by Dennis Mayer on May 10th, 2012 | Ask the Bartender, Cocktails, Mixed Drinks
After a long winter, rhubarb is now in season. Is there a way to use this first sign of the growing season in a cocktail?
You ask a very worrisome question. I'm sure you're aware that rhubarb leaves are poisonous, so before we start talking about anything else, we need to start with a disclaimer; trim leaves from your rhubarb stalks as soon as you harvest them, dispose of the leaves immediately, and wash the stalks, your hands, and your tools thoroughly.
Now that that's taken care of...
Rhubarb stalks are going to act a lot like celery would act in a
by Dennis Mayer on April 13th, 2012 | Cocktails, Liquor, Mixed Drinks
Back in February, when we were experiencing an early (if not sustained) rush of spring, I wrote about the
Suffering Bastard as a potential season-bridging drink, for its mix of refreshing summer flavors and warm winter notes. But honestly, one ingredient in that drink fits that description all by itself. Ginger beer is a sharp, refreshing mixer that contains enough spicy heat to either warm you up on a cold day or help you sweat off the weather on a hot one.
The extra spice makes ginger beer completely different from its more boring cousin, ginger ale, but it
by Dennis Mayer on March 23rd, 2012 | Cocktails, Liquor, Mixed Drinks
Flipping through my various cocktail books, I'm often struck by how many ingredients that were considered
de rigueur for bartenders 50 or so years ago have fallen out of favor with bartenders (or, more importantly, their customers) these days. So many recipes used to employ a few drops of absinthe (or other similarly flavored liqueur), a dash or two of bitters, a splash of port or champagne, and the like to tweak the flavors of their cocktails. I suspect this all fell by the wayside when a) vodka became popular, meaning any beverage could be made alcoholic without really changing
by Dennis Mayer on March 14th, 2012 | Cocktails, Liquor, Mixed Drinks
Bartending, as a profession, is a fairly new invention in the grand scheme of human history. Alcohol is not; we've been making wine for thousands of years, and there are some people who believe the earliest hunter-gatherers settled down and learned to cultivate fields not to feed themselves, but to grow grain for beermaking. (Whether or not that's true, one of the earliest laws devised as humans staggered out of the Middle Ages and toward enlightenment
concerned beer purity.)
But I digress. During the majority of history of human drinking, if you wanted to drink something other than beer, wine,
