One advantage I have in my career – and believe me, I thank my lucky stars every day for my good fortune in this regard – is that I travel a lot. And when I do travel, I get to visit the greatest bars in the world and spend time picking the brains of the world’s greatest bartenders.
The most recent drink to grace our cocktail list is the result of my travels.
Taking inspiration from many sources, my initial interest in bitter, sour and sweet with a distinctly tropical bent was taken directly from the ever-brilliant Giuseppe Gonzalez and his now-famous Trinidad Sour.
While I, and the rest of the world, was taken by the combination of bitter, herbal, sweet flavors, it never really struck me as a an extensible sort of drink style until I came across Andrew Bohrer’s amaro-based Mai Tai variation called the “Elena’s Virtue”. Now here was a drink with legs, and a hint of what was to come in the world of cocktails, in my humble opinion.
But what New York and Seattle do well, San Francisco often does better, and usually with a lot more Fernet Branca, and that’s the conversation I had with Josh Harris while competing in the Domaine de Canton finals in St. Maarten this spring. And after tasting his simple concoction of ginger liqueur, pineapple and Fernet Branca I knew it was time for me to get my feet wet and try my hand at the herbal tropical sour.
The result has been a smash hit at the bar, as it very much follows in the style of our restaurant bar, a reflection of the crafted European style of cooking that emerges from the kitchen on a nightly basis. In other words, earthy, sour, herbal flavors do very, very well where we work.
Put all of this together, throw in a desire to explore the dusty, neglected bottle of Drambuie, and an early morning racking one’s brain to come up with a drink name (the original intent was Brixton Club) and a star was born:
Kingston Club
1½ oz Drambuie
1½ oz pineapple juice
¾ oz lime juice
1 tsp Fernet Branca
3 dashes Angostura bitters
Shake ingredients with ice and finish with 1 oz soda water. Strain mix over fresh ice into a chilled collins glass and garnish with an orange twist.
A side project, an experiment or just a simple curiosity that turned into a delicious phenomenon that we're still serving to much delight at our bar, barrel aged cocktails explore the gentle manipulation of a drink's flavors over time. This post details the inspiration, the history and the methods behind my barrel aged cocktails.
My problem with homemade tonic water has always been a flavor profile that was too esoteric for the general audience. This recipe takes some of the positive qualities people have come to understand from commercial tonic water and updated them with fresh ingredients.
Turned off by the glop you find in the grocery store, and unable to endure another long egg and cream whipping session, I set out to build an egg nog recipe from the ground up that retained the character of the orginal formula, was easy to make in a few minutes at home or at the bar, and tasted absolutely delicious. See if you agree with the result.
One question I'm often asked is "Do you have any drink-related book recommendations?" Well, funny you should ask, I've compiled a list of the ten books every professional bartender or home mixologist should own. I keep every one of these close at hand and have read most of them several times. I suggest you do the same.
The problem with living in Oregon is the absence of little wooden shacks by the sea that sell cases of fresh ginger beer stacked on back porches. But with some readily-available ingredients, a recipe I've been revising for several years - and a few free minutes - I can easily transport myself to a little fishing boat on the ocean as I sip a Dark and Stormy made with fresh, house-made ginger beer.
It's always mojito season somewhere, so this advice is timely in your area about half the year. Wether you're making them or simply enjoying them, this advice will help you look like a pro in no time at all.
The flavors of the Richmond Gimlet are imbued with sunshine. Fresh mint mingling with the herbaceousness of gin and the tartness of lime have made this drink a Eugene classic for many years now.
You'll get a lot of snarky advice on this site about how to make a proper drink, but if you ever need to know what not to do, this is the video for you.
Not to be confused with the Spanish wine-and-fruit-based alcoholic beverage sangria, sangrita (meaning "little blood") is a traditional accompaniment to a tequila served completo; a non-alcoholic sipper that cleanses the palate between fiery doses of agave.
The world of booze can be mystifying to people that don't work in bars or around alcohol all the time. I hear a lot of assumptions about the industry I'm in that are - much like 90% of what you hear in bars - completely false. Here are a few you've probably heard yourself.
The traditional garnish for a Pisco Sour is a couple of drops of bitters in the foam, but I've never been particularly impressed with the way these few paltry drops of bitters sat in their little egg-white mattress and didn't play along with the rest of the drink. I envisioned a Pisco Sour with a uniformly-distributed bitters-scorched foam: slightly crisp as the fire burnt the sugars, and slightly warm as the foam insulated the rest of the frosty cocktail from the heat. A pisco creme brulée in a glass!
