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A subtly almond-influenced brandy sour served straight up, it is set apart by its namesake, the 'Thin Pink Line' of Peychaud's bitters, which floats on...
Dry shook everything as I did not care much about the visual appearance. Incredibly smooth drink, super balanced, maybe I will do .5 rich and .5 orgeat next time for an additional almond taste
I always reverse shake. Dry shake doesn’t make a solid enough meringue for me. Tried dry shake and failed lol. I did get a line on one side of the glass, but also a big pink hole in the middle. It wasn’t sour or bitter enough for me either, but was indeed, very tasty. I like the transformation concept - imma keep at it.
The "Thin Pink Line" and the "Improved Japanese Cocktail" are cousins from different cities. One born in London with egg white, the other in New York with Peychaud's Bitter - both nine years old. I better try them side by side on day soon.
Very clever - However I dont like having to wait 10 minutes for the thin line to appear. Personally I like to drink the cocktail cold. The amount of bitter was unpleasant for me.
Awesome cocktail every thing about it was just right. Loved the subtle almond orgeat interplay with the Peychaud's! Having tried all (?) the recipes calling for lots of Angostura, and thoroughly enjoying, was pleasantly suprised to find this one calls for two spoons of the bitters. Really works. I used a French XO brandy.
For presentation purposes it's pretty easy to simply scoop the bitters-stained foam off the top, so you get a nice clean white foam with the layer of pink underneath
Call it a Bloody Mess. I failed to account for the step of pouring the Peychaud's through the center of the drink, rather than all over, and now the surface looks like a Dexter case.
Made this with Martell VS. I didn't get a thin pink line. The Peychaud's stayed mostly central and mostly on top/in place of the foam. I expect I was overly cautious. Still, a cocktail stick spread it out and the drink was really nice. I don't do much floating because I generally prefer my flavours mixed but in this case the distinguished flavours worked really well.
Once while making this concoction I ran out of Cognac. I was already filling up my shaker, so there was no way back. After careful observation of my bar inventory I selected a bottle of apricot brandy as the most close relative. The resulting version used 30 ml of Cognac and 20 ml of the apricot brandy. This invention out of necessity felt so good — like a boozy nectar! — that I use this slightly tweaked version of the famous cocktail ever since.