how to throw a cocktail bash in four easy steps

[by john]

this past weekend, i threw a two night cocktail fête. it was perhaps the closest i will come to opening a bar, with different guests every night, waves of drink orders, and gourmet bar food. (mad props to mike and andy for the crispy shredded pork awesomeness, gravlax, and bone marrow.) i had tremendous amounts of fun without drinking anything, save for a few dozen milliliters from test-straws. homing in on each guest's taste proved to be a delightful challenge. i will certainly do this again.

now, easily:

create a menu

i put up my menu last time, but gave no indication of how hard it was to make. i tested tens of drinks over the course of a week to see which would appeal to a wide sample of palates. and, in addition to the pet pet, i created two originals - a st. germain/applejack marriage (la pomme rouge), and a constantly varying - popular, too, it turned out - tequila cocktail (the ho[a]rfrost).

everything on the menu got great attention and compliments, except for the poor martinez. being the oldest drink on there, maybe it couldn't hang with this hip crowd. noted. but otherwise, i am elated for converting many guests to the wonders of sloe gin, regular gin, spicy finishes, and flamed chartreuse.

go into debt

having settled on a menu, i then biked around boston/cambridge for another week trying to gather the necessary ingredients. the word is out on rittenhouse, quality bourbon, and old monk rum, apparently, because i had to discover several new liquor stores to hunt them all down.

after all my shopping, i went (a predicted) $200 over my normal budget for the month. i calculated the cost of each drink: usually around $3, and $4 for the tipperary. i figured each guest would go through ~3 rounds, so asked for $10 donations. in the end, i recouped exactly $200, perfect!

for the nth time, i'd like to reiterate how cheap home bartending is, compared to going out.

focus on the freezer

at some point, maybe 10 days before the party, i realized with growing dread that i would need a lot of ice. like, 200 cubes per night. only the brute force solution was viable: i bought two more tovolo trays and pushed out batches each day and night into ziploc bags. by friday morning, i was satisfied with five gallon bags, four trays in reserve, and five non-cubical trays in super-reserve.

some further creative maneuvering allowed me to fit cocktail glasses in there, too, so they could chill before service. good thing we weren't serving gelato or something.

stand around

the hard parts are done. now you only need to stand in one place for three hours and shake or stir the shit out of lots of drinks. stand, and also listen, steer, cajole, charm, engage, introduce, rinse, muddle, crack, and pour.

i had not expected the rush i got from bartending. it's like being on a kitchen line, but colder and solo. some hardcore multitasking - remembering orders, mixing, chatting people up, and monitoring the glassware situation all at once, with outward aplomb. and the repeated delight on guests' faces with the first sip made it even better.

ice

[by john]

i was reminded last night of just how essential ice is as a cocktail ingredient.

in order to properly warm a cliquot-loving friend's new apartment, i brought a flask of pre-measured gin and st. germain and a bottle of prosecco to make elderfashion royales. the only thing i didn't bring - and hadn't thought i needed - was ice. like habit, i put the glassware in the freezer and started looking around for the clear stuff...but alas! after some playful admonishing, i went ahead with the drink, swirling it in a frozen pint glass and then topping the chilled flute with prosecco.

ah, but there's the rub. a drink is not stirred, shaken, or built with ice for the bracing chill alone; dilution is - i would argue - the most important side effect. you don't want to poison your guests, after all.

so, i ended up trying two versions of the cocktail - one straight up, and one with 1/4 oz of water to simulate a little bit of dilution. and there was definitely a difference...the 'watered down' one was indeed rounder.

the cocktails turned out nicely (as st. germain and bubbly usually do), and made the night's conversations all the more pleasant.

-----

now, i've been trying to restrain myself from becoming an ice snob, as bartenders are wont to do. i don't boil my water beforehand, or purify it, or do two stages of freezing...but i will admit to buying some tovolo trays, which give very solid one inch cubes. they've got a lot more shaking power than chipped ice, and they look sexy in a collins glass.

however, i think this might take it too far: physicists have discovered a new kind of ice, dubbed ice xv. it is formed only at high pressures and is a little strange, being antiferroelectric. i don't know how it would change a drink, but it'd be impossible to find out anyway. i guess those scientists will have to celebrate their achievement with some champagne chilled in regular ol' ice ih.

as a final ice news note, check out this slideshow of different kinds of solid water and then tell me people aren't obsessed with this all too common, all too weird substance.

Juicin'

[by Mike]

Some time ago, John sent me a site featuring some interesting tequila cocktails.  Intrigued by the concept of muddling a jalapeño, I immediately put together a Don Julio Caesar and was not disappointed.  With the seeds removed and the lime juice hiding any lingering capsaicin, the fruit flavors of the chile shined through and resonated with the tequila.

Those flavors floated around in my head until the thorough discussion of cucumber juice during our last outing to Rendezvous.  Wouldn't a well executed jalapeño juice offer all of the flavors extracted from muddling only more powerful?  After some research, I found a reasonable priced juicer online and went to work.  

