How to Make Drinks With Vodka

Video Transcript

"Hello my name is JD Stubenberg. I'm one of the bar managers here at Jimmy Mak's Jazz Club in Portland, Oregon and today we're going to talk about making cocktails with Vodka. Vodka has a neutral spirit, has very very little flavor. It's either distilled from one of two basic items traditionally from potatoes but the vast majority of Vodka produced today is distilled from grain spirits, wheats, barley, rye, even oats so your oatmeal could actually be Vodka as well if you really worked at it. What that means is that because it has very little flavor it takes great flavor so it's a really fundamental alcohol for using to make lots of different types of cocktails. One of the things that we like to do here at Jimmy Mak's is a cocktail we came up with just recently that is named in honor of the late great Freddie Hubbard who was a legendary jazz trumpeter who was well known for playing with his lip busted open so we call it The Split Lip. What we're going to do is start with a single cube of sugar because we are working with fresh pineapple with this cocktail and whenever you work with fresh fruit you need to help it out a little bit because fresh fruit tends to be fairly tar in the beginning so it needs some sugar to help bring out the natural flavors. So a single cube of sugar. We are going to add a couple of cubes of large chunks of pineapple and then we're also going to add a few leaves of mint. Now it is really important when you make cocktails with mint, Mohitos are a real big thing right now, lots of mint drinks are as well, you need to check the mint out and see how aromatic it is. If it's really really pungent, a little bit will go a long way because if you use too much really pungent mint it will overpower all the other flavors in this cocktail. Believe me I know because I learned through a log of trial and error so just a few leaves of mint, your pineapple and sugar, get your muddler out, macerate this real well so you have get the sugar broken down, get the pineapple broken up pretty well and get the mint as broken up as you can as well because in this cocktail we're actually going to serve this up in strains so it is going to take much of the meat out of this so you want to be able to get the flavor as broken down as much as possible so as much of that comes through the drink as you can. O'kay after you have macerated it we're going to add ice, always use lots of good hard ice. the next part of this we're going to start, going to go to is the Vodka obviously. In this case I have chosen to use a potato Vodka Monopolowa from Austria, inexpensive, very very good quality Vodka. Some people who are serious Vodka drinkers don't like, there you go, don't actually like potato Vodkas because they are so used to drinking grain Vodkas. You can use grain oriented Vodka in this too, I prefer potato Vodkas. It is a really nice neutral flavor so we're going to add a generous portion, I do mean generous of Monopolowa Vodka and then we're going to apply our cocktail shaker on the top, get a good seal so it doesn't break on you and shake vigorously. O'kay the reason why you shake it so hard like that is because we are using cubed sugar and you want that sugar to break down. You could substitute confectionery sugar or super fine sugar which would break down a little more evenly or you could even use simple syrup. Simple syrup is dangerous because a little bit too much and you have a drink that is overly sweet. A little bit too little and the drink doesn't have enough sweetness. It requires really really exact measuring but simple syrup has a great advantage in that it dissolves instantly so, and for us we like to use cubed sugar because we work so fast and make so many cocktails that it makes it a little easier to keep running and running and running and not be so worried about being exactly right on how much sugar goes in the drink. O'kay now we're going to add a little splash of soda water just for a little effervescence in this cocktail, a martini glass. With martini style drinks, anything that is anything that is served up it is always good to pre-chill the glass. You can do this either by having it in a refrigerator or you can cheat the way we do, fill the glass with ice and water. It is the same concept of chilling a bottle of wine. Ice water actually is colder than ice itself because it gets a complete seal around whatever it is you are trying to chill. In any event when you are making a cocktail like this you'd actually want to get this chilling beforehand that way it gives it maximum time to get the glass cold and in interest of expediency we have just done this here so you can see how it's done. So now we are going to take this cocktail, this wonderful drink and we're going to strain it in just a second as soon as we put a garnish on this drink. We're going to garnish this with a wonderful pineapple with a little mint sprig as well, strain it up and you'll see just little bits of the mints coming out in there and the color of the pineapple as well and there you have what we call The Split Lip."