Kohai

Sounds a bit rough. This may be a silly request but I'd love to see any blueprints/schematics/diagrams of what you're describing. Who planned the bar layout? Is it your perception that those challenges could have avoided with different (or, better) bar design? I only went to Whistler in Chicago once, but I remember that they were doing a good job of cranking out good drinks in volume with a non-ideal bar layout, to say the least. Which is to say, solutions can be found. It sounds like you might have already thought about this, but what about building upwards? Racks of glassware (wine glasses or anything footed that needn't be chilled) hanging over the bartop, etc? Another thought: is it better for servers to pick up their drinks at the service station, rather than at the kitchen door on the other side of the bar? What do you guys do for your juice? Squeeze it preshift? ETA: OK, I'm looking over the pictures on the blog. Looks like quite a challenge!

Barbacks/quickly/every hour or as needed/in standard ice buckets? But this answer is probably not so different from what you're doing now, and therefore not helpful to your question. What is your system now and what problems do you see that you want to fix?

OK, what about service wells? For how many guests can a single service well produce quality (jiggered) drinks without sacrificing speed? Can two service wells handle a room that seats 100? Of course, this depends on the bartender. It also depends on the layout of the service well. Has anyone used layouts that they thought were particularly well-thought out - or encountered nightmarish layouts to avoid? (Ice should/shouldn't go there, etc.)

Luxardo Maraschino is up there for me. What can't that stuff do?

This works pretty well for a light, summery drink. 1.5 oz. blanco tequila 1.5 oz. Noilly Prat Dry (skant) .5 oz lemon .5 oz simple 3 thick slices cucumber In a shaker, muddle cucumber into vermouth. Add remaining ingredients and ice, shake and double-strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish somehow. Don't have a name yet. I'm tired of naming drinks after Mexican stuff just because they use tequila. I half-seriously want to call it the Snozzcumber, after the ubiquitous vegetable in Roald Dahl's The BFG. But no one would ever order it.

Are manual juicers good for large citrus like a grapefruit or an orange? What do places like the Violet Hour, Pegu, etc. use?

OK, that makes sense. I like the idea of pre-picking before service in particular, though a problem may arise when customers start specifying how many olives. (Out of curiosity, do places like Pegu do stuffed olives?) We keep our olives in a small dish with minimal juice in the bowl (so as to keep fingers clean). These are replenished from the large jar several times during a shift using a clean spoon. Under such storage conditions, I have no ethical problem plucking olives from the top of the little pile and jabbing them onto a pick with my fingers. I wonder if a pick is even necessary. Or pitted olives, for that matter (unpitted would eliminate calls for blue-cheese stuffed olives, for one thing). I like olives in Japan which are often unpitted, and you get one on the tip of a metal pin. Very classy. I also like the idea of serving them on the side and letting guests add as they wish. Nothing ruins the ritual of a martini for me like adding olives or brine to it. Just makes me sad. If I had my druthers, I'd serve a few olives in brine in a little shot glass on the side, and let them ruin the drink as they saw fit.

How, indeed? If you don't trust your bartender to adhere to the basic level of cleanliness required to safely handle olives then holding jiggers, picking mint, squeezing a lemon wedge or, hell, just putting a straw in a drink seems equally "cringe-worthy".

Does anyone know the origin of the tradition of martini olives? Did it start with FDR? A no-olive martini, me.

Bringing this back because it's suddenly becoming pertinent for me. What about citrus juicers? What's the best route, a press-style juicer or an electric juicer whose, um, "juicing part" spins? I always thought those electric juicers were a no-go because they took some of the bitter white pith off as well. But I've been told that the press-style juicer is a huge pain in the ass. What's the best way?

On the aquavit front, I've got something I really really like. 3 oz. Linie Aquavit 1/2 oz. Luxardo Maraschino (generous) 1 dash orange bitters Rye whiskey (Wild Turkey 101) Garnish orange twist Rinse a wine glass or rocks glass with rye whiskey, thoroughly coating it, then discard. Stir together first three ingredients and strain into glass. Garnish with an orange twist. Basically an Improved Aquavit Cocktail with a rinse. Works well, for me. Name withheld for the moment.

File this under "quibbling", but wouldn't a circa-1806 version simply be called a "Bourbon Cocktail" (or "Cock-tail")? It's true that they are almost identical (the OF's lemon/orange twist being the differentiating feature), but in historical terms, wasn't the Old-Fashioned Cocktail a variation on the original Cocktail? It's my understanding that the OF came later, when there were "new-fashioned" cocktails (Improveds, Fancys, etc.) with which to be "old-fashioned" in comparison. This is something that I believe Mr. Wondrich has stated earlier in this thread, as well as in Imbibe. All that aside, I'd be very curious to know which version your audience prefers. In my experience one taste of the "real thing", old-school and well-made, will cause people to forever forswear the garbage and the soda water.

