now I'm going to demonstrate a mint julep for you as a non southerner I have some techniques here that are totally traditional but I think I make a fantastic tool to start out you need a silver plated julep cup pewter or metal will work but the idea is you want a metal cup that's really going to help this drink chill down very quickly next you're going to need fresh beautiful mint and you're going to need your favorite overproof bourbon I prefer a really strong bourbon here because when you make the drink the strength of the alcohol will actually help chill it down a lot so to start I'm going to add some mint leaves I add about six to eight maybe ten and generally what I'll do is I'll pull off the leaves of the if they're if the leaves are sort of limp like this I'll pull them all in or if they're not I'll pull the the bottom leaves off so that I have top leaves that are beautiful so these ones not going to use a julep is going to require about four to five mint sprigs as garnish so you want to pull your favorite most beautiful mint sprigs aside and reserve that for your drink now I'm going to add half an ounce of simple syrup I'm going to give that a gentle press the idea here is not to pulverize this it's to release the oils from the mint leaves now I'm going to add a healthy two and a half ounces of bourbon here's the half here is the two now this is where my technique for making the joke gets a little bit unorthodox but they use to mix and stir drinks in the Caribbean it's a tree branch where the top branches are cut off and it works perfectly for a julep because what you want to do is you want to mix the mint and the sugar and the Bourbon but you don't want to mix the mint leaves all over in the drink so what you do if you carefully get your swizzle stick about halfway through the jewel and you just Swizzle the drink between both hands what this is doing is it's mixing the mint oil and the sugar and the bourbon and as you watch me swizzle it's going to start chilling the glass so as this drink mixes the glass is going to start to frost over and what you want to be careful to do is not swizzle too much you're going to add a little bit more ice you don't want too much of that bourbon to melt so you're going to pack this up you want a real nice mound of cubes and then you're going to just brush that away so it's nice and clean this drink is going to get garnished with two straws and before you put those straws in you want to make a little bit of room for your mint sprigs so first I'm just going to use my straw to make room for my mint sprigs and then I'm going to take four or five mint sprigs which I've pulled the leaves off of the bottom put them together into a nice bouquet and give it a gentle clap to release the oils and then I'm going to pull the bottom parts of a sprigs off to clean it up and then right where I put that straw in I'm going to get these mint leaves down into my julep now a mint julep should almost look like a flower the idea is you want these beautiful mint leaves to be all over the place creating a nice beautiful bouquet and then I'm going to take my straws back and put it right in front of the glass that way when you pick up this drink the first thing you're going to be able to smell is the mint as this drink sits it'll frost over and ice will begin to form on the outside of the glass it's a beautiful drink the mint julep