<div class="block">Is it really a holiday celebration without some adult beverages? We say no and now we want to help you prepare the best drinks for your holiday gathering. Jason Hedges, beverage director at Back Bar, joined &#39;Stretching Your Dollar&#39; to share some tips on how add alcohol to your shopping list without breaking the bank.</div>

Stretching Your Dollar

Stretching Your Dollar: Holiday Drinks on A Budget

It is the season for celebrating with holiday parties and family gatherings and for many people that does mean fun, even fancy drinks, but adult beverages can be expensive. Recently, our own had to do that with Jason Hedges, the Beverage Director of Back Bar here in New York City to help us create some holiday cocktails and mocktails on a budget. Take a look, Jason, welcome to the show. Thank you, Hannah. Thanks so much for having me, me and the team we're talking about how great this set up is. So first, let's start with the recommendations you have for those looking to make the holiday, you know, keep it on a budget when they're making their drinks, keep it on budget. Just um I would suggest uh looking for quality, you can find value. Um If you know how to look, just look for well made spirits uh like that are just well made. I mean, after all of this, this time evolution, there's just a time honored tradition of spirit making uh that's been passed down from generation to generation and that with technology, uh there's been achievements in the distilleries like like never before now. My favorite part. Let's dive into the demos. What are we making first? Um We're gonna make first uh a drink called Sour Attitude. Sour Attitude. It. Yep. Yep. And my wife says it fits my personality. So my husband says that about my personality, but go on. So it's really a riff on a whiskey sour, which is uh whiskey, lemon juice, simple syrup and a little egg white. So, in this case, we're infusing the whiskey with uh vanilla bean and cinnamon and then fat washing it with brown butter. Let's do it. All right. So, and while we make this, can you walk me through how to make your sour attitude cocktail as people are watching right now? Sure. So I start with the base and uh I infuse the bourbon with uh vanilla bean and, and a cinnamon stick and then uh melt some brown butter, a half a cup for every liter of bourbon. OK. Tell us about back bar's inflation proof menu. How do you even come up with that? I think you'd have to go back at least 15 years if not longer to find a $12 cocktail in this town. $12. That's, yeah, that's a steal these days, $12. So try to find value ingredients. So this is a whiskey sour. It's a really, it's in the, the sour uh family of cocktails and it's just basically a base spirit with citrus and, and sugar. And so that's a pretty inexpensive thing to do. But if you doctor it up a little bit, you can make some really interesting flavors though to say it smells very good now. So for those people who want that boozy option for a holiday party, are there certain types of alcohol that are budget friendly? Um Sure. I mean, you can look at uh things that have not been aged in oak because oak is expensive. So anything that a is aged in oak will generally be a little bit more expensive. So you look at for like the white spirits, vodka gin. You can find some good value there and even the the aged spirits, you can find some really well made ones value driven. So I'm gonna, what I'm gonna do right now is give it a shake. I'm gonna give it a dry shake. So there's egg whites in here. So you must be thinking I'm crazy why you forgot the other, the ice. Um I wanna emulsify the egg and make it nice and frothy. So I'm gonna just give this a little bit of a shake, shake, shake, shake, shake, shake, shake and then a good shake. OK? And now we'll add the ice. OK? And what's the next drink that we're making too? Jason? The next I know you have a few for us. I've got a few. The next one we're gonna make is called the Desert Paloma. OK? And so that is a riff on a, on a Paloma. I love the coloring. That looks beautiful. That again is the sour attitude. This is a sour attitude. It's $12. OK. Uh On a get a drink for $12 in the city anymore. So that's incredible. OK. Oh, look how beautiful the presentation guys. There you go. And the next drink is a riff on uh Paloma. So I'm using a spirit called uh Baca Nora. And this is maybe it's an unusual thing. It's one of the latest agave spirits to come out of the shadows of Mexico after being outlawed. And uh I guess I would say it tastes similar to like somewhere between a tequila and Mezcal. Tell me what you're doing with a desert Paloma here. What I'm doing right now is I'm gonna um add a little salt to the rim of the glass. What's the more in season drink right now? What are people leaning towards? So right now we have figs. I think pigs are really nice in this season. We're getting into winter months. Citrus is always a great thing to have. All right. So what goes in this Paloma? You mentioned this spirit from Mexico? Yep, this is Bacara. So I'm adding a half ounce of the Bacara. OK? And then I'm gonna do a half ounce of fresh lime juice. So again, so these are modifying ingredients so we can get lime, lime juice, lemon juice, it's pretty inexpensive, right? It's your budget. No, adding some agave syrup and some grapefruit cordial. Now I'm gonna just give this a little shake and some club soda at the end, adding some club soda. So usually is topped with a grapefruit soda, but we're using a grapefruit cordial here to give it elevate the drink a little bit more. And so now we're gonna garnish this here with a grapefruit. Crescent presentation is amazing. You have one more drink to show us one more drink to show you. Yes, indeed. So what's it called? It's called the Autumn Oasis while we do this. OK. I'm gonna start with the desert Paloma. OK. Yeah, guys, this is delicious. So next, I'm gonna make a, a spirit free cocktail mocktail. Everybody loves a good mocktail. Here is a non alcoholic distill seed lip spice seed lip and then I'm gonna add some, some fig cordial. This is a house made fig cordial, an ounce of this gonna add some honey syrup. So I think that's a really nice flavor combination, honey and fig. They're good flavor buddies. And so uh I'm gonna finish this off with a couple dashes. I like to do a double strain just to get any, any, any ice or anything like that. That looks so pretty. All right. Now we'll just garnish this with fig wedge. Well, any final tips for viewers looking for Holly drinks on a budget Jason drink, drink, what you like, find um find, you know, the, the value make what you can at home, you know, use your fresh ingredients. I mean, this is fig syrup. We make it pretty inexpensively in house, but it's available uh to purchase in the store but get creative and, and try to try to do, do some homemade uh cordial syrups and things like that. That great advice. Cheers Jason. Thank you so much. Happy holidays. Jason Hedges. We appreciate your time. I would take the mocktail left on that desk. Our thanks again to Jason Hedges for joining us on stretching your dollar and of course, had to.