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.
Since I was deep in the thick of competition and couldn’t take notes, I enlisted the services of Portland, Oregon food writer Ms. Lizzy Caston. Following is her report.
What does a group of creative bartenders do with bags full of promotional alcohol samples, mixers and condiments? Hold a contest to determine who can make the best drink using nothing but the swag handed out at Tales of the Cocktail.
Welcome to Swag Off ’08.
In true rogue spirit, Jeffrey Morgenthaler, Daniel Shoemaker from the Teardrop Lounge in Portland, Oregon and Eric Adkins from the Slanted Door in San Francisco met Friday night on the roof the Monteleone Hotel by moonlight, in what is sure to become a legendary annual event.
The rules were simple. Gather together a group of three judges; in this case Keith Waldbauer, bartender at Union in Seattle and author of Moving at the Speed of Life, Lauren Clark from Drink Boston and Misty from LUPEC http://lupecboston.blogspot.com/. The lovely and vivacious Liquid Muse, Natalie Bovis-Nelson agreed to MC.
Ingredients included a hodge-podge of liquors not limited to airplane sized bottles of Bluecoat Dry Gin, G’Vine French Grape Gin, Pearl Vodka, St. Germain Elderflower liqueur, Veev Acai Spirit, Poli Grappa and the most prominent swag at Tales this year: Canton French Ginger Liquor.
Yikes.
In lesser hands these drinks could have been small disasters, yet each contestant showed skill, inventiveness and their own personal touches. Jeff’s strategy was to, “take one of everything on the table and mix it together” in a technique reminiscent of a savant teenage mixologist at a house party. Eric on the other hand, took the molecular cocktail approach by smoking an inverted drinking glass over a Navan liqueur vanilla-scented aromatherapy candle. Daniel simply grabbed a few different ingredients and like a mad scientist on speed mixed and tasted and mixed some more.
All drinks were served up, and Eric’s had a whopping 2 oz of gin, a full oz of Veev, an undisclosed amount of grappa and the above mentioned “smoke of the vanilla candle”. Daniel chose chili powder, 7 whole dashes of Angostura bitters, agave nectar, 1.5 oz gin, ¾ oz grappa and ½ oz of Campari for his “Seat of the Pants” cocktail. Jeff could not resist muddling the Sour Green Apple Cocktail Candy http://www.cocktailcandy.com/ccandy/ccandy.html for his “Green Mile”, adding it along with 4 dashes of Campari, dashes of Angostura, with some of the gin, St. Germaine, Bitter Lemon and a float of Lemoncello.
While the judges reactions were mixed, no one “spat” which is surely a good sign. Feedback was generally positive with all judges agreeing that each certainly had the Spirit of the Cocktail in them. Yet a clear winner did emerge; Daniel Shoemaker’s Seat of the Pants. Look for it at a Bennigan’s or TGIF Fridays soon.
So congratulations Daniel. And remember, we are all winners at Tales of the Cocktail.
I can’t believe you f@#kers didn’t let me in on this!!! That’s a competition I’d actually consider competing in.
Son of a BITCH!! It pisses me off that someone who lives in Washington’s “Mexico” and California’s “Canada” actually won this thing!
‘Til next year…
(I’ll be the guy making a cocktail from the four different airplane bottles of vodka–blending vodkas adds complexity, don’t you know)
21 Jul 2008 at 6:37 PM 2. laura tran
omg that was so funny i will have to buy the person a drink at the carousel bar next year who came up with the idea of swag off.
21 Jul 2008 at 8:23 PM 3. Jennifer Colliau
you guys are f’n rock stars! and it was a pleasure spending the week with all you.
Jamie, you’re very much invited to next year’s Swag Off. Although, there is some speculation that you’d have too tough of a time without your little collection of bitters, flamethrowers, powders etc., I think another year of not bartending will give you plenty of time to practice.
;)
And Jennifer, we had a great week with you as well.
