opinionated alchemist

The older I become, the more I see opportunities to do some really significant (and new stuff) without using arsenic in cocktails and poison people (or like a trend a couple of years ago, make tobacco infusions , which are basically more poisonous than arsenic - as nicotine is quite a bit more poisonou s...). Off course I am kidding - however you don't need to mix Bourbon with Mountain Dew to do something really exciting... In the place I have worked before we did a barrel aged Last Word. This was actually a great idea - the cocktail was pretty awesome. But as we used a very small oak vessel, the oak was quickly exhausted and we tried to age Glenmorangie in it (Last Word finished Glenmorangie 10 years old). It was a success - not for everyone (especially the Chartreuse gave the whisky a hint of funk, which isn't often experienced) - but it was subtle enough and I loved how different yet recognizable (Glenmorangie) it has been   Now we are aging Negroni (thanks to the ...

It seems that there is for the moment a big Old Fashioned promotion going on. Angostura, which is one ingredient, which is in essentially every bar, tried to push their popularity even further - well they know, that 99% of all bartenders and bars are using their product. But what is an Old Fashioned? And what makes an Old Fashioned an Old Fashioned? I have been annoyed, when one of my favorite YouTube channels "How to Drink" really screwed up with this cocktail. So first the video below... Why did Greg screwed up? Let's start first with the origins.  We can safely presume, that the Old Fashioned was the original cocktail: The first definition of cocktail known to be an alcoholic beverage appeared in The Balance and Columbian Repository ( Hudson, New York ) May 13, 1806; editor Harry Croswell answered the question, "What is a cocktail?": Cock-tail is a stimulating liquor, composed of spirits of any kind, sugar, water, and bitter...