Brandy Crusta an Improvement on a Fancy Cocktail

The Brandy Crusta

Jerry Thomas called the Brandy Crusta an improvement on the cocktail in his 1862 Bar-Tender’s Guide. The cocktail he also referred to as a ‘modern invention’. That modern invention was just another step in the ongoing development of what we now know as the Old Fashioned.


What is a Brandy Crusta?

The Crusta follows the classic Old Fashioned formula in the sense that it contains 2 ounces of spirit, bitters, sugar and water. The ‘improvement’ comes with splitting the base spirit between brandy and orange curaƧao and the addition of lemon juice. This is what Jerry Thomas would have called the Fancy Cockail.

You can also look at the Crusta from the sour angle. That is the approach David Embury takes in his 1948 book The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks. He dismisses the drink as a sour served in a fancy style. So, its a hybrid. An Old Fashioned sour served fancy.

Throw a Fancy Cocktail into a stemmed wine glass coated in sugar and containing a wide strip of lemon zest – now you have a Crusta. Sort of, that lemon peel is the sticky bit. Literally and figuratively. It’s a bit of a trick to get it right.


Brandy Cocktails

When the Brandy Crusta first showed up at cocktail bars brandy was what people drank. Brandy is made by distilling wine and it is made anywhere people make wine. It is usually aged in oak barrels which gives it a lot of flavours people are familiar with from drinking whiskey.

In addition to flavours that come from ageing in oak barrels brandy also has fruit and floral flavours that come from the wine. This makes it a complex and nuanced spirit that makes for some amazing cocktails.

Click here for more classic cocktail recipes.


Brandy Crusta

  • Glass: chilled rocks glass
  • 1 1/2 oz. cognac
  • 1/2 oz. orange curacao
  • 1/2 oz. fresh lemon juice
  • 1 dash Angostura bitters
  • Garnish: 1 long strip of lemon zest (sugar)
  1. Moisten the rim of a chilled rocks glass with a lemon wedge and coat with sugar.
  2. Add lemon zest to glass.
  3. In a cocktail shaker add the spirits and ice. Shake and fine strain into prepared glass.
  4. Add ice and serve.

Crusta Garnish

This is the part that makes it fancy. To start with you need to prepare your glass a couple of hours ahead of time so the sugar has time to dry and form a hard crust. This is important, because you are using the sugar to seal the lemon peel to the glass.

In other words, you are extending the glass by attaching a wide strip of lemon peel to it using sugar. Typically, you are using a sherry or dessert wine glass.

The first thing you need to do is to find a lemon that fits tightly inside the glass. Cut the ends off the lemon and cut the inside out so you are left with a hollow tube of lemon. This strip of lemon peel is then fit inside the glass and ‘crusted’ with sugar and left to dry so that it forms a watertight seal.

If you’ve done everything right you drink from the lemon as if it were the new rim of the glass. Fancy, indeed.

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If you love a classic cocktail, check out our list of classic cocktail recipes. Knowing how these recipes work will improve your cocktail game.

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