A Muddled Thought

Cynar, the artichoke spirit as most people will refer to it. But what is it exactly?

Cynar, a liqueur made from a combination of 13 herbs and plants, with the main and most touted of the ingredients being artichoke. Yes, that’s right Cynar is made using artichokes. So what’s it taste like?

Think about that sense of bitterness you experienced if you’ve ever bit into a coffee bean, add subtle hints of vanilla, cinnamon and cardamom to the background of this bitter flavor, and then have that last sip end with a slight touch of sweetness. If you can imagine what this would taste like, you’ll have an idea of what the Cynar experience is all about.

That bitterness works Cynar’s advantage when it comes to working in cocktails as the Cynar plays well with a variety of spirits and can be used to add a bit of edge or even balance to a cocktail.

All Good Things

1 3/4 oz Don Julio Reposado Tequila
1/4 oz Cynar
3/4 oz Del Maguey Crema De Mezcal
1/2 oz Lime Juice
2 Dashes The Bitter Truth Mole Bitters

Wednesday Pick Me Up

2oz Rhum J.M. VSOP Rhum
¾ oz Creole Shrubb Orange Liqueur
¼ oz Cynar
1 Dash Fee Brothers Aztec Chocolate Bitters
1 oz Espresso Syrup
Garnish with Burnt Orange Zest

Burning Alarm Clock
1 ¾ oz Ardmore Traditional Cask

½ oz Solerno Blood Orange Liquor

½ oz Cynar

1 oz Lemon Juice

2 Dashes Herbsaint(90 Proof) New Recipe

2 Dashes Aromatic Bitters

A Pirate’s Life for Me

1 ½ oz Appleton Estate 12
3/4 oz Aperol
1/4oz Cynar
3/4 oz Banana Syrup
Lime Juice-1/2 oz
2 Dashes The Bitter Truth Mole Bitters
Fee Brothers Whiskey Barrel Bitters-1 Dash

Released in June by Pernod-Ricard, the company behind Beefeater London Dry Gin, Beefeater 24, and Plymouth, Beefeater Summer is the 2nd ever variation of the centuries old Beefeater recipe.

After Master Distiller, Desmond Payne released Beefeater 24 in 2009 and built on the original Beefeater recipe with the additions of botanicals such as grapefruit peels, and Japanese Sencha Tea.

Desmond went back to the drawing board or in this case the still and took the original Beefeater recipe, added the botanicals of elderflower, hibiscus and black currant which he then bottles at eighty proof for a softer finish than that of the ninety proof Beefeater London Dry

Beefeater Summer Edition starts off with soft floral notes, and is expected with the lower proof, is less forward than traditional Beefeater London Dry. Once you get past these introductory floral notes, you’re greeted with touches of sweet orange, subtle seductive juniper, followed up by just barely there spice that ends in a slightly fruity finish.

Beefeater Summer Edition has a slightly limited run, so if you see on the shelves of your local liquor store, grab it before it’s gone.

West 12th Fizz

Beefeater Summer 2oz
1oz simple
1/2 oz Lemon
1/2 Campari
2 Dashes The Bitter Truth Aromatic Bitters
Eggwhite
Top with Club Soda

Twisted Point of View

1 ¾ oz beef summer
¾ oz Gran Centenario Rosangel
3 Dashes Yellow Chartreuse
¾ oz Rosemary Anise Syrup
Tbsp Dolin Blanc Vermouth

BÄRENJÄGER HONEY LIQUEUR ANNOUNCES FIRST-ANNUAL
NATIONAL BÄRENJAGER BÄRTENDER COMPETITION
Fighting for Their Honey, American Bartenders Face Off

New Rochelle, NY. –– For the second year in a row, Bärenjäger Honey Liqueur is kicking off the brand’s annual bartender competition. While last year, Bärenjäger initiated a contest that focused on New York area bar talent, this year’s contest invites national* bartenders as well as amateurs to submit innovative cocktails using Bärenjäger Honey Liqueur. With an A-list lineup of celebrity judges and a grand prize, which includes a trip for two to Oktoberfest, contestants are encouraged to fight for their honey using bar-smarts and creativity.

The panel of judges includes five nationally acclaimed industry mentors. Top mixologist Allen Katz of Southern Wine & Spirits, Spirits and Cocktails Geek Gary Regan of ArdentSpirits.com , both return as judges for the second year in a row. Joining the group are famed bar talents – Dushan Zaric, of Employees Only & Macao Trading Co., Tad Carducci from Tippling Brothers and Phil Ward, from the award-winning cocktail bars Death & Co. and Mayahuel.

