“Making cocktails is a lot more like baking than it is like cooking.” I hear this all the time from bartenders, the point being that precise measurement is vital to making balanced drinks. A bit too much citrus, too little vermouth, and your finely crafted, expensive cocktail isn’t is as good as it should be. This is why we encourage bartenders and home mixologists to use a jigger. It’s more consistent and delivers better results than “free-pouring” as the bartending academies instruct.
-Jacob Grier

That is how one of my favorite bartenders and bar bloggers starts a new post today that challenges us all to really take drinks to the ultimate level of consistency and quality. Jacob notes that volumetric measurements are problematic, especially the very small measures used in such things as dashes. The solution that people who care about results use when baking is to use a scale.

Go read the whole thing at Jacob’s site. I will note that one reason for measuring the mass of ingredients instead of volume in baking has to do with the compressibility of powdered ingredients like flour. Now, I don’t have a lot of flour-based recipes in my repertoire, but I would not put it past some of our more creative artistes. And more to the point, the real problem in cocktails comes with the smallest of ingredient amounts, such as dashes or drops. If you can’t even count on one bottle of Angostura to the next delivering the same amount in a dash, imagine from one brand to the next. A high-quality digital scale is the answer to this issue!

I will note that the OXO scale shown in Jacob’s picture is not up to the task that he himself lays out for measuring such amounts as .666g of bitters, as it is accurate only to the whole gram. The PeguWife and I have a retired Olympic scale that was first used for weighing the shoes of beach volleyball players. It is sensitive to the thousandth of the gram, so it wasn’t precise enough for the outfits….

via FoxSports.

Since a scale like ours is in limited supply, I’d suggest something like this Ohaus Scout Pro Portable Scale for professional bars, as it appears to be robust enough to handle the rough, wet environment. It is a bit expensive, but only two ought to be enough for most any bar. For the home, I’d suggest something cheaper, like this American Weigh Gemini.

I’m excited by this whole new world of precision in my cocktails, and I expect to see scales in use all over on the next calendar year! It really isn’t that much more exacting effort to use this system. Let’s hope everyone starts expecting this, so the people who do will get exactly the drink they deserve.

Cheers, y’all.

Somehow, the impending bartender singularity is already in its rococo phase. Because I certainly want my Manhattan brutally shaken and then dispensed through a series of cherub penises….

Cocktail-style Tiki drinks really have ended up being the central theme of exploration this Tiki Month, and here is another: The Captain’s Blood. Of course, both in name and in flavor, the Captain’s blood is more Pirate than Polynesian, but I’ll allow it. After all, pirate stuff has a long association with Tiki, just as spy-themed music and paraphernalia do. And Tiki’s patron saints, Don the Beachcomber and Trader Vic, were really pirates in all but the name. (They also omitted the bad hygiene and most of the old ultra-violence, but let’s not quibble)

There are all sorts of recipes for Captain’s Blood on the web, and aside from all pretty much containing rum, lime of some fashion, and usually bitters of some type, there seems to be no definitive recipe. I suspect that this is one of those drinks with a great name that has been reverse engineered from the memory of the taste countless times, and for which we shall never find a rock-solid origin or original formulation. I went with the one of CocktailDB, which has propagated the farthest on the web and which is the most nearly Tiki in character. I made two amendments, which I will explain.

The original CocktaiDB recipe calls for one dash of Angostura and a half teaspoon of sugar (roughly 1 tsp simple syrup). That result I found to be too thin, even sour, in flavor, especially if you are looking for a Tiki, or at least a Tiki Compliant, cocktail.
Increasing the bitters demonstrates that great, largely unappreciated by the masses, cocktail truth: Bitters in small amounts don’t increase the bitterness of a drink, they knock the edges off other outsize flavor elements instead. In this case, the extra bitters just sands down the sourness of the lime and falernum without hiding the underlying flavorful goodness.
I got the idea for the honey mix from Rumdood’s old post on homemade falernum. It was my choice to up the amount. I like the melding of the flavors resulting from the added sweetness, and the honey also gives a tiny bit of additional complexity. But make no mistake, this remains a tart drink. The honey also gives a tiny bit richer body to the cocktail, which I like as well. Next time I try it, I may even replace the honey mix with gomme syrup, to see how far I can take that effect.