I prepped about 20 chiles, using a sculpting tool to make quick work of ribs (capsaicin-rich liquid is produced in glands near the stem of the chile, and as the fruit grows it slowly flows down the interior flesh, coating the ribs and seeds with heat).  A few seconds through the whirling blades of death, the jalapeños (and a bunch of cilantro) were pulverized and I had a fresh batch of juice.  A batch of cucumber-mint juice stands in the background (two English cucumbers, including seeds and skin, with a bunch of mint).

The juices really didn't come into their own until they had been passed through cheesecloth to remove residual, gelatinous flesh (as well as much of the plant proteins that produce the head of foam after a quick shake).  By itself the jalapeño juice is too spicy to be sippable, but once the heat has been shadowed by a little bit of syrup and lime juice the fruity flavors dominate.  The cucumber juice is addictingly refreshing, and right on time for summer.

Of course, what would any of this be worth without cocktails?

The Ultraviolet Catastrophe

1.5 oz reposado tequila

0.5 oz jalapeño juice

0.5 oz lime juice

0.5 oz creme de violette

0.25 oz agave nectar

1 scant dash Angostura bitters

The addition of the bitters really rounds out the flavors, but at the expense of turning the drink an atrocious drab green.  Are there clear aromatic bitters out there?

Baron Thierry

1.5 oz reposado tequila

0.75 oz cucumber juice

0.5 oz elderflower liquor

0.25 oz lime juice

0.25 oz agave nectar

1 dash celery bitters

The name?  Taking inspiration from Misty, I went with historical: Baron Thierry was an Austrian hired by Maximillian to encourage British support of the French occupation of Mexico (I could only find one decent reference, page 195).  Not bad for a physicist, eh?

bourbon and branch

[by john]

a glorious day of rooftop dim sum, dan tat from golden gate bakery, theater, a trip to bourbon and branch, and formidable amounts of thai food capped my sf adventure.

bourbon and branch is a speakeasy bar in sf's sketchy tenderloin district which prides itself on, well, being a speakeasy. yes, it's pretentious. but yes, it's cool. you get a password with your online reservation to use at its unmarked door. a rare experience, at least. and a stark contrast to alembic's wide open front door. there are so many competing pros and cons, in fact, that bullet points are required:

pros

• fruit drawer - a roll-out drawer full of fresh seasonal fruit, awesome.
• cloth drink napkins - embroidered and all.
• seasonal menu - our night was the first for the spring menu.
• gorgeous - tin ceiling, cloth walls, elegant modern chandelier, tractor seats at the bar.

cons

• ditzy waitresses - good thing we sat at the bar.
• expensive - $2 more per drink than alembic, pushing justification.
• bad speakeasy - their front door opens up directly to the street, so there's no anteroom to hide the bar from passers-by. when it's still light out, it ruins the mood. take a page from milk and honey and use two heavy curtains.
• branding - they measured from shot glasses emblazoned with their logo. settle down, guys. not to mention the glitzy flash website.

alright, enough of that, on to the drinks. b&b is very menu-heavy. seasonal cocktails, champagne cocktails, classics, favorites from other bartenders, whiskey list... we must have sat there for 10 minutes poring over it. that's a con on my scorecard, because i'd rather be interacting with the bartender, but some could find it helpful.

we decided on two creations from the new spring menu. me: a mariachi, my first drink with mezcal, an extremely close relative of tequila which has gotten a bad reputation lately with the worm-in-the-bottle gimmick. yellow chartreuse, cointreau, fresh lemon juice, and orange bitters rounded out the cocktail. delightful! i enjoyed the whiskey-esque, smokey profile of the mezcal, which gave way easily enough to the citruses. my only complaint is that the last half of the drink was rather sweet; somehow the mezcal lost its magic by then.

my guy got the delicious 'devil's advocate', with gin, lime, ginger syrup, 3 fresh muddled raspberries, and a couple dashes of absinthe on top. i mean, just plain awesome and drinkable. i wish the absinthe had stayed longer than the first couple sips, though.

our bartender had the same hipster getup (by that i mean newspaper boy hat) as our one at alembic, so i had to put him to the same off-piste test, something bitter and spirit-based. he really pulled through, outdoing his rival: rye, licor 43, and fernet branca. for once, the fernet's long finish was subdued, and the bazillion combined herbs and flavors in the three ingredients worked perfectly together. wildly surprising and tasty, and with a working name of 'friends of ours'.

'i want something with st. germain and fire.' my boyfriend's request set the bartender back on his heels a little bit. after tasting his initial attempt with gin, green chartreuse, and the requested ingredient, he poured it out because the elderflower didn't shine through. restarting with the blank palette of vodka, he added peach bitters and a flamed grapefruit peel to complement the st. germain. an airy finished product, well done under the constraints.

now i just wish i could work there so i could fix all those nagging cons (plus get those expensive drinks for cheap).