Bostonapothecary: What kind of weighted pitchers are you using? And this might be better in a separate syrup thread, but anyway: can anyone tell me the problem with making simple syrup using hot or boiling water? I have heard a lot about the the superiority of cold-processed (ie, dissolved by shaking at room temperature) simple syrups but I am not sure what the advantage is. Help?

If syrup was good enough for Embury, it's good enough for me. I'm not sure I see the benefit of sugar cubes beyond placating that nagging purist demon perched on my shoulder.

I've been seeing something strange with Bluecoat. Some of the bottles - at least two of the six that we have - have a weird "corked" flavor, very similar to the flavor of corked wine. Some sort of synthetic, moldy ick going on. It really is odd. Anyone else run into this?

Chris, The Japanese instructions do not call for hot or warm water, despite that picture of the kettle. They merely state that water expands when it freezes, so the molds should be filled to the line indicated - not too high, not too low. I noticed that there was a second half to your instruction manual which was cut off by the edge of your photo. The clue to why your spheres are cracking might be found there.

If it's red onions you're after... Could you pickle them in red wine vinegar?

Ah. Well there is that. Guess I will be abandoning that practice.

Right, the logical conclusion to this method would be to just not shake at all: keep the liquor in the freezer and measure everything directly into a chilled glass, then add the appropriate amount of water. To be honest, I'm surprised that no one has tried this yet (that I've heard of) since I think it's occurred to everyone at some point or another. It seems like something the molecular mixology movement might love.

As regards real-world solutions... After I measure ingredients into a shaker tin (without ice), I push the tin into the ice well, spin it, and leave it on the ice for at least 30 seconds (while I prep a garnish, sugar a rim, or prepare another drink on the ticket, for example). The hope is that doing this will lower the temperature of the metal and prechill the liquid inside without dilution. Then I add ice and stir or shake. I'm not sure if this makes much of a difference, however.

Hmmm... I guess it seems a bit more complicated than that, to me. I feel like there are variables that aren't so constant. As someone observed above, ice from different parts of the well (center, edges, top, bottom, etc) is different. Even bars that top off the ice well every thirty minutes probably see slight changes in the character of that ice within that half-hour, and a lot of bars don't do this in the first place. If using several chilled ingredients (vermouth, juices) those will have a slight impact on the starting temperature of the mix. And just as there are factors that influence time perception, couldn't there be factors that influence the consistency of a bartender's technique? A bartender will probably shake with a different strength at the beginning of the night than at the end, for example. This could result in different amounts of ice breakage, thus more surface area, thus more dilution. It seems like the same argument could be made for speed of shake. Bartenders simply will not be using the exact same shaking style throughout the course of a night. Now, I'll grant you, the variables above could be pretty small, if they even exist at all. But it seems to me that, as much as anything else, controlling water dilution is pretty crucial and even a few percentage points one way or another could mean the difference between a good drink and a great one. Or maybe everything I just wrote is crap. I'm still thinking this one through.

Noted. Elsewhere, I read with great interest your thoughts on freepouring, Sam. Do you have any thoughts on the difficulties of controlling dilution by "feel"?

On a somewhat related note, I would be curious to know how people here gauge ice meltage when they are shaking a drink. What metrics are useful? Sound? Feel? Time and experience? I've been thinking about what has been posted elsewhere here about the inherent inaccuracy of freepouring. It occurs to me that, similarly, for a bartender to (a.) know the exact optimal amount of dilution for each particular cocktail, (b.) adjust for all variables such as wet/dry/very cold ice, chilled liquids, room temperature and (c.) perfectly gauge when the mix in the shaker has reached that point, by whatever metric... well, that seems difficult, to say the least. Anyway, I'd be curious to know how others do't. ETA: "Kold Draft is not a substitute for technique." Agreed. On the other hand, can technique be a substitute for KD? If Flatiron could do it without KD, is KD all that necessary? Are bars with KD just slowing themselves down because they have to shake longer? Just wondering aloud.

We've got it back in Minneapolis. Relief! I ordered a case just to be safe.

I've heard Bar Rouge in Shanghai is spectacular; can't personally vouch for that, however. In Tokyo: - Uyeda Kazuo's Bar Tender. Definitely. (Browsing other threads on this site will show that I am biased in this.) - Hana No Ishi in Shibuya (emphasis on a la minute fresh fruit cocktails) - Lady Jane Booze Jazz in Shimokitazawa (awesome smoky jazz bar with only decent drinks) Check out Ginza for the snooty, classicist stuff (extended pinkies and tuxedos and whatnot). Check out Shibuya and Shinjuku for the younger, hipper scene. That's my two yen.