Happy Hour with Josh

Video Transcript

Josh Bretl: Hi, Josh Bretl here with FSR Wealth Strategies and we are not at the end of my hallway this time. We are actually at one of my favorite places in downtown Elmhurst. This is Tannin’s Wine Bar, and this is not Dave standing next to me, who you’re used to. This is the owner of Tannin’s, Mike. And Dave likes to make these videos with me, because he always gets a cocktail that I make for him. And one of our favorite things to do with friends is he comes over and we’ll make a drink and we’ll sit down. Now when I want a drink that I think is really, really awesome, I am usually here with my wife and at Tannin’s. So what we thought we’d do this month is we would introduce a cocktail that you might be able to enjoy at your Easter table. Or as we start to get together as the weather warms up, we’ll find a cocktail that you would like to have as we start getting together in this warmer weather here in Chicago. So Mike, what are we making today?

Mike Allas: Okay, well, it doesn’t have a name and-

Josh Bretl: We’re going to name it before it’s over with.

Mike Allas: But you guys, yeah, that’s what, your group can come up with a great name because one of my least favorite things is naming cocktails. It just becomes, you’ll, if you see my cocktail list, a lot of them have names that are associated with music. And it’s just because I’m more familiar with music, so I can always do a little twist on some type of either a group or a song and make a cocktail of it.

Josh Bretl: We name it after people usually.

Mike Allas: Oh, okay. Very good.

Josh Bretl: It’s not, and no one important either, so we’re good.

Mike Allas: Oh, so what’s the one named after Dave?

Josh Bretl: Well, I was actually wondering, is this going to be Dave’s cocktail? I mean, this could be it.

Mike Allas: We could. We could.

Josh Bretl: So, what do we have today here? You’ve got a bunch of bottles set up here. I usually know what bourbon looks like and syrup. You’ve got five things over here.

Mike Allas: So five things are there. There is a syrup there. So what we wanted to do is we’re going to do something that’s kind of Eastery. So I was thinking colors that would pop.

Josh Bretl: Ooh, cool.

Mike Allas: So we kind of did some fun little things to make that happen. One of the things we did is going to be this prickly pear syrup, which has a really really intense red color. We don’t put a lot of it in there. So it’s going to be kind of just a hue when it’s all-

Josh Bretl: Prickly pear syrup.

Mike Allas: Prickly pear syrup, yes.

Josh Bretl: Is that something somebody can find? Is that, I mean…

Mike Allas: Absolutely. I went out and I bought this at a store. You certainly can find it online. It’s not that difficult to find. But where the color is really, really going to pop, I’m hoping, is in the ice cubes. Is in the ice cubes. So what I did, I don’t know if you could see this very well, but I dyed some ice cubes and you could dye the ice cubes however you want to. I kind of-

Josh Bretl: just food coloring or is there something you’d use in the ice cubes?

Mike Allas: Well, I decided to go au natural. And no, I was clothed while I made those. What I mean by that is that I actually just took red cabbage and then I just poured hot water over it and I let it sit for a little bit and it just extracts the color. The good thing is no, it doesn’t impart any flavor into it.

Josh Bretl: I don’t think anyone watching this would ever have thought of pouring hot water over red cabbage to make blue ice cubes, but-

Mike Allas: Well, there you go.

Josh Bretl: There we go.

Mike Allas: But you certainly can do it with coloring dye just like you would your Easter eggs.

Josh Bretl: Cool. All right, let’s make it here.

Mike Allas: Let’s make it.

Josh Bretl: I’m Excited.

Mike Allas: All right, very good. So I think the first thing we should start off with is we’re going to want to go ahead and rim our glass. So this is because this is a mescal base cocktail. Mescal and tequila are the fastest growing liquor segment in the country right now. So all I’m doing is I’m just taking a little lime that we’re going to use as our garnish and again, go around the rim.

Josh Bretl: So you don’t use water when I’m here having a fancy cocktail.

Mike Allas: Yeah. They shouldn’t do that. No. And the reason being is a lot of times when you do that, or if you pre chill a glass and then you go to rim it, all that water then gets into your product, whether it’s salt or sugar, and then that all kind of coagulates and becomes a big messy clump. And then you’ve got to throw it all out and start all over again. All right. So the first thing we’re going to do is we’re going to start with our mescal. And this is an ounce and a half.

Josh Bretl: Dave, you know how I know he’s fancy and not like us? He flipped the measuring cup. It was pretty cool.

Mike Allas: Well, that took days of practice.

Josh Bretl: Was that days?

Mike Allas: Yes, yes, it was very, very difficult. So that was an ounce and a half of the mescal. Now we’re going to do an orange liqueur. My preference is actually cointreau. Today we’re working with a little gran gala. Any orange liqueur is going to work. You could use triple sec if you wanted to go on the cheap a little bit, but either way. And this is one ounce.

Josh Bretl: One ounce.

Mike Allas: One ounce.

Josh Bretl: You said cointreau. I’ve always called it cointreau.

Mike Allas: Okay.

Josh Bretl: But I’m used to saying things incorrectly.

Mike Allas: That is, yeah, I believe that’s incorrect.

Josh Bretl: I learned something too, now.

Mike Allas: Otherwise, everybody in my industry has been saying it wrong for a very long time.

Josh Bretl: I’ll take you. I mean, I consider the word amortization. How’s that one?

Mike Allas: I used to be able to say that. Yeah. So next up is this really, really great liqueur. It’s called prickly pear. Here, take a little whiff of that.

