a of a kind of after dinner drink,
this one I could probably drink about three of in half an hour but this one I'd definitely
be happy to to ruminate on for a while. So both excellent drinks but
really quite different when you make them like this.