Open tryouts for the 2012 Columbus Iron Bartender. Dec. 13th, 2011 at Park Street Cantina.

To promote their new bottle design, Tuaca is offering a custom tattoo by Corey Miller as a sweepstakes grand prize. The Pegu Blog in no way recommends tattoos….
(Via @LiveTheLushLife)

Vote for Matt Robold (Rumdood) to be Tommy Bahama’s first Rumologist™. Once a day will make you feel great.
{Pictured above: NOT Matt Robold}

I recently got a tip from fellow cocktail blogger, Michael Dietsch, that several of our friends and fellows were nominated by Saveur magazine for their annual awards in the category of Best Cocktail Blog. You have to register to vote for your favorite, which is OK, but you also have to register just to see the list of nominees, which is kinda lame.
They also give no info on why they nominated each contestant, so I’ll do it for you.

Cask Strength is in what I call the Pro-Blogger Category. Andrew Bohrer is a Seattle-area bartender and very funny fellow. He blogs on a wide variety of subjects and drink styles. My favorite of his work is his current series 10 Rules of Drinking Like a Man (now up to number six).

Alcademics is the personal booze musings of professional writer Camper English. Camper gets to travel extensively around the country and world covering the liquor industry (this is why I hate him), and a lot of the peripheral stuff he’s not being paid to write about ends up on Alcademics. More importantly, he also is a an inveterate cocktail experimenter and the internet’s leading ice geek (and that is why I love him).

Cocktailians is the cocktailian project of Sam Meyer, a.k.a. Vidiot. It’s an entertaining collection of anecdotes, drink recipes, and an eternal source of Rule 2 linky goodness.

Another Pro-Blogger blog, Drink Dogma, is the project of Bobby Heugel. Bobby is one of my, and I suspect many cocktail bloggers’, personal heroes, in that he has gone from blogger to co-owner and creator of one of the country’s truly great craft cocktail bars, Anvil in Houston, Texas. During Anvil’s early stages of development, his blogging really fell off (I wonder why), but he has been writing much more lately, with great posts on the industry, drinks, and the bartending lifestyle.

Jeffrey Morganthaler’s eponymous blog is one of the granddaddys of the Cocktailosphere. One of Oregon’s leading bartenders, Jeffrey writes one of the more professionally utilitarian blogs out there. Many of his posts (though not all) are little reference resources that remain useful indefinitely. One such post is his Ginger Beer Brewing instruction that I once called The Greatest Cocktail Blog Post Ever.

Last (but only on the list) is the inimitable Kaiser Penguin. I’m tempted to call him the one and only “Garnishblogger“, but Rick does a lot more than that. He also is great with housemade ingredients, has an unhealthy obsession with Fernet Branca, and does some very fun thought pieces as well.

That is the six. Who am I voting for? Not telling, except to say that I am voting, and so should you!

From the Department of Self-Promotion Department: The finalists for AskMen’s Cocktail War competition, which I wrote about earlier have been announced. Contestant Number Nine is yours truly, having nominated the Greatest Drink Ever Mixed™.
Now, by all rights this thing wold be over by acclaimation, with the Pegu spilling all the other contestants and taking their lunch money, but that’s not how the competition works. You see, AskMen.com and Liquor.com want to drive traffic to themselves measure the buzz each drink can create. They will be measuring said buzz by two metrics: Twitter mentions and comments on the post.

Thus, I need the help of all my readers to make sure the Pegu gets over the finish line in the lead.

If you tweet, you need only post a tweet promoting drink number 9, and include @AskMen_com, @LiquorDotCom, and the hashtag #CocktailWar. Or you can just retweet my tweet (I hope).

Also, since you should actually read the article anyway, you can just go to AskMen’s post and leave a shoutout to number 9 in the comments.

Either way, I’d appreciate a little love for my readers!

Hey, don’t worry, Doug.
I’ll vote for you!

Sockpuppets not allowed to vote, dude. Which is a good thing, because otherwise you’d suddenly have a of of company….

Above the Post Update: I’m in the finals! You can vote for me here, or you can just Tweet the following: I want @dawinship’s #9 to win the @AskMen_com & @Liquordotcom #CocktailWar

AskMen, the “men’s lifestyle” portal, is running a contest right now, in conjunction with Liquor.com that’s worth a mention.

