In late July, when a mysterious, creeping sugar pumpkin vine emerged from my compost pile, I started thinking about the strange fruit and how to get it from gourd to glass. The answer? Pumpkin butter. Pumpkin butter 8 sugar pumpkins; 1 1/2 cups Dr. Pepper (or something cola-esque); 1 1/2 cups brown sugar; 2 cups […]
I’ve been asked by bar customers to make some pretty ridiculous drinks in my day—Sex with Alligators, a Duck Fart, a Sloe Comfortable Screw Up Against the Wall, a Cement Mixer, a Brain Hemorrhage, a Greene County Man Hammer. Most of them are not very good, and the people who order them are not shooting […]
A “global whiskey renaissance”—that’s what the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States is calling the trend in spirits over the last five years. Domestic and international demand for whiskey—bourbon in particular—has forced some of the largest producers to warn consumers of impending shortages, as demand is significantly outpacing supply. U.S. Whiskey exports topped 1 […]
“Yeah, that’s a Special Order Item. You need to submit a Special Order form.” “I know, I submitted a Special Order form eight months ago.” “You’ll have to submit a Special Order form for any Special Order Items.” “I did—eight months ago—and I’ve been requesting the item every week since. Any progress on that request? […]
A wise man once wrote: “What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun.” And that’s not a bad thing, especially when it comes to drinks. The classic mixed drinks, concocted in the American Golden Age of Cocktails (roughly […]
I’ve done this several times, all with the same result. I hand a patron a translucent, orange-tinged beverage. They look at it curiously and shrug, and I wait for them to take their first sip. First their face wrinkles in confusion. Then there is cautious enjoyment. Then, even more intense confusion. What follows for some […]
Those of you who know me know that I’m a champion of the little guy. I root the for the apron-clad shop owner, the starving artist who waits tables, and the homebrewer who dreams of running an eight-barrel system. With so many of our world’s products mass-produced out of sight, I find it refreshing to […]
I distinctly remember the aromas of Tanqueray gin and Myers’s rum from my days as a country club bartender in Lynchburg. Despite their potency, I knew how to make the spirits taste as good as they smelled. Then there was the vermouth—cheap stuff, likely sitting open for years, as dry martini-drinking members from the ’80s had […]
I spent all of January getting everything in order to open a serious cocktail bar Downtown. Several weeks went into researching what the business’s official and exact position on ice, shaking, dilution, stirring, double straining, etc. should be. I spent another several days discussing this with our staff and figuring out specifically how to implement those […]
When it comes to the human palate, the perception of the flavor “bitter” is bitterly controversial. As far back as 60,000 years ago, our simian ancestors found that many of the plants that were lethal had a bitter flavor. If they could perceive this bitter flavor, they could avoid eating a toxic plant, survive, and […]