A Raspberry Honey Apple Brandy Smash

Add some razzle-dazzle to your summer cocktail rotation...

I thought I was done with raspberries. But it turned out that raspberries weren’t done with me.

And after a few experiments and iterations, which I will trace for you below, I ended up with one of my personal favorite original cocktails.

I think you’ll like it too.

In last Friday’s newsletter, I wrote about the Whiskey Smash, which began life as a Mint Julep twin, but eventually evolved into a sort of a Mint Julep crossed with a Whiskey Sour, after bartenders started adding fresh fruit.

In Harry Johnson’s late 1800s spec, the particular fresh fruit was not specified. He assumed, I suppose, that bartenders would simply use whatever fresh fruit was available—or just whatever they already had on hand.

Never underestimate the power of making cocktails with what you happen to have in your house right now.

As it happened, I had already been writing about raspberry cocktails.

So even as I was writing about the raspberry-less Whiskey Smash, I had some raspberries on hand. This presented an obvious opportunity.

With cocktails, as in life, when opportunity knocks, you should probably open the door.

With all the ingredients for a Whiskey Smash, I could make a Raspberry Whiskey Smash—a Whiskey Smash…with raspberries muddled in. This would be a test of the simple theory of raspberry cocktails: Just add raspberry.

At first that’s what I did. And it was pretty good.

If you want to make that drink, you can just take last week’s Whiskey Smash recipe and add raspberries during the muddling stage. (Make sure to double-strain the final mix to remove any fruit solids.)

But then I realized that this crossover drink template presented more opportunities for iteration and innovation.

Even more than that, there was a specific flavor profile, a kind of an idea of a drink, that arrived almost fully-formed in my head. It was light, bright, sweet (but not too sweet), fruity, and spicy, with some minty-raspberry pizazz. I knew I had to create an IRL drink to live up to that idea.

So I made a couple of changes, Mr. Potato Head style, swapping like-for-like ingredients.

The main change I made to the next version was to use apple brandy instead of whiskey. Good American apple brandy—I always use and strongly recommend Laird’s Straight—is a deep brown, aged liquor that reads sort of like apple whiskey. It’s fruity, yes, but with a little more of the kick and oaky character of good bourbon. So I figured it would make a good swap.

And it did. That gave me an initial spec that looked like this:

• 2 dashes Angostura Aromatic bitters

• 4 raspberries

• ½ large lemon, cut into 4 wedges

• 4-6 mint leaves

• ¾ ounce rich (2:1) simple syrup

• 2 ounces Laird’s Straight Apple Brandy

Muddle, shake, strain, and served over crushed or pebble/nugget ice.

Like I said, this worked for me, and you might enjoy this too.¹ But I sensed there was an opportunity to make it a little better. It didn’t quite match the imaginary cocktail that I had already consumed in my head.

The bitter notes in particular, were a bit much, dragging the drink in a dark and intense direction when it needed to be lighter, fruitier, and spicier. So I made a couple more adjustments.

Instead of Angostura Aromatic bitters, I swapped in Peychaud’s bitters. Peychaud’s bitters are spicy, fruity, and essential to several New Orleans-linked classics. We also know from other cocktails that Peychaud’s pairs quite well with apple brandy.

Instead of rich simple syrup, I swapped in a 3:1 honey syrup. Honey syrup is a little more summer-y, and it harmonizes better with the fruit elements.

Finally, in place of the muddled lemon wedges, I used fresh squeezed lemon juice. As I noted in last week’s newsletter, muddling lemon wedges brings out the oils from the lemon peels, giving the drink a slightly bitter cast. Using fresh lemon juice, without the peel oils, brightens the drink and helps emphasize the raspberry tang.

This gave me exactly what I wanted—a bright, fruity, tangy summer cocktail, with a pleasingly intense reddish color thanks to the combo of Peychaud’s and raspberries.

I know I said that last week’s Raspberry Rum Old Fashioned was my favorite of the raspberry drinks I’d featured in the newsletter.

But after making this, I have to update my ranking, because this one is by far the clear winner—not just the best of the raspberry cocktails, but one of the better originals I’ve ever made. It has a coherence and force of character, a charisma, you might say, perhaps even the cocktail equivalent of “rizz.”

So I’ll have to call it…

The Razzler

• 4-6 mint leaves

• 4 raspberries

• 2 dashes Peychaud’s bitters

• ¾ ounce 3:1 honey syrup*

• ¾ ounce fresh squeezed lemon juice

• 2 ounces Laird’s Straight Apple Brandy

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Combine all ingredients in a cocktail shaker.

2. Muddle until you can clearly smell the aroma of mint and raspberries.

3. Add ice, then shake briefly to chill and integrate.

4. Double strain, using a cocktail strainer and fine mesh strainer, into a glass filled with crushed or pebble/nugget ice.²

5. Garnish with a small mint bouquet.

*3:1 honey syrup: Combine 3 parts honey with one part water, measured by liquid volume, in a mixing bowl. Whisk until fully combined, about a minute. Bottle and store in the fridge. Keeps for a month or more.

Huckleberry’s Floppy Ear Gets Me Every Time

1. If you’re interested in a drink that I think is reasonably good but could definitely be better, just for comparison purposes, try this first iteration.

2. Since I frequently get questions about ice: I recommend a wooden mallet and Lewis bag for crushing ice, but you can just use an ordinary hammer/mallet and ice inside a folded kitchen towel. This method produces inconsistent shards, but it’s straightforward and inexpensie. It’s also fun to smash stuff! Just don’t smash stuff on nice stone kitchen counters. If you want perfectly crunchy pebble/nugget ice, you can buy a dedicated machine. There are several products on the market. Ice machines of all kinds are almost always annoying—they’re loud, they break, they take up space, they’re frustrating to clean—but when they work, they’re great. You can also purchase bags of nugget ice at Sonic.