Hey, Doug!
What’s a “men’s lifestyle portal”?

It’s an online magazine where they have pictures of almost famous pretty women and talk about cars, pretty women, health issues, the health issues of meeting pretty women, clothes, clothes almost on pretty women, cocktails, and pretty women drinking cocktails. They also do lots of product reviews and promotions.

Oh, I see.
In other words, your dream job.

Exactly. And will you two butt out? This was supposed to to be a quick hit post… a glorified SideBlog.

Nothing is brief when we get involved, Doug!

Nothing is brief when YOU get involved, Doug!

Shut up.

Anyway, I find the contest interesting in that it is one of those hybrid contest/buzz creator thingies that use Twitter. The basic idea is for you to tweet your favorite cocktail recipe, and they will choose the top ten. (Here’s my tweet. Betcha can’t guess what drink I suggested!) Then the buzz thing goes on as they watch Twitter and the comments to see who gets the most buzz. The winner will receive the handsome $150 basket of mixological goodies you see above. The process is a bit more involved than that (of course) and you can read how to enter here.

I’ll conclude, with a nod to Rule 5, by noting a lovely convergence of the AskMen subject matter upon the Pegu world. I’m sure your eye will be drawn, as is mine, to the lovely bottles of Cointreau, that essential ingredient in the world’s best cocktail. While the cocktail Miss Dita Von Teese is holding seems a bit red for a Pegu, I’m sure that’s just a color-balance issue….

Bulgarian Ivan Ivanov wins Can You Make It at Bushmills? apprenticeship. I wrote on this contest here.

Monday was the finals of B² Productions’ Chopped Mixology Columbus. It was a crowded, raucous house at Mozaik that got its money’s worth out of the competition.
The finalists were, in order of selection, Cris Dehlavi, Zak Renzetti-Voit, Jordan Conkey, and Joseph Gardina. You can read about each and their roads to the finals at the links.
The format of this bartending competition is different from most, as are the skills it tests. Before the finals, Zak told me that, Of all the competitions I’ve done, this is my favorite. I asked him why and his response was that the compressed time and the mystery ingredients made it more of a test and less of a show. Twenty minutes is not a lot of time to make up a new drink and produce four good looking specimens thereof, especially with ingredients you at least aren’t expecting and may not have ever tried before.
And while creativity and taste instincts are the primary skills being tested in this format, I can tell you as a judge that fancy knife skills, witty words, and general professionalism prolonged the stays of several of the 16 competitors during the last month.

The competitors this week all had experience with the format, and each seemed both more focused and more nervous than they had before the preliminaries. Some of this was knowing what they were in for, and some was the fact that the prize for the first four weeks was more work, whereas the prize for this week was a trip for two to Las Vegas….
Each contestant had brought a large crowd to support them in their efforts. This is great for the contestants, but a bit less so for the judges, since they could tell before the competition that they were gonna get booed every time they gave someone the chop!

The first round featured a mystery basket containing Ketel One, Tanqueray 10, Ruby Red grapefruit, and a jar of Penzey’s Chinese Five Spice Blend. Apparently the baskets for this round were packed by Pandora, because they also contained the most drama of any round in the competition.
Joseph elected to concoct a pair of drinks, each of which was to be topped with champagne. A staff member was tidying up around the periphery as time was running out, and when Joseph went to pour his champagne floats, the bubbly he had set up was nowhere to be found! Panicked seconds flew by, and he did not get all his drinks finished, leaving a ragged line of eight different looking flutes at his station—right in front of the judges!
As the other contestants approached with their drinks, Brandon offered to poll the others about whether Joseph should be allowed to finish prepping the rest of his drinks. Zak was asked first, and since he had seen this unfolding, he said OK. Cris, who did not understand what was happening heard only that Joseph wanted more time, and hard-nosed competitor that she is, said no. This made for a testy round of drink presentations….
It turned out not to matter, as Zak ended up getting the chop. He had the most trouble with the spice, and he neglected to tell the judges that they were supposed to use the sugared grapefruit garnish to counteract the bitterness in the pure drink.
Now, if this had been a TV reality show like Survivor or Next Food Network Star (or something more mature like seventh grade), the producers would have gotten Cris and Joseph separated and fanned the situation into an eight episode feud. Instead, Cris and Joseph talked among themselves and demonstrated that they were grownups. Take that, Hollywood!