These esteemed judges will score all submissions prior to selecting the top 6 recipes to move on to the final round. Finalists will mix off at a private event for media and industry heavyweights on September 20th in New York City for the grand prize of an all-expense paid trip for two to Oktoberfest 2010 in Munich, Germany and $1,000 in cash to sweeten the pot. Additionally, all guests of this event will be asked to cast their vote for best cocktail and the audience favorite will take home a check for $1,000.

In the forests of medieval Europe – during the 15th century, the Eastern Prussian bear trap company, Teucke & König, introduced Bärenjäger, a honey liqueur which translates to “Bear Hunter.” In an effort to end the struggle between man and bear, this sweet concoction was the first professionally produced Meschkinnes – mead-like moonshine made from honey by beekeepers and farmers – and was formulated to aid hunters in attracting bears and to lure them from their dwellings. Made in Germany, this 70 proof honey liqueur is made with premium quality honey from the Mexican province of Yucatan. Each liter bottle contains 300 grams of natural honey and a mixture of botanicals resulting in a subtly sweet, spicy and herb edged taste profile.

“If you want to get in on this year’s Bärenjäger competition, you’d better do some serious thinking—last year’s finalists were just superb,” says returning judge, gaz regan.“This year we anticipate even more cocktailian mastery from our contestants. I’m looking forward to another doozy of a competition.”

To enter the competition, visit www.barenjagerhoney.com and complete the online registration form by August 23, 2010. Must be at least 21 years of age to enter. No purchase necessary. The official rules and regulations can also be found on this site.

Bärenjäger Honey Liqueur is available in the United States in the liter, 750ml, 375ml, and 50ml sizes.

*Contest is not open to residents of Texas, Washington, California, Tennessee, Alaska and Hawaii.

I recently received an email in my inbox from Michael Dietsch of A Dash of Bitters and the man running this year’s Tales of the Cocktail Blog Site, www.talesblog.com. He asked if in addition to covering the behind the scenes experience of the Apprentice Program, if I could share some details on the application process behind the apprentice program.

I’m hoping the following helps shed some light on the application process.

The application for this year’s Apprentice Program went live on the Tales of the Cocktail website around February of this year, with notifications of acceptance going out around the beginning of May.

There were several sections of the application that had to be filled out before submission.
Some of these were pretty basic, such as name, work place, home city and whether or not you’ve served as an apprentice the previous year.

After filling out the basics, you moved to questions such as whether or not you’ve ever worked events with more than 500 attendees and have batched cocktails for large groups. And when they say batch, they mean by the bucket load. Think about making 3-5 cocktails, each for about 200 people within 90 minutes of an event starting and then serving these to a room full of people. Once you can wrap your head around this concept, you slowly begin to understand what being an apprentice means. Now think about doing this from 8am to 6pm each night, with nary a time for a break. Think about running around a large-scale hotel between events making sure everything is ready for that next seminar. This coupled with late nights out, is part of what being apprentice is about.That and the bonds and friendships you form with your fellow cap brothers and sisters. People that after pulling an all-nighter and working four out of the five seminars that day will sacrifice, much needed downtime to help you pull off that last seminar of the day.

Jumping back to the application, there are a few more questions involving the aforementioned batching experience, including a math problem. Yes a math problem. A boozy math problem, that begs the question why didn’t our high school math teachers use whisky and gin to demonstrate why we should have been paying attention back when we were still in school? So the math question at hand involved taking one cocktail with a plethora of ingredients in different measurements (ie: ounces, milliliters, and cups) and calculating how many ounces of each you would need to serve a large group of people.
If memory serves the number in question was about two hundred. One suggestion, if you do apply for next years apprentice program, get accepted and also happen to possess an Iphone. purchase an application called Converter . It’ll save you a few headaches since it lets you convert ounces to cups, milliliters to ounces, and everything else in between. But be careful not to drop your Iphone in a vat of whisky cocktails. Disclaimer-To my knowledge no iphones suffered this fate during the week.

After completing this section, you’re asked to submit both your favorite cocktail and an original recipe and explain the inspiration behind how this recipe came to be and why all the ingredients worked in the cocktail.

At this point you’re approaching the end to the submission process, but there are still three more questions. Two of them are yes or no questions- “Would you like to be an apprentice leader? “ and “Would you like to be part of Commis?”

