David Wondrich decodes your personality from your drink of choice. And he’s damn spot on, almost as if he knows drinkers or something.
“The sort of person who, when presented with the dazzling array of elegant potables offered by a state-of-the-craft cocktail bar, confines himself or herself to a dry Martini is the sort of person who dresses in Brooks Brothers, does not use profanity in public, and has never done anything crazy in his or her life except that one time in college.”

Yes, really. My first post written after Tales of the Cocktail 2011 is a road review of an airport bar. Bear with me, it’s worth the journey.

I had the superior sense and forethought to book my flight home from New Orleans in the afternoon, but the result was that I had three hours in Atlanta Hartsfield at dinner time. I idly tweeted, “Hmmm. 3 hour layover in ATL. Anyone know where the best Sazerac is made in Concourse C?” I fully intended to sup on lukewarm Budweiser and chicken fingers, so the tweet was really just an idle musing on how cocktail-spoiled I’d become in The Big Easy. Thus, I was surprised to receive this reply moments later from follower @Vespajet, moments later: “Nowhere on that concourse. Your best bet in terms of cocktails is One Flew South on Concourse E.”

With a shrug, I set off. Concourse E is the main international rib in ATL, so I figured that if there was decent food and the chance of an un-shaken Manhattan to be had in this or any airport, it would be found there.

One Flew South is located right at the top of the escalators accessing the councourse. It is an elegant modern sushi bar, restaurant and cocktail lounge. It is decorated in spare, Japanese style, all in white enamel and blonde woods, with modern white leather and chrome seating that is more comfortable than it looks. (This is more important than it might sound at first, since this place is designed for travelers who may have just spent up to 12 hours scrunched into those pretzel molds they call coach seating.) There are 11 seats at the bar, a few less in front of the sushi chefs, and a bunch of two person tables surrounding these.

I slipped into a seat in the middle of the bar, not expecting much, and that’s when all the fun began….

Bartender Norm Johnson presented me with both sushi and cocktail menus as I sat (an important detail I highlighted in my last post on menus), and I almost laughed out loud. No Sazerac, but this menu offered me such non-obvious but essential craft cocktails as Bellinis, French 75s (gin, sorry NOLA), Vieux Carrés, Negronis, and Aviations. They offer Pisco Sours and ‘Treuse or Dares… These are raw egg white drinks… In an airport bar.

As I sipped my Aviation (what else to go with first in an airport bar?), I started paying real attention. Just how crafty is this bar, I wondered. The next drink someone ordered was a simple gin and tonic…
“Really?” I asked Norm. “You have a Kold-Draft machine here?”
Yep. No soda gun, either, only premium bottled mixers. They have a small but useful selection of fresh juices and herbs. I counted at least nine bitters. (Unaccountably, no Angostura.) And they boast a pretty interesting selection of premium liquors and liqueurs.

The sushi offerings were limited but very well executed, with excellent quality tuna. While the drinks are priced very much in line with a regular craft bar, the food prices are up there where you’d expect for the captive airport clientele. They offer non-sushi dishes as well that looked pretty good, but I saw none served whilst I was there.

Of course, you can build a nice facility, stock it with great stuff, and still have a crappy result if you don’t have the most critical element of any bar, craft or otherwise: good staff. Rather than the usual parade of temporary journeymen who toil behind the mahogany-print vinyl in most ‘tween runway establishments, One Flew South boasts a small, long-term professional staff. Norm has been there the whole three years the bar has been open. He’s enough of a drink geek to have fun with the resources he has before him, but isn’t self-indulgent about it. He also has that great judgement about character that let him treat every customer at the bar with me in a subtly different way from the one next to them. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that he has a private bartending firm, as well.

So, is One Flew South another Pegu Club? No, of course not. But it is a damn well-executed classic cocktail bar with some nice touches that would be worth a spot in a local’s rotation if it were located in Buckhead. And it wildly exceeds any reasonable expectations a traveler should have for a refuge between flights. If you fly through Atlanta and have the time, I highly recommend a ride on the train to Concourse E. It’s the best bar I’ve ever seen in an airport. Say, “hi,” to Norm for me.

