Blended Scotch and boiling water, sweetened with a spoonful of sugar, are set alight and arced between two metal mugs in a ribbon of blue flame, then land in the glass piping hot under a twist of lemon peel. Equal parts toddy and showmanship, it drinks soft and warming, with the sugar rounding the whisky's edges and the lemon oil lifting the malt on the steam.
Garnish: Lemon Peel
thrown · Rocks
build
Add the Scotch whisky and boiling water into one of two sturdy metal (silver-plated) mugs with handles, then dissolve the sugar.
other
Carefully ignite the liquid with a flame.
throw
While blazing, pour the burning mixture back and forth between the two mugs four or five times, creating a long arc of blue flame ('a continued stream of liquid fire'). Practice with cold water first to avoid scalding.
strain
Once mixed, extinguish and pour the hot drink into a small bar tumbler (rocks glass).
garnish
Twist a lemon peel over the surface and drop it in.
Jerry Thomas devised the Blue Blazer while working the bar at the El Dorado, a gambling saloon in San Francisco during the Gold Rush, and it became the drink most closely tied to his name. He put it into print in 1862 in his Bar-Tender's Guide, also published as How to Mix Drinks, measuring the whisky and water by the wine-glass and mixing them in a pair of large silver-plated mugs. Thomas summed up the blazing pour in his own words as "a continued stream of liquid fire."