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.
If you’re going to be taken halfway across the world to learn about the clarity of Icelandic water, you’re probably going to be shown some of the stuff in its natural state. So at 8 this morning, after a night of dinner and a few Brennevins at one of the many bars near the hotel, Superjeeps picked up this slow-moving pack of fools and whisked us off to the Icelandic wilderness.
Our first stop was Thingvellir, a massive rift in the land where the North American and Euroasian plates are slowly tearing Iceland in half.
They somehow convinced this wise-assed crowd to sit down in the visitor’s center and watch an instructional video about the area, but sarcasm seemed to be everyone’s specialty at the moment, so we were taken out of the building and loaded back into the jeeps. Next stop, Langjökull, the second largest glacier in Iceland for some snowmobiling.
Our driver explained to me that we were going to get very cold out on the ice, but being cocky and from the Pacific Northwest, I didn’t really understand what that meant until I was standing on a glacier in the freezing rain, contemplating what we were about to actually do.
Let me just say that there’s nothing quite like that moment when the waterproofing on a ski jumper finally gives under the pressure of pure, icy, Icelandic water that’s been accumulating in one’s lap and every inch of one’s body from the waist down is bathed in pure, icy, Icelandic water. It’s a really incredible sensation that I hope to never experience again soon.
But then we poured ourselves into the warm jeeps and were taken back to a more temperate climate for lunch and a peek at Gullfoss, a breathtaking waterfall.
So what does all this mean for gin? I’ll talk about that in my next post, but I think the whole point of showing us around the island was to demonstrate that Iceland is very natural, very pure, and very cold. And the water that comes from here is of an incredible quality – this is the water that cuts the distillate in Martin Miller’s gin, and it’s an important part of the reason that the gin tastes so damned good.
Comments
6 Responses to “Iceland, Day Two: You’re Going to Get Very, Very Cold…”
Yikes! I’m glad to take your word on the quality of the water…no icy showers for me, thanks! More lovely images — I’m so glad you’re blogging all this.
16 Sep 2008 at 8:21 AM 2. Donny
Looks like a whole lot of fun. No wonder MM tastes so good. Icelandic water…I never knew.
16 Sep 2008 at 10:33 AM 3. joey medrington
hi Jeffery,
I work for Martin Miller’s up in Edinburgh, really enjoying your blog – great to get people familiar with the brand. I’m actually learning quite a bit too so please keep it up!
cheers, and enjoy the rest of your trip!
Oh my god … so cold cold cold. I can assure all of you – there is no way to exaggerate the cold of glacier ’skidoo’ ing in icey-land.
I mean, I think there is an icelandic word for it – probably something like “coldensmolden blargarkkaraken van freezerfraken” – but nothing in america can describe it.
Had fun jeffery – let’s do it again next week! :)
16 Sep 2008 at 8:34 PM 6. sheila
Iceland is very natural, very pure, and very cold.
Damn, you are one insightful guy. Hard to believe someone who is the master of angostura bitters also has the ability to describe nature so pithily, poetically and accurately. You are DA MAN, Mr. M.!!!!!
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15 Sep 2008 at 5:48 PM 1. Eugenia
Yikes! I’m glad to take your word on the quality of the water…no icy showers for me, thanks! More lovely images — I’m so glad you’re blogging all this.
16 Sep 2008 at 8:21 AM 2. Donny
Looks like a whole lot of fun. No wonder MM tastes so good. Icelandic water…I never knew.
16 Sep 2008 at 10:33 AM 3. joey medrington
hi Jeffery,
I work for Martin Miller’s up in Edinburgh, really enjoying your blog – great to get people familiar with the brand. I’m actually learning quite a bit too so please keep it up!
cheers, and enjoy the rest of your trip!
16 Sep 2008 at 11:02 AM 4. Kevin Erskine
Brennevin is some fantastically foul stuff.
16 Sep 2008 at 1:54 PM 5. Jenny Adams
Oh my god … so cold cold cold. I can assure all of you – there is no way to exaggerate the cold of glacier ’skidoo’ ing in icey-land.
I mean, I think there is an icelandic word for it – probably something like “coldensmolden blargarkkaraken van freezerfraken” – but nothing in america can describe it.
Had fun jeffery – let’s do it again next week! :)
16 Sep 2008 at 8:34 PM 6. sheila
Iceland is very natural, very pure, and very cold.
Damn, you are one insightful guy. Hard to believe someone who is the master of angostura bitters also has the ability to describe nature so pithily, poetically and accurately. You are DA MAN, Mr. M.!!!!!