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St. Patrick’s Day Cocktails Beyond Green Beer · Into The Barchive

• Nashville Drinks: Welcome Barqivis to this week's episode of Into the Barqive. And today we're talking about St. Patrick's Day. And are we going... We're staying away from bastardizing this and we're saying true to the history of what makes St. Patrick's Day or made St. Patrick's Day St. Patrick's Day. Well, if not that, just honoring St. Patrick's Day with like authentic, more authentic Irish and Irish whiskey cocktails, ⁓ not green beer. ⁓ OK, not just Jameson shots. Car bombs. Certainly not Irish Carbons. Instead, today we're making two cocktails that tell very different parts of the story about Irish and Irish-American drinking culture. First, we're going to make the Tiparary, an old school Irish whiskey cocktail with real history behind it. And then the Irish maid. Yeah. which is a modern cocktail that feels fresh and light very now. And St. Patrick's Day didn't start as a party. It actually started as a feast day. Celebration day. Absolutely. And Irish whiskey didn't disappear from cocktails because it wasn't good. It disappeared because history got in the way. Before we take that deep dive, I say, Let's go build some cocktails. Let's do it. We're going to start by making the classic cocktail, the Tipperary. And the Tipperary is a riff on the Bijou, which uses gin as its base spirit. Instead, we're going to be using Irish whiskey. And the Tipperary was first mentioned in Hugo Enslen's 1916 book, and it said that the cocktail was named the Tipperary because Irish soldier returning home from war, World War I in this case, was walking into the bar humming the song, ⁓ It's a Long Way from Tipperary, which was an anthem for homesick Irish soldiers during World War I. So, we're going to start by adding an ounce and a half of a pot still Irish whiskey. So, the traditional contemporary had equal parts Irish whiskey sweet vermouth and chartreuse then it was modified a Couple years later by Harry McElhone to have two parts Irish whiskey one part sweet vermouth and a half ounce of green chartreuse the recipe we're using today comes from the modern Irish bar the dead rabbit and so we're going to use one and a half of Irish whiskey and then one and a half of sweet vermouth. And then we'll use half an ounce of green chartreuse. So I'm adding my sweet vermouth here, that ounce and a half. I'm gonna seal that back up after using the Coramon. Now, we are, we said no green, but we're gonna use a half ounce of green chartreuse. This drink will not be green. It will be more of a reddish brown. So the green chartreuse is going to add some nice herbaceousness and botanicals to this. So adding the chartreuse, you can see the color doesn't change even though the spirit is quite green. From there, we're going to add three dashes of Angostura Bitters, and because I'm using a Japanese Dasher it'll be six, so one, two, three, four, five, six. Three dashes of Orange Bitters, again same thing, Japanese Dasher, one, two, three, four, five, six. And then, you probably saw this bottle of St. George Absinthe on the table. We're gonna add three dashes of it as well. So there's one. Two, and let's make sure we get in there. Three. All right. So one of the reasons that you may be looking here like Red Brist 12, that's a pretty expensive whiskey to be using in a cocktail. It is important for the tepary to use what's called a single pot still Irish whiskey. Jameson blended Irish whiskey has a lot of grain whiskey in it, which makes it very light and smooth. But you want more texture and body that a single Potstill Irish Whiskey will provide. So it's all malted and unmalted barley, as well as all coming from a Potstill, which gives the distillate more character than grain whiskies that are used in blends like Jameson, which tend to be made on a column still. So you don't have to use a $65- $70 bottle of Red Breast. If you make this cocktail at home, there are more affordable options like the Busker, Single Pot Silla Irish Whiskey, Powers, Three Swallow. So again, use Single Pot Silla doesn't have to be Red Breast. That's just what we had. From there, let's add some ice to our mixing glass. and get ready to stir this cocktail down. Again, make sure you're adding enough ice to create an iceberg of sorts. And then we'll stir 30 to 45 seconds. And so this creates a more balanced cocktail than the equal parts Irish whiskey, sweet vermouth, and chartreuse recipe, so it won't be a sweet, a little more balanced. But again, that pot-stilled Irish whiskey is going to give a lot of flavor and character ⁓ to this cocktail. And then the absinthe, the orange bitters, and the angostura bitters will give it that sort of extra spice. ⁓ In some ways, can think of this like a Manhattan of sorts. I mean, again, even though it's a riff on a gin drink called a Bijou, for most people, may