In the Spirit of the Royal Wedding.

Hundreds of thousands of people are expected to mark the royal wedding with a street party this coming Friday, but plenty more will be celebrating in Britain’s bars. Many operators are planning a weekend-long party after the government allowed them to stay open until 1am on the nights of Friday 29th and Saturday 30th, and special wedding-themed cocktails have been appearing on menus.
Quintessential English ingredients have been used by mixologist Tristan Stephenson of London bars Purl and the soon-to-open Worship Street Whistling Shop. He has created the Royal Jam cocktail using Williams apple gin, produced by Chase Distillery in Herefordshire. This is combined with English strawberry jam, lemon juice, lavender bitters and a splash of Nyetimber Brut, the sparkling wine from Kent. With a flavour profile based on an English Victoria sponge, it is served in a gilded bone china tea cup and saucer. It is accompanied by a pot of Earl Grey tea but not for drinking – dry ice is dropped into the pot to billow out aromatic steam around the drinker to add to the experience. [Read the full story HERE]
Source: Chasedistillery, Bar Magazine

The Tiki Bar.

Originally , referred to a carved statue representing Polynesian god. It brings the image of exoticism, fantasy, mysticism, laid back life Polynesian lifestyle, hula girls, Hawaiian Tattoos burning torches…thanks to CBS-TV series Gilligan's Island..

The Tiki bar was more or less American’s escape from the depression. The tales brought back by returning soldiers after serving in Southern Pacific (WWII) and the uprising of the middle class as an economic force in post war era helped tiki to bloom.

Don the Beachcomber (Feb22,1907-June7,1989) & Trader Vic (Dec, 1902-Oct11,1984)

Donn Beach, a former Texan bootlegger during prohibition, served in WWII, famously known to open a bar and restaurant called Don Beachcomber in 1934 in Hollywood California serving Cantonese dishes with mysterious drinks like Zombie, Navy Grog, scorpion bowls and many others..

Victor Jules Bergeron Jr., founder of restaurant called Trader Vic’s is one of the two who claims to have invented The Mai Tai.

Don the Beachcomber Zombie

Lime juice 0.75 ml

Grapefruit cinnamon syrup 15 ml

Pineapple juice 45 ml

Falernum 15 ml

Jamaican rum 30 ml

Gold rum 30 ml

151 Demerara rum 30 ml

Maraschino liqueur 15 ml

Absinth 6 drops

Grenadine 1/8

Bitters dash

Blend for about 5 seconds with few ice to mix and to aerate the pineapple juice. Pour into a tall glass and garnish with a big sprig of mint.

Trader Vic's Mai Tai
17-year-old rum imported by J. Wray & Nephew 60ml

Dry orange curacao 15ml

Lime juice 22.75ml

Orgeat 7.5ml

Rock candy syrup 7.5ml

Shake and strain on a rock glass over crushed ice. Garnish With a mint sprig (the drink should be beige in colour)

Bars like Pain killer (from Guiseppe Gonzales and Richard boccato), Julie Reiner’s headed Lani Kai and Smuggler’s Cove in SFO are to be looked up for the revival of Tiki... Jeff “Beachbum” Berry is a noted rum expert, a tiki demi god known for his dedication to tiki drinks.

Read up more on the Tiki Research by Painkiller, HERE.


Source: Tikipop, Humuhumu.com

DIY Whiskey.

Age Your Own Whiskey Kits

Rooster Studio designed these Age Your Own Whiskey Kits from Woodinville Whiskey Co. From WWC:

"Being such a unique item, we wanted the consumer to be able to see and touch the contents of the package, yet it still had to be functional. Graphically, we wanted to bring the Woodinville Whiskey Co. brand into the package while tying it into a Prohibition-era theme since the product intrinsically has a bit of a rebellious element to it.

The design of the box itself was a collaboration between Woodinville Whiskey Co. and our packaging manufacturer. The graphics were a collaboration between Woodinville Whiskey Co. and [Rooster Studio]"

Source: thedieline.com

The Blind Pig.

Prohibition Style Hen Party

Looking for ideas for holding hen parties in Glasgow?   Wedding Ideas likes the sound of “Tea Time Martinis” at theIntoxicating Tearooms.

It’s afternoon tea with a twist – vintage teapots brimming with an array of delicious cocktails, served with scrummy cakes and sandwiches.   The Intoxicating Tearooms are inspired by the prohibition era secret speakeasies of New York.  Think “The Cotton Club” and you get the idea. 

Inside you’ll feel like you’ve taken a step back in time to the 1920′s and 1930′s. 

   

The in-house mixologists make your cocktail teapots to order – choose from delights like; “Espresso Martini”, “Strawberry Cream Tea”, “For All The Tea in China”.  They’ll explain how to create the delectable drinks, giving everyone a hands-on experience making the cocktails themselves.   “Tea Time Martinis” is £15 per person (or per hen should we say) and includes cakes, sandwiches and your teapot cocktail! 