If you answer this first question with “yes” you’ll more than likely be put in charge of running the prep, batching and serving of cocktails and spirits for a few of the seminars. Trust me it’s not as bad as it sounds, as you’ll be working with between 2-4 other caps for the seminar. So trust me it’ll be okay. Once you’ve clicked yes or no on this, the next question is regarding Commis. You’re probably thinking what is a commis exactly? In the culinary world, commis means a chef’s apprentice. And in the world of caps, it mean’s you’ll be one of about five leaders of the group, reporting directly to Don Lee who heads up the CAP Program. These folks have both my respect and my sympathy, while we all busted ourselves in the kitchen day and day out, this group of apprentices that served as commis, were always there when a crisis occurred, most of the time they were there before, able to avert any issues that came up. Whether this was missing ingredients, or a presenter trying to change all the recipes for their seminars two hours before the seminar was to occur. Gents, my hats off to all of you.

And the final question, “How’d you get into Cocktails?” With this last answer, you’re given the opportunity to tell your story, how you arrived at this application in the first place, and demonstrate your passion.

One last step, as with any application, references were needed.
With a few clicks of the keyboard you’re finally done. Time to click the submit button.

Once you click that submit button, it’s all over. You’ve gone ahead and done it. There’s no turning back now, you’ve applied for the Cocktail Apprentice Program. Now comes the waiting. If you’ve just read this and are thinking of applying for the Apprentice program, good luck and hope to see you next year.

As I write this, I’ve been back in New York City for about 24 hours —and the exhaustion is finally hitting me. After landing yesterday at 4pm, running home, showering, and unpacking, I headed to a USBGNY Mixer, which then led me to home and eventually passing out. My dreams were filled with recipes and images of batching cocktails—memories left over from the previous week.

About a week ago I posted that I had planned to chronicle a diary of what it’s like to be a Tales of the Cocktail Apprentice (or CAP). After hitting the ground running the first day, I began to realize that I might not be able to juggle both the media side and the Apprentice side as well as I had originally planned to. Once in the kitchen, any time I had hoped to have a camera in hand was replaced with an Oxo 32oz measuring cup or a knife. I’m not sure I’d have had it any other way.

After the majority of the Apprentices arrived Monday afternoon, we had a few hours to settle in before we started off the week. We were treated to dinner—some amazing fried chicken with all the fixin’s—along with some Stella at Jacques Imos.

The night eventually led us to New Orleans cocktail haven Cure, where most of us put the night to rest as we had an early morning call—the first of many.

Our second day on site—the Tuesday before Tales—started off with a meeting of all the Apprentices, CAP leaders, and Tales Staff. This, of course, included a cocktail. Unexpected to all attending the meeting, this also included a blessing from a voodoo priestess.

Ann Tunnermann, aka Mrs. Cocktail, and Paul Tunnermann., aka Mr. Cocktail, were kind enough to bring in a voodoo priestess to bless all the Apprentices and Tales Staff. Did it work, you ask?I’d like to think so, since all made it through the week relatively unscathed.

After each and every Apprentice was blessed (Thanks again Ann and Paul), we collected our Apprentice gift bags. Attached to each bag was the ever-so-important Apprentice badge, which enabled us complete access to Tales throughout the week without ever an issue. Along with these badges were our aprons, our Apprentice chef jackets, a Tony Abou Ganim (TAG) Bag and TAG Muddler, and a thank you bottle of Chartreuse V.E.P.

So what does being a Tales of the Cocktail Apprentice mean?

Work. And lots of it. Anyone thinking about applying for next year’s program should keep this in mind. By the end of the week, you’ll have pain in places on your body you never knew could feel pain.

The day of an Apprentice typically starts around 8:00 or 8:30am if you decide to sleep in. The work day usually ends at 6:00pm or so, at which point you shower (trust me—after working in a hot kitchen all day, you need one), find dinner, and then head off to whatever parties are happening on a given night. The night (morning) usually ends between 2:00 am and 4:00 am at the Old Absinthe House. Aside from this typical daily framework, the rest of the week is anything but “typical.”

For example, one of our assignments involved supplying two hundred liquor bottles half-filled with water for Stanislav Vadrna’s Seminar, “Ichigo/Ichie: One Chance/One Meeting the Way How to Synchronize the Bartenders Mind/Body,” in which he discussed the proper styles and techniques to make your guest feel at ease and get the most out of their visit to your bar.

The two hundred bottles were used by the seminar attendees to practice the art of opening and closing a liquor bottle.