have never heard of a Bijou before. So, thinking about this as like a supercharged Irish whiskey Manhattan may be a better choice. So... As we come to the end of our stirring time, let's grab a chilled coupe. And because of the volume, I got a slightly bigger coupe for this cocktail. And then strain that out. into our little bit larger coop and then to finish the drink we're to take an orange peel and using the ⁓ cheese plane to make the peeling process a little safer and it gives us a thicker pith where it's easier to express the oils over the top of the cocktail and then after I take that and run it around the rim I'm gonna discard so it's not getting in my way as I drink my Tipperary throw that away Enjoy the temporary. Cheers. For cocktail number two, we're going to make the Irish Maid. Another dead rabbit cocktail. For this one, we're going to do a technique we haven't done on our channel just yet. We're actually gonna muddle. We're gonna start with three-quarter of an ounce of simple syrup. Three-quarters of an ounce into our shaken tin. I'll pop this up here for a better view. Our next ingredient will be three quarters of an ounce of freshly squeezed lemon juice. And here's where we go to muddle. We're going to take an English cucumber and take a handful of cucumber wheels and drop them down into our Shakington and then take a muddler. Talking to Blake earlier, I usually pour all my ingredients in and then start to muddle, but I didn't want to piss too many people off into the comments just yet. So maybe I'll do that technique later, but that's just more me being lazy than it is the proper technique or whatever is supposed to be the proper. What we're doing is we're muddling down the oils, juices, and some of that viscosity from this English cucumber and imparting it into our simple syrup and lemon juice. What we're trying to do. is not pulverize this. We're not trying to get a blender or kind of emulsify it. We're just getting enough broken in to where you can start to smell that cucumber aroma. Once you've got that, you're done. Stake off your muddler, drop it to your bar map, and now let's finish building the cocktail. We're now going to take our Irish whiskey. We've got some Bushmill here. We're going to take and put two ounces. Into our Shiggington. Our next ingredient and the one that makes this one pop. a half ounce of St. Germain that elderflower liqueur. Don't skip on it. If you've got somebody that produces a better one please let me know. I have yet to come across anybody that has done a better job of making an elderflower liqueur than St. Germain. Drop that half ounce into your shaking tin. Let's get ice into our big tin. And now we shake. 10 to 15 seconds. And notice those models are still in there. It's a slight regal shake. I really got a whiff of the hucum loose as you began to shake. After our 10 to 15 seconds, we've got the frost on the coming up on our chicken tin over here. I know I've done a good job there with dilution chilling. We've popped our tin and now we're taking our glass, putting ice into our glass. And now we're going to double strain because the because we did break up those cucumbers that cucumber. We don't want all that extra sludge and junk in our cocktail. So we're going to do a quick double strain. And to garnish. One cucumber wheel. And now we have our Irish mate. Cheers. Now that we've built the cocktails, let's build the context. The history? My good man. All right. Well, I guess let's before we can talk about St. Patrick's Day drinking, we've got to at least make some gesture toward St. Patrick's Day and who St. Patrick was. What we do know is he was born in Great Britain in the 5th century, abducted in his youth and taken to Ireland. And even though he knew managed to eventually escape, St. Patrick received a vision that he should lead a mission to convert the pagan Irish to Christianity. And in this vision, we get what? Well, according to legend, St. Patrick drove all the snakes out of Ireland. But when you think about the climate of Ireland and things like that, it makes it very unlikely that snakes were ever there in the first place, and was likely more of a metaphor of driving the snakes of paganism out of Ireland. And so the Catholic Church designated the day of St. Patrick's Day, ⁓ St. Patrick's death, March 17th as a holiday to commemorate his legacy. so this steward of God's work. is now made a saint given his own day of March 17th. Yep. Well, there's one problem. Okay. March 17th falls smack dab in the middle of the Lenten holiday. Yeah, that seems to be no celebratory anything during this time frame. So the Catholic Church made a one day exception to the fasting and abstaining from alcohol for St. Patrick's Day. Hence why heavy drinking has long been associated with St. Patrick's Day. I've gone to, I'm now honoring my beliefs. I am abstaining for this long period of time. Now I have been given