November 12, 2023
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My first real fancy bar job was at a French restaurant. I’d been working for like six years in dive bars and clubs already but this was like, black tie, crisp white shirt, starched bistro apron, the whole thing. Pouring wine and TONS of Martinis. At least once a night someone would order a Martini | Read More
August 14, 2023
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This is super cool. Friend of the site and all-around rockstar Richard Lindsay turned my Universal Syrup Calculator into an easy-to-use webapp, so those of you who aren’t super comfortable with spreadsheets (and I don’t blame you) have a much easier solution. Just plug two numbers into Richard’s app and it spits out all the | Read More
August 8, 2023
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This is one my business partner, Benjamin Amberg, came up with for our menu at Pacific Standard last year – and boy is it a good one. It all started when the owner of a new non-alcoholic spirit company out of Seattle reached out to me and let me know he was coming to Portland | Read More
March 23, 2023
Yesterday I bought a new hand juicer that someone shared with me, and I bought it because it was something I’d never seen before! (To be fair I do believe it was just released this year – someone let me know if this is incorrect) It’s a hard plastic, flat hand juicer. That’s right, it | Read More
February 8, 2023
The Keoke Coffee is one of those drinks that I got a lot of orders for back in the late 90s and early 2000s when I was first starting out making cocktails. And I never really gave it much thought back then, because it seemed like there were a hundred coffee drinks that all seemed | Read More
October 12, 2022
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This post is long overdue, but I’ve been very, very, very busy these past four months. In case you haven’t heard, I’ve finally opened my own bar – with my good friend, business partner, and former lead bartender at Clyde Common, Benjamin Amberg. And now that I’m finally able to come up for air a | Read More
April 25, 2022
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Greetings! Today, April 25th, is the 26th anniversary of the day I started my bartending career. A couple of years ago during the height of the pandemic I decided to celebrate by sharing my chocolate chip cookie recipe online. And this year I thought I would just make that a tradition by sharing something I | Read More
February 4, 2022
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I started tending bar when I was in school, back in 1996, at a corner bar called The Tiny Tavern, located in the Whitaker district of Eugene, Oregon. It was (and still is) kind of a rough-and-tumble part of town, full of working class people, families, musicians, artists, you name it. I met a lot | Read More
January 21, 2022
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Since I’ve had a little more free time these days, I’ve been going back through some of my old recipes and noticing that I’ve got a pretty extensive backlog of cocktails that have never made it on to the site. Until now. You can expect to see more cocktails here this year as I’ve discovered | Read More
January 11, 2022
Something occurred to me recently: Why are we still banishing low-alcohol and no-alcohol drinks to their own dumb section of the menu, like they’re sitting at the kids’ table at dinner? Think about it for a second, doesn’t it seem a little barbaric in this day and age – when we’re all consuming more low-proof | Read More
November 21, 2021
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As any regular visitor to this site can tell you, I. Love. Eggnog. (A LOT). And as I’ve said before, my love for the stuff is not limited to just the alcoholic versions I’ve been evangelizing for the past decade and half. I even love the goop that you get from the grocery store. It’s | Read More
August 12, 2021
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Back in 2019, I wrote a little piece about how liquor companies could be better about supporting the next generation of working bartenders. It was really well-received by both the bartending community and by the brands who truly care about the people who are on the front lines, selling their products. Dozens of brands reached | Read More
June 30, 2021
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With the loss of both my bartending/bar management jobs due to the pandemic, I just wrote my first resume (curriculum vitae or CV for my international and academic friends) in nearly fifteen years. To say I was a little rusty at putting together a resume would be putting it mildly. I haven’t had a need | Read More
June 18, 2021
See more Ingredients / Recipes
One of the things I can’t run a bar without is a solid 2:1 brown sugar syrup. I love a dark rum Daiquiri with Demerara syrup, I only use brown sugar syrup in my Irish Coffees, and Muscovado syrup goes great in cocktails made with my house ginger beer recipe. I’ve been thinking about having | Read More
June 15, 2021
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A few weeks ago I got an Instagram message from an old regular of ours, who had some questions about making my famous Gallon of Margaritas recipe for Memorial Day. At one point in the conversation she said to me, and I quote: “Can I make a half batch of these because last year we | Read More
These are the books and tools I use every single day to make drinks at home and behind the bar. Clicking on a product takes you to Amazon, which helps me keep this site running, so thank you in advance!