The second round basket contained Parrot Bay 90, some berry applesauce, apple green tea, and a bottle of pomegranate soda. Cris and Joseph put together tasty concoctions that did a great job of marrying the pretty wild collection of flavors, while Jordan chose to make a coffee cocktail, the Blackheart Martini. If you liked coffee drinks, this one had potential. But it fell afoul of the dreaded question, Where the heck are the required ingredients? There was just too much bitter blackness (NotThatThere’sAnythingWrongWithThat) to pick out the original fruitiness. But the Parrot Bay 90 went surprisingly well, so keep that in mind.

And with that, we were down to two contestants. My impression was that Cris and Joseph were essentially tied going into the last round, the judges also seemed to think that way. It was interesting to note that Columbus has only two AAA Four Diamond rated restaurants, and their representatives were the finalists in this competition.

The final basket contained Ciroc Red Berry Vodka, a tub of pistachio ice cream, toasted almonds, and the oh, so esoteric Pimm’s #1.
Joseph did what he had for every drink in he competition: he started with his garnish. His skills with a knife are really impressive. I almost stopped worrying he was going to add blood as an extra ingredient by the time the finals were over. He does a lot of the elaborate tableside preparation that the Refectory offers, so he works fast and sure while creating food sculpture. In this case, he made little shot glasses out of the strawberries, covered them in chocolate and set them in the fridge to set up. His drink, Strawberries and Cream, was a well-made blender concoction that took every minute he had left to balance and prepare.
Cris also used every moment of allotted time. Her Berries and Meringue was a beautiful cocktail. The really interesting element was a quick toasted almond meringue she made on the spot. Having just made a batch of mayonnaise the day before myself, I was amazed that she could get such a nice foam going with a hand-whisk in the little time she had after re-balancing her drink more than once. The dollop of the stuff that she added to the drinks was both a cool garnish, and a delicious flavoring.

Joseph’s strawberry shot glasses of Gran Marnier did not quite come off as intended, with the chocolate failing to fully set and most of the liqueur absorbing into the berry. They still looked good, and the drink itself was delicious and had a great texture. The flavors were all there and all happy together.
Cris’s was also fabulous, and while I’d have dinged her on the scorecard for the less than lyrical name, the meringue worked perfectly and the drink was one of those rare dessert cocktails that would appeal to snooty cocktailian (with it’s delicate and exotic flavors) and country club party-goer (with its creamy sweetness) alike.

For the record, I agreed with the judges who narrowly awarded the win to Cris.

Cris deserves this win because she had to work so hard for it. The competition she faced was very, very good as well. No one advanced from round to round, much less night to night, without being both talented and at least a little lucky. Brandon Bowsher produced a really excellent event that truly tested the contestants’ instincts and abilities. The crowds had fun too, which is not an unimportant detail.
I’ll try to do one more post about the whole thing, with some general comments on the process, in a little while, but this post is already a week late and over long. Congratulations to every contestant and to Cris Dehlavi for the win. I’ll leave you with her recipe for her final cocktail.

The final preliminary Round of Chopped Mixology Columbus is in the books, next week will see the champion crowned. (Here are the Week One, Week Two and Week Three roundups)
This week’s contestants struck me as each possessing a personality and style that perfectly suits the establishment they were representing to a T. The crowd was a little smaller this week, due to extreme patriotic shenanigans hangover among the general Columbus populace, but each contestant had a retinue of their faithful to keep enthusiasm high. A note to the contestants in the finals on next Monday: Get your fans to Mozaik. A cheering mob does not affect the judges (at least it didn’t affect me), but I have noticed an increased energy and focus on the part of the bartenders as they craft their entries.
The first round this week featured a mystery basket containing one of the sponsors, Finlandia Tangerine Vodka, whole lychee fruits, and some strawberry soda. Each contestant presented a drink that looked good and tasted nice. This left the judges resorting to the secondary areas of the scoring system to make our decision. Brian ‘Whitey’ White, of The Pub at Polaris Center got the chop for his Strawberry Red Wagon due to its being pretty significantly different in strength from one judge’s drink to the next. All the contestants had this issue in the first round, actually, as they worked their way into the competition, but Whitey just suffered the worst. Frankly, we were all cranky to have to chop Whitey, as he was very charismatic and any dude with the balls to wear a kilt to work every day is OK in my book.