The suggestion for this Tiki Month post from Jason McGrady, who presides over the mahogany at Sazerac Restaurant in the Hotel Monaco in Seattle, where Maggi and I stayed two Summers ago. What’s that? Yes, I keep in touch with bartenders I haven’t seen in two years. I keep track of an incredible number of good bartenders around the world whom I seldom actually see. You never know when I am going to have a sudden need for an agent to do me a favor and make me a good drink. I’m like the Shadow that way.

“Someday, bartender, I will need a Manhattan from you….”
Source: Alex Sheikman

And hey! This post is part of Tiki Month 2013 here at the Pegu Blog! Be sure to look around for LOTS more Tiki stuff all February!

One odd phenomenon about this year’s Tiki Month is a new-found affinity on my part to drinks born out of Don the Beachcomber. In the past, I have always leaned much more to Trader Vic’s style of concoction. But so far this year, I’ve found a number of Don’s recipes turn out to taste much better than their ingredients list would give any indication. The Queen’s Road Cocktail is the best of these I’ve found so far.

The Queen’s Road also has the distinction of being one of the few true “cocktails” in the Tiki tradition. Thus you can give your arm a rest from hefting those fun ceramic grotesqueries that are close in size and weight to a 40 of Colt than they are to the delicate concoctions I sip the rest of the year, and instead give a nod to your regular stemware. Or you can combine the best of both worlds and serve it up in a TikiTini glass!

With honey mix and the dreaded orange juice, the Kanye West of cocktail ingredients, as well as some added simple, I expected this one to be far too sweet. Instead, the first sip was revelatory. It doesn’t taste sweet. It doesn’t taste boozy or rummy. And it doesn’t taste of orange juice. The flavor of this cocktail should appeal to just about any drinker, with any background, as long as they are not seeking the bite of raw liquor. It is good, folks.

I noted in the SideBlog a few days ago an excellent definition of the term “balance”, which describes it as existing in a drink where all the flavors get their turn and you can distinguish and identify them all. I’ll now quibble with that definition in my contention that a balanced Tiki drink is very nearly the opposite; all the flavors meld together, and subsume the characteristics of the spirit, to create a new gestalt of the whole, where it is hard to discern for sure any of the components.

In many of the really great Tiki drinks, instead of finely crafted harmonies, you get what seems to be an entirely new flavor. I think that it is this above all else that may account for the popularity of the original Tiki movement. Tiki may have explicitly exhibited its glorious lack of authenticity, but it delivered on its promise of an experience unlike any to be found in the comfortable, familiar environs of home.

And hey! This post is part of Tiki Month 2013 here at the Pegu Blog! Be sure to look around for LOTS more Tiki stuff all February!

Part-Time Bartenders have standards too, you know. Part or Full time, forcing them to make a Jägerbomb for you kills a little piece of their souls each time.

Source: NY Times

Seattle bartending legend Murray Stenson is very ill with a heart condition. It may require extensive, and thus expensive, heart surgery. And you probably know how much health insurance bartenders tend to have. A movement is underway to raise funds to help out Murray. You can go to MurrayAid.org to send a donation via PayPal. I have. Or, if you must do everything via Facebook, you can donate there, too. Though if you go the Facebook route, be aware that Zuckerman will get his cut, and Murray needs the money more. There will also be several benefit events at Northwestern cocktail bars in the coming days, so if you live up there, check out MurrayAid.org for info on those as well.

I was just going to sidebar this, but I decided to do a full post so I can explain why Murray may deserve your help, and also blog about the one time I got a chance to meet the man.

Murray is one of the Ur-Bartenders of the modern cocktail renaissance. And perhaps the Ur-Bartender of the Pacific Northwest cocktail movement, which in turn seems the most important wellspring of the whole cocktail geek/enthusiast side movement. I heard about Murray’s condition from Paul Clarke (a foundational, if not Ur-Blogger himself), and you can read his thoughts on Murray and how he nurtured boozenerds like Paul over at Cocktail Chronicles. Here’s a taste:

This is all to say that Murray’s given me a lot. And if you’re at all interested in cocktails and bars — and really, why are reading this blog if you’re not? — then he’s given you a lot, too, because this story I’m sharing about how Murray’s influenced me can be echoed by dozens of bartenders, bloggers, cocktail enthusiasts and others who enjoy relaxing in a bar, not only in Seattle but around the world, as well.

