Sazerac Recipe
Sazerac Ingredients
2 oz / 60 ml Rye whiskey (I used Sazerac Rye)
1 barspoon / 5 ml Simple syrup (or one sugar cube, muddled with a few drops of water)
3 dashes Peychaud's bitters
Absinthe, 3 or 4 sprays from an atomizer, or a .25 oz. rinse
Lemon peel
How to make a Sazerac
Put a rocks glass in the freezer, or fill it with ice and water, while you build the drink.
Add the simple syrup, Peychaud's and rye to a mixing glass. Fill with ice and stir 20 to 25 seconds.
Dump the ice water out of the serving glass. Spray the inside with absinthe, three or four sprays from an atomizer. No atomizer: pour in a quarter ounce, tilt and roll the glass until the inside is coated, and dump the rest.
Strain the drink into the rinsed glass. No ice. Twist a lemon peel over the top so the oils land on the surface, rub it around the rim, and either drop it in or set it on the edge. Traditionalists discard it. I leave it in.
Rye: Sazerac Rye is the obvious bottle. Rittenhouse, Old Forester Rye and Wild Turkey 101 Rye all work and the 100 proof ones stand up better to the absinthe.
Sugar: a cube muddled with a few drops of water is the old way and it's fine, but it never fully dissolves. A barspoon of simple syrup is the same sweetness and no grit. Demerara syrup if you want it rounder.
Absinthe: anything works for a rinse. Herbsaint is the New Orleans substitute and it's what most bars there use. Pastis is fine too.
Bitters: Peychaud's is the drink. Some bars add a dash of Angostura alongside it. Try it both ways.
The Sazerac is New Orleans in a glass: rye whiskey, Peychaud's bitters, a little sugar and an absinthe-rinsed glass, served neat with a lemon peel and no ice. It's an old fashioned's cousin, built the same way, but the Peychaud's and the absinthe move it somewhere else entirely. Anise on the nose, cherry-red bitters underneath, and rye doing the work bourbon does in an old fashioned.
The drink started as a cognac cocktail in the 1850s at the Sazerac Coffee House, switched to rye when phylloxera wiped out the French vineyards, and switched from absinthe to Herbsaint when absinthe was banned. Absinthe is legal again, so this is the rye and absinthe version. I use Sazerac Rye because it's named for the drink and it's the one most bars pour, but any 90 to 100 proof rye works.
Two things make or break it. Chill the serving glass while you stir, and go easy on the absinthe. It's a rinse, not an ingredient. An atomizer gets you three sprays and a coated glass without wasting a quarter ounce every time.
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