this gift almost from God himself where I have one day of a cheat day, if you will. Yeah, a heavenly cheat day. A divinely appointed cheat day. Oh, yes. And so St. Patrick's Day as a tradition has often been more important to the Irish diaspora than the people of Ireland themselves. So the people who migrated out of Ireland. In fact, the very first St. Patrick's Day parade was held in the 1760s in the United States. So this is no modern invention. those outside of Ireland are the ones that are taking more advantage of this gift than others? Well, it's not just about their religious faith. It's also about your identity. St. Patrick's Day became a way for Irish immigrants to become visible in America, to assert their Irishness. Parades weren't just celebrations of this holiday, they were statements of identity, and oftentimes bars and taverns became hubs of the Irish-American community. It wasn't always this spectacle, it was an opportunity for them to show their pride. Yeah, to show their pride in their culture and being from Ireland, as well as to share with one another that pride of being Irishness. And now, like many things over time, things got bastardized and commercialized, so like green beer. Not Irish. Clearly American. And, you know, that's not necessarily a bad thing, but it is an incomplete understanding of the story. St. Patrick's Day has Ironically, it also becomes an increasingly important holiday in Ireland itself. It's not just about the Irish-American diaspora anymore. We took one thing and just completely ran with it. Green. Yeah. Green beer. Green cocktails. Green everything. But yet we try to now stay true in the cocktails that we present here. Absolutely. And so, we very much featured Irish whiskey in our drinks for this episode. Because in the 19th century, Irish whiskey was the dominant whiskey style in the entire world. Like, it accounted for like 70 % of the whiskey sold throughout the world. What changed? Well… What changed? Several factors, okay? Because, I mean, prior to this change in the early 20th century, when most of those early cocktail books, if they just said whiskey, they didn't necessarily mean bourbon or rye, they meant Irish whiskey. I mean, it was so crazy that Irish whiskey outsold Scotch and Scotch Okay. That's impressive. Absolutely. But Irish whiskey didn't just, like, slowly lose popularity in the early 20th century. As an industry and as a category, Irish whiskey almost entirely disappeared. And how is that? So a couple major factors. First, after World War I, the Republic of Ireland became independent from Britain and gained its independence, so there's a severing of trade ties with Britain. So you're losing markets there. Very, yeah. The second thing is that the Scotch whisky industry began to capitalize on the technological improvements of the continuous columns still. And so they're able to bring in grain whiskies, blend it with their malt whiskies. and have blended scotches a la Johnny Walker. And so that began to replace Irish whiskey in British markets. And then one of the key markets for Irish whiskey, the United States, that market entirely evaporates after World War I with prohibition. So they get hit by the mighty three. And I mean, some would argue the fourth is that even once prohibition ends in the United States, the world is in the midst of a great depression and then World War II. So, I mean, essentially from the end of World War I until after World War II, it is just like one thing after another. The Irish whiskey is now having to fight its way back to the table where it once was the champion of them all. Exactly. So like the Tipperary comes from an era right before the decline of Irish whiskey. So it is kind of emblematic of that history of Irish whiskey dominance or the tail end of its dominance. And one of the problems is, Ireland's population in about 1950 was like 3 million people. That was half the size of New York City's 1950 population. And because of laws, ⁓ when Ireland was dominated by the United Kingdom, Irish distilleries ran these massive pot stills, they were triple pot distilled, so you'd have the three or more pots, and so that small domestic market could not consume enough of the Irish whiskey produced at that scale. In fact, by 1972, there was only one distiller left on the island. Irish Distillers Limited. And so, they had gotten, like, and Jameson and Cork and Eventually bought Bushmills in Northern Ireland too, which was still part of United Kingdom. So in 1972, really, there was only one distillery on the entire island of Ireland. Producing all of these name brands. Exactly. And so Irish whiskey begins to make its resurgence in the early 2000s when Irish Distillers Limited, also known as IDL, launched a major marketing campaign, pitching Jamison. Making this makes sense because from the brands that you listed, my first introduction to Irish whiskey would have been seeing