Episode 218

Combine these ingredients in a mixing beaker with ice, stir until the contents are well chilled and properly diluted, strain into a chilled, stemmed cocktail glass, garnish with a lemon wheel, and enjoy.

We wanted to feature the Billionaire cocktail because it’s a great example of bars being in communication with history and with each other. It was originally put forth by New York’s Employee’s Only bar as a riff on the classic Prohibition Era “Millionaire” cocktail. When it first hit the scene, it employed their house Grenadine syrup. But, the recipe above is actually adapted by bartender Kala Brooks of Top of the Monk in Asheville, North Carolina. She subbed in the Campari in place of the Grenadine, and it completely changes the profile of the drink.

A couple quick notes on the ingredients and the build:

Absinthe Bitters are essentially a combination of absinthe, green Chartreuse,, Peychaud’s bitters, Angostura bitters, and Fee Brothers mint bitters. Here’s the PUNCH article where we sourced this drink that details how you can recreate those yourself.

Finally, you may have noticed that this is a stirred citrus cocktail. Usually, when you see lemon or lime juice in a recipe, you start instinctually reaching for your Boston shaker tins, but here – we’ve got a half ounce of lemon juice, and yet it’s a stirred cocktail. We wish we could tell you why this is, but we have no clue. We’d love to do an episode dedicated to this and other stirred citrus cocktails to really understand what’s going on. So if you think of any others, please send them our way, and if you have any thoughts on why some citrus cocktails are stirred rather than shaken, please drop ua a line and let us know.