Guerilla Bartending
Last night I did a small favour for a friend. At this large loft-esque apartment with patio there were about a hundred guests. Alec and his roommate Farzad set out the turntables connected to a mac and belted out some brilliant tunes, most of which sounded early R&B, gospel and funk. Something like Nina Simone, but brought into the modern era with some fresh remixes added. Brilliant.
For the evening’s festivities I threw in four cocktails on offer. The Pegu Club, The Calvados Cocktail, Satan’s Whiskers (all from T. Haigh’s book, “Vintage Cocktails & Spirits”) and rounded off with Jaimie Boudreau’s Rosewater Rickey. Plenty of other classics came to be made, of course, but those were the main ones. Christ I had fun. It was a good opportunity to screw around with recipes I wanted to practice, and practice I did.
Boudreau’s was an immediate hit with the pyrotechnics and the bourbon cherries.
In a mixing glass I put two cherries, added a spritz of bitters from the mister then brulée’d them for a good ten seconds.
I then added gin, rose water, lime juice and simple syrup. Shook like a dervish, strained over ice and topped with soda. The feedback on it was brilliant and it seemed to have turned a number of people who previously hated gin onto the beautiful spirit. Perhaps that’s just wishful thinking.
Second most popular was the Calvados Cocktail. I chose this because of the glut of orange bitters I had in the house. The recipe calls for 3/4 ounces of bitters and me with a litre of the stuff could accomodate. Thankfully, my bitters are a little more delicate than others so they didn’t overpower the subtleties of the of the Calvados, the Cointreau and the orange juice.
The Pegu Club recieved a little less fan fare than the dramatic Rickey, but nonetheless a delicious simple drink. Essentially a gin sidecar with Angostura bitters, it was originally served at the Pegu Club in Rangoon circa the 1920′s.
I was a little uneasy about pushing Satan’s Whisker’s, a mistake in hindsight, I think. With equal parts gin, red vermouth, white vermouth, orange juice; a dash of orange bitters and Cointreau I thought it perhaps a little esoteric. On re-reading the recipe I’m thinking I was too quick to judge the drinks popularity. The five I made received happy looks, in truth. I didn’t make them until I had become a little more familiar with their palate.
Gin was certainly the theme of the evening. Mojito, Caipirissimas, Caipiroskas, Sazeracs, Manhattans, Margaritas were made as well. I made one version of a Cosmopolitan on the fly without cranberry. I crushed some fresh cherries in the shaker, vodka and Cointreau, dash of orange bitters and lime and finished with an orange twist. I think it worked quite well, and ended up making quite a few.
The bar was a great set up with an ancient record player unit serving as the “wood”, and the kitchen counter and sinks serving as my back bar, well stocked by the host, I might add. There were a number of instances in the evening that found me chuckling at scooping ice from a small stock pot with a shaker tin.
I havn’t had so much fun tending bar in a long time. That sentiment may have come from the glass of Cava I had on the go, along with a couple of Bourbon sours. I don’t partake while I’m working, but this was more casual and it wasn’t really working, after all.
