Circles and straight lines
With any kind of creative endeavour, there’s always a temptation to say you’ve created something for the simple pleasure of having created it – art for art’s sake, if you will – but while that’s true to some extent, it would be ever so slightly misleading of me to suggest that all the drinks I [...]
Outbound: storm in a julep cup
How big of a deal is three percent? If you’re talking about whiskey, apparently a lot. Last weekend, the news that Maker’s Mark was to be bottled at 42% ABV instead of its current level of 45% ABV brought forth the full range of reaction from the Internet – y’know: disbelief, anger, torches and pitchforks. [...]
Outbound: Learning the world
I’ve spent the first few weeks of 2013 adjusting to life in Australia. On paper, you’d think moving to an Anglophone, Westernized country with a developed economy would be straightforward and, for the most part, it has been. The adjustment hasn’t been so much in the big things – bank accounts, property leases, tax codes [...]
A bartender in need
The history of mixed drinks is, in general, pretty murky. The creators of many drinks have seen their names drift away from the record while the credit often falls not to the first person who made a thing, but to the first person who wrote it down. The question of why some drinks make it [...]
Outbound: telling Tales
So, Tales of the Cocktail was a thing. It’s been nearly three weeks since I got back and I’m still not entirely sure how I feel about it. There were definitely enjoyable parts – putting faces to names was a particular pleasure (thanks to everyone I foisted a business card upon), as was catching up [...]
Outbound: tulips and headbutts
So I got to spend a couple of days in Amsterdam a couple of weeks ago thanks to the lovely people at Bols. We checked out the House of Bols Cocktail and Genever Experience, spent a good few hours tasting lots of Genever with the Bols Academy’s head bartender Rob Rademaker and sneakily checked out [...]
Outbound: “My library was dukedom large enough.”
Jerry Thomas Project: “Fifty shades of…” Adam Elmegirab (of bitters fame) asked fifty figures from the world of bartending and cocktails to suggest the one book they’d recommend to a bartender regardless of that person’s skillset. It’s a worthy exercise (full disclosure: I was asked for my choice) – maybe even enough to excuse an [...]
“When this baby hits 88 miles per hour…”
In honour of the forthcoming tenth edition of Tales of the Cocktail – which, coincidentally marks my first attendence – I’ve been spending a fair bit of time thinking about the Sazerac. It’s often cited as the world’s oldest cocktail (though the burden of proof suggests otherwise) but I think it represents something far more [...]
OT OTT
I never realised cocktail competitions could go to overtime. I’ve been involved with a couple of tiebreakers over the years but quadruple overtime was a new one. I was almost glad I wasn’t involved. Our host, 42 Below brand ambassador Metinee Kongsrivilai, had revealed that two out of three places on the team to represent [...]
One day in June
I’ve made this point before, but if January 25th can be designated No Name Calling Day and the last Wednesday in April marks Administrative Professionals’ Day, then it is only right and proper that the second Saturday of June be set aside for World Gin Day. Instituted by Neil Houston (a.k.a. @yetanothergin) in 2009, today [...]
Labwork 3: Fizzy
Once upon a time, I had a notion to write a semi-regular series of posts about exploring this idea of molecular mixology. It’s been a while since I did one. The gap isn’t because molecular techniques aren’t an interesting area of innovation. Way back, I split approaches to molecular mixology into two fairly broad categories [...]
As debuts go…
A lot of new products hit the market every year; a most recent online edition of CLASS contained 22 reviews of new products and sometimes it feels like you can’t turn around without encountering a new gin with some previously unused botanical, or a new single malt expression finished in a succession of different barrels. But [...]
Tiki month update
February is, of course, Tiki Month – seriously, who doesn’t know that? – and I’m going to attempt to make up for skipping chief kahuna Pegu Tiki Doug‘s MxMo by sharing this tale of the peculiar effects of one of Donn the Beachcomber’s signature creations.
Fare thee well, thou first and fairest
Every year, Scots throughout the world set aside January 25th for celebrating the life and work of our national poet, Robert Burns. The man’s influence extends far beyond the borders of this little corner of Northern Europe – where would the literary tradition be without “the best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men”, or indeed [...]
2011 in numbers
So it turns out that December happens to coincide with the time at which everyone starts putting together their year-in-review or best-of-the-year lists. For me, and for this little site here, 2011 has been a mixed year – there’s been some good (previously 1, 2, 3) and there’s been some bad - but rather than throwing up [...]
The Matinee
I’ve previously written about my participation in Bacardi’s annual Legacy Cocktail Competition; despite qualifying for the regional finals twice, I never really managed any great success in it. Luckily for anyone who’s interested in how things go beyond the initial stages, Metinee Kongsrivilai, head bartender at the Bon Vivant up here in Edinburgh, not only [...]
Starry Night
There are lot of cocktail competitions throughout the year and sometimes when you submit an entry, you don’t really think about it too much after you hit the “submit” button. For me, that was the case with the Bols Genever Classic Competition – I sent in a drink called the Stuyvesant and didn’t hear anything [...]
Road Trip: Sipsmith
Having lived in Scotland for pretty much all my life, I have a fairly well-developed idea of what a distillery looks like. It would be hidden away at the end of a glen somewhere remote where the taxation officers would be unlikely to stumble across it, with a cluster of copper pot stills in one [...]
Road Trip: London Cocktail Week
It’s been a while since I took some time off work, so being nominated for CLASS Magazine’s Bartender of the Year award seemed like the perfect opportunity to sack it off for a week and check out the bright lights of London town. Happily, the competition coincided with the second edition of London Cocktail Week, [...]
Road Trip: Balmenach Distillery and Caorunn
Scotland – and it’s likely that I’m not the first person to notice – has a long history of distilling. The obvious product of that history is whisky – single malt or blended – but like any country with that kind of tradition, it’s not uncommon for producers to branch out into other spirits. Up [...]
Leaving the Twentieth Century
I’ve been in the process of working up a small cocktail offering for a function we’re hosting at Sygn in a couple of months time. There are some obvious choices for it – the event isn’t industry-focused so I won’t be going too obscure or bleeding edge with anything – but flicking through various menus [...]
Saint-Antoine
So, I was chilling out at work, doing my thing when I got a phone call from Grant Cunningham at Blavod/Luscious Liquid who said there was someone he’d like me to meet. That person turned out to be Paul Bungener who is the UK brand ambassador for FAIR., the producers of the world’s first range [...]
Black Daisy
After an absence of a couple of years, cocktail competition leagues are back with a vengeance in Edinburgh. The newly minted Scottish Society for Professional Bartenders have a four-round league starting later this month, while Tonic‘s modestly named Champions League (in association with Bacardi Brown-Forman Brands) kicked off last month. So far, we’ve had two [...]