Our first stop in Boston on the Great Cross-Country Barcrawl was at Drink in the Fort Point neighborhood of Boston. Drink fills a huge basement, and it is worth taking a few minutes to look through the leg-level windows out on the street in front before going inside. The view is impressive as you look down on the room from above and behind the bar.

The plain wooden bartop runs the whole length of the basement. And rather than being simply straight, it bends outward in three rectangular humps, greatly increasing the length and available seating at the bar. The center segment is larger than either end. There is very little other seating at Drink, almost all the action is at the bar. This place is entirely about the mixology. There are no menus here. You ask your bartender for what you want, and they deliver. It’s like a giant, full-time game of Stump the Bartender. Amazingly, even if you are a serious cocktail geek, you are going to lose.

The obsession here is with classic mixology, and the bartenders are part and parcel of their obsession. An icon of said obsession is the daily special board (The black felt board with white plastic letters type) that hasn’t apparently been changed since “May 13, 1806″ when some drink consisting of “Spirit, water, sugar, and bitters” was first offered….

If you don’t get the joke of that message board, you’ll still enjoy Drink, but you won’t be able to really appreciate it. If you do get the joke, you have to go here.

We were fortunate enough to be able to share our Drink experience with Fred and Andrea of Cocktail Virgin Slut. We met outside and made our way downstairs. Pay attention to the address (348 Congress St.), as there is no exterior signage to direct you. We went on a Friday night, which was a bit problematic as Drink is very popular on weekends. As I said, there is no real seating other than what is at the bar, and the place was packed.
But as was demonstrated numerous times on this trip, it is good to have old friends whom you have never previously met. Fred knew the hostess Rebekah Powers pretty well. (Apparently they kick box together or something. My advice is: don’t act up at Drink) Despite the crowd, she found us four seats around the corner of one of the smaller end bars before we had much of a wait. I think we were lucky with this. There was a hockey game of some importance to Bostonians going on and the crowd was “thin”. (June is of course the only logical month for championship ice hockey.)

Drink was awesome, but I really want to get back there on a night early in the week when the crowd is much less intense. The biggest problem I had was with the noise level, which was more in line with a dance club than what I’d expect from a craft bar of this magnificence. Fred assured me that it is much quieter during the week. At least I think that’s what he said….

But enough bitching about the din of all those people having fun, let’s get back to the awesome. Our bartender was Brynn Tattan, an elfin yet very intense young woman who may have paused a moment to catch her breath about twice all night. Between the noise and the pace of orders, we didn’t get much of a chance to talk, but she was a ball to watch. In the course of our visit I saw several fascinating new techniques and presentations. She also shook cocktails so long and intently, I occasionally worried about her health.

Drink is dedicated to the whole ouvre of craft bartending. As such, they posses a bewildering assortment of ingredients, spirits, tools, and barware. Brynn was particularly skilled with manipulating the block ice they employed for a variety of uses. I love cutting chunks of clear ice in my own home bar for Old Fashioneds, but they use that same block of ice for shaved ice in juleps, Tiki drinks, and other concoctions. I’d never before seen the Mexican Ice Shaver Brynn used, but I want one now so much it hurts.

The ice manipulation was not the only spectacular technique I saw that night. Most bartenders have no idea what a Blue Blazer is. Most of those that do, won’t make one. Most of those that will, will only do it for special events. Brynn made one for some random dude who came up to the bar after us, in the middle of a crowded Friday night. Fortunately, I sussed out what she was up to before she lit it up, so I was able yo get my iPhone camera set to video. The clip below is worth a watch. I know it is dark, but I didn’t punch it up for a reason. It gets really spectacular starting about a third of the way in….

I often say (especially when I want to piss off a craft bartender) that full-on craft bartending is another form of “flair“. While most of the drinks I saw being dispensed were fairly straight-forward, there was a steady stream of occasional crazy stuff to prove that point. Of course, the construction of most craft cocktails is a subtle skill, a tiny performance. But a serious skill nonetheless. It’s clear that there is a pretty rare collection of such skills staffing the bar at Drink.

