How to Make a Pomegranate Cosmo

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name is J.D. Stubenberg. I'm one of the bar managers here at Jimmy Maks Jazz Club in Portland, Oregon. Today we're going to be talking about making pomegranate cosmopolitans. It's a sort of an oxymoron in that a cosmopolitan gets it's color from cranberry juice, and combining cranberry juice and pomegranate syrup can be a little interesting, but we'll give it a try and see how it comes out. Your basic cosmopolitan is a very simple cocktail, made popular on television a few years ago by the girls on Sex and the City. It's since morphed in to different kinds of things, but the basic cosmopolitan starts as such: Start out with your cocktail mixer, fill this with ice. We're going to start out with some straight lime juice, just a little bit, about a half an ounce. We're going to add to this a combination of two things, first and foremost being the main ingredient, which is vodka. We're going to be using Ketel One vodka today, about two ounce of Ketel One. Now, normally here we'd be using triple sec as a sweetening agent, now we've talked before with pomegranate about being very sweet, and that is a good substitute as a sweetening agent, and we're going to do the same thing here. Replace the triple sec with pomegranate syrup, about a half an ounce, a very little bit goes a very long way. As you're pouring, you've got to keep in mind too that syrup's like pomegranate syrup tend to be very thick, so they pour a little slower than a, an alcohol like vodka does, so in measuring as a home bartender, use a jigger, get accurate measures, as a professional bartender, most professionals can figure out what they're pouring pretty quickly because they just know by looking at it. So here's our starting point, now here's where it gets interesting, the primary color agent in a cosmopolitan is cranberry juice, well, we've already got good color here, so we really don't need the cranberry juice, but it also adds a lot of flavor, there's a tart flavor, and kind of a dry finish that comes in a cosmopolitan the cranberry juice is essential for. And now that we've added all the sweetening agent with pomegranate syrup, which has it's own flavor, you're going to need that cranberry for sure. So just add a little dose of cranberry juice, and now we've got our fundamental cosmopolitan. We'll serve this up in a martini shell. I've mentioned this in other discussions before that martini shells should typically be chilled before hand, you can either keep it in a refrigerator, you can also do it with the method that we have done before, and I'll show you guys again. Fill a martini shell with ice and water, this will get the shell to chill fairly quickly. If you know you're making one of these, the best thing you can do is actually do this before you start making your cocktail, that way it has plenty of time to get the ice going and get the glass very cold, but for purposes of our demonstration here today, you understand what I'm talking about. So, we now have a glass that's ready to use, let's get our shaker. Again, shaker on top of the glass, good, firm seal, and shake well. This one doesn't require as much shaking as other cocktails do because you're not trying to break down sugars, or creams or anything like that, the, all the ingredients here are fairly liquefied to begin with, so the shaking is going to be pretty minimal, and that will get the cocktail together. Get the strainer, strain that up, and garnish this with a wheel of lime, just like so. There you have a pomegranate cosmopolitan."