What is the building block to a julep? Well, the traditional beverage, made popular by the Kentucky Derby, is a just an old fashioned sans bitters with some muddled mint poured over shaved ice in a tin cup. Pretty yummy. Here at Rustic we have almost none of the hardware for it. We do, however, have the booze, muddler, mint, and sugar. In traditional Rustic fashion, we can work with what we have. No shaved ice, or pebble ice machine? No problem. Just smash ice in a tin with a muddler. Oppose the choice of glass because it’s not made of tin? Too bad. I actually think it works better in a rocks glass anyway because you can see what’s going on.

Someone stirred up a Cynar julep at one point which got me thinking about a Jägermeister julep. Why you ask? Why not?

This might be the easiest thing you do all day. Combine 2 oz. Jäger, a teaspoon of rich demerara syrup, some loose mint leaves in a glass, muddle it all up, throw some ice on it, stir it, pour it into an awaiting glass (your choice of already ice in it) with the aid of your trusty julep strainer. Garnish with a nice mint bundle. Drink it down. To make it stronger, add some whiskey of your favorite variety. Jeez, do I have to help you with everything?

Don’t like whiskey or amaro? Do it with gin.

This one is 1 oz. shochu, 1 oz. Japanese gin, a small quarter oz. of simple syrup and some muddled shiso. Same premise, different results.

You can take it anywhere you want it. There’s a myriad of herbs out there to play with. Basil would be quite fun. Hey, I’m thinking yerba santa or hoja santa (same thing) would be good with tequila or mezcal. Hey, life is what you make it. Muddle it up.