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.
I’m leaving in about an hour to head to the airport and ship off to Europe, so if you have any interest in learning more about what a small-town bartender does from hour to hour as he stumbles across a continent in search of the perfect cocktail, then please by all means follow along with my Twitter feed.
I’ll be trying to make it to London in time to meet up with legendary bloggers Chuck Taggart of The Gumbo Pages and Jay Hepburn of Oh Gosh! for cocktails, and then mixing up tasty drinks with Boca Loca cachaça at RumFest UK all weekend.
From there I’ll head to Finland to talk about Boca Loca and demonstrate its tasty versatility in Helsinki for two days, and hopefully search out legendary Finnish bartender Timo Siitonen for a cocktail or two.
And finally, we’ll wrap things up in Paris by visiting even more bars, haggling for Tintin memorabilia, and sobering up before the long flight home.
Now, all of this is predicated on my finding a reasonable deal on a European SIM card for my phone, but assuming all goes well I will be posting regular updates to the account.
Oh, and if you’re in Portland this weekend, be sure to check out the Great American Distillers Festival, featuring a mixology competition sponsored in part by the Oregon Bartenders Guild. I’ll be missing my chance to cast judgement on the entries alongside Robert Hess, but I’ll be there in spirit as I sip cane spirits with some of the finest bartenders in Europe. See you all when I get back!
Anyway – it’s July, which means that it’s that time of year, to take a week-long reprieve from the steamy swelter of Oregon and head once again to the cool lazy breezes of New Orleans. Tales of the Cocktail is a week of cocktail seminars, workshops, classes, competitions, food, fun, friends, and – for some – nearly lethal amounts of alcohol that flows freely through the streets like so much urine in the morning sun.
Ah, Tales of The Cocktail. The greatest yearly gathering on earth for cocktail enthusiasts, bartenders, students of mixology and aficionados of fine liquors. Also, a logistical nightmare for those who have to plan the hundreds of events spread over those five days in New Orleans.
So I called Paul, and after his initial swearing and foot-stomping he agreed to let me off the hook – and instead found a much more suitable replacement: Bobby Heugel of the brilliant blog Drink Dogma and co-owner of Houston’s newest and greatest cocktail bar Anvil.
Bobby’s years of writing and bartending make him the perfect fit for the panel, which includes the effervescent, salty Paul Clarke and marketing guru Steve Raye of Brand Action Team.
My sincere apologies to the one person who foolishly booked a ticket expecting to hear my drivel, and I assure you (whoever in the heck you are) that Paul Clarke has done his duty by filling my head with disgusting imagery and lewd commends. That man is an animal.
Hey folks, if you’re reading this post, then you’re officially a reader of this website. And that means that I could really use your help. In order to lure potential advertisers over to the dark side that is my, uh, sidebar, I need to prove to them that my website is mainly frequented by consenting adults.
So, whether or not you’re of legal drinking age, would you mind doing me a favor and filling out this quick survey? I’m not going to even ask for your name or email address, so rest assured that it’s completely confidential. Because more advertising means more money, more money means more liquor, and more liquor means more late-night booze-fueled ramblings both here and on my regularly-updated Twitter feed.
Thanks, folks. Stay tuned for more drinks and stories.
Just when I think I’ve run out of things to say, my friends over at Imbibe Magazine drop me a note telling me that there’s a new video up, and it’s almost like the content writes itself.
It’s been busy times here in Portland, but I thought I’d take a break from all the hot bar-managin’ action to post a aggregated update of what’s been happening in my world lately – loose ends, mostly:
Last week I attended the Grand Marnier/Navan Mixology Summit in Vail Colorado. One hundred bartenders from around the country were chosen from over 800 applicants to prepare original cocktails, attend seminars, and to learn from each other and the AKA Wine Geek team. I was there with my good friends from around the country, enjoying lavish meals, incredible Grand Marnier, Cuvées du Centenaire and Cent Cinquantenaire and Navan cocktails, and – of course – skiing and enjoying gorgeous Vail.
If you happen to be a Twitter user, please feel free to follow along with me for a more detailed account of what’s happening day to day. I always try to provide a running commentary when I’m on these booze excursions and Twitter can be a great way to peek in on the action.
I’ve got another video up at Imbibe Magazine’s website, which is also viewable on YouTube and subscribeable as a podcast via the iTunes Store. In this second video, I show you how to make an Old Fashioned the way I like to drink them – as a simple drink with a surprising amount of flavor, considering the very limited ingredient list.
My last video for Imbibe turned out to be much less of a disaster than everyone anticipated, so with any luck Episode Two will be remembered as my Attack of the Clones.
I believe that is all. Please go back to what you were doing and stay tuned for another drink recipe sometime this week.
Hey, here’s a fun way to illustrate karma. If you’ve, say, built a large web presence upon a not-so-generous string of public criticisms of bar-related web videos [1, 2, 3, 4], then one day somebody will ask you to appear in a series of videos yourself.
That’s what happened last month when Imbibe Magazine called me up and stuck it to me by asking that I appear in some instructional videos for their new website. And like a rabbit to a carrot I leapt at the big, bright, orange opportunity called fame.
So grab yourself a scorecard and sit back, relax, and count the screw-ups as I try to demonstrate the difference between shaking and stirring a cocktail:
I’m a big fan of my friend Eric Tecosky and his company, Dirty Sue. So when he asked me to judge the upcoming Dirty Sue Cocktail Competition, I accepted without hesitation. Also, he’d just said some nice things about me on the internet, so I felt obliged.
Anyway, here’s the deal. Grab yourself a bottle of Eric’s Dirty Sue Olive Juice and whip up an original creation that uses at least ¼ ounce of the stuff. Then send your creation to info at dirtysue.com
Then Eric’s going to strip all your names off of the submissions, send them to me, and I’m going to make each one in my kitchen and pass them around my apartment to my friends. We’ll critique and belittle your creations, all the while trying to stay coherent enough to grade them and select the best drink recipes.
The first place winner will win $250, a year’s supply of Dirty Sue, and some Dirty Sue merchandise, which I can personally attest is pretty sweet – seriously. Second place gets a hundred bucks and some merch. Third place? I’ll publish your recipe here on my website. Sweet deal, see more info below.
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 [...]
