Elijah Craig Bourbon’s annual Old-Fashioned Week returns for its second year supporting the Restaurant Workers’ Community Foundation, October 15-24. Sign up your bar or restaurant to participate by featuring Elijah Craig Old-Fashioned riffs on your menu.
Japanese for “autumn”—“I’m bad at naming cocktails!” laments Natasha Bermudez—the drink was created as a fall menu pairing at New York’s Llama San, the Nikkei (Japanese food as practiced in Peru) restaurant where Bermudez is head bartender. She makes it food-friendly by thinning out the body, using a smaller dose of syrup than she would with a stand-alone cocktail, and with barley shōchū, which she finds nutty and woody like a good sherry. She enhances the “fresh” notes she finds in Elijah Craig Small Batch with lightly muddled shiso leaf, a Japanese staple.
1/2 ounce white sesame cane syrup (see Editor’s Note)
1/2 ounce white sesame cane syrup (see Editor’s Note)
12 drops The Japanese Shiso Bitters
12 drops The Japanese Shiso Bitters
1 shiso leaf
1 shiso leaf
Garnish: grapefruit peel
Directions
Combine all ingredients in a mixing glass over ice and stir until chilled.
In a rocks glass, lightly muddle shiso leaf to release aromatics, then add a large ice cube.
Strain cocktail into rocks glass.
Express grapefruit peel over cocktail, and discard.
Editor's Note
White Sesame Cane Syrup Toast 80 grams white sesame seeds until golden, stirring constantly so as not to burn. Combine with 1,100 grams cane syrup in a sous-vide silicone bag. Preheat water bath to 155 degrees Fahrenheit, place bag in heated water, and let cook for 1½ hours. Remove and place in ice bath until syrup cools down. Pass through cheesecloth to strain, then vacuum-seal and store in refrigerator.
