THE CURATED CURE ALL

BY: JOSHUA GANDEE
Beverage Director, Watershed Kitchen & Bar

The time has come where we shuffle around the house like a magnet that attracts anything that might provide some sense of warmth. We end up haunting our own hallways like a charged up dryer sheet, pulling in blankets and tall socks, hats from bins, and slippers made from mattress materials. We begin scouring the internet for soup recipes and scheduling weekends around how long “that thing” needs to cook. Time not spent staring into the abyss of color changing trees is spent rubbing hands on arms, attempting to warm up. Here’s what we know is true: It’s fall. It’s about to be winter. It’s mother f*ckin’ Hot Toddy season.

The Hot Toddy has a history that resembles many beloved cocktails: taken by the British and claimed as their own, eventually finding its way into the US by the mid-eighteenth century by way of a doctor’s prescription pad. Eventually, it will end up on your favorite bars’ cocktail menu. This somewhat misunderstood hot cocktail can be celebrated by making subtle changes to a classic core recipe, striving for the perfect blend right for any occasion. In this blog, I’ll walk you through the basic build of the hot toddy and demonstrate some areas where you can make minor adjustments and work toward crafting the toddy of your dreams.

The One We Know and Love

Many people reach for toddy ingredients the moment they feel a tickle in their throat or want something warm they can cup their hands around. The mix of whiskey, lemon, and honey is a blend that always feels good on a troubled throat, and the addition of warm water or tea makes for some heated palms that work their way into your soul. Some of the first toddys were comprised of just hot water to scotch, so if that doesn’t sound utterly delightful to you, let me ease your mind by saying there have been some advancements as of late. If warmed smoky scotch isn’t your cup of tea (go ahead and step right over that pun there, I’ll clean it up later) then thinking about the toddy as a chilled cocktail first might help you make some changes to the warmed version.

If we think about the toddy as its shaken counterpart, you might know it better as the Gold Rush, a mix of bourbon, honey, and lemon shaken to form a light froth and poured into a coupe glass. The shaking of the ice dilutes the beverage into a delectable mix perfect for sipping. Adding in hot water or tea to this mixture acts as the dilution, softens the sharpness of the lemon juice, and takes some of the heat off the bourbon. A touch of honey adds a subtle sweetness that helps to combine all the flavors into one sip that pairs well with Sleepless in Seattle on Netflix. (We’re guessing..)

There are similar cocktails that work well as a hot version tool. Take the Brown Derby, for instance, which is essentially the Gold Rush but lemon is replaced with grapefruit juice. It’s softer on the palate but a touch more bitter. Since citrus comes to life in the winter months, this is truly the best time to play around with your favorite juice to spice up warmed drinks. In the recipes provided, you’ll notice minor additions to the basic build of the toddy. I’ll walk you through some of my favorite manipulations now.

Get Adventurous With Your Flavors

Don’t feel like you need to stick to bourbon just because it’s what you usually use. If you swap out the bourbon for citrusy Four Peel Gin in a Gold Rush, you have yourself a Bee’s Knees. The difference will be a lighter, more floral expression of the drink, but tasty nonetheless. Swapping in Watershed Bourbon Barrel Four Peel Gin, Apple Brandy, or even mixing a couple of spirits like our vodka with Nocino will result in scrumptious combinations that will entice and impress.

Stepping up your warm ingredients, such as swapping out teas to include chamomile or earl grey in place of hot water will add additional spice and complexity. Your choice of sweetener is a place to add little flavor jabs as well. Think about the differences between maple syrup and honey. Now think about what would happen if you introduced fresh herbs to those mixes. How delightful do sage and maple sound? How about ginger and honey? Now we’re talking, let’s get to some recipes, eh?

Let’s start with the classic. If this is your first time with a toddy, it is best to start with an original before you start making changes. The early toddy recipes called for American brandy, so feel free to make this recipe with our bourbon or our apple brandy, both made using ingredients from the Midwest as an homage to the agricultural history of the region.

THE HOT TODDY

2oz Watershed Bourbon or Apple Brandy

½ oz Fresh Lemon Juice

½ oz Local Honey

4oz Hot Water

Mix all ingredients into a mug or a glass made for hot drinks. Gently stir to combine, and garnish with a lemon wheel.
For a subtle change to this add grapefruit juice in place of the lemon for a softer slightly bitter taste.

This next recipe is going to ask for a flavored simple syrup and for the addition of tea. If you don’t have these things, the stripped-down version will be good on its own, but I implore you to take the extra steps.

EARL’S TODDY

2oz Watershed Bourbon Barrel Four Peel Gin

½ oz Fresh Lemon Juice

½ oz Sage Maple Syrup*

4oz Earl Grey Tea

Mix all ingredients in a mug, gently stir to combine, and garnish with a lemon peel expressed over top.
*To make sage maple, simply add a few sprigs of fresh sage leaves to a cup of maple syrup and let rest on a countertop overnight. Remove sage, and refrigerate.

This recipe will read a little bizarre, but the blend of ingredients makes for a quite enjoyable sip. I like to make this one for my more exploratory friends who don’t mind ordering blindly from a cocktail menu and say things like “we summered there” instead of vacation. I recommend making this is a larger batch since all ingredients will be put together in a pan. Each recipe serves one, so scale up for however many people will be enjoying.

VITAMIN TODDY

1 ½ oz Watershed Four Peel Gin

¾ oz Fresh Squeezed OJ

¾ oz Ginger Syrup*

Add all ingredients to a saucepan with a single cinnamon stick over medium-low heat and let simmer before serving. Add mix into a mug and garnish with a slice of orange
*To make ginger syrup, slice a thumb of ginger into a coin. In a saucepan add 2c Honey, 1c Water, your ginger coins and bring to a boil. Let cool and strain out ginger. Refrigerated, this will last 3-4 weeks.

Our final recipe takes a page out of the espresso martini book, so look for familiar flavors in the warmed version that calls for tea instead of coffee. The mix of vodka and nocino will create a mix of chocolate, vanilla, and spiced flavors that pairs well with the English breakfast tea, slightly sweetened with simple syrup.

I HAVE WORK IN THE AM TODDY

1 ½ oz Watershed Distillery Vodka

½ oz Watershed Nocino

½ oz Simple Syrup

4oz English Breakfast Tea

Mix all ingredients in a mug, gently stir to combine, and garnish with a lemon peel expressed over top.

As always, these recipes are meant to give you a jumping-off point. My goal is to get you situated with some classics and some simple modifications so you can feel poised and ready to start making your own delicious drinks at home. Using the family of spirits found at Watershed gives you an easy place to start swapping, and having a little fun in the kitchen with flavored simple syrups will have you feeling like a pro in no time at all. Please tag us in your creations on Instagram, as it is our hope that your cocktails inspire someone else’s next round!

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