So you’re making a manhattan on-the-rocks. First you pour one part Sweet Vermouth over the ice. Then you pour two parts Whiskey over the ice. And lastly you pour the dash of bitters over the ice. My question is, do you then stir it at this point? I know the vermouth and whiskey don’t seem to need stirring at this point. But the bitters just seem to cling to the ice cubes and stay there.
I seem to vaguely recall reading somewhere that when you pour cocktails on-the-rocks, you don’t stir. And my father and I had a manhattan yesterday at a concert we went to. And the bartender didn’t seem to stir. Ironically though, he didn’t add bitters though. Someone please illuminate me in this matter.
Manhattans are my favorite drink, and when I make them I make sure to give a nice wrist shake to kind of blend the things together. Never stirred one before as I think that the splashing and the ice/wrist manuver take care of the blending.
Just as an aside, try using the best vermouth you can find and gradually increasing the ratio until it’s 1/1. That’s the best Manhattan I’ve ever had.
It depends on the drink. Some cocktails on the rocks you can make in a mixer and shake the hell out of (usually ones with vodka as the primary or only alcohol.) The reason for this is that shaking makes the drink colder, and for many liquors, this will diminish the flavor, so you just stir or do nothing. Personally, I would stir, because I can’t see any harm from a gentle stir, but I can see an advantage.
I always thought that this was why you included a swizzle stick. In addition to being able to spear the garnish (cherry, olive, twist, etc.), the stick allows your guest to stir or not, at his or her option. In my experience, some guests do, but some don’t. It depends on their preference.
Rule of thumb: you never stir a drink that comes with a stir stick. (And ladies, those aren’t straws. Just because bars got cheap and decided to start using the hollow swizzle sticks doesn’t make them a straw.) Stiring a drink is the customer’s job.
No bitters? I’ve seen a few people prefer their Manhattan sans bitters, but it’s part of the standard recipe. I’m surprised anyone would leave it out. Did he put the right garnish on it?
You didn’t ask, but regarding shaking vs. stirring, this seems to be a religious issue. I think it’s widely understood that you don’t shake gin- or whiskey-based cocktails (doing so “bruises” the liquor) and it’s not clear that there’s any reason to do so for plain or flavored vodka, other than showing off and making the drink opaque with ice chips. Really, the liquors will pretty much manage to mix themselves, especially after pooring room-temperature liquor over ice. (I don’t regard a quick wrist-twist as shaking; I’m talking about the full-on, both hands, up and down, impress-the-clients thing that well-endowed female bartenders seem to do as a sacred rite to the Good Tip Deity.)
Cluricaun, what vermouth do you prefer? I’ve been looking for a really good vermouth to try but haven’t found anything impressive so far. I generally mix at about 4:1 to 5:1 for vodka and regular martinis. (I’m not a fan of Manhattans and the only Scotches I care to drink–the Glenmorangie cask whiskeys–are much too good to waste mixing it with wine.)
You didn’t ask me, but I’ll offer this anyway: when I make a gin or vodka martini, I use Noilly Prat vermouth. There’s something about it–it’s gentle enough to let the flavour of the spirit through, while imparting its own distinctive flavour, to make the (IMHO) perfect martini.
Of course, others’ taste may vary, but that’s my perfect martini: Bombay Sapphire gin with Noilly Prat vermouth.
I’m no martini drinker, so to me dry vermouth is an abomination of astringency and I have almost no first hand experiances with it. I do drink sweet vermouth straight on occaison, like when I would have a port, so I keep Vya for that and for high end manhattans (usually Makers Mark).
I’d imagine that their dry is as good as the sweet, but again I only keep a pint bottle of Martini and Rossi dry in the house for guests who drink martinis. For the scrimping times when I’ve out drank my budget I do Canadian Club and either Cinzano or Rossi.