Another seminar assignment involved placing down several hundred glasses for a tasting of straight spirits.

And we haven’t even gotten to the part about the cocktails.

Speaking of which—let’s talk cocktails—all those lovely libations people imbibed in throughout the week at each and every seminar. Most people likely enjoyed them without much of a thought about how the drinks got there. If you’re imagining a few guys using those 64oz shakers to shake up a few drinks then let me share with you what actually happened.

Well, before they got to you and other seminar attendees, the cocktails were prepared by the bucket load. Using lots of math (try batching cocktails for close to 200 people on the fly without a calculator!), a great deal of talent, and a few dashes of love, the Apprentices used the buckets pictured below to prep each and every cocktail.

Here are some of the tools we used to get them out to folks looking like actual cocktails.

And some more…

And no cocktail would be complete without a few key items. First of all, lots and lots of booze.

The below picture is from the “Booze Room” from which Apprentices would pull from once we figured out many bottles of a particular spirit a recipe called for. For example, if a presenter called for 100 Gin and Tonics with two ounces of gin per glass, we would more than likely pull eight 750ml bottles of gin, as each bottle contains about 25.6 ounces of gin.
This task often proved to be interesting when we had to adjust the recipes due to an inadequate supply of ingredients being received for a particular presentation.

And what cocktail would be complete without some citrus or other fruit?

So is participating in the Apprentice program worth it? In my opinion, an emphatic , ”Hell yes!!!” However, if you apply and are lucky enough to be accepted, keep in mind that you’ll be pushed to work possibly harder than you’ve ever worked with little time for breaks during the course of each day. On the other hand, the rewarding feeling of knowing that you took part in something so much bigger than one person and that you were involved in pulling off some amazing feats—not to mention the friends and contacts you make in the process—definitely make the whole experience worth the effort.

Would I do it again next year? I’d definitely like to, if the group will have me.

Ah, the group. I’m not sure the Apprentices could ask for a better group of leaders than the ones we were given. Don Lee, John Deragon, Leo Robitschek, Mike Ryan, Jeff Grdinich(aka Keebler), and Eric Simpkins ran a tight ship (well, as tightly as a ship can be run when its crew starts each day with shots of Del Maguey Tobala or Fernet) during five incredibly intense days of anything a boozy imagination could conjure, —all whilemanaging to keep it cool at all times, regardless of the situation. Our week included seminars that involved the use of chainsaws, moving liquid nitrogen from one side of the state to the other, among many other crazy situations; but with our leadership, we managed to pull through the week in one piece.

As I mentioned earlier, I unexpectedly put the camera aside fairly early on, so after the first day any pictures that I managed to snap were via the trusty ol’ iPhone. Luckily I managed to take a few of the kitchen that first day.

Other highlights of the week included a presentation on Mezcal by Mr. Del Maguey Himself—Ron Cooper, with a special appearance by Dave Wondrich.

A Cointreau Tasting presented by Erin Williams, Cointreau’s Resident Mixologist.

The Spirit Awards.

The way saw it, since I started off the week with coffee and a cocktail, I might as well end it in a similar fashion with coffee and a beer at the airport.

And a special thanks to my fellow Apprentices that I had the pleasure of working with throughout the week. A greater group of partners in this booze filled endeavor, one cannot ask for. After this week, I consider them all close friends.

Adam Robinson
Bradley Bolt
Bradley Farran
Brian Matthys
California Gold
Cassie Fellet
Chad Doll
Chris Hannah
Christine Nielsen
Christopher Churilla
Corey Bunnewith
Cristiana DeLucca
Cristina Dehlavi
Daniel de Oliveira
Don Lee
Eamon Rockey
Eric Simpkins
Erica Pearce
Eryn Reece
Evan Martin
Frank Cisneros
Franky Marshall
Jamie Kilgore
Jared Schubert
Jeff Grdinich
John Deragon
Jonathan Armstrong
Kimberly Patton-Bragg
Leo Robitschek
Luis Bustamante
Matthew Eggleston
Meaghan Dorman
Michelle Peake
Mike Ryan
Naomi Schimek
Navarro Carr
Neil Kopplin
Nicholas Jarrett
Patrick O’Brien
Rachel Kim
Robert Leavey
Sharon Floyd
Sierra Zimei
Sudeep Rangi
Summer Voelker
Sylvia Cosmopoulos
Ted Kilgore
Thomas Klus
Thomas Speechley
Tiffany Soles
William Dollard