What is a good base drink for a new 'bar'? - Tiki Drinks and Food

S swizzle Tiki Socialite Melbourne,Australia Joined: Jun 03, 2007 Posts: 1460	S swizzle Posted posted on Mon, Jan 18, 2016 5:13 PM On 2016-01-18 07:52, AceExplorer wrote: My pet peeve -- all the over-the-top bartenders who craft really unique and often (but not always) tasty drinks using exotic ingredients or crazy tinctures and syrups which only their bar uses. So they publish recipes, but nobody wants to invest in single-purpose spirits, liqueurs, and bitters, or take two weeks to make specialty syrups and tinctures for just one cocktail. I'm surprised how much of that I see at cocktail competitions and exhibitions. Coming soon - Ace Explorer's Buffalo Butt Bitters. It'll put tongue on your hair! There used to be a local cocktail book that i bought several issues of that was like this. The book was put out by a distributor and was effectively a way for them to promote the product lines they carried. The book would have an advertisment for a particular brand, i.e. Cointreau, and then have three cocktails using that ingredient, with the drinks made by various bartenders from different bars here in Australia. The first issue, and maybe even the second, were fine, they had drinks in them you could make at home. Sure, you might have had to go out and buy a bottle of something you didn't have, like some Brandy or Midori for example, but then each book after that started doing exactly what you have mentioned Ace. There would be ONE drink that sounded great until you read the ingredients and it said you needed some bizarre syrup they had obviously made for the bar that there was no way you would spend your time making at home just to make one drink. Something like a fig and rhubarb syrup. Naturally i stopped buying it after about the fourth edition. And RE: Kahuna Kevin's books, i have a drink dedicated for/to me in volumes 2 & 3 and you have no idea how many arguments we had when he was coming up with the recipes about him using products that are readily available. Especially to me here in Australia. One of the biggest problems i had was that he kept wanting to substitute an ingredient with one, that either i just couldn't buy here, or, was so expensive there was no way i would go out and buy a bottle just to make one drink. The drink in the third book, The Third Dilemma, was my recipe which i sent him to tinker with/adjust the ratios (even though i liked the drink as it was) and he still subbed some ingredients. I had to go out and buy the $50 bottle of Grand Marnier, which i never would buy normally, instead of the $42 Cointreau which i generally alwys have a bottle of on hand. Having said all that, i was fortunate enough to spend some time at his house when i was there in 2012 and must say that of the several drinks that he made me, although there was one i wasn't too keen on, all the others were really, really good, and on par with, if not better, than some of the drinks i had at Smugglers Cove and Forbidden Island.

On 2016-01-18 07:52, AceExplorer wrote:

My pet peeve -- all the over-the-top bartenders who craft really unique and often (but not always) tasty drinks using exotic ingredients or crazy tinctures and syrups which only their bar uses. So they publish recipes, but nobody wants to invest in single-purpose spirits, liqueurs, and bitters, or take two weeks to make specialty syrups and tinctures for just one cocktail. I'm surprised how much of that I see at cocktail competitions and exhibitions.

Coming soon - Ace Explorer's Buffalo Butt Bitters. It'll put tongue on your hair!

There used to be a local cocktail book that i bought several issues of that was like this. The book was put out by a distributor and was effectively a way for them to promote the product lines they carried. The book would have an advertisment for a particular brand, i.e. Cointreau, and then have three cocktails using that ingredient, with the drinks made by various bartenders from different bars here in Australia.

The first issue, and maybe even the second, were fine, they had drinks in them you could make at home. Sure, you might have had to go out and buy a bottle of something you didn't have, like some Brandy or Midori for example, but then each book after that started doing exactly what you have mentioned Ace. There would be ONE drink that sounded great until you read the ingredients and it said you needed some bizarre syrup they had obviously made for the bar that there was no way you would spend your time making at home just to make one drink. Something like a fig and rhubarb syrup. Naturally i stopped buying it after about the fourth edition.

And RE: Kahuna Kevin's books, i have a drink dedicated for/to me in volumes 2 & 3 and you have no idea how many arguments we had when he was coming up with the recipes about him using products that are readily available. Especially to me here in Australia. One of the biggest problems i had was that he kept wanting to substitute an ingredient with one, that either i just couldn't buy here, or, was so expensive there was no way i would go out and buy a bottle just to make one drink.
The drink in the third book, The Third Dilemma, was my recipe which i sent him to tinker with/adjust the ratios (even though i liked the drink as it was) and he still subbed some ingredients. I had to go out and buy the $50 bottle of Grand Marnier, which i never would buy normally, instead of the $42 Cointreau which i generally alwys have a bottle of on hand.

Having said all that, i was fortunate enough to spend some time at his house when i was there in 2012 and must say that of the several drinks that he made me, although there was one i wasn't too keen on, all the others were really, really good, and on par with, if not better, than some of the drinks i had at Smugglers Cove and Forbidden Island.

Post #757494 by swizzle on Mon, Jan 18, 2016 5:13 PM