The hen party will also be able to decorate their own cupcakes, with advice on how to make them look just right.

“A hen party is all about indulgence and treating the bride-to-be and what better treat than a day filled with food, drink and an activity to enjoy before hitting Glasgow’s fantastic bars and clubs” says Brad Stevens, owner of The Blind Pig (of which The Intoxicating Tearooms is a part).   

(All photography supplied by Blind Pig.)  We’ve also got plenty of other hen party ideas on the Wedding Ideas magazine blog.

Source: weddingideasmag.com

The Beer Story.

Source: Manolith

The Zetter Townhouse.

The Cocktail Lounge at the Townhouse is an exciting collaboration between The Zetter and the creators of the award winning 69 Colebrooke Row, Tony Conigliaro and Camille Hobby Limon.

A drinks pioneer and creator of such modern classics as The Twinkle and Smoked Old Fashioned, Tony Conigliaro has earned a reputation for his ground-breaking approach to cocktail making and the drinking experience. Clerkenwell, once the centre of Dickensian London, was known also for its breweries and Gin distilleries and the unique recipes that Tony has created for The Zetter Townhouse pay homage to that heritage. Old recipes for tinctures, bitters and herbal remedies have inspired not only the cocktails but also the homemade cordials and infusions that sit behind the apothecary style counter.

Accessed through a discreet entrance on St John's Square, the lounge within is a sumptuous and intriguing place. With an open fire crackling in the grate and a bartender fixing your favourite drink it feels like private residence of a most beloved, eccentric and indulgent aunt - we call her Wilhelmina. Packed with curios and oddities from her travels it is a den of lived in luxury - an ideal hideout for an afternoon of lazy reading, a relaxed working lunch or an evening or riotous revelry!

Source: thezettertownhouse

Beer Pong Guidelines.

Source: Flowingdata

Captain Haddock.

"Billions of bilious blue blistering barnacles!"
— Herge

Source: Tintin

Architecture of a Drink.

Source: Flowingdata, Behance, BUILD LLC

Raising the Bar.

Simple, taverns or inns frequented by the labourers after long hard day,were said to have barricade their fragile products against vandalism from the frequently brawling alcohol consumer; hence the word bar.

Around 1800,Salon came into common use for the establishment probably the the derivation from the Italian word. The customers were primarily male and no respectable woman would have been seen in there.

Nearing 19th century,the word bar started to open its wings and to be seen in the better hotels in prosperous cities,rapidly becoming the expression of new attitude of life. In between American Revolution and Prohibition(1920-1933), the art of bartending was born and started to spread its wings...

The first bar book ,"The bartender's guide" was published in 1862 containing the rules of the conduct for the bartender and handy selections of recipes including punches, cobblers, flips, fix, juleps, sangaree, sour, shrub, crusta, pousse-café ...etc by Jerry P.Thomas.

In 1856,Knickerbocker Magazine ,Charles G. Leland had referred bartender as mixologist of tipulars fixings ...

who can forget the contribution of hotel bars in the history of cocktail making...like Sidecar from The Ritz Carlton (Paris);The Monteleone(New Orleans) for Vieux carre;The St.Regis (NYC) , King Cole bar for Red Snapper /bloody Mary.The St,Regis -King Cole bar claims their french bartender Fernand Petiot invented the Red Snapper known as Bloody Mary in 1934 but Harry's New York bar (Paris) also claims to have invented the drink.The Waldrof -Astoria-(Nyc)-for Rob Roy..and The Great Savoy with numerous libations..

Bloody Mary with a Twist.

After a long week, there is nothing like a Saturday brunch with a home made Gin Bloody Mary with a twist of Rosemary.


What You will Need:

Image by: richa

Voila!

Image by: richa

Mix all the ingredients in a tall glass filled half way with ice. Pour the mixture back and fourth a few times to bind all the ingredients together. Top it off with more ice and a slightly bruised Rosemary sprig. ENJOY!

Here is an interesting article we came across about Bloody Mary...

Cocktail Chemistry: Parsing the Bloody Mary

by ADAM COLE

Enlargekillthebird/Flickr

You have no idea what's going on in that glass.

The bloody mary, the signature brunch cocktail, had a friend in Ernest Hemingway. The famous writer bragged in a letter to Bernard Peyton that he introduced the drink to Hong Kong, and further claimed that "it did more than any other single factor except perhaps the Japanese Army to precipitate the fall of that Crown Colony."

I don't know about that, but the bloody mary does seem to hold a special place on the menu. It at least appears to be a healthier option than most drinks (it's mostly tomato juice, right?), and it's often touted as a hangover remedy. So how do you make the perfect bloody mary?

Hemingway's recipe involved a lot of "tasting-as-you-go", and a long list of ingredients: vodka, tomato juice, Worcestershire sauce, lime juice, celery salt, cayenne pepper (modern bartenders usually substitute Tabasco sauce) and black pepper.

