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Subject: Julep etc
From: fatdeko
Posted: Mon Mar 19. 2007, 20:00 UTC
Followup to: "Re: Negroni Video"  by Thinking Bartender  (Mon Mar 19. 2007, 17:48 UTC)
Here is the relevant thread, not eGullet, but DrinkBoy.
http://groups.msn.com/DrinkBoy/general.msnw?action=get_message&mview=0&ID_Message=13262&LastModified=4675590579909967993&all_topics=1

As for when to deploy the julep vs. Hawthorn strainer, I'm solidly with Angus. 
Which leads us to the question of when do you pour from the tin and when do 
you pour from the glass?

Tradition would have us routinely pour FROM the glass for the same reason we 
mix first IN the glass. The guiding principle there is simply 
"transparency"--the customer can see what's going "in" to his drink and can be 
certain that he's getting all of it back out, as well. (And it's funny how a 
lot of the rituals surrounding drink have at their root a suspicion that all 
may not be as it appears.)The julep strainer is also a more thorough 
contraption and will catch most of the shards of ice caused by shaking etc. 
The current practice of (primarily UK bartender,it seems,)double straining 
through a sieve is unnecessary with the judicious use of the julep strainer. 

So why pour from the tin at all? Egg whites tend to make a drink more 
voluminous than when it started to the point where it can't be poured 
comfortably (to say nothing of deftly)from the glass. Same goes for Pineapple 
juice. Cocktails with chunky bits (scraps of muddled fruit, herbs etc) get the 
tin treatment from me. The Hawthorn does a handy job of keeping the spent 
garbage from clogging the holes of the strainer. And with an adjustment of the 
index finger you can compress the coils on the pouring side to allow as much 
or as little of the trash into the drink. Sometimes little flecks of herb can 
be attractive; big chunks, not so much.

And then there's the weird practice, and I see this a lot from Boston area 
bartenders, of the "cracked egg" pour. Basically the tin and the glass are 
slightly separated, like a cracked egg, and the drink pours into the glass 
through this crack. It is a consternation and a befuddlement to me on so many 
levels. It's not efficient--it requires both hands to execute and takes longer 
as the bartender has to slosh the drink back and forth across the divide to 
get it all out. The resulting cocktail has veritable icebergs on the surface 
and if herbs are deployed you're soon picking spinach out of your teeth.

Makes me wanna grab my old julep strainer and use it the way it may have 
originally been intended!

myers


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