The next thing you know, they’ll be banning the Blue Blazer. No, not the dark navy sport coat, but the cocktail for which the legendary 19th-century bartender, Jerry Thomas, was rightly famous. Thomas would take two silver-plated mugs, and into one of them, he would put two ounces of scotch and two ounces of boiling water. Ignite the liquid with a match and then pour the flaming contents from one mug to another and back again half a dozen times. “If well done,” Thomas wrote in his 1862 bartender’s guide, “this will have the appearance of a continued stream of liquid fire.” The burnt whiskey is poured into a tumbler with some sugar.
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