What distinguishes Murray from his contemporaries who resurrected the world of cocktails is that Murray remains a bartender. The DeGroffs and Regans of the world have gone forth and evangelized. They consult and write. And while they may still get behind the stick for an “Event” now and then, guys like that haven’t counted on tips to make the rent for a very long time. Very well-deserved fame has been good to them.

Fame and Murray don’t get along. Sure he is famous, in a certain way. The deeper you steep yourself in the craft cocktail culture, the more likely you are to know Murray, or at least know of him. And Murray values anyone who understands what Murray is doing, whether he knows you or not.

But when the mainstream media tried to make Murray into the next big “bar star”, it brought him nothing but misery. A few years back a major magazine wrote a profile of Murray and his then home, the Zig Zag, telling the world of this mixological colossus standing astride Peugeot Sound, mixing liquid miracles for the cognoscenti. Newspapers followed up, and the World beat a path to his door. Unfortunately, to Murray’s way of thinking, the World consists mostly of posers who don’t and can’t appreciate what he really does. The World that walked in his door was there mainly to be able to tell their friends that they’d been there, and would not return because they deep down didn’t understand what made Murray special. And most importantly, when the World is crowded into your bar every night, there is no room for your regulars. No room for the friends who knew Murray, appreciated what he did, and who had the knowledge to understand and let him do what he does so very well.

Murray couldn’t wait for the spotlight to dim, and never could recapture the magic of being a mere master craftsman behind the mahogany at Zig Zag. Which is why he has moved out to Jamie Boudreau’s Canon, where he would be working tonight, most likely, were it not for the heart condition which engenders this post.

That is where I met him, the one time I had that chance. I confess I was drunk before I walked through the door. Spending a few hours with Kieth Waldbauer at his bar Liberty will do that to a man. Kieth came with me, so at least Murray knew by association that I knew what I was doing, and not just some derelict. I haven’t blogged about Canon because I remembered almost nothing about it the next day, or to this day, except for one standout thing: Murray.

I like spending time in bars in large part because I like the kind of people who work there, and I like watching them go about their craft. This goes for regular bars, dive bars, and hotel bars too, in addition to the craft palaces I so adore. I know, at by now an unconscious level, what a good bartender looks like. And even through the haze of a couple hours at Canon, overlayed by whatever gin concoctions Murray prepared for me, it was apparent that this not just a good bartender, but a very special one.

His drinks, of course, were great. But I’ll leave the specifics of Murray’s mixological knowledge to folks like Paul, who’ve had years to experience and appreciate that. What I could see almost the instant we entered Canon was the diamond cutter focus that Murray brings to his work. His piercing gaze focuses on each customer in turn, giving them the attention they deserve. Drinks, no matter how complex, are made in the most efficient manner imaginable. Nothing behind his bar was ever out of place, no customer was ever long without a full glass, and yet he still had time to talk to everyone and make them feel like he was there for them.
In short he was in complete and utter control. Morganthaler has a bit of the same vibe. But whereas Jeff maintains his rule with a happy, albeit iron, fist, Murray stays king by always seeming a step ahead. Everyone gets in the weeds sometimes, but I wager the weeds fear Murray.

With which I return full circle. Murray is in the weeds right now. Weeds his skills aren’t suited for. He could use your help.

How to make a White Russian. Um, I am compelled to note that she doesn’t measure her portions…. What kind of mixologist is she?
Oh… that kind!

Source: Seattle Magazine

To paraphrase Bill Cosby, I did that last post so I can do this one. I just reviewed the bar Liberty, in Seattle, Washington, and focused on how it is the sort of craft bar that not only is a magnificent example of the art, but also a model of market sustainability for the craft cocktail industry. Liberty’s founder Andrew Friedman, a smooth, elegant beast behind the stick, would like to run for the presidency of the United States Bartending Guild. I won’t puff up myself by making a “formal endorsement” of Andrew, but if you are a USBG member like me, supporting him would not be a mistake.

This may be difficult, of course. I went searching for information about USBG national elections, and found… nothing. Except for a blog post welcoming the current officers to a two year term that appears to have expired last month. This is not unusual for still essentially nascent organizations like the national USBG, especially ones that are largely volunteer, and still run by their founders. That said, elections like this are important to determining how (and if) such groups mature and flourish or wither on the vine, so I’d suggest fellow USBG members pay attention when they do get around to having this one.