I wouldn’t be much of a critic if I couldn’t find at least one quibble with how Drink works. No one should expect a craft bar to serve drinks quickly. The care and deliberation with which craft cocktails are made makes a reasonable wait for a drink expected. Throw in the occasional Blue Blazer, and no one should complain about the pace of service at Drink. (I’ll bet there still are guys who don’t recognize what they are seeing who do complain though. Screw them.) That said, I could not understand how inefficiently laid out the tools and ingredient storage behind the bar seemed to be. I think each bartender at Drink must walk a half-marathon over the course of a shift, in search of this or that.
Admittedly, a bar that seems to have the knowledge and, more to the point, the inventory to produce whatever drink you ask for can’t have all that inventory within arm’s reach. Brynn seemed to flit around from this cooler to that, and between a cabinet here and a rack there for just about every order. It made me a little tired just watching her.

I also am a bit mystified about how they maintain profitability. Drinks aren’t cheap here, but not terribly out of line either. With no cocktail menu to direct customers toward certain fresh ingredients (or even liquors for that matter), I wonder how the management controls inventory in a cost-effective manner. So far, they seem to be managing it, so Bravo say I.

Beyond the business implications, I’m of two minds about the lack of a menu. For a geek like me, it’s no limitation, and is kind of liberating in fact. Whatever I wanted, I could indulge in and not worry overmuch about whether I could get it, or seeming a jerk for asking for it. But for someone with less accumulated knowledge of such otherwise dubious utility than I have, they might actually feel a bit limited. And a customer who knows nothing of classic drinks might find themselves simply drinking G&Ts without realizing the delights available to them here. On a less crowded night, I’m sure the bartenders can more than compensate for the lack of a menu, if you ask.

Drink is a bar I can recommend to both the jaded coaktailian and the relative newbie. Don’t go on a crowded weekend if you are an old fart like me whose tolerance for shouting over music you didn’t choose has long ago run out. Similarly, if your aim is to try new cocktails, go during the week when you will have the time (and hearing) to discuss where you’d like to go. But whatever you do, if in Boston, you need to go.

This review is part of my larger Great Cross-Country Bar Crawl series. Here is the main post for our Boston stop, with links to all reviews for the city.

To kick off our second night of the Great Cross-Country Barcrawl (still in Washington, DC) Maggi and I met up with SeanMike Whipkey for dinner and drinks at what might be my favorite of all the places we visited in our nation’s capitol, PS7. It’s just a couple of blocks north of Pennsylvania Avenue, between Capitol Hill and the White House. The neighborhood practically throbs with the dark majesty of the Federal Government. With the Convention Center to the North, this is a heavy-hitter business, government, and tourist area.

Source: StarChefs

The Head Bartender at PS7 is Gina Chersevani. SeanMike, who apparently knows every bartender who works near the Potomac River, told me she is the best “original modern drink” mixologist in town. Who am I to argue? The drinks were very good, though we didn’t have that many rounds, for two reasons. One was that we had a long night ahead of us. In addition to being skilled, Gina is also immensely charming… an attribute that I’m led to believe doesn’t hurt in the bar game. We sat at a table, so I didn’t get to see her work, but the sunlight was still flowing into the beautiful modern lounge and I could see all her products being delivered to tables around us. The drinks were gorgeous and the faces of the customers appreciative.

SeanMike had apparently told her in advance of our coming. When he introduced us, she told me she had something in mind for me. A few minutes after we sat down, she came over to our table with that monster you see below. (The drink, not SeanMike!) If you had told me that I was going to really enjoy a Strawberry Sage Frozen Pegu, in a snifter the size of a basketball, I might have scoffed…. But nay, nay! That was delicious. It wasn’t terribly Pegu-like, but it was good. The other reason we each only had one other round was the size of this thing!

PS7 is a fine dining restaurant first, with a fine drinking lounge attached. But that lounge is not what you’d expect from a restaurant bar. The prices are not inflated over bar prices as is the inexcusable case with most fine dining restaurant bars. The cocktails on the menu are all originals, but aren’t the typical homogenous group of offerings that limit so many such menus. A few are riffs on classics, updated with a new or oddball ingredient. Others are completely novel creations. Gina employs some combination of fresh fruits, herbs, spices and/or peppers in most drinks. She even uses beets in two on the current menu. I have a policy against beets, but that’s just me. The names are also clever, which I really appreciate. Some are evocative of classic cocktail predecessors, while others are meant to appeal to the clientele of Washington, DC, like the press and military.

