Sawyer Cocktail

If you are looking for a way to introduce bitters into your cocktail repertoire the Sawyer cocktail is your drink. I mean, actually, this drink is a bitters bomb, but you can’t believe how drinkable this cocktail is. The bitters add so much complexity to the flavors in the Sawyer cocktail. Be prepared to get a lot of “What’s in this drink?” questions when you make it for friends.

ORIGIN OF THE SAWYER COCKTAIL

And while we wish we could take all the credit for this delicious cocktail, this drink is one of many favorite recipes we’ve found in the book Bitters: A Spirited History of a Classic Cure-All, with Cocktails, Recipes, and Formulas. Our friends gave us this book as a house warming gift. Such a good gift. Our friends knew about our love of craft cocktails and that we’ve been itching to experiment at home, and this book allowed us to do just that.  Definitely check it out!

How Do You Make Those Long Citrus Peel Garnishes?

It is time, dear reader, for you to meet your new best friend the channel knife. A channel knife can be used to slice a long, gorgeous citrus peel/zest garnish for your Sawyer cocktail. It takes practice to get your garnishes looking consistently awesome, but here are a few tips.

1. The best fruit to use is a lemon. Limes are a bit harder, but can work great. Varieties of oranges can work well, but often the peel is too soft.
2. Make sure the fruit is dry before using the channel knife. Wet fruit doesn’t zest as well. This is a good tip for other applications of regular zesting too.
3. Do not buy a cheap channel knife. You need that knife to be sharp! Don’t worry, though, a good channel knife should only set you back $10-15.
4. Start peeling/zesting at the top of the fruit and continue around the fruit so you can get a nice long peel. If you go from the top straight down to the bottom, your zest can only be so long. So work east to west, or west to east if you’re feeling saucy.
5. Use fresh fruit. Old fruit has softer, dryer skin that won’t give you great results. When you’re buying fruit look for fruit that has firm, nice-looking skin.
6. Practice. You may have a bowl of skinless lemons hanging around before you get really good, but it’ll be worth it!

Sawyer Cocktail

 

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Author: Oakhurst Kitchen adapted from Bitters: A Spirited History of a Classic Cure-All, with Cocktails, Recipes, and Formulas by Brad Thomas Parsons

Yield: 1 drink

Ingredients

• 2 oz gin, such as Beefeater
• ½ oz freshly squeezed lime juice
• ½ oz simple syrup
• 14 dashes Angostura bitters
• 7 dashes Peychaud’s Bitters
• 7 dashes Regan’s Orange Bitters No. 6

Instructions

1. Combine all the ingredients in a cocktail shaker filled with ice and shake until well chilled.
2. Strain into a chilled coupe.
3. Garnish with lime zest.

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