I, like my fellow media whore Jamie, am disappointed to have missed out on this event. I feel like I could have offered something valuable to the proceedings, as I spent a great part of the week swagging off in my hotel room. There were some spectacular results, but no one to share them with.
Oh, sure, Kathy… the *one* post I don’t actually write myself…
I might have to change the site to LizzyCaston.com!
24 Jul 2008 at 5:12 PM 9. Lizzy Caston
Yes, it is true. As of NOW I am taking over Jeff’s site, although tell them the truth Jeff. I’ve been writing his damn blog for months now anyway, because Jeff is too busy being a superstar to write it himself. Kidding. Jeff, it was fun writing this. If you ever want another guest blog post, count me in! And Natalie, it was a pleasure meeting you. Stay in touch!
If you have, in fact, been writing this blog for several months now, then you’ve some serious explaining to do for both the quantity and the quality of posts in those months. I, for one, am offended by the work.
I absolutely hate it when someone sends me a box full of sex toys in the mail. Sure, it might sound like fun to some of you (you know who you are), but receiving a big box of free sex is much more trouble than it’s worth. Believe me. So I get a [...]
21 Jul 2008 at 2:13 PM 1. Jamie Boudreau
I can’t believe you f@#kers didn’t let me in on this!!! That’s a competition I’d actually consider competing in.
Son of a BITCH!! It pisses me off that someone who lives in Washington’s “Mexico” and California’s “Canada” actually won this thing!
‘Til next year…
(I’ll be the guy making a cocktail from the four different airplane bottles of vodka–blending vodkas adds complexity, don’t you know)
21 Jul 2008 at 6:37 PM 2. laura tran
omg that was so funny i will have to buy the person a drink at the carousel bar next year who came up with the idea of swag off.
21 Jul 2008 at 8:23 PM 3. Jennifer Colliau
you guys are f’n rock stars! and it was a pleasure spending the week with all you.
22 Jul 2008 at 9:26 AM 4. Jeffrey Morgenthaler
Jamie, you’re very much invited to next year’s Swag Off. Although, there is some speculation that you’d have too tough of a time without your little collection of bitters, flamethrowers, powders etc., I think another year of not bartending will give you plenty of time to practice.
;)
And Jennifer, we had a great week with you as well.
22 Jul 2008 at 10:36 AM 5. Natalie - The Liquid Muse
This was one of the highlight events of the 5 days. Hilariously fun (if not a bit sweaty on the rooftop pool bar)
Thanks to Lizzie for writing this great coverage. And, thanks to Jeffrey Morgenthaaaler for coming up with such a creative and fun idea.
All six “Daily Recap Webisodes” will be on my homepage (and SSNetwork,and Tales) by tonight. The Swag Off is featured in Episode 4!!!
xooxxoxoo The Liquid Muse
22 Jul 2008 at 11:34 PM 6. Ted Munat
I, like my fellow media whore Jamie, am disappointed to have missed out on this event. I feel like I could have offered something valuable to the proceedings, as I spent a great part of the week swagging off in my hotel room. There were some spectacular results, but no one to share them with.
(sigh)
24 Jul 2008 at 1:41 PM 7. Kathy Casey
Loved the story and pics – I felt like I was there! Thanks!
24 Jul 2008 at 2:47 PM 8. Jeffrey Morgenthaler
Oh, sure, Kathy… the *one* post I don’t actually write myself…
I might have to change the site to LizzyCaston.com!
24 Jul 2008 at 5:12 PM 9. Lizzy Caston
Yes, it is true. As of NOW I am taking over Jeff’s site, although tell them the truth Jeff. I’ve been writing his damn blog for months now anyway, because Jeff is too busy being a superstar to write it himself. Kidding. Jeff, it was fun writing this. If you ever want another guest blog post, count me in! And Natalie, it was a pleasure meeting you. Stay in touch!
24 Jul 2008 at 5:24 PM 10. Jeffrey Morgenthaler
Lizzy
If you have, in fact, been writing this blog for several months now, then you’ve some serious explaining to do for both the quantity and the quality of posts in those months. I, for one, am offended by the work.
Jeff