I’d like to eat in the main dining room at PS7 next time we visit DC. The food in the lounge, where the offerings are mainly small plates, was simply delicious. Again, the offerings start as bar food, with burgers, sandwiches and flatbread pizzas. And like lots of great places, they tweak it for more modern tastes. But Chef Peter Smith takes that transformation further than most, with great results. The most outstanding and unique dish we had was a plate of thick slices of pork belly, rolled up in small hot dog buns and covered in a gently spicy relish. I think they are called Banh Mini, and I could eat them about every day. The rest of the world needs pork belly hot dogs, stat.

As I noted before, the decor in the PS7 lounge is very modern and airy. It isn’t much like what you see in most “craft” cocktail bars, with their dark woods and cozy environs. There is nothing of the speakeasy here. The walls are white, the windows, huge, and the light, bright. The bar itself is smaller than in most watering holes of this quality, but there is a plethora of low, plush seating spread throughout the rest of the large room. The music was there, but ambient. This is a bar for conversation, where they assume you are interesting enough to hold the attention of your fellows when you can actually hear each other….

The reason I said that PS7 may well be my favorite from our Washington stop is that it does so many things well. The service and hospitality are wonderful. The food is top notch, especially those pork belly things. The location is convenient and safe-feeling. And the drinks are top-notch and not over-priced. As an overall package, the lounge at PS7 would be great for a lot more occasions than just a night of cocktailan adventure. It wold be a great pre-show stop, happy hour haunt, or business entertainment venue as well. Here’s hoping I can get back and review the restaurant itself soon.

This review is part of my larger Great Cross-Country Bar Crawl series. Here is the main post for our Washington stop, with links to all reviews for DC.

Bartenders, for the love of all that is holy, please listen to what I have to say:
Quit shaking your goddamn Manhattans!
The Gospel of Whiskey is a simple drink, guys. Really, it is. It has only three ingredients. You can even speed-pour and get the ratios right. The garnish is cheap, easy, and beautiful. All you have to do is chill and dilute these ingredients, and put them in whatever glass your establishment has for cocktails. Voila! When you are done, you have created a monster classic cocktail which will have likely been requested by the more discerning and sophisticated of your customers….

…

So quit f*cking them up by shaking the damn things until they are a frothy goddamn mess!

I am sick and goddamn tired of having to spend more time describing to you how I want my Manhattan made than it then takes for you to assemble said drink, if I want it to look right in the glass and feel right in my mouth.
You. Stir. A. Manhattan.
It’s a clear drink. It should look like a glass of liquid topaz with a ruby nestled in the bottom when you hand it to me. It should not look like stupid, polluted beach water with a brown, foamy crust.
I have asked you for a cocktail that takes very little time to assemble. I think I’m f*cking entitled to you spending an extra few seconds with a spoon in your hand to ensure it is sufficiently and properly chilled. Yes, it takes longer to stir a drink into the twenties than it does to shake it that cold. But I’ve done the damn experiments, electronic thermometers and all, and it really is just a few extra seconds. 10-15 at the absolute outside, depending on the quality and type of your ice.

Stir. The. Drink.

See this guy?

He’s pissing me off. I want to jump over the bar and beat him down with the spoon he’s supposed to be using here. (Actually the bartender here is shaking a Grey Goose “Martini”, which is fine. But admitting this is mellowing my rant, so forget I mentioned it.)

My wife is always after me to make up cards with recipes she likes so she can give them to bartenders when I’m not around and she can get the drink she wants, made the way she wants it. Well, I’ve also decided to make up my own damn card to give to bartenders when I’m in the mood for a Manahattan. Here it is:

Actually, I haven’t made these physically because I am lazy, and because I have no room in my wallet. My wallet has no room because it is full of money for tips. Tips I give generously of when my Manhattan is not f*cking ruined by being shaken. The money stays in my wallet, leaving no room for said cards, because I keep getting shaken Manhattans.

So I wrote this post instead, so it will be read by all the world’s bartenders.
All bartenders read this blog, right? No? Well, if you know of such a non-Pegu Blog-reading bartender, give him this link at the very least.
Your next Manhattan will thank you.

Whew! That feels better. That’s really all it takes, guys and gals.

Stir. The. Drink.

Thanks.