One element of the competition I had not noticed before is that Brandon Bowsher, the organizer, only gives the contestants a few minutes behind the bar before the contest. Brandon says it adds another element to evaluate in how well the contestants work under pressure, but I suspect it is just because he is evil.

The second round saw a basket that included Herradura Anejo Tequila, coconut water, roasted yellow peppers, and Fee’s Mint Bitters. The second round is the savory round, and the same thing happens each week. A contestant makes a drink that tastes good, sometimes better than the others, by covering up the powerful ingredients instead of balancing them, and gets chopped for his trouble. If your drink would taste just the same without one of the secret ingredients, then you have a problem. If your drink would taste better without an ingredient or two, well that’s a problem too. Balancing the two is how you win.
This week’s guy to fall afoul of this issue was Chris Yoha of Elevator on High Street. He was my initial favorite, based on our interview before the event started. Any bartender who will wax eloquent about Negronis, Sazeracs, and Pimm’s Cup (coming soon to the Elevator cocktail menu), is my kinda mixologist. Chris’s Mint Jubilee was frothy and tasty, but we had a dickens of a time picking up the peppers or even the tequila. The Herradura was pretty smooth stuff and just got lost.

The dessert round came down to Joseph Gardina of the Refectory and Benjamin Handley of Vonn Jazz. The Refectory is a Columbus institution that has never let slip the quality that got it that status. The food, the drinks, and the clientele for that matter, are all classic, elegant, and expensive. Joseph’s style matched that. All three drinks were subtle, meticulous, and classically attractive. Vonn Jazz is a new, very cool club that is seeing a lot of success. Benjamin mixes with a very jazz style himself, with lots of improvisation, flash, and panache. If he hits an off note or gets a bit messy, who cares, the whole groove is just so cool. I should clarify that Benjamin was, for all the improvisation, an incredibly detail-oriented, meticulous worker.
The final basket contained sponsor Jack Daniels, Chambord, and Old Engine Oil Scottish Black Ale. (I told you Brandon was evil!) Both contestants immediately called for vanilla ice cream, and I was afraid we’d have similar drinks again, which would suck since they were essentially tied going into the last round. I could not have been more wrong.

Benjamin presented us his Holy Brown Cow first. It was a big, fun, delicious rootbeer float-type drink, served with chocolate covered strawberries and a big honking spoon to help eat, er, drink it. It was a crazy mess, and we all loved it.
Joseph then presented us with a perfect little creation, the Black Beer Berry Kiss. It was much smaller than any other drink I’ve seen throughout the competition, but also one of the most meticulously constructed. It was a frothy, particularly balanced mix of the ingredients and vanilla ice cream that held together very well. the surface was lightly drizzled with a bit more Chambord and garnished with a single blackberry. The colors were great, the taste was great, the whole package was very cool, very elegant. It looked as if it was ready for a magazine photo shoot.

After much deliberation among the judges, we made our decision. And with sadness, we gave the chop to Benjamin.
Monday, July 12th 2010, will be the finals of the contest! If you are one of my Columbus readers, I hope you’ll come down and support this very cool event. Doors open at eight, and the contest begins right at nine. The final four contestants hoping to survive the final chop are:
Cris Dehlavi of M at Miranova
Zak Renzetti-Voit of Black Olive
Jordan Conkey of Smith & Wollensky
Joseph Gardina of the Refectory

June 28th was the third round of Columbus Chopped Mixology, hosted by Mozaik. (Here are the Week One and Week Two roundups) I was once again a judge, and had a great time. If you don’t think that judging a contest like this is hard, however, you are wrong.

Oh, sure.
It’s a hard knock life, sitting there at a table while bartenders bring you cocktail after cocktail to try….

No seriously, it’s hard work!

I can tell.
Clearly, your fellow judge here is weary from all the drudgery….

