Sauced Exclusive! An Experiment with Cocktails at Rob Roy
On October 1st, some of Seattle’s best bartenders gathered to concoct mixed drinks from rare and bizarre ingredients. Here’s what happened.
Posted by: Jessica Voelker on Oct 09, 2009 at 07:45AM
1 Comments
View Slideshow » Illustration:
From Mung beans to hibiscus flowers: Charles Munat’s collection of potable curios.
View Slideshow »This shiny beauty from Zane was one of the best of the lot. “Stir ingredients with ice” says Zane. "Then strain into cocktail glass and squeeze the oil from a swath of lemon on top of the drink. Discard the lemon peel. (1.5oz gin, .5oz Zaya rum, .75oz Lillet, 1 barspoon yellow chartreuse, spritz of lemon oil.)
View Slideshow »Paul Clarke’s memorable first effort: Not for the weak of spirit. Stir with ice & strain into cocktail glass. (2oz rye white dog infused with 1tsp jasmine tea, 1/4oz myrtle berry liqueur. 1 dash Marshall’s Moonshine Bitters
1 tsp Gosling’s Black Seal Rum.)
From front right: Andrew, Paul, Jaime, and Zane, Philip.
View Slideshow »Philip Trickey calls this one the Spiced Fudge Sundae. He made it with kijafa, a Danish cherry wine. (1oz spiced rum. .5oz orgeat, 2 dashes of cherry bitters, .5oz vanilla bean vodka .25oz Kijafa.)
View Slideshow »“Fortune favors the bold,” said Andrew Bohrer at some point during the mayhem. That should be the name of his five-alarm cocktail featuring muddled red pepper. (1.5oz spiced rum, 1.5oz tea liqueur, .5oz Orgeat, .5oz pineapple juice 1 red pepper, muddled.)
View Slideshow » Illustration:Another winner from Zane. Excellent fall drink. (1.5oz Pumpkin moonshine, .5oz Lemon, .5oz Lime, .5oz House made dark Falernum 1 egg white.)
View Slideshow »A rep for Corsair, a micro-distillery in Kentucky brought all these bottles. The pumpkin moonshine was a favorite.
View Slideshow »Andrew used the Corsair red absinthe in this one. (Spiced rum 1.5oz, Red absinthe 1oz, pineapple juice 1oz, lemon juice .5oz.)
View Slideshow »The drinks lined up along the Rob Roy bar as the bartenders kept busting out new concoctions.
View Slideshow » Illustration:Jay’s tequila mixer. Blanco tequila, lime, egg whites, Canton Ginger Liqueur, Genepi liqueur and a
lime twist. If you want a more specific recipe, you’ll have to go to Sambar and ask him—Jay’s a hard guy to get ahold of.
Jamie Boudreau lived up to his reputation with this super delicious cocktail featuring tapioca pearls. (6-8 Tapioca pearls, 1 oz tea liqueur,1 oz aperol, Champagne to top, lemon twist.)
View Slideshow » Illustration:It tasted better than it photographed. This was Andrew Bohrer’s first drink of the afternoon. The sage and myrtle berry liqueur were a tasty combo.(1.5oz myrtle berry liqueur, 1.5oz Gin, lemon juice from ½ lemon, muddled sage, Sage garnish.)
View Slideshow » Illustration:From Paul Clarke: “Shake with ice, strain into cocktail glass, garnish with hibiscus blossom.” (2oz Corsair gin, 1/4oz tea liqueur, 1/2oz lemon, 1/4oz creme de cassis, two hibiscus blossoms, muddled with a barspoon of their syrup.)
View Slideshow » Illustration:I promised Jamie Boudreau his peanut butter cocktail recipe would die with us in that room—but I couldn’t resist showing off that campfire hibiscus flower garnish. Genius.
Charles Munat is a collector of rare spirits and liqueurs and a frequenter of Seattle cocktail bars. In preparation for a move to Argentina, Munat has begun cleaning out his collection. How fun, Munat and I thought, to gather some of Seattle’s best bartenders, present them with these bizarre boozes—plus some unconventional pantry items—and see what they’d get up to.
On October 1st, we did. Bartenders Jamie Boudreau, Andrew Bohrer, Zane Harris, Paul Clarke, Philip Trickey, and Jay Kuehner gathered at Rob Roy. (Anu Apte, who owns Rob Roy with Harris, was there too, but she seemed to be actually working or something. Sadly we have no samples from her.)
Here’s what Charles brought the barmen:
Satoh Shochu (60% sweet potato/40% rice) from Japan
Tiffin Tea Liqueur from Germany
Tremontis Mirto myrtle berry liqueur from Italy
Red mung beans
Tapioca pearls
Wild hibiscus flowers in syrup
Organic creamy peanut butter
Munat also invited a rep from Corsair, a microdistillery in Kentucky whose bottles will soon to be sold in Washington.
The bartenders jumped right it—Boudreau showed he meant business by reaching for the mung bean jar, Bohrer started intently muddling sage with the wooden muddling stick he calls “Teddy.” It was Harris was who first picked up the peanut butter.
“Can we agree,” Harris said later, when it was all over and his bar was sticky with hibiscus syrup and littered with dirty coupe glasses full or warm drinks and wilted garnish. “That we should never make cocktails with peanut butter?”
In truth, the peanut butter drinks—a strange take on pb&J from Harris, a muddy mixer made with Polish porter by Bohrer, and some crazy-textured cocktail by Boudreau (it should be force fed to anyone who says the word “mouthfeel” too often)—were kind of dreadful.
But the rest? Delicious and impressive. I knew these guys were good, but these spontaneous mixers showed the breadth of their knowledge and creativity.
Click on the slideshow for recipes and pictures. You’re bound to be inspired.
***************************************************************************
Unfortunately, we were unable to photograph all the drinks from the day, including a surprisingly tasty mung bean drink from Jamie Boudreau (below) and two drinks from Jay Kuehner. I’m working on getting recipes for Kuehner’s cocktails.
Jamie Boudreau’s mung bean cocktail
1.5oz gin
.75 oz Lillet
8 barspoons mung beans, muddled
Dash of simple syrup (2:1)
Orange zest for garnish
[ALL PHOTOS BY LEAH KRAUS]
Nice article, Jessica. I had a great time.
I should mention, though, that at the last minute rather than pull impossible-to-find liquors from my collection, I picked up the shochu, tea liquor, and myrtle-berry liquor online from DrinkUpNY — all were suggested by one of their employees, and DrinkUpNY owner, Kamal, waived the overnight shipping charges to help out. I wanted to pick obscure liquors, but ones that readers could find if they wanted to reproduce the drinks. As for the Corsair products used in the drinks, they should be available in Washington state soon, I think. The other ingredients you can get at any good grocery store or in the International District.
The peanut butter and Goldfish foam cocktail with stout beer in it that Andrew created was far and away the most horrifying concoction, but I actually liked a couple of the peanut butter drinks (though not as a regular thing). One tasted weirdly like liquid Butterfinger or something like that.
We should make this a regular thing, but with different ingredients and a rotating cast of bartenders. And we should let people come watch and taste. The drinks really were spectacular.