…

…

Oh, and don’t forget the goddamn bitters either!

…

And enough vermouth, too!

…

And another thing….

The magic here isn’t the result of distilling grain or grape, but of distilling the last three years or so of cocktail trends. This little video, produced using Xtranormal, was written by Phillip Duff for a seminar at the Manhattan Cocktail Classic, featuring himself and Angus Winchester.
Oh, in this particular distilling method, all they kept was the most heinous of the heads and tails of the run….

This video is really a piece of genius. Most readers of the Cocktailosphere will need no annotation, but I can’t resist a little highlighting. (You probably ought to watch the vid first, as I try not to give away the jokes with my comments.)

• While in the video the customer is an off-duty bartender, not a blogger, I blush to admit I see a good bit of my own behavior in him. At least in the whole sitting at the end of the bar, watching the bartender work like I’m trying to break down the Zapruder film.
• I haven’t personally had any of the whiskey brand mentioned, you hear it specified all the time during Thursday Drink Night….
• I officially offer a prize to the cocktail historian blogger who unearths the recipe for the Gloogelflocken Swizzle. Offer void if I post it here first….
• I suspect the technique for drink making that they discuss may be the Hard Shake. If it isn’t… it should be.
• The customer is obviously not Rick Stutz, as he doesn’t want enough bitters.
• Love the name checks of Baker and Embury. Oh, and I am utterly guilty as charged.
• Two phrases: “A Kardashian” and “black hole”. The they aren’t connected but appear in the same riff. It’s epic.
• I don’t know how Duff or Winchester make their Old Fashioneds, but mine take less time to make than my Cosmopolitan, so it’s the only punchline to fail, at least for me.
• Since I have studiously avoided any mention of the barrel-aging frenzy gripping Cocktailia, I will simply sit back and feel superior to those who have succumbed and are summarily thrashed herein.

Thanks to That’s the Spirit! for the head’s up on the video.

As Spring takes hold, things outside start to grow. When it rains every. damn. day. like it has here recently, things outside grow more than is convenient. This means that from now until October, I’ll be spending a lot of time outside working. When doing so, I like to fire up the iPhone and listen to podcasts. I recently found a new one worth listening to that also happens to throw in some cocktail-related Things To Do, so I thought I’d share it here.

How To Do Everything is an NPR production starring Mike Danforth and Ian Chillag. They ponder cool things that people do, and seek out an expert to tell them How To Do It. It’s light, funny entertainment, and well worth a few MBs on your iPod/iPhone digital media device. (Happy Android weenies?)
Some of it is unlikely to be useful for most of us, such as How To Tail Someone. (Answer: Learn the phrase, “Follow that cab!”)
Some of it is very useful for everyone. Two such, which are pretty germane to readers here are How To Tip in any situation and How To Get a Job as a Bartender with no experience. Both are full of entertaining and informative stuff. For instance, your barber should get an extra tip equal to the price of a cut at your last visit before Christmas. Also, don’t ask for an application after the third round of drinks.
Some of it is of no use to you, like How to Plan and Pull Off a Navy SEAL Takedown of Osama Bin Laden.

1. If you take nothing else from this post, listen to that podcast. It is fascinating.
2. If you are in fact a U.S. Navy SEAL and are reading this, don’t hurt Doug, he didn’t know… Sir.

This latest podcast also has interesting information about when even straight liquors start to go bad. I’ll criticize that last segment, because it doesn’t point out that this is a much bigger problem with liqueurs and fortified wines like vermouth, than with straight booze. Also, I don’t understand this concept of liquor being around after opening for very long….

Finally, the latest episode ends with a request for what is the “worst booze made—anywhere”. Listen to the podcast, I’m sure my readers have some awesome ideas to give them.

Me, I’m sending them this as my entry, so no poaching!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Art of Drink’s Darcy O’Neil has seemed to me to be a bit grumpy lately. The best evidence of this is his latest post, Jumping the Shark, in which he drags “Flavor Guru” Alex Ott out behind the Rule 4 woodshed and gives him a good hiding with a switch Alex cut himself. The occasion for this lecture is a profile of Mr. Ott in the pages of the New York Times entitled The Sorcerer of Shaken and Stirred.