Through our Ohio USBG, I received a letter from Andrew about his hopes for moving the the national USBG forward and improving both its fun and its utility for members, and I’m reprinting it here below for you to read. There is a lot of good stuff here that needs doing regardless of who is the next USBG President. You can read more of what Andrew thinks the USBG needs at Liberty’s website.

The United States Bartenders’ Guild:
A Bartenders’ Guild for Bartenders

As president of the Washington State chapter of the USBG, I want to thank the previous administrations for taking us to where we are today. When bartenders get together, what is created is an unmistakably apparent insta-family and it’s time to encourage these relationships. So, now is the time to move forward from where we are today, making the USBG what it really can and should become – A Bartenders’ Guild For Bartenders.

Four years ago, when we started the Washington State Bartenders’ Guild, we started with a mission to promote community & education for our membership. For the last four years as President, together, our guild has chosen to value education over brand indoctrination and community over competition. We have a progressive, tight-knit & growing community, and I’d like to work nationally with all of you to help the USBG become a larger extended family and not limited to what some think that has become: marketing blocks for large distributors & liquor companies.

There are three main directions that we’d like to see the USBG move towards in the next few years:

• Education
• Community
• Communication

Education
Here in Washington State, as I imagine in your community also, we hold a higher value for education over brand indoctrination, and I would like to start a program to work between our guild to replicate successful educational events that each of us has done and share these model for these successful events between our guilds. There’s no reason that we cannot learn from each others’ successes, and education should be one of the first priorities of the USBG.

Community
For many of you who have been able to go to regional and national events where bartenders are able to meet & learn from each other, it becomes unmistakable that THESE are the kinds of events, such as an official Bartender Exchange Program, which will be truly valuable & important for all of us. I would like to create a framework of connection between our organizations to allow these events to not just happen more often, but to allow for follow-up between members afterwards.

Communication
Right now, inexplicably, there is no organized communication between our guilds. This is incomprehensible to me, as it obviously is to many of you that I have spoken with, and the first thing that we will work on together is to create this framework for communication between our guilds. For instance, the Northeast chapters hold regional meetings a number of times a year – this is an outstanding example of what we could do if there were leadership which helped create a framework to promote great ideas like this and have a leadership who will work together to take these kinds of events national. Immediately, we should have a forum available on the usbg.org website in order to allow all paid members to easily communicate.

In speaking to many of your chapter’s representatives in the last week, it’s become obvious that there are many things which we need to work together to do in order to improve the USBG in the upcoming, two-year term of the next president, so I am guaranteeing my commitment to the USBG and to each and every one of you, so let’s move forward and continue the kinds of actions that our guilds have have taken individually – but this time as a community.

There’s so much more information that we would need to talk about in order to really discuss which candidate’s policies mesh best with your idea for where our guild could go, but candidates only have one page to express their opinion for where the WSBG guild should go. If you’d like to read more information on where together I think that we can take our community, please go to www.libertybars.com/usbg.

I had a chance to visit Seattle this Summer with my family. Since we had the kids with us, I didn’t get a chance to do a real detailed exploration of this, one of America’s premier cocktail towns, but I made sure to have enough time to hit a few highlights, and to get a feel for the general cocktail environment in town.

For a variety of reasons, I will lead with a review of Liberty, at 517 15th Ave. E. (@LibertyLovesYou on Twitter) Liberty is the love child of cocktail warriors Andrew Friedman and Keith Waldbauer. Andrew started Liberty in 2006, with Keith joining him later, so that makes this a very well-established and long-lived high-end bar. I’ve known, or at least “internet known”, Keith since I started blogging, as his now fallow Moving at the Speed of Life was one of the first cocktail blogs I read and among the first such blogs written by a working pro.