"Each of those ingredients has tens of compounds, if not hundreds of compounds," Neil Da Costa, an analytic chemist working for International Flavors and Fragrances, tells Shots. "The bloody mary has been called the world's most complex cocktail."

He should know. Da Costa has used every trick in the chemist's book to analyze each ingredient, and the cocktail as whole. He presented his findings at a meeting of the American Chemical Society this week. Da Costas, an expert in food flavors, is chairman-elect of the group's agriculture and food chemistry division.

With gas and liquid chromatography, Da Costa isolated the wide variety of compounds that give the bloody mary its unique flavor. The drink covers much of the taste spectrum: sweet, salty, sour and umami — the savory taste of glutamic acid.

EnlargeAdam Cole/NPR

A visualization of the flavors in a typical bloody mary

And, Da Costa says, the order of these sensations is appealing: first cool and refreshing, then spicy, and finally a sinus-clearing horseradish kick.

So what lessons can amateur bartenders glean from all this analysis? Make it fresh and make it cool, Da Costa says. Many of the ingredients are chemically unstable, so it's important to make your bloody mary from fresh ingredients and keep it iced to prevent deterioration.

Hemingway would agree. He jotted down at the bottom of his recipe, "Whole trick is to keep it very cold."

He went on to observe: "You can mix it so it will taste as though it had absolutely no alcohol of any kind in it and a glass of it will still have as much kick as a really good big martini."

So if you're aiming for that perfect bloody mary, splurge on the tomato juice, not the vodka. You might not even taste the cheap alcohol.

Neil presented his findings as part of the International Year of Chemistry a "worldwide celebration of the achievements of chemistry" organized by the UN and International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry.

"This was done to try and get chemistry to the masses," Da Costa says. "Anything you eat or anything you do - everything involves chemistry."

Erik Lorincz's Bloody Mary.

To work behind the same bar as Harry Craddock, the man who published the definitive Savoy Cocktail Book in 1930, is the dream for many bartenders, and Erik Lorincz is the latest high profile barman to live that dream. After outperforming 9000 bartenders to win the 2010 Diageo World Class Competition, a Wall Street Journal writer wondered whether that made him “the best bartender in the world.” Best or not, he did become head bartender at the famed American Bar at the Savoy Hotel, which reopened after some fine tuning on 10.10.10.

Bourdain in Japan.

 

Muchacha Caliente.

Source: npr.org, foodgps.com

The Aussie Spirit.

Drinks Taken from March’s Bartender magazine.

Truffled Alexander

30ml Canberra black truffle infused St. Agnes VSOP brandy
30ml White crème de cacao
30ml Half and half

Shake with ice and double strain. Garnish with fresh grated nutmeg.

Geoff Fewell, Pelagic Bar & Dining, Canberra

Devil’s Punch

333ml 666 Tasmanian Vodka
60ml Lemon juice
120ml Ginger beer
½ bottle Sparkling Wine
30ml St Germain. elderflower liqueur
20ml honey water

Add all ingredients into a carafe. Add flower ice cubes. Stir and serve.

Eddie Alder, Cushdy, Adelaide

The East Coast Blue Tailed Lorrikeet

120ml Holey Dollar Cask Gold Coin 
25ml Tamborine Mountain Distillery Lavender liqueur
1/2 teaspoon of wattle seed
120ml of freshly squeezed pineapple juice
60ml lime juice
1 - 2 teaspoons of Capilano honey (depending on the sweetness of the pineapple)
Chandon NV sparkling to top

Take a whole pineapple and chop the top off. Carefully scoop out the flesh leaving the outside of the pineapple as your serving vessel. Juice up the pineapple pieces. Shake other ingredients and strain into pineapple shell. Add pineapple juice and ice then stir. Top with sparkling and garnish with pineapple top with a couple of sparklers scattered around to really draw everyone’s attention.

Quyhn Nguyen, Blue Hotel, Sydney

HMS Bounty

50ml Bundaberg Rum
15ml falernum
10ml caramel coffee molasses
15ml fresh lime juice
30ml fresh orange juice

Shake and strain into an ice filled Tiki mug. Garnish with a mint sprig and orange slices.

Ryan Norieks, Shanghai (ex-The Lark, Brisbane)

Hibiscus Fizz

45ml Vodka O
20ml Tamborine Mountain Distillery Hibiscus Liqueur
10ml lychee liqueur
30ml lemon juice
15ml sugar syrup
Dash egg white

Dry shake then shake with ice. Strain over fresh ice in a tall glass. Garnish with a lemon wedge.

Tom Price, Goldfish, Sydney 

Mary St. Hurricane

50ml Inner Circle Red Dot rum
20ml lime juice
15ml homemade grenadine
5ml Simple syrup
Juice/pulp of half a passion fruit.

Shake rigorously and pour into a traditional Hurricane glass. No fine straining is necessary for this Tiki style concoction. Garnish with a passionfruit wheel, lime wheel and while we’re here, a parasol.

Owen Westman, The Collection, Melbourne

Source: 4bars.com.au