Welcome to Matt and Friends Drink the Universe, the comedy podcast where great drinks meet great stories. Join host Matt and a rotating crew of friends as they share laughs, taste unique craft beers, cocktails, wines, and spirits, and dive into the stories, history, and science behind every sip.
Every episode brings something different — from fan-favorite Stellar Sips (the drinks we love) to those dreaded Cosmic Chugs (the ones that crash and burn). You’ll also find a mix of fun episode themes like Alcohology, Think or Drink Trivia, Rocket Rankings, Bar Chats, and How Did We Get Beer? to keep every listen fresh and entertaining.
Packed with hilarious banter, fun facts, and plenty of libation inspiration, this show is perfect for anyone who enjoys discovering new flavors while kicking back with great company.
So grab your favorite drink, relax, and join us as we drink our way through the universe — one unforgettable pour at a time. Cheers!
Your fall cocktail menu doesn’t need a dozen syrups or a full bar cart, it needs three smart builds and a couple of solid techniques. Our boozy starships Head of Cocktail Engineering Josh joins Matton Matt and Friends Drink to roll out a trio of autumn drinks that cover the whole range: bold and boozy, bright and foamy, and light enough to pour before dinner.
First up is a Spiced Pear Old Fashioned made with 100-proof bourbon, St. George Spiced Pear Liqueur, and a bitters combo that keeps the pear from turning cloying. We also talk presentation that actually matters, including how a flamed orange peel adds real aroma and a clean citrus snap. It’s a strong sipping cocktail for crisp nights, porch hangs, and anyone who loves an old fashioned with fall flavor.
Then we shift to the Blood Moon Rising, a blood orange cocktail built with orange rum, allspice dram, and a silky egg white foam created with a dry shake. If raw egg makes you hesitate, we get practical about it: what the risk really looks like, when to skip it, and the bartender-friendly alternative (Fee Foam) that gets you that same velvety texture.
We close with an Apple Cider Martini featuring applejack, apple cider, and ginger liqueur, basically trick-or-treat night energy in a glass without going heavy.
If you try one of these fall cocktails, share it with a friend, then subscribe, leave a review, and tell us which drink you’re making first.
1Spiced Pear Old Fashioned ("The Headless Pearman")
2 oz 100-proof bourbon
1 oz St. George Spiced Pear Liqueur
2 dashes Angostura bitters
2 dashes Fee Brothers old-fashioned bitters
Stir with ice in a mixing glass, strain over a large cube. Garnish with a flamed (warmed) orange peel, spritzing the oils through the flame.
Blood Moon Rising
2 oz Don Q Naranja (orange) rum
¾ oz allspice dram
1¾ oz fresh-squeezed blood orange juice
¼ oz lime juice
1 egg white
Dry shake (no ice) to foam the egg white, then add ice and shake hard again. Double strain over a large ice cube into a rocks glass. Garnish with a dried blood orange slice (thin slices baked at about 185°F on convection for roughly 3 hours, turned every 30 minutes). An orange slice or cinnamon stick also works.
Egg white alternative: Fee Foam, ½ oz in place of the egg white, or omit it entirely with the same other ingredients.
Apple Cider Martini
2 oz Laird's applejack
2 oz apple cider (cold-pressed preferred; spiced cider is fine)
1 oz Barrow's Intense ginger liqueur
Shake, then strain into a martini glass. Garnish with an apple slice, orange peel, or cinnamon stick (or Halloween candy).
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Welcome back everyone to Matt and Friends Drink the Universe. I have today joining me Josh. And we're going to be talking fall cocktails. Josh is our head of mixology engineering here on our boozy spacecraft. Has come up with three delicious fall cocktails. The first of which I'm drinking right now. Do we want to start with that one or is this too strong to start with? What do you think?
Josh
Sure, we'll start there and then we can go back in ABV, if you will.
So the first cocktail I made today is a spiced pear old-fashioned. I used a 100-proof bourbon. Two ounces of that went into a mixing glass, along with one ounce of St. George Spiced Pear Liqueur, two dashes of Angostora bitters, and two dashes of Fae Brothers bitters, old-fashioned bitters. Stirred that with ice, then strained it over a large cube, and then we garnished that with a flamed orange peel.
Matt
It is really good. I'm glad you didn't burn down my kitchen with the flamed orange peel. Anytime somebody says, Do you have a lighter? I'm going to light something on fire in your kitchen. Make it a little leery.
Josh
I didn't quite light the orange peel on fire, just warmed it up a little, spritz the oils through the flame, makes for a nice little presentation, gives it a little orange zest uh zing at the end there. But this is one of my favorite, as my wife would call it, strong sipping cocktails. So this is not a cocktail you're gonna get and pound a bunch of. Uh it's it's truth. It's very booze forward, but with the spiced pear liqueur in there, it is uh the perfect fall sipper. If you're sitting outside on a nice autumn night around a fire, this is like the perfect drink for that.
Matt
I'll tell you, I grabbed this one off the table after Josh made them I sampled all three and thought, you know what? This is the one that I would sit and sip for a while if you're an old-fashioned fan. Out of this world, outstanding. What do we want to call it?
Josh
The uh I was just calling it spiced pear old-fashioned, but if you can come up with a fun name, you can insert it here. The headless pearman.
Matt
Yeah, sure. Alright, there we go. Sounds fantastic.
Josh
I did make two other cocktails because Matt reached out and said to me, Do you want to do a fall cocktail feature? And I said, Actually, fall is my favorite time for cocktails. I love fall cocktails, I love the fall flavors. So can I make three? And he said, Yeah, absolutely. So I made two other cocktails.
