047 – Blue Blazer

A Sydney Covid ‘lock-down’ exploration of the ‘Blue Blazer’ cocktail. Be extremely careful if trying this mix at home.

Lock-down has inspired me to explore this famous pre-1862 cocktail, the first ‘flaming cocktail’ and an impressive example from the ‘Professor’, Jerry Thomas.

Make your own ‘mix-at-home’ #Locktail the ‘Blue Blazer’, but be very careful and fire-aware.

METHOD – A NOTE OF WARNING – If you are going to make the ‘Blue Blazer’, you need to take a great deal of care, choose very carefully where you will make it, have fire suppression gear ready and practice first with cold water and the tankards. Also be ready to address any accidents or burns, this is a truly dangerous cocktail to make, even for a professional bartender.

PREPARATION – You need two large steel tankards or similar and a glass that is heat resistant. You also need to warm the tankards with very hot water first, and have at least 30ml of very hot (almost boiling water) ready.

THE COCKTAIL – Add 60ml of Cask Strength (around 50% abv) Whisky into one of the very warm tankards and 30ml of very hot water and 5gm of fine sugar into the other. Light (ignite) the whisky in the tankard with a long-match or gas-lighter until the whisky is well alight (it will burn blue and can be hard to see in daylight, so be careful as it may not look to be burning). Then gradually and carefully pour the burning whisky from its tankard into the other, without spilling and while maintaining the flame (this should be practiced repeatedly before the actual mix). Then reverse the pour again from burning full tankard into the empty one. You can do this a few times depending upon the conditions and rate of alcohol burn. Once the flame starts to become more orange/yellow pour the tankard contents into the glass.

While the cocktail is still burning in the glass, carefully add a bar-spoon (5ml) of lemon juice. Once the cocktail has burned for a few more seconds, douse the flame by covering the glass with a non-flammable object, such as the flat base of the tankard. Make sure all flames are out. Do not drink (or allow someone to drink) the cocktail until you make sure it is cool enough to drink and the rim of the glassware is similarly cool.

HISTORICAL NOTES – Most likely invented by Jerry (‘the Professor’) Thomas (1830–1885), while working at the El Dorado gambling saloon in San Francisco, sometime before 1860 during California’s Gold Rush (1848–1855). The ‘Blue Blazer’ is suspected of being the original ‘flaming cocktail’. The recipe appears in his 1862 book titled the ‘Bar-Tender’s Guide’ and also ‘How to Mix Drinks: The Bon Vivant’s Companion’, the first drink recipe book published in the United States.

Jerry Thomas was the first ‘celebrity Bartender’ and at one point toured Europe displaying his skills with a set of solid-silver bar tools. He is also considered the originator of ‘flare’ bar-tending. Thomas was the creator of a large number of cocktails, including the first published recipes for the ‘Tom Collins’ and the ‘Martinez’. At the Occidental Hotel in San Francisco, he was reported to be earning $100 per week, an enormous sum back in around 1862 (more than ten-times the average salary of the time).

THE OFFICIAL MIX – The ‘Blue Blazer’ is not on any of the International Bartender Association (IBA) official cocktail lists. The closest to an official recipe is that of the original Jerry Thomas 1862 book, very similar to the one that I have provided here.

TASTING NOTES – This cocktail is more about flair and theater than the end result, however it is still a very drinkable mix. The final cocktail while warm is like a ‘hot toddy’, warm whisky, slightly alcohol reduced from the burn, with some lemon and burnt sugar in the mix. A difficult way to make a warm whisky ‘toddy’ but satisfying to create nonetheless.

LOCKTAIL CHANGES – No significant changes from Jerry Thomas’ 1862 recipe, this is all about reliving the experience. I have included it in the 1931-1940 group incorrectly, however flare-bartending and flaming cocktails were popular in certain places in the depression and pre-war era, even in Prohibition (1920–1933) USA.

YOUR LOCKTAIL EXPERIENCE – If you’d rather taste than read, I am progressively building an ingredient list and other sourcing information on this site. I will re-use ingredients where I can (good for my budget too), so that the cost goes down overtime if you are ‘playing at home’.

Let me know what you think.

Cocktails you’d like reinvented.

Recipes you’ve tried and your ‘score’.

This is the seventh cocktail of the 1931-1940 bracket of ‘Locktail’ remixes. Full list in the index.