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 there’s one thing I hate about living in the Pacific Northwest, it’s the stretch of time from late October until late June, when the sun makes only the most occasional of appearances. I typically pack on an extra 10-15 pounds during those rainy months, party due to over-consumption of wintertime drinks like dark beer, egg nog, hot-buttered-anything and wassail. I wanted a drink for the winter that I could add to my cocktail menu that was more like the light, café-style cocktails I typically gravitate to during the summer.
Jerry Thomas prescribed a drink called “sangaree” that, to the best of our knowledge was a colonial adaptation of the Spanish “sangria”. The recipe, which calls for anywhere from 1½ to 4 ounces of port, Madeira, gin or brandy dolled up with sugar and dusted with nutmeg in a glass sounded less than exciting to me, but the challenge of updating this old chestnut sounded like a fun January task.
We began with ruby and tawny ports but found both way too sweet. White port got us much closer to our target, but it wasn’t until a healthy dose of dry vermouth was applied that we knew we were on to something. To provide additional depth and hint at the drink’s colonial origins we sweetened with a maple-nutmeg syrup and finished the whole thing off with a teaspoon of allspice liqueur and orange oil.
The Dry Vermouth Sangaree
3 oz dry vermouth
½ oz maple-nutmeg syrup*
1 tsp St. Elizabeth Allspice Dram
1 large strip orange peel
Shake everything – yes, even the orange peel – with ice until well-chilled and strain into a cold cocktail glass. Garnish with a fresh strip of orange peel.
*To make maple-nutmeg syrup, combine 8 ounces each of Grade B maple syrup and water, and 1 tbsp freshly-grated nutmeg. Simmer, covered, for 20 minutes. Let cool, strain out solids, bottle and chill.
Nathan – I didn’t personally find the sweetness of a quarter ounce of maple syrup and teaspoon of allspice dram to overpower three ounces of dry vermouth, but your mileage may vary. And I’m using Noilly-Prat dry vermouth in this one.
Nathan – Would you happen to be using the Dolin Blanc, or the Dolin Dry?
And Jesh, try a Chrysanthemum sometime. It’s two ounces of dry vermouth, one ounce of Benedictine and a teaspoon of absinthe, stirred and served up.
14 Jan 2010 at 1:01 PM 7. juliana
Jeff – this looks awesome. I’m trying to figure out how to adapt it for my bar, which is beer/wine/vermouth only. Any thoughts, or do you have any other recipes I might unleash on my unsuspecting staff?
I love this. Delicious.
The story leaves me salivating, as most article about booze do. With the homemade concord grape dry vermouth I make it’s awesome too.
23 Jan 2010 at 7:54 PM 12. Josh Lenz
Haven’t been able to find St. Elizabeth Allspice Dram in SW MO, What would you recommend to do instead?
26 Jan 2010 at 5:55 PM 13. Tokyo Tea
Was curious if there was a particular reason why you shook this cocktail rather than stirring it during preparation?
30 Mar 2010 at 11:24 PM 14. juliana
Okay, I think I’ve found the Starbelly Variation:
3 oz. Noilly Prat Dry
1 oz. maple-allspice-nutmeg syrup (since I can’t use the St. Elizabeth)
1 oz. lemon juice
orange peel
I’m still looking for something to give me the rum flavor without, you know, being rum, but it’s a start.
06 Apr 2010 at 10:41 AM 15. Doug
Jeff- For the Maple Nutmeg syrup, is it 8oz each of Syrup and water?
Thanks
23 Aug 2010 at 9:34 PM 16. Tom
Bringing it back to your old home town. Eugene is responding well to your advances! (as per usual)
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14 Jan 2010 at 9:58 AM 1. Nathan
I have to wonder about myself sometimes. “Well, J-Mo said to mix dry vermouth and maple syrup, I guess I’d better do it.”
It’s an intriguing drink, but very sweet. What dry vermouth did you use?
14 Jan 2010 at 10:45 AM 2. Nathan
Throwing in a whole egg tempers the sweetness and makes a delicious, delicious flip.
14 Jan 2010 at 12:10 PM 3. Jeffrey Morgenthaler
Nathan – I didn’t personally find the sweetness of a quarter ounce of maple syrup and teaspoon of allspice dram to overpower three ounces of dry vermouth, but your mileage may vary. And I’m using Noilly-Prat dry vermouth in this one.
14 Jan 2010 at 12:44 PM 4. Nathan
Okay, I’m trying this with Dolin, which I’m told is fairly sweet for a dry vermouth. I’ll try and find some Noilly Prat.
14 Jan 2010 at 12:48 PM 5. Jesh M
Frickin great!! I love it when people come up with vermouth based cocktails. Know where I can find anymore?
14 Jan 2010 at 12:57 PM 6. Jeffrey Morgenthaler
Nathan – Would you happen to be using the Dolin Blanc, or the Dolin Dry?
And Jesh, try a Chrysanthemum sometime. It’s two ounces of dry vermouth, one ounce of Benedictine and a teaspoon of absinthe, stirred and served up.
14 Jan 2010 at 1:01 PM 7. juliana
Jeff – this looks awesome. I’m trying to figure out how to adapt it for my bar, which is beer/wine/vermouth only. Any thoughts, or do you have any other recipes I might unleash on my unsuspecting staff?
14 Jan 2010 at 1:05 PM 8. Jeffrey Morgenthaler
Juliana – I would try making a non-alcoholic allspice syrup to substitute for the St. Elizabeth. Be sure to report back with your findings.
14 Jan 2010 at 1:53 PM 9. Rocky
I’m wondering how this would work with a dry sake.
14 Jan 2010 at 2:38 PM 10. Jeffrey Morgenthaler
Rocky – There’s only one way to find out. Get busy.
15 Jan 2010 at 12:22 AM 11. Lauren Mote
I love this. Delicious.
The story leaves me salivating, as most article about booze do. With the homemade concord grape dry vermouth I make it’s awesome too.
23 Jan 2010 at 7:54 PM 12. Josh Lenz
Haven’t been able to find St. Elizabeth Allspice Dram in SW MO, What would you recommend to do instead?
26 Jan 2010 at 5:55 PM 13. Tokyo Tea
Was curious if there was a particular reason why you shook this cocktail rather than stirring it during preparation?
30 Mar 2010 at 11:24 PM 14. juliana
Okay, I think I’ve found the Starbelly Variation:
3 oz. Noilly Prat Dry
1 oz. maple-allspice-nutmeg syrup (since I can’t use the St. Elizabeth)
1 oz. lemon juice
orange peel
I’m still looking for something to give me the rum flavor without, you know, being rum, but it’s a start.
06 Apr 2010 at 10:41 AM 15. Doug
Jeff- For the Maple Nutmeg syrup, is it 8oz each of Syrup and water?
Thanks
23 Aug 2010 at 9:34 PM 16. Tom
Bringing it back to your old home town. Eugene is responding well to your advances! (as per usual)
23 Sep 2010 at 2:34 AM 17. Jameson's
Sounds amazingly delicious. Maybe you should come down and make a batch for the next employee party.