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.
Sugar is a wonderful thing in the world of cocktails. Sugar and bitters are the barman’s equivalent of the chef’s salt and pepper. But just as novice chefs overuse these master spices, the novice bartender will manage to ruin a perfectly good cocktail.
Sugar can make a drink taste, well, more like itself. A mojito made without sugar will taste like a mess. Add a cube of sugar and suddenly the flavors show themselves, swirling about the different sections of the tongue like a symphony. Add too much sugar and the drink has become a syrupy-sweet Sno-Cone, where no flavors are discernible. At this point, the drink has been ruined and there’s nothing that can be done to revive it.
Sugar can be used in another way, and it’s here that you can really separate the amateurs from the professionals. It’s one thing that can make or break a bartender: the Sugared Rim.
Sugaring the rim of a glass is essentially a garnish. Just as a wedge of lime will be added to the rim of a glass for adjusting the tartness of the cocktail, the sugared rim is used as a way of adjusting the sweetness of the drink. In fact, a perfect rim is one that is only sugared halfway – it gives the imbiber an option.
This rule falls to shit when someone hands you a mixture of pineapple juice, vanilla schapps, raspberry vodka and cream – with a sugared rim.
B-52 with a sugared rim? Dumb.
Cadillac Margarita with a sugared rim? No way, José.
Half-and-half Rose’s lime gin gimlet with a vanilla-bean infused sugar rim? I’m getting diabetes just thinking about it.
Now think of the Sidecar: tart, bracing and strong, it’s possibly the world’s perfect cocktail. The balance of sweet and sour is nearly perfect, but a lemon wedge perfectly balanced on a neatly sugared rim makes for the perfect set of accoutrements.
So the next time you’re about to shell out perfectly good money for a dessert drink with a sugared rim, ask yourself the question your bartender most likely failed to ponder: why am I doing this?
Comments
2 Responses to “Sugar and the Novice Bartender”
29 Mar 2008 at 7:10 PM 1. scott in the LBC
Hey Jeff–I’m surprised this post is over a year old and has no comments. I’m sure it’s not because nobody out there has ever come across the problem you discussed. For a cocktail to be its best, all the little things (glass, ice, liquids, preparation, garnish) have to be done correctly. One could look to the proverbial ‘a chain is only as strong as its weakest link’. A few sugar-based questions:
1) What do you do to teach your novice bartenders the rules of garnish? 2) Do you care much about the type of sugar? That is, do you think there’s much difference between inexpensive processed sugar and more expensive organic sugar? 3) Have you ever used turbinado sugar for any particular drink; and if not, can you think of one it might be particularly suited for (either as part of a simple syrup or a garnish)? I hope so: I have a lot of leftover turbinado right now!
I have a few other questions, but this is plenty long already. I hope this finds you and you get a chance to reply.
17 Jun 2008 at 1:08 PM 2. jack
There’s a really small bar here in Chicago – Matchbox – the name gives you an idea of how small it is! They make a fantastic Vodka Gimlet with Powdered Sugar and fresh squeezeed Lime Juice. I was sceptical at first, being a huge fan of the VG, but it really is great. If you are happen to be in Chicago, check it out!
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29 Mar 2008 at 7:10 PM 1. scott in the LBC
Hey Jeff–I’m surprised this post is over a year old and has no comments. I’m sure it’s not because nobody out there has ever come across the problem you discussed. For a cocktail to be its best, all the little things (glass, ice, liquids, preparation, garnish) have to be done correctly. One could look to the proverbial ‘a chain is only as strong as its weakest link’. A few sugar-based questions:
1) What do you do to teach your novice bartenders the rules of garnish? 2) Do you care much about the type of sugar? That is, do you think there’s much difference between inexpensive processed sugar and more expensive organic sugar? 3) Have you ever used turbinado sugar for any particular drink; and if not, can you think of one it might be particularly suited for (either as part of a simple syrup or a garnish)? I hope so: I have a lot of leftover turbinado right now!
I have a few other questions, but this is plenty long already. I hope this finds you and you get a chance to reply.
17 Jun 2008 at 1:08 PM 2. jack
There’s a really small bar here in Chicago – Matchbox – the name gives you an idea of how small it is! They make a fantastic Vodka Gimlet with Powdered Sugar and fresh squeezeed Lime Juice. I was sceptical at first, being a huge fan of the VG, but it really is great. If you are happen to be in Chicago, check it out!
Cheers!