I do not understand what is going on with the Gray Lady, but every single article written in its Style section seems to be secretly intended to make out those interviewed as pretentious jackanapes. (Full disclosure: I was interviewed by a New York Times reporter myself a year or so ago about my decision to hoard incandescent light bulbs in response to the fascistic, job-killing, federal ban on same. The deathless wisdom of my words never appeared in the Times, so I am bitter.)
Of course, I see the appeal of a profile in the Times. The paper’s circulation, though dwindling daily, is still mighty. It reaches all the “right” people. And the writing and especially photography is just freaking fabulous if you have something beautiful to photograph. Check out this picture of one of the drinks Ott offers as exemplars of his work, the Little Death:

Picture by Michael Falco for The New York Times

Alas for Mr. Ott, half of the magnificence of his life’s oeuvre just pisses Darcy off. Well, that and this quote Darcy pulls that apparently also failed to sit well a number of Ott’s and Darcy’s peers and customers:

Bartenders should never be people who come up with cocktails, because they have no education.
Alex Ott

I wonder if you can figure out what they found objectionable about that… And the pros can be bent by that all they want, but we amateurs have two words a bit more damning: David Embury.

Darcy has a number of other problems, small and large, with what Ott says and does in the piece. I’ll suggest you go read his post yourself and steal only one more sentence from it as a jumping off point for my own piling on. “There is also a video embedded in the article if you really want to experience the Ott.”

I can’t embed the Times video here, so consider this additional incentive to visit their site and watch it there. By the way, the production values in the video are better than those you find on the average FoodNetwork show. All the better to see Ott make a bit of an ass of himself. Let us fisk this little show, shall we?

Ott introduces himself:

This is MASTER Mixologist, Alex Ott. I’ll be here today….

Really?
Did I miss the academic accreditation process somewhere for this title? Or perhaps the formation of a generally accepted professional guild to bestow it? If someone else, anyone else, wants to call you a “Master Mixologist” that’s fine. Great even. A compliment from anyone, and high praise depending on who so calls you. But when you grant yourself a grand, meaningless title the effect is similar to the stockbroker in a pick-up bar telling every lady he meets about how much he loves his new Porsche.

As he starts mixing the drinks, he makes certain claims as to their effect.

…if you want to stay awake, if you want to get hungry, I can make you a cocktail that makes you feel like your mommy just tucks you in and gave you a little tiny gift or a little bon bon.

Frankly, I got the impression that I was watching a weird mirror-universe version of Hogwart’s potions class where a cheery Snape was from Hufflepuff instead of Slytherin.

He has a beautifully laid out mis en place of his ingredients to make each drink, then goes and eyeballs the amount of each ingredient. Nothing is exacting. And he even describes the amounts in the recipes in terms like, “an ounce and a half to two ounces of the gin”. He uses the exact same phrase, “just a squeeze”, for lime juice in his first drink as for lemon juice in his second. But in the first, he squeezes in barely a quarter teaspoon at most, while he drains half a lemon in.
I admit that with some drinks you can go overboard with the exact measuring routine, but when you are going on about your amazing qualifications as a flavor scientist….

This is a great gin called New Amsterdam.

The Liquor Fairy is unhappy with you, Alex. When you pimp a product you work for, complete with loving bottle shot for the camera, you might want to throw in some kind of disclaimer….

It’s an aphrodesiac. And uh, how do I know it’s an aphrodesiac? Well, not only have I tried it out (pause) on everyone I know….

One look at the ill-concealed grin on his face during that momentary pause is enough to make me glad I don’t know Mr. Ott.

Finally, what’s with the NASA lapel pin? Really? We’re supposed to think you are a rocket scientist?

Now, Mr. Ott has apparently gotten quite a bit more blowback on all this than just Darcy’s objections. He put up a bit of a mea culpa on his FaceBook page headed To all my peers. It’s almost worth fisking itself, but I’ll only say it is the classic modern half-apology in which a figure who has been caught saying something revealing about themselves tries to tell the world simultaneously that he didn’t mean what he said, that his friends and employers (hopefully) don’t believe that he did, that he’d never say such a thing intentionally, and it’s all true by the way, and here’s why.
To be fair, my description is slightly more nasty than warranted. His apology seems sincere enough, I just hate it when people follow the lead of our dysfunctional political class and I’m taking it out on Ott.

