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.
This subject has been covered many timesbefore, but after numerous requests and some positive encouragement from a good friend this weekend I have decided to post my version of homemade tonic water.
The base for this recipe came from my friend Kevin Ludwig, who pioneered craft tonic water in Portland. His recipe can be found on page 76 of the March/April 2007 issue of Imbibe Magazine. This version is all mine.
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.
4 cups water
1 cup chopped lemongrass (roughly one large stalk)
¼ cup powdered cinchona bark
zest and juice of 1 orange
zest and juice of 1 lemon
zest and juice of 1 lime
1 tsp whole allspice berries
¼ cup citric acid
¼ tsp Kosher salt
Combine ingredients in a medium saucepan and bring to a boil over high heat. Once mixture starts to boil, reduce heat to low, cover and simmer for 20 minutes.
Cinchona Bark
Try a few different suppliers for powdered cinchona bark to see which you like best. Tenzing Momo has great products as a rule, but their cinchona can often be floral, which may or may not work for you. You can also find cinchona from bulk herbal medicine retailers and other specialty herb shops. I find the yellow variety to be milder than the red, so adding too many other flavors to the mix can overpower the quinine. Adjust your recipes accordingly.
Remove from heat and strain out solids using a strainer or chinois. You’ll need to fine-strain the mixture, as it still contains quite a bit of the cinchona bark. You can use a coffee filter and wait for an hour or more, or do as I do and run the whole mixture through a French coffee press.
Once you’re satisfied with the clarity of your mix, heat it back up on the stovetop or microwave, and then add ¾ cup of agave syrup to each cup of your hot mix. Stir until combined, and store in the attractive bottle of your choice.
You now have a syrup that you can carbonate with seltzer water; I use my iSi soda siphon for some nicely-textured bubbles. To assemble a gin and tonic, use ¾ ounce of syrup, 1½ ounces of gin and 2 ounces of soda water over ice.
Once you’ve mastered your own tonic recipe, you can begin to experiment with different spices and fruit flavors to pair with specific gins. For instance, I’ve found that beefing up the orange peel results in a tonic that pairs nicely with Hendrick’s, but try playing off the coriander or cardamom in other gins and see what happens.
The Kentucky Derby is this Saturday, and many of those watching this historic event will be doing so with mint juleps in hand. Sounds like the perfect time to jot down a couple of notes about this classic American cocktail.
The mint julep is another of those drinks shrouded in mystery, so in an effort to clear up some of the confusion (and possibly contribute to it) I’m going to offer up some of my ideas about what makes a spectacular drink, based on my knowledge and my palate. Feel free to take or leave the following advice as you will.
I’ve been stricken by writer’s block this summer. And who cares? People tune in to their TVs to watch a bunch of re-hashed crap every summer, right? If it’s good enough for major multi-million-dollar TV networks, it’s good enough for me. Here’s what you may have missed on the Jeffrey Morgenthaler Network last season:
From time to time, I’ll pop in to Paul Clarke’s liquor cabinet to see what I should have to drink. The only problem is, he lives several hundred miles away and I can’t actually have any of the goodies located therein. However, I can post a list of what’s in my liquor cabinet so that you, too, can peek into my inner sanctum. Unlike Paul’s esoteric list, this is pretty much straightforward, but there are a couple of winners to be discovered…
For the past few months, I had my heart set on attending Tales of the Cocktail in New Orleans. However, after weeks of painful deliberation, the Girl and I decided to stay home and focus on domestic matters. So I sent out my heartfelt regrets to all of my so-called friends and told them I would see them next year.
End of story, right? Wrong.
Okay, so do you remember that time you broke your ankle right before the big pool party in high school and you had to stay home, and the phone was ringing off the hook all night with people being all like, “Where are you, we’re having so much fun here drinking and partying without you!” and you were all, like, “Thanks for calling.” Well, it was like that.
Stephen Beaumont once referred to my “borderline obsessive list-making“, and although this post certainly won’t help my reputation in that area, I’ve wanted to do it for a while now, and I think it will be good times for all. Now, people ask me all the time what my favorite drink is, but it’s hard for me to commit settle on just one. So here are, in some sort of order, my ten favorite drinks of all time.
Quick! Can you name the five main whisk(e)y-producing countries in the world? Scotland? Check. Ireland? Mmm-hmm. Canada? Yep. United States? Definitely.
But then you’d go, “Five?”, and I’d be all, “Yeah, five!”
And then you’d be all, “Like, where else?”
And then I’d be all, “Japan, dude!”
And you’d be all, “No way!”
And I’d be all, “Fully!”
And then for proof I would show you Chris Bunting’s blog Nonjatta, which means “I drank it all”. Like, literally. Nonjatta is all about Japanese whiskey, which is really helpful when you live in BFE and can’t get any where you live, because then you can learn all about it and sound smart anyway.
Loathe as I am to suggest that you read anything other than the gospel that I hand down to you at three in the morning twice a week, I should admit that another one of my favorite blogs is Cocktails with Camper English. Here’s Camper in his own words:
Camper English is a cocktails and spirits writer for publications including the San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Magazine, Imbibe Magazine, Out Magazine, Wine & Spirits Magazine, and Stuff Magazine. This blog is a celebration of drinks, drinking venues, drink making, drinking, and drunks, including home bartending experiments, visiting venues in San Francisco, and sharing universal booze news.
The writing is as informed as it is hysterical. You can see his full website here, and be sure to check out the Hate Blog:
People who say, “I love your Hate Blog, Camper!” Get a life, InterNerd.
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 [...]
Try a few different suppliers for powdered cinchona bark to see which you like best. Tenzing Momo has great products as a rule, but their cinchona can often be floral, which may or may not work for you. You can also find cinchona from bulk herbal medicine retailers and other specialty herb shops. I find the yellow variety to be milder than the red, so adding too many other flavors to the mix can overpower the quinine. Adjust your recipes accordingly.
