Meet Brian Sandahl, our friend from Austin, TX and find out how he got his start in Mixology!
Name:
Brian Sandahl
Location:
Austin, TX
Go-To Cocktail:
A Manhattan, because it is a 3-ingredient cocktail with so much nuance. Do you use rye or bourbon? Standard proof or high proof liquor? Is the vermouth bittered? Do you blend sweet and dry vermouth? What ratio of whiskey to vermouth? Traditional Angostura bitters or something more adventurous? Maraschino cherry or citrus peel garnish? The combinations are endless.
Instagram:
@heavymuddle
Tell us a little bit about yourself. How did you first get into mixology? Who/what/where taught you what you know?
In a roundabout way, music theory got me into mixology.
Music was my first love. I bought my first guitar when I was 14 and spent hours in my room learning to play my favorite songs. I soon discovered that songs often resembled other songs, because music is based on scales — i.e. notes that fit together. Once I realized that scales were the building blocks of music, I started writing my own songs (which at that age were mostly emo and about girlz…lol). Writing songs increased my appreciation and understanding of music, and also changed how I listened to music.
My love of cocktails followed a similar path. I started actively seeking out cocktails and cocktail bars in my mid-20s. I didn’t know what many of the ingredients were in the drinks I ordered, or how to recreate the drinks at home. I just knew that they tasted good, and I wanted to learn more about them. So I bought two books: Robert Hess’ The Essential Bartender’s Guide and Gary Regan’s The Joy of Mixology. The Joy of Mixology really opened my eyes to the concept of cocktail families, which are essentially the musical scales of the cocktail world. The Margarita, Sidecar and Daiquiri for example are all members of the Sour family, meaning they share a common blueprint of spirit, citrus, and sweetener. Knowing that I could create an infinite number of drinks from a single blueprint really fueled my creativity, and the more I attempted both classic drinks and original drinks the more I started to understand individual ingredients and the roles they played in balanced cocktail making. Later I started getting more into technique and the measured science of cocktails through resources like Dave Arnold’s Liquid Intelligence, Jeffrey Morgenthaler’s The Bar Book and the Death & Co tomes. Now I draw a lot of knowledge and inspiration from fellow Instagrammers, and love collaborating whenever I can on ideas and recipes.
Tell us about a recent experiment!
I recently bought a juicer, which for me was very exciting because previously I would pulverize whole fruit in a blender, then use a muddler / strainer combo to separate the liquids from the solids. It was a huge pain in the butt and for some fruits and veggies the yield from this method was pretty low.
While juicers can certainly be used to make juices, those juices can also become really vibrantly colored syrups by adding additional sugars. Taking it a step further, you can substitute liqueurs in place of granulated sugar to create cordials. You can also add a high-proof spirit to increase the ABV to something closer to a liqueur. The nice thing about cordials and liqueurs is that they can be enjoyed on their own or worked into a cocktail.
I’ve used this approach to make a few at-home cordials and liqueurs. My favorite to-date combined fresh juiced blueberries with St. Germain elderflower liqueur. It works great in a Pisco or gin sour, and also with tequila and grapefruit in a Tequila Sunrise style cocktail.
Where do you draw inspiration from?
My source of inspiration varies from cocktail to cocktail.
Often it’s food — I did an entire #RamosForDessert series where I turned classic desserts like Bananas Foster, Peach Cobbler and Key Lime Pie into Ramos-style fizzes.
Other times I use what Death & Co refers to as the “Mr. Potato Head” approach where I start with, say, a gin sour blueprint and selectively plug in different sugars, citruses, bitters or spirits and see where it takes me. This approach often plays out like a snowball rolling downhill, picking up speed and getting bigger as it goes. What if I split the base spirit, what if I infused the simple syrup, what if I brought in a totally new element, etc.
Less often, I start with a very unique ingredient, and the rest of the recipe is built around complementing that single ingredient. Heirloom’s Pineapple Amaro comes to mind as a focal point ingredient I’ve used in an Old Fashioned style cocktail recently.
The rarest but most fun cocktails for me start with just a name that I like. Usually a pun or a song lyric. Or a combination of those two things as it were for my “Berry Styles’ Watermel-Gin Sugar High” cocktail. In these cases I try to find a way to make the cocktail ingredients fit the name narrative. It’s a good way to force your brain to think about creating cocktails very differently.
One last thing I’ll add — whenever I’m lacking for inspiration or get “stuck” while working on a cocktail, I go to my trusted cocktail books like Death & Co and look for recipes that provide a good jumping off point, or to The Flavor Bible to identify new flavors I could bring into a cocktail. 9 times out of 10, those resources get me going again.
What is one recipe that you created on your own that you’re really proud of?
I love margaritas, and I drink a lot of them here in Austin, TX because they serve margaritas literally everywhere you go. Sometimes I want something like a margarita that isn’t a margarita. This cocktail for me is just the right amount of similar-but-different. I call it the “Slow Burn”. It leads with ginger spice and finishes with the slow burn of habanero pepper spice. In between you get sweetness from pineapple, earthiness from carrot, smokiness from mezcal, and a kick of citrus from lime bitters.
Slow Burn
- 2 oz Pineapple Juice
- 1 oz Carrot Juice
- 1 oz Habanero-Infused Reposado Tequila (recipe included)
- 3/4 oz Mezcal
- 1/4 oz Ginger Syrup (recipe included)
- 2-3 Dashes Lime Bitters
To make the habanero infusion:
Slice half a habanero pepper (no seeds) and add to a sealable container with 16 fluid oz of tequila. Give it a shake and allow it to infuse at least 3 hours and up to 12 hours, depending on your spice preference. Let you tastebuds be your guide.
To make the ginger syrup:
Combine 3 parts sugar, 2 parts fresh-juiced ginger, and 1 part water in a pot over low heat. Stir until sugar dissolves, then remove from heat and allow to cool.
To prepare the cocktail:
Add all ingredients to a shaker with ice. Shake 15 seconds then strain into a rocks glass over ice.