And to further be fair, I repeat that this was in the New York Times’ Style section. I personally know at least three New Yorkers who aren’t pretentious egomaniacs, and I assume there may be more. But the Times makes everyone they interview seem that way, so I suspect this may be a stylistic thing.
And it probably applies to most major media. When I sucker punched Eben Freeman over his intellectual property thoughts as represented in The Atlantic, and he bravely and graciously responded in the comments of that post, it was a good learning experience. Reporters want big thoughts and grand pronouncements. They will pick up the strongest statements you make and distill them out. And any self-deprecation or alternative musings you may make had better be driven home or they won’t make it into the final cut.

I don’t know who Morgan Hendry is. But I do know that he,

1. Likes to serve drinks.
2. Is into Tiki.

So I like him right there.

3. He’s an engineering geek with some serious chops.
4. He’s dedicated.
5. He’s insanely creative.

Check out his Halloween costume from last year:

(Found via: Let’s Tiki)

I have been a bit hard on Eben Freeman in the past, and I just ran across a story on him, about which you’d pretty much expect me to tee up and take a rip at.
See, the reason I’ve taken shots at Eben in the past isn’t that he so richly deserves it. He doesn’t. He’s one of the Boss mixologists out there, with great feel for ingredients, a wealth of knowledge of food, cocktails, and chemistry, and an adventurous, avante garde mind. And a bit of ego. Combine all that in one man, and from time to time he’s going to take an idea, puff it up and stretch it from intelligent to ridiculous. Get ridiculous, and snarky critics like me will be there to ridicule you.

But not this time.

See, this time, Eben’s got a idea that’s both ridiculous on its face, and guaranteed to piss off a bunch of purists I could link. But I’m here to praise, not bury, because the drink sounds cool, Eben’s not puffing it or himself up, and the method is both ingenious and appropriate.

[Source]

He’s shooting a finished cocktail out of a soda gun. It’s called the Waylon, and while I’ve never heard of it, he’s been making it for a while.
The Waylon is a highball, with Buffalo Trace bourbon and smoke infused Coca Cola. To produce it, Eben smoke-infuses the pure Coke syrup, then mixes in the whiskey. Add the right amount of water, and you have a mix that will likely last months. Or hours, if it’s a busy night and the drinks geeks know it’s there to be tried.
Plug in the CO2 tank and hook up the gun. Eben runs the output tube through a chilled aluminum block to produce a cocktail that is already drinking temp. I have no idea if this is something that most soda fountains do, but I doubt it. I can see the value, even though this is a rocks drink, of the chilling. There will be less, and more reliable melting, leaving a drink that is reliably strong, no matter what ice you end up using.

Yes, it uses a soda gun, but the blasted mechanism is put to good use here. The drink’s also fun, different, and not at all pretentious. OK, it’s a little pretentious, but with a wink. And if you’re on a mission to shut down all winking pretension, you’re going to have to shut down the whole craft bar industry. So piss off.

[Source]

I imagine that this is a method most anyone could use themselves at home for all sorts of jiggery pokery. I’m thinking it’ll be fun with Cuba Libré variants. All you’d need is a soda siphon, which you hopefully have, and if not, shame on you. The drink won’t be pre-chilled, but some things just can’t be helped. And depending on what ingredients you play with in your own efforts, the batch should last quite a while.

The serious ingredient you’ll need is the Coke syrup itself. You could go all Darcy and make it yourself. Or you could pick up any of the scores of knockoff syrups out there for use in home soda machines, like the bottle that came with my SodaStream.
But back in the day, you could just go to your pharmacy’s antacid aisle and buy a bottle of pure, genuine Coca Cola syrup. It’s a lot harder to find today, which is a shame since it does the job on nausea. Still, here’s at least one source where you can buy small bottles of the stuff. And you can even buy five gallon bags of Essence of the Real Thing™ right from Amazon. That’s a bit much for the home mixer, I suppose.

Regardless, Eben is serving up his Waylons tonight (I believe) at a bar called Fatty Johnson’s in New York. I’ll miss out because I am here, but if you can chip your way through the ice encasing your door in New York, tell Eben I said hello, and come back and tell me how the Waylon tastes. (Via The Feast, H/T: Gizmodo)