October 21, 2009
See more General
I’m leaving in about an hour to head to the airport and ship off to Europe, so if you have any interest in learning more about what a small-town bartender does from hour to hour as he stumbles across a continent in search of the perfect cocktail, then please by all means follow along with | Read More
September 18, 2009
See more Recipes
You may or may not have known this, but I like making cocktails out of wine. Or things that were once wine. Or things that were made from wine. However you want to say it, I like making cocktails out of wine. So when I saw that there was a cocktail competition coming up that | Read More
September 4, 2009
See more General
(I couldn’t find an appropriate photo, and I wanted to get this out there before I head to work tonight. Sorry – JM) Hey Bartender I went to the bar last night with a coworker, whom I was treating to drinks on my tab. When we got the bill, it was very high, so we | Read More
August 5, 2009
See more General
It’s six o’clock at night in New Orleans and I’m sweating, hard. Not because of the heat outside, but because I’m inside, on a stage with a microphone in my hand. Eight of the best bartenders in the country are lined up behind me, hundreds of people are seated in front of me, and everyone | Read More
July 15, 2009
My good friends over at Embury Cocktails were kind enough to stop by the Boca Loca luncheon at Tales of the Cocktail this year, and captured me on film while Jason Rowan grilled me after a late night and an early morning of prepping for the lunch.
July 5, 2009
See more General
(Gosh, they look happy.) Anyway – it’s July, which means that it’s that time of year, to take a week-long reprieve from the steamy swelter of Oregon and head once again to the cool lazy breezes of New Orleans. Tales of the Cocktail is a week of cocktail seminars, workshops, classes, competitions, food, fun, friends, | Read More
June 25, 2009
See more General
Ah, Tales of The Cocktail. The greatest yearly gathering on earth for cocktail enthusiasts, bartenders, students of mixology and aficionados of fine liquors. Also, a logistical nightmare for those who have to plan the hundreds of events spread over those five days in New Orleans. Shortly after to agreeing to sit on Paul Clarke’s panel, | Read More
June 5, 2009
See more Ingredients
I absolutely hate it when someone sends me a box full of sex toys in the mail. Sure, it might sound like fun to some of you (you know who you are), but receiving a big box of free sex is much more trouble than it’s worth. Believe me. So I get a little guarded | Read More
June 1, 2009
See more Recipes
“Here, see if you can make me something with this”, the liquor rep taunted as he dropped a bottle of aquavit on the bar. If there’s one thing you should know about me, it’s that I don’t really work that well under pressure. I try, but it literally takes me weeks to come up with | Read More
April 13, 2009
See more General
It’s been busy times here in Portland, but I thought I’d take a break from all the hot bar-managin’ action to post a aggregated update of what’s been happening in my world lately – loose ends, mostly: Last week I attended the Grand Marnier/Navan Mixology Summit in Vail Colorado. One hundred bartenders from around the | Read More
March 20, 2009
See more Techniques
Hey, here’s a fun way to illustrate karma. If you’ve, say, built a large web presence upon a not-so-generous string of public criticisms of bar-related web videos [1, 2, 3, 4], then one day somebody will ask you to appear in a series of videos yourself. That’s what happened last month when Imbibe Magazine called | Read More
March 17, 2009
See more General / Ingredients
Hey Bartender My South Side Irish Chicago Dad always told me that Jameson was the Catholic whisky and that Bushmills was the whiskey made by “the damn Protestants”. Now this character I met at the bar is trying to tell me it’s the other way around. Help! Who do I believe, the man who raised | Read More
March 16, 2009
See more Ingredients
The list of increduble experiences I had last fall while attending (and speaking at) the Bar Convent Berlin is a mile long, but up near the top of the list is the afternoon chat I had with Andreas Redlefsen, owner of St. Lucia’s Elements Eight rums. Elements Eight is virtually unknown in this country, but | Read More
March 6, 2009
See more Techniques
Speaking of great cocktails made with cachaça, let’s take a moment before the weekend and see what our old friends at the American Bartending School would do when confronted with a bottle of the stuff. In this segment, we’ll learn how to make the Brazilian classic, the caipirinha (kai-peer-EEN-ya) 1. Announce to your friends that | Read More
March 2, 2009
See more Recipes
With my recent move to Portland and consequent adjustment to a new work environment, new living situation and new selection of great bars and restaurants to explore, I’ve been a little lax on the new drink recipes. Fortunately I have my cruel taskmasters at Boca Loca Cachaça to keep me toiling away, day and night, | 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!
