September 2, 2007
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Sometimes living in Eugene, Oregon means that you have a smaller circle of people who share similar interests as yourself. Driving an hour and a half to Portland is always an option, but sometimes you just wish you could play at home. A select few of us local cocktail enthusiasts gathered today to experiment with | Read More
September 2, 2007
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Earlier today at our little Cocktail Summit, we played with seaberries (aka sea berries or sea-buckthorn). If you haven’t tried seaberries before, they’re a small, soft fruit full of a milky, citrusy, tart juice – slightly astringent and very rich. They’re unlike anything I had ever tried. I had been messing around with some wine syrups | Read More
August 27, 2007
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Yesterday my co-pilot at El Vaquero, Scott, and I made our way up to Portland at nine in the morning for the Great American Distillers Festival – a feat not easily accomplished by two bartenders who had closed the bar the previous night. The list of products available for tasting was short – this ain’t | Read More
August 22, 2007
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For those of you in the beautiful Pacific Northwest, this weekend is the Great American Distillers Festival [PDF at rogue.com] in Portland. I’ll be hanging out and blogging the festival all day on Sunday, so if any of you want to meet up and tour the booths with us, drop me a line and let | Read More
August 19, 2007
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I’m a big fan of Jamie Boudreau’s website Spirits and Cocktails. The writing is engaging, the photography is brilliant, and his techniques push the boundaries of mixology. So when I read about how Jamie would brulée brandied cherries with a Misto filled with 151-proof rum and Angostura bitters, I was inspired. And I immediately thought: | Read More
August 13, 2007
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In case you’ve missed all the hoopla, it’s time for another Mixology Monday! This month, we’re being hosted by Gwen over at Intoxicated Zodiac. Gwen has chosen orange as the theme for the month. I had originally planned on doing a post about one of my cocktails that uses orange bitters. However, I figured that | Read More
August 9, 2007
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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: Remember | Read More
August 8, 2007
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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 | Read More
August 8, 2007
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This is my interpretation of a classic style of Brazilian drink. Often these are blended, but variations appear here and there that are on the rocks like this one. I like to use Leblon cachaça at the bar because it’s a multi-distilled, and therefore lighter, product.
July 30, 2007
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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 | Read More
July 16, 2007
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Greetings, and happy Mixology Monday! Paul over at Cocktail Chronicles is hosting this month’s get-together, and the theme is Blog Love. Yikes, what a name, huh? But it’s a great idea: we’re all going to try out recipes that we’ve seen on each other’s sites, and report on our findings. Because we’re bloggers. And we | Read More
July 13, 2007
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If you’ve been reading this website for a while, you probably know that I spout the virtues of fresh ingredients and encourage people to eschew the use of pre-made drink mixes. So, I was a little taken aback when I received a package containing two bottles of Dirty Sue Dirty Martini Mix in the mail | Read More
July 10, 2007
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The mojito education bus keeps on rollin’ on over here. Thanks to Joe Bartender for finding this brilliant (read: boobalicious) instructional video embedded below: To recap, here’s the recipe: 1. Pick some mint for your mojito. Wink! 2. Put some ice like America. 3. Split half of the cup to half of the cup (to | Read More
July 5, 2007
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Well, it’s mojito season here in the northern hemisphere, which means it’s time for a little lesson for the novice and experienced mojito drinker alike. Follow these helpful hints, dear reader, and you won’t dare go wrong. Do use crushed ice in your mojitos. Crushed ice will melt faster, which is a good thing in | Read More
July 4, 2007
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My friend Paul Clarke just published a fantastic article about bartenders making their own liqueurs in the latest Imbibe magazine, and El Vaquero has the honor of representing falernum. We’ve been making a variation of Paul’s falernum recipe for a few months now, to great reviews. When you’ve wrapped up reading his article in Imbibe, | 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!