A few thoughts:
[ul]
[li]The “add bitters last and don’t stir” thing is only because some people think it looks nifty to see the bitters slowly mixing with the rest of the drink. I’d just go ahead and stir it.[/li][li]A decent practice is to add ingredients in order from items that will most strongly affect the flavor of the drink to items that will least affect it. This means that if you screw up somehow it’s easier to recover. For example, the bottles of Fee Bros. bitters have holes that are too large, so it’s easy to add way too much bitters. If I add the bitters first and mess up, I just have to dump the ice and bitters. But if I added the bitters last, I then either have to add a bunch more rye and vermouth to balance it, or dump the whole drink and start over (which is expensive).[/li][li]Try making a Manhattan with rye and orange bitters; IMO rye works waaaay better than bourbon. I use Regan’s orange bitters.[/li][li]Swizzle stick != garnish holder. It’s a stirrer. (If you want to get really anal, it’s a stirrer for a drink called a “swizzle”.)[/li][li]Vya vermouth is the best stuff you can reasonably find. If you happen to stumble across any remaining bottles of King Eider, grab them all. It’s no longer made, and it was fabulous. You might also want to ask on eGullet; they may have some pointers to other good vermouth (e.g., I think there are a couple of obscure European labels that are supposed to be very good, but I don’t remember them offhand).[/li][li]My take on shaking vs. stirring: Shake drinks that are going to be cloudy or need to be agitated (e.g., drinks with fruit juice or egg white); stir clear drinks. That being said, defer to the person who’s going to be drinking it, since this is one of those things that people tend to have a weird religious attachment to.[/li][/ul]
I have never made a Manhattan with bitters. Also, I use less than 1 part sweet vermouth. For what it’s worth, I’m a part time banquet bartender and have been for 15 years. Maybe it’s regional?
Nope. For example, the Waldorf-Astoria bar book lists orange bitters as part of their recipes for Manhattans, and NYC isn’t too far from where you are. It would be safer to claim that it’s generational rather than regional.
Seriously, try making it according to an older recipe; it’s much better than just the bourbon & vermouth version.
Oh, one other note: For those folks who don’t go through much vermouth but want to keep some available for guests–try locating airline bottles of vermouth. They’ll keep pretty much forever rather than oxidizing like an opened bottle would.
There are some regional variances with respect to the Manhattan, such as the use of brandy in place of the bourbon/rye/whiskey in Wisconsin. It’s called a Brown Mumbler and they’re not half bad. To me, the thing about “classic” cocktails is that they were mostly invented during prohibition to cover the sometimes objectionable flavors of bathtub gin or bootleg whiskey. Today’s distillations don’t need as much cover since they tend to taste better, hence the loss of the bitters in many Manhattans. If you’re a fan of the flavors of the mixers, as I am, it can still be worth it to try and make sure you include them.
What is it with Wisconsinites and brandy? The couple of times I went to order a Manhattan in Milwaukee, I always got posed the question, “Brandy or bourbon,” which always took me aback.
I learned about this at a wedding up in Wisconsin a few years ago and figured I’d go local for the weekend (It wasn’t during football season) and said what the hey. It’s really not all that different, and since brandy is made from grapes, and vermouth is a spiced wine it might actually be a bit more homogenous than the tried and true standard. I didn’t switch mind you, I just didn’t recoil.
Besides, this was also the weekend I learned about Prairie Fire shots so a Brandy Manhattan was the least of my worries.
OTOH, I’ve also seen a Wisconsin recipe for a Brandy Old Fashioned made with 7-Up and garnished with an olive, so I’d be a little dubious about Cocktails From The Land of Cheese.
I don’t buy this, for a few reasons:
Many of the classic cocktails are actually pre-prohibition; for example, the Manhattan is from forty or fifty years before prohibition.
The Savoy Cocktail Book has a brief section on “Cocktails suitable for a prohibition country”, and none of the recipes therein calls for bitters.
A cocktail is, by definition, a “bittered sling” (in other words, made with a base spirit, a sweetener, water, and bitters). This implies that plenty of people were drinking spirits without bitters. On the other hand, that definition is 200 years old, so people were drinking spirits legally both with and without bitters for a good long time based on flavor profiles rather than having to cover up the taste of illicit hooch.
If you look in classic cocktail recipes, you’ll see references to over a dozen different kinds of bitters. If the only purpose of bitters was to cover the taste of bad booze, you wouldn’t see that proliferation of different flavor profiles.
Prohibition really did a number on the art of bartending. The good bartenders either retired or went to Europe, so the bartenders who were left weren’t exactly top-notch. And since bartending is something you mostly have to learn by experience, this affected the way drinks were made post-prohibition.
“Proper” protocol isn’t important for me, as I am always mixing drinks away from a formal bar, but I always put bitters in, then vermouth, then whiskey or brandy, over ice, of course (get real, folks – it’s ice; calling it “rocks” just make you sound pretentious). That way, the splashing of the second & third ingredients mix up the first ones. It’s a little like putting cream in a coffee cup before the coffee – the pouring of the coffee mixes the cream and there is no need to stir.
That principle doesn’t work as well for drinks with a thicker fruit juice, like a Bloody Mary or a Screwdriver, where some stirring or shaking may be necessary.
As far as Brandy Manhattans, I was introduced to those first in Wisconsin, too. I like them either way.