I get so many visitors looking for tips on how to write a bartending resume that I thought I should finally post a tutorial on how to write your own. Click the headline to read more.
I always love showing up to a party with a gallon jug of pre-mixed margaritas, so I've decided to share my recipe. This margarita recipe is the perfect blend of strong, sweet, and sour. But be warned: this recipe packs a serious punch.
There isn't much I can say about this video that hasn't been said already. If you've read anything I've written about cocktails, you'll understand why this video symbolizes everything wrong with the state of bartending in America today. Watch and learn, but be warned: this one isn't for the feint of heart.
About Me
My name is Jeff Morgenthaler and I'm the head bartender at Clyde Common in Portland, Oregon.
I've been tending bar since 1996 and writing about it since 2004. Mixing drinks has become something of a passion for me in recent years, and I strive to elevate the experience of having a drink from something mundane to something more culinary.
The writing I do here is intended as a work in progress. My recipes are like my opinions: they are constantly being revised and refined as I work them through my mind and my fingers. Comments and participation are encouraged, so please don't feel the need to tread lightly here.
It’s Friday night. I’m closing the bar tonight, so I’m not required to be there until 6. Lately, on Fridays, it’s been kind of slow, so I saunter in around 6:15.
Of course, it’s slammed.
The printer is chattering off drink orders for the restaurant, the bar is full of customers, and my bartender is running around like a crazy man.
There’s a group of regulars at the end of the bar, and they’re celebrating. The ringleader, a slow redneck-type that comes in occasionally, is buying drinks for the whole group, and for everyone he knows that walks by.
Now, this group’s tab is starting to skyrocket, and we’re starting to get a little nervous. We’ve gotten shafted by this guy on numerous occasions, and it seems that the higher his tab is, the less of a tip we get.
But we don’t have time to worry about that, because they’re making us work. Hard. Mojitos for all his friends, margaritas all around, beers, shots, wine, you name it. And Redneck’s putting everyone’s drink on his tab, like the King of Siam. Everyone loves a big spender.
Eventually they start to wind down, and Redneck asks for his tab. The other bartender presents it to him and he freaks out.
“There’s no way we had all of these drinks”, he says.
“I’m sorry, but we ring in every round into the computer when you order them, so the tab should be accurate”, my bartender tells him.
“Well there’s no possible way we had all of this.” He starts to try to tally how many drinks everyone had, while drunk, of course. “You had, like, four or five beers, right? And how many mojitos did you drink between the three of you? Four? Five?”
This guy is getting to be a problem, and we’re still really busy. So he informs my bartender that he refuses to pay for about 30 bucks worth of drinks. Fine, whatever, says the bartender, and comps them off of his tab. The guy’s a friend of the owners’, we’ll just call the bosses and tell them what happened later.
But here’s the clincher: after running us ragged for three hours on a busy Friday night, after whittling down his tab by refusing to pay, after cleaning up his friends’ spilled beers and putting up with their drunken antics all night, he left us (drumroll, please) ..
Four dollars.
Karma works in strange ways, pal.
Comments
3 Responses to “Dissed”
27 Jul 2006 at 2:32 AM 1. Jolene Linsangan
Stumbled across your page. Very well done. I’m a bartender as well here in San Francisco, Ca. Great entries. I can relate! I could only imagine how that guy will be treated on his next visit!
28 Jul 2006 at 10:08 PM 2. Jessica Dorff
He needed the money to buy a birthday lay.
19 Oct 2006 at 9:55 PM 3. Mark
next time tell him,”sorry, cash only, no tabs!” that will slow him down abit.
Dont forget to hold your hand out everytime you give him his change! I may seem rude, but not as rude as he is for not tipping appropriatly.
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27 Jul 2006 at 2:32 AM 1. Jolene Linsangan
Stumbled across your page. Very well done. I’m a bartender as well here in San Francisco, Ca. Great entries. I can relate! I could only imagine how that guy will be treated on his next visit!
28 Jul 2006 at 10:08 PM 2. Jessica Dorff
He needed the money to buy a birthday lay.
19 Oct 2006 at 9:55 PM 3. Mark
next time tell him,”sorry, cash only, no tabs!” that will slow him down abit.
Dont forget to hold your hand out everytime you give him his change! I may seem rude, but not as rude as he is for not tipping appropriatly.