a Jamison bottle, red, black, blue, you know, whatever the colored label it is at the time, not knowing what the hell the different colors meant before I stumbled across maybe a Bushmill or a Powers. Heck, it was not until the last I would say four or five years that Powers was even brought up in conversations that I would have had about Irish whiskey. And so they're pitching Jameson not just like drink this great Irish whiskey, but it was a lifestyle brand. It became a staple behind the bar of like doing a shot in a beer, things like that. And so the explosive growth of Jameson paves the way for this new diversity and the Irish whiskey market where we become here in the United States, get exposure to more brands in the early 21st century. So now that we have progressed to where we are now, how many distilleries are there? Like I said, I'm now seeing minor brands in different liquor stores. Yeah. ⁓ I checked, and as of early this year in 2026, there are 50 operational Irish whiskey distilleries on the island, and more are being planned and are in various stages of development. And so, I mean, there's a lot of diversity coming in the Irish whiskey market. And so, like your cocktail, Irish Maid, exemplifies kind of this new trend of Irish whiskey. Back to a blended whiskey. And that was part of how Irish whiskey managed to survive, was the traditional style of Irish whiskey was more the single pot still style, but then they moved toward blends like Scotch did and make grain whiskey on your column stills instead of the pot stills, blend it with the richer pot stilled whiskey and you get light blends like Jameson. which are maybe a little more cocktail friendly for a lot of people on the palette. But like this Irish Maid you mentioned created by ⁓ the Dead Rabbit. And in many ways it is a riff on the Kentucky Maid. is one of my favorite cocktails. I love it. And the Kentucky Maid was one of those early cocktail Renaissance drinks. created by bartender Sam Ross of Milk and Honey fame, and it combined bourbon, lime, simple syrup, mint, and cucumber. The Irish maid swaps Irish whiskey for bourbon, lemon for lime, and instead of the mint, brings in the St. Germain. And so, ⁓ you know, it's a fantastic cocktail, and really demonstrated how the dead rabbit is leading the way for Irish whiskey ⁓ and cocktail making. And the way that you and I approach our Kentucky maids are actually a blend of the two recipes, right? Because we do like to add the ⁓ elderflower liqueur in ours and still hold true to the mint that comes from that Kentucky. So prepping for today's cocktail. It threw me back and I was like, are we using elderflower liqueur? And you were like, no, not in this one. yeah. Are we using it? Are we using MIT in this one? I was like, no, we're not. ⁓ okay. We're good. We're good. Okay. So you've gone through the, the kind of where Irish whiskey or has now started to come back and has this resurgence. It actually has a place at the table. It has its own designation worldwide. Like it's there. Now with the 40, 50 operational stills that you're talking about, let's now talk about the modern Irish cocktail culture, maybe? Yeah, and focus more specifically on Irish American cocktail culture, because like if you think about the cocktail is one of America's greatest gifts to the world. Your welcome, world. That's right. And so if we're going to talk about Irish American cocktail culture, the conversation is really dominated by the dead rabbit. Both of our cocktails, we use a recipe from the dead rabbit. And so the dead rabbit was founded by Jack McGarry and Sean Muldoon in New York as a combination of like Irish pub and world-class cocktail bar. And so, ⁓ like To the point where The Dead Rabbit earned numerous accolades. It was World's Best Bar in 2015, ⁓ named in Tales of the Cocktail Spirited Awards, won World's Best Bar in 2016 by the World's 50 Best. I think the thing that impresses me most about them is probably a stat that you're gonna give. Guinness? They serve the most Guinness? They serve a lot of Guinness because like when they were coming up with their bar and like as they have like really dialed in to like we're going to be the premier Irish bar in the world, they said we've got three pillars. Okay. Okay. One, we're going to have one of the most extensive collections of Irish whiskey in the world. Okay. Number two, we're going to make an amazing Irish coffee. And number three, we're going to pour perfect pints of Guinness every time. so they just go through the Guinness. I remember you telling me one time, and we won't have probably the stats, but the number of kegs they are in the U S right. They serve the most Guinness out of all bars in the U S correct. Or pretty damn close. They would be up there for sure, I would need to go back and check my stats. But, one of things that's impressive about them is they're bringing Irish whiskey back into cocktails