MxMo: Limit One, Irish Sazerac

This has been my most difficult Mixology Monday yet.

The theme is "Limit: One," set by this month’s host, Kaiser Penguin.

Rules

• Consume and write about your favorite, strongest drink. You know, the one that that is delightful, complex, and will leave you wanting to stay home from work the next day. It should contain at least 3oz of 80-proof spirit or have less than 1/2oz of non-spiritness.
• When you finish your post, please email me or post a comment with your link. I will include it in a round-up on Tuesday if I’ve recovered from trying as many of your drinks as I can.
• Include a link in your post to Kaiser Penguin so those who haven’t heard of Mx Monday can join in.

Extras

• Include a photo of your deadly potion; I plan to blatantly rip off Gabriel’s format from when he hosted, as it was just wonderful. So make sure to include a picture, unless you want a screen-shot of your blog text.
• Include the Mixology Monday logo along with your post!

We love MxMo for its variations — or at least I do — but how to make the most of a focus on overindulgence?

{Editorial note: Due to the nature of this post, I will not be able to keep to my usual spelling and grammar standards. I will be eternally grateful if youl will overlook such errors here.}

My preferred strong drink, if the setting and bartending and my situation allows, is a Sazerac. (Have I spelled the name of this drink wrong for years? Yes. I’m OK with that. Thank you for your flexibility.) This is a classic drink, but one I  came to enjoy only while outside of Pennsylvania. It’s native to Louisiana but known many places, and the joy of it is its simplicity:

Sazerac

1 1/2 oz. Bourbon (in this case, Old Overholt Rye)
1/2 tsp. Pernod
3 dashes Peychaud Bitters
twist Lemon
2 tsp. Sugar Syrup

Coat rocks glass with Pernod. In shaker (no ice) mix Bourbon, sugar syrup and Bitters. Shake and pour into glass. Add lemon twist.

For this occasion, because I’d already written about the Sazerac, I thought I’d experiment with using an Irish whiskey in place of the rye. The Irish Whiskey I have is Power’s, and it’s mellow and sweet with just a trace of smoke. It’s not an easy fit to a Sazerac. I confess I went through many variations before I realized the simple answer was to reduce the amount of sugar in the basic recipe.

Here’s how to do it (and fit the Limit: One critiera):

Irish Sazerac

3 oz Powers whiskey
1/2 tsp. Pernod or absinthe
4 dashes Peychaud Bitters
1/2 tsp. Sugar Syrup

Coat rocks glass with Pernod or absinthe. In shaker (no ice) mix whiskey, sugar syrup and Bitters. Shake and pour into glass.

Note that the alcohol is doubled but the other ingredients are not. This is on purpose. Power’s is sweet from the start, and when I tried the drink as a straight substitution it was ridiculous. Halving the sugar helped. I tried adding Angostura bitters (bad idea), adding other bitter elements (no good), and finally realized that just reducing the sweetness solved the trouble.

Please check in with the Kaiser Penguin for the latest updates in the MxMo entries this month. Cheers!