She was going that extra mile in getting a clarification on his technique!
And shut up.
The first round secret ingredients this week were Espolon Tequila Blanco, seedless watermelons, World Market Blood Orange Soda, and Tropical Punch Kool-Aid! That last ingredient confirmed to me that the organizer, Brandon Bowsher, has an evil streak.
For Michael Valentino, of Hyde Park’s Eleven, the pink powder was the source of both a great idea, and his downfall. His drink, Sunset at Eleven was a tequila punch. His cool idea was to rim half the cocktail glass with salt, and the other half in a sugar/Kool-Aid mixture. It was an innovative idea, and it looked great when he first did it. But he finished too soon, and the rimming dissolved before he could present it to us. Also, he just used too much of the Kool-Aid in the drink itself to let much of the tequila flavor come through. When you have never competed under clock pressure before, knowing how much time you have is hard. I think if Michael had realized how for ahead of things he was, he’d have realized he had more time to get the balance right. Regardless, I’m shamelessly stealing the yin-yang rimming idea.

Michael, representing Eleven, prepares his custom cocktail shaker.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention one of the most innovative and successful presentations of the entire contest so far. Adam Winham, of Brewsky’s Sports Bar, presented us with a flight of shots, instead of a single cocktail. Not only was it a ballsy, out of the box move, but he nailed it. Each of the three shots was good, and one was really good.

Round two featured a secret ingredient basket that contained the sponsor’s SKYY Vodka, Campari, fresh ginger root, and a bottle of mango pureé. With Campari and ginger, that’s two ingredients that have great character, but can go from awesome to too much in a very narrow range. For me, that’s what got Mozaik’s own Eric Barhorst in trouble. His Ginger, Spice, ‘n Everything Nice had the most complex flavors of the bunch, but the pungency was just a little too in your face. In talking to Eric before the contest, he told me that he has a weakness for hot or spicy cocktails, so I can see where he was going.

Mozaik’s Eric Barhorst has a knack for never appearing rushed, while getting things done in plenty of time.

The final round pitted the aforementioned Adam against Jordan Conkey of Smith and Wollensky. Based on thumbnail resumés, these are not the two a cocktail snob would have expected to be in the finals. Adam works at a popular beer and shot sports bar, while Jordon has been bartending for barely a year. Neither had ever been in anything like this competition.
Resumés mean nothing!
As the last round progressed, the judges discussed what it was about both these guys that makes them good. Both have a great skill set. Their drinks were both very consistent in appearance and amount from glass to glass, which is harder in these circumstances than you think. Also, both are very good with their knives. There were a few garnishes by Adam and Jordan last night that Rick Stutz would’ve been proud of. Both also have great flavor instincts. All three drinks by each (well, five for Adam) were balanced and pleasant. Finally, both guys used those skills in a creative fashion throughout the contest.

Adam is the first Chopped Mixology contestant to have actual stadium-style signs wielded by his fans….

The final mystery basket contained Wild Turkey Rare Breed, rhubarb raspberry jam, and Trader Tiki’s Cinnamon Syrup (from some damn crazed blogger in Portland). One of the best things about this week is that we got two utterly different drinks to judge.
Adam offered us his Just Desserts, which was a chocolate, whipped cream confection. It was sweet, and pretty, and the stuffed strawberry garnish rocked. (Is it fair to have a garnish, a plate of which might have won all on its own?) We all liked it, but it wobbled a bit in the way a lot of the sweet round drinks have throughout the contest: You lost track of the featured spirit.

Jordan Conkey, of Smith & Wollensky Easton, is absurdly talented for someone who has been legally drinking less than two years.

Jordan served us his Redneck Holiday, an Old-Fashioned/Mint Julep hybrid. It was gorgeous to look at, meticulously constructed, and tasted wonderful. Lots of sweet drinks taste good, but it’s damn hard to make them also feel “clean” on the palate. The Redneck Holiday managed that difficult feat. It was refreshing as well as tasty, and they took mine away before I was finished!

And so we conversed. The challenge in judging the last round is that we are to judge the entire, three-drink “cocktail menu” the contestants have created. We took longer than we should have, but in the end we had to lift away a bucket and declare Adam to be chopped.
Jordan moves on to the finals on July 12th.