in a thoughtful way. So they're looking at historical recipes like the Tipperary and bringing modern mixological sensibilities to them, like modifying the recipe from equal parts Irish whiskey, green chartreuse and sweet vermouth to something that's a little more balanced along the way. Yeah, the Eagle Parts cocktail of this, we've done this, you and I have made this. I love green chartreuse and if you can get your hands on bottles, congratulations. And it is out there in the wild. It's coming back more available now. Still not 100 % at every liquor store, but it is becoming a little bit more available, but still. adding an equal part of those three ingredients. The green shroofer fruits took over, even if you're using a good like Red Breast 12 and it changing the specs was the correct way and the correct approach, I think to the temporary. Yeah. And using a single pot still Irish whiskey like a Red Breast or something like that, rather than a blended Irish whiskey like a Jameson. Yep. I mean, could probably get away, we were using, like in your cocktail, Bushmills Black Bush, even if you use like a Jameson Black Barrel, something that has a higher percentage of malt, less grain, is you want the texture of the malt and unmalted barley to kind of fight against these other ingredients to have a richer drink. What else would you say then? I would say the other major contribution of Dead Rabbit to ⁓ Irish-American drinking culture is they have focused less on the kitch, so less on leprechauns and pots of gold and stereotypical decorations that we may associate with more commercial Irish bars. Instead, their locations focus more on modern Irish art and music. So instead of like the traditional like ⁓ St. Patty's Day type music. You're gonna do it doing these jigs type. Yeah. It's like they'll feature like Irish R &B and Irish hip hop and things like that in their bar to show you a modern picture of Ireland. not just a picture of Ireland stuck at some point in the mythic past. The other thing is, I think that's really important that the dead rabbit has accomplished, is that they are trying to encourage people to drink Irish spirits and Irish beer year round, not just on St. Patrick's Day. And I think with their three pillars that you mentioned earlier, they do that. They haven't been around and been provided or awarded these accolades by skirting around those three pillars. That's their staple and it's working and it works very well. Well, so last year over Spring Break, my wife and I went to Austin, Texas and Austin is one of the first places where the dead rabbit opened another location outside of New York and we happened to be there on Spring Break. on St. Patrick's Day. And so I was like, they're probably gonna get nuts in there. So we went when they opened at like noon or two or whatever. It was early in the afternoon. We had lunch there. And so, you know, I got my Guinness. I got ⁓ an Irish whiskey based cocktail that was there to like specialty menu that day. ⁓ And had ended the experience with an Irish coffee. And while my wife loves coffee, she does not love whiskey. And I took a sip of that. And I've made some great Irish coffees in my life. But it was fantastic. And even she took a sip and was like I need another sip, another sip. I had to full on share my Irish coffee with her! And so, it just goes to show, experiencing that firsthand is the amount of detail and quality that they're committed to in their drinks program, in their food program, and in the ambiance. that they're trying to create in the bar that's thinking about modern Ireland and not just this, you know, pretty city version of Ireland. I'm gonna bring us home? Yep, let's do it. So St. Patrick's Day isn't always about just green cocktails. Absolutely. You don't need to be green to feel authentic. Our drinks, the Tipperary and the Irish Maid. showed two different ends of the cocktail spectrum, from deep heritage to fresh modernity. Yes. With the freshness, we would also like for you to keep it fresh with us on our socials. If you're watching via YouTube right now, please like, subscribe, and leave us some comments below. As I've mentioned in the past, if you would like, ask us some more details. Send us an email over at podcastset.intothebarchive.com and we would love to chat with you there. Yeah. And then you can follow us on TikTok, Instagram, both at Into the Bar-Cive. ⁓ And as we kind of come to a close as Irish Whiskey met Vermouth in my temporary, it opens the door to a broader conversation in our next episode about Vermouth itself. And lower ABV. Yeah. So as we move into springtime, Maybe want to enjoy the day, like get home from work and like, well, it's nice and sunny and let's start drinking. And so let's get some lower ABV cocktails going on. So whether you're stirring something old or shaking something new, thanks for digging into the history with us on Into the Barcourt.