Josh Bretl: Oh gosh. So prickly, this is a prickly pear liqueur? Is this something that you can find at your local liquor store, or is this a…

Mike Allas: You may be able to find it at liquor stores. Maybe a little harder at a grocery store, but you should be able to find it at a liquor store.

Josh Bretl: At Binny’s or something like that is going to have a prickly pear.

Mike Allas: Doti’s, down the street if you live here in town.

Josh Bretl: You don’t sell these here. You don’t sell this liqueur?

Mike Allas: No, I do. I don’t.

Josh Bretl: I just want to make sure before I-

Mike Allas: we do sell some liquors, but not a lot. That’s not our business. Our business is really wine and beer and cocktails. All right. So we’re just doing a half ounce of this.

Josh Bretl: Okay.

Mike Allas: All right. And then the aforementioned prickly pear syrup. And we’re just going to do a quarter ounce of this. We don’t need too much.

Josh Bretl: That’s really not that much.

Mike Allas: Nah.

Josh Bretl: Okay.

Mike Allas: Just to give it some color. And I think it also just amps up the flavor a little bit too. And now here we’re just doing one ounce of lime juice, freshly squeezed lime juice.

Josh Bretl: Fresh lime juice.

Mike Allas: Yeah. You don’t want to use anything that is a store bought lime juice if you can avoid it.

Josh Bretl: Someone told me that a few years ago, and that was the biggest life change in making any food, any cocktail. It was squeeze your own.

Mike Allas: Squeeze your own juice, man. This is just one ounce. That last thing I just did called free pouring. Everything else I was using a jigger with, but when I’m making cocktails here, I free pour. Except for something like this that doesn’t have a speed pourer on it, I’m going to measure it. But everything else, I just free pour.

Josh Bretl: For those playing at home, it’s like an ounce.

Mike Allas: It’s one ounce, one ounce, exactly. So that’s it. It’s five ingredients that are in this cocktail. So the next thing I’m going to do is we’re going to shake this up. So we’re going to ice this down real quick. What you don’t want to do is you don’t want to pour those ingredients over the ice, because as soon as those ingredients start hitting the ice, your ice starts to dilute. Starts to melt.

Josh Bretl: You want to control that.

Mike Allas: Right, you want controlled dilution. That’s incredibly important when it comes to cocktails, because you make your cocktail to be at a certain taste level. Alcohol, you want to balance it with alcohol, sweetness, tartness, acidity, all those things want to come into a balance. But if you make it over ice, it’s just going to be watered down. So you’re not going to get that. What you made your cocktail to tastes like, it’s not going to taste like that.

Josh Bretl: I saw your face light up talking about controlled dilution. In a way, I think my clients-

Mike Allas: Amortization.

Josh Bretl: My face lights up when I’m talking about social security. That’s good. I see it.

Mike Allas: It’s very important. It’s very important. So I’m going to grab some ice real quick. All right. And we’re going to put this right in on top here. You want to put it down nice and tight there at an angle. At an angle. Then we’re going to give it a shake. You want to hold onto the bottom and to the top.

Josh Bretl: So it doesn’t start flying.

Mike Allas: And then to release that, we’re just going to go about three quarters of the way.

Josh Bretl: Fell how cold that is all of a sudden. Look at that. It’s iced over.

Mike Allas: Just like that. Nice. And that’s how you can tell as it’s getting cold on your hands, then you know it’s about ready. So we’re going to dump in.

Josh Bretl: Those are those blue cubes.

Mike Allas: We’re going to dump in some blue cubes. And we’re going to go ahead and pour this right on over.

Josh Bretl: Oh, look at that.

Mike Allas: Ain’t that fun. And then we’re going to take a little lime and put that right on there. There you go.

Josh Bretl: That is so pretty. All right. I’m going to try this.

Mike Allas: Absolutely.

Josh Bretl: Am I going to taste the red cabbage?

Mike Allas: Hope so.

Josh Bretl: Oh my gosh. The mescal has the smokiness of it and the prickly pears, that little bit of sweetness and the tart. That is an outstanding, it’s kind of light too. It’s not a heavy, it’s not like a margarita that’s super heavy. And this is outstanding.

Mike Allas: And you could do this exact same recipe with making a margarita, really. And it would still look cool because it would be a greenish color, as a margarita would be. And then you’d have that pop of the blue on there.

Josh Bretl: Okay. Well you said it’s not named yet, so now we have to name it.

Dave Schmidt: We need to pause this production really quick. It’s good.

Josh Bretl: Is it good? You approve it?

Dave Schmidt: Oh yeah.

Josh Bretl: I knew you couldn’t be off camera that long. All right, well we have to name. Still good, Dave? So we don’t have a name for it yet. And I have an idea, if you’re open to it. We’re going to ask, just send an email to, let’s do it, cocktail@fsrwealth.com, cocktail@fsrwealth.com. And the best name to come in before the end of March. And Mike, will you put it on the menu here? Will somebody will get to watch us get to name the cocktail?

Mike Allas: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Josh Bretl: All right. So it’s got the mescal, the crispness, the prickly pear, the orange liqueur. This is outstanding. If you’re out and around in Elmhurst and you’re stopping by our office and you need something to do, I highly recommend come on down to Tannin’s here in downtown Elmhurst. Say hi to Mike or any other friendly staff. Get a bottle of wine. Try one of the cocktails that hopefully you’re naming and enjoy. So with that, Mike, thank you very much for doing this.

Mike Allas: It was my pleasure.