One I'm calling the Blood Moon Rising, and that is a cocktail that I used Don Q Naranja Rum or Naranja Rum, which is their orange rum. Two ounces of that went into a shaker, along with three-quarters of an ounce of allspice dram, one and three-quarter ounces of blood orange juice, fresh squeezed, one egg white, and a quarter ounce of lime juice. So that all went into the shaker by itself. I dry shook that, meaning I shook it without ice to get the egg white nice and foamy. Then I added ice, did a second shake, and you shake it really hard so it gets the really nice velvety foam. And then I double strained that over a large ice cube into a rock's glass, and I topped that or garnished that with a dried blood orange slice. So I took the blood oranges, I sliced them really thin, I laid them out on a baking sheet, and put them in the oven at about 185 degrees on convection for roughly three hours. I turned it every 30 minutes. Now, if you don't want to spend the time making that, that's just for fun and for looks. You can just do an orange slice, you can do a cinnamon stick, you can do anything that your heart desires, because that allspice dram's got all kinds of different fall flavors in there. And that is uh much lighter, much more fruit forward cocktail, but still has those fall notes of the allspice in there. And actually, it's funny, Matt's uh mother-in-law, who I've never seen drink a cocktail before, she snatched that one up and uh and she drank it and asked for seconds before we came in here to record. So she was really into that one. It's a really nice, fun, fruit forward, uh, fall flavored cocktail.
Matt
I enjoyed that one quite a bit. The foam is a little thicker than I anticipated, but you get a lot of that flavor and it it hits the nose right up front. And then as you drink, you get more of that very fall flavor. This is also why in our neighborhood we go trick-or-treating together as as a mass group of children and adults. And this is why when we start at Josh's house, things get a little fuzzy by block two, which we all appreciate very much.
Josh
That's fair, and that leads perfectly into our next cocktail because what we normally drink on trick-or-treat nights is bourbon and
cider. So instead of bourbon and cider, because I made a bourbon cocktail already, I made an apple cider martini. So this contains two ounces of Laird's apple jack, two ounces of store-bought apple cider. If you can find like a cold-pressed apple cider, I find that to be better. Um, but any apple cider will do. If you like spiced apple cider, you can use that as well. And then to that, I added one ounce of Barrow's intense ginger liqueur. Because I think ginger and apple go so well together and it's like the perfect uh fall time flavor profile. Shake that, strain it into a martini glass, garnish it with an apple slice, garnish it with an orange peel, garnish it with a cinnamon stick, or garnish it with uh, I don't know, maybe some uh Halloween candy. Um but it's a nice little, probably the least booze forward of the three, just because it's got just as much um apple cider in it as it does the main spirit. Yep. So it's kind of a nice little refreshing pre-dinner uh cocktail. And um, it's great. And maybe we'll have to be walking around with martini glasses this trick or treat.
Matt
That would be very fancy. Very fancy. I don't know what I'm going dressed as this year, but we'll have to figure it out. I enjoyed that one as well. It was very refreshing overall. I I had that one after I had the old-fashioned, the pair old-fashioned, so that was a big switch. Oh yeah, from one to the other. But all three, absolutely excellent. We will post the recipes for you on Instaface and everywhere else we decide to drop this one. But uh, Josh, any closing thoughts?
Not necessarily closing thought, but I was just thinking about this. If you're hesitant to use raw eggs in your cocktails, I totally understand that, and that's totally fine. There is a product out there called Fee Foam, which comes in a bottle that looks like bitters, and you can add that in place of egg whites and shake up your cocktails, and it'll give you that same velvety, smooth consistency. So that's for sure an option. Or this cocktail would have been just fine without the egg white if you don't like that that foamy, uh, silky mouthfeel. Some people are just not into that. The ingredients would stay the same, and you can just leave out the egg white.
Matt
While we're on the subject, sure. Is there any known danger to putting egg white in a cocktail? Yeah, I mean, uh it's something I've always thought about. Like you're making it, you're they everybody says, you know, don't drink raw eggs unless you're brocky training for a match, I guess.
Josh
But uh yes, I believe there is a one in some odd million chance of contracting salmonella, but it is with modern farming and livestock practices these days, it's not I don't want to I'm not gonna tell anyone that the risk is zero, but it's pretty minimal. I've drank a lot of cocktails with uh egg whites in them, and uh I've never once gotten sick that I can recall from my my cocktails or cocktails that I've had out of a bar with uh with an egg white in them or anything like that. So I condone it, but I'm not a doctor, so I just want that to be clear. I'm not giving you uh medical advice. So that's why I was given the option there uh if you want to use something other than an egg white to make your your cocktails foamy.
Matt
But um as far as no idea, no idea there is an alternate product for egg white.
Josh
Yeah, it's the fee foam is pretty popular these days in bars amongst bartenders because they don't have to have raw eggs behind the bar and they don't have to be cracking them and separating them and washing their hands afterwards. So it's it's just easier for them to grab this bottle, add a half an ounce of the fee foam and shake it up and get the same kind of consistency.
Matt
Makes sense to me, makes sense to me. We hope that you enjoy any of these three or all of these three cocktails for your fall parties or gatherings or whatever you happen to be doing to celebrate the fall season. Josh, I did have my boost with the fur and my apple pick and jeans, and there was no pumpkin spice today. But I'm okay.
Josh
No pumpkin spice today. Um, but maybe next fall, stay tuned, and I'll try and work on a pumpkin spice cocktail for everyone. Here you go. Thank you.
Matt
Well, everybody, happy fall.
Josh
Cheers and have a great fall.
Matt
And shout out to Josh. Thank you very much for making all three of these delicious cocktails
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Matt
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