Liberty and its owners take great care to characterize it as “just a neighborhood bar”, rather than some Fancy Dan Craft Bar.
This is a load of bull fritters.
I insist that this is a fabulous, high-end bar. From the back wall (pictured above) full of a head-spinning array of ingredients headlined by a magnificent but not over the top selection of whisk(e)ys, to the menu filled with a great selection of classics and modern creations, to each and every drink that I saw placed before me or any other customer, Liberty is a cocktail lover’s dream. This is place with drinks like the Point of No Return, which simply lists fire among its ingredients. (If you visit Liberty, be sure to try one. It’s both delicious and a lot of fun to watch being made.)
There is also an excellent balance between the types of drinks on the menu. Andrew and Keith offer not just a wide variety of spirit bases and flavor profiles, but also what I’ll call “levels” of drinks. Many craft palaces I enter have menus of naught but ridiculously baroque concoctions that will be awesome to talk about with one’s fellow geeks at Tales of the Cocktail, but are too bitter, complex, or simply weird for anyone else. There are drinks here for the snob who isn’t “on duty” that evening, and the “training wheels” offerings still have something of interest to be learned from.

That said, Liberty also really is a neighborhood joint. Liberty’s location is one of the things that really strikes me about it. It is is located on a fairly modest stretch of retail shopping in a quiet residential neighborhood, rather than in the restaurant, tourist, or entertainment districts where most “serious” craft bars dwell.
Tourists like me are an anomaly in Liberty, and businessmen drinking here are likely doing so on their own dime, rather than an expense account. As a result, the prices are almost shockingly modest for such offerings.
To satisfy the Licensing Gods’ demand for food service, not to mention that of any reasonable drinker’s stomach, Liberty has the elegant and tasty solution of devoting about five feet of its bar to a sushi counter, with one or two cutters as demand warrants.

The place has that well-used feel of many older bars, the kind that have been open forever, have seen weddings and wakes, sometimes for the same customer, yet never ever feel run-down, through the sheer force of the love and responsibility of its proprietors. The seating is comfortable, both at the bar and around the room. The bar itself is moderately sized and fits in visually, rather than dominating the space like some altar to the Gods of Fernet and Angostura. There is even a large back room for meetings and private parties, but which is essentially invisible to the regular clientele.

Your average oblivious Jack and Coke drinker could make of Liberty his Third Place happily for years and never care or even realize that he was spending his time in a temple of high-end concoctions.

And this last point, the seamless melding of tavern and cocktail palace is what makes Liberty so interesting to me and, so important to the craft movement.

Craft cocktails as an industry have had a fascinating decade-plus of growth now, and are in a different stage of development in nearly every city in America. When you travel like I do all over the country killing people, you can move forward and backward through the whole history of the craft, using airline or auto as your time machine.
Many locales still have yet to see the first blush of our passion; the only “lime” in bars still has with the word “Rose’s” writ upon the bottle. Other cities have merely discovered the joys, and the commercial possibilities, of fresh or more exotic ingredients. Many, like my own Columbus, have a few restaurants and bars that are making a try at true high-end drinks. And cities like Seattle or New York have reached the point where the craft bars are a well-understood phenomenon, and most high-end restaurants have reached the point of having to offer competitive programs of their own.

But like any movement that is reaching maturity, at least in some markets, there is now a lot of angst about where to go from here. Because the simple facts are, craft cocktails made with exotic syrups, or oddball bitters, or cinnamon smoke, are not for everyone. And even among those who do enjoy them, they are unprepared to drink them all the time. There are very real limits to speed of growth and profitability in the craft movement.

This is why bars like Liberty, and Anvil in Houston, and to some extent Passenger or Bourbon in Washington, DC, are so significant, and why I admire them so much. These are places that serve all drinkers well, not just our specific clientele. The aforementioned Mr. Jack and Coke can happily hang out there with his buddy Mr. Vieux Carre. And Mr. Sazerac can find the opportunity to hit on Miss Greyhound here. (Mr. Grey Goose Martini, don’t waste your time hitting on Miss Knob Creek Old-Fashioned. It’s not going to end well for you.)

Bar like Liberty are where previously undiscovered reserves of cocktail lovers (as opposed to cocktail drinkers) will be uncovered. The easy atmosphere provides no barrier to entry for the uninitiated (quite the contrary), but the magnificent offerings are the sort that can open doors and minds. If you visit Seattle, take the time one evening to cab your way to Liberty and settle in for a great evening. If you live there, this is the kind of place you take your uninitiated friends when they are resisting being initiated….

Sh*t Brand Ambassadors Say. The only thing this video needs is more participation from the inimitable Jacob Briars. Via A Jigger of Blog.