Stocking the nursery-school bar, take 2

[Fat Guy]

Christopher (plattetude), you mentioned that you think Aperol is kosher. Where are you getting that information? I don't want to go too far down the Aperol path without confirming that.

[slkinsey]

There is no indication of kosher certification on my bottle of Aperol.

[Fat Guy]

I examined Aperol bottles at K&D and also found no certification.

Apparently Angostura now has (as Chris Amirault noted) certification. My older bottle doesn't, so I have to find some.

[Fat Guy]

Rose's lime does have certification so I bought a few bottles this morning and will work it in to that tequila/pineapple drink.

I found some kosher orange oil, highly concentrated. I acquired a tiny bottle so maybe I'll work that in somewhere.

No kosher ginger syrup out there that I could find. The only solution I can think of there is to cook up a batch at the rabbi's apartment some time this week. I'm not sure the effort is justified, though he is excellent company and would probably indulge me.

Llords triple sec seems to be the kosher option that's not crazy expensive. Indeed, it's 5 bucks a liter. I'm sure it's junk but maybe it won't show much in a mixed drink.

[Fat Guy]

Pom does have certification, albeit well-hidden on the packaging.

[Fat Guy]

The good Dole pineapple juice that comes in half gallons in the refrigerator section has kosher certification. I think that may make for a passable cocktail with cheap tequila and Rose's lime, plus whatever else needs to go in to balance it -- maybe some fresh lime, some bitters, ginger syrup if it can be done... Also this one demands to be decorated with paper umbrella toothpicks.

[Fat Guy]

With Angostura bitters, what's the quantity of product needed for a traditional Champagne cocktail? It's just a few drops but how is that measured as a portion of a 10-ounce bottle? How many bottles would it take to make like 150 Champagne cocktails?

And where do I get Angostura bitters these days? I thought they were a straightforward supermarket item but I checked two supermarkets and Fairway and nobody had them -- they just had stuff like Mrs. T's bloody Mary mix, and Grenadine.

[slkinsey]

Kalustyan's surely has Angostura bitters (be aware that we are in the midst of a temporary shortage of Angostura, so it's possible you may have some trouble finding it).

One large bottle, or perhaps two to be safe, should be more than enough for 150 champagne cocktails. If you figure on, say, 2 dashes per cocktail it shouldn't be too terribly difficult to simply dash 300 dashes into your batch container.

[thirtyoneknots]

Educate me if you would on how the system works: I was under the impression that "pareve" meant "neutral" or something similar and was therefore allowed in most circumstances...is this not the case? Or can you just not find the Monin syrups?

[Fat Guy]

I haven't yet been to Kalustyan's, but so far I haven't found a bottle of Angostura bitters anywhere. I've surely been to 10 stores now. It's amusing to observe the reactions when you ask supermarket clerks "Do you have bitters?" Mostly they're like "What's that?" Eventually you get steered to wherever the Rose's lime is. But at this juncture in history there doesn't appear to be any Angostura on the shelves.

[Fat Guy]

Educate me if you would on how the system works: I was under the impression that "pareve" meant "neutral" or something similar and was therefore allowed in most circumstances...is this not the case? Or can you just not find the Monin syrups?

I just haven't seen the Monin syrups. The closest I came was a false alarm at Food Emporium, where they stock Monini olive oil.

[Shalmanese]

Any restaurant supply store should have the full array of monin syrups as it's a pretty common ingredient in the cafe trade.

[Fat Guy]

The restaurant-supply stores around here seem only to sell equipment. I called a couple of the places I normally use for pots and pans and such, and they were like "Huh?" I've also emailed the sales rep listed for the NY area to see if he has ideas on retailers.

[slkinsey]

Zabar's has Monin. It's on the right hand side of that little passageway leading into the coffee area. Right across from the escargots (of course!).

Buon Italia has the Torani stuff, I think.

Fairway at 72nd Street has a ton of syrups over in that side-aisle between the coffee area and the cheese area. Not sure what brand.

Edited February 1, 2010 by slkinsey (log)

[Fat Guy]

I was in Zabar's this morning. I went in to look for bitters. I must have been staring at the Monin rack for 2 or 3 minutes before I realized it was a Monin rack. I picked up a bottle of the ginger syrup for R&D. However, I also got in touch with the NJ distributor and I think I can get a better price from him. In any event, we'll have Monin ginger syrup. No bitters yet, though. I still have to try the Dean & DeLuca branch near my house, and if that doesn't work I guess I'll have to schlep to Kalustyan's.

The triple sec solution is going to be DeKuyper. It's probably not as gross as LLords, though probably not great either. But it has kosher certification and I'm hoping it's going to be decent in a mixed drink.

The Bourbon is going to be Evan Williams.

So that 3:2:1 cocktail will be Evan Williams bourbon : DeKuyper triple sec : fresh lemon juice. I'll make one tonight to see if it needs any simple syrup. I guess garnished with a lemon half-round? I don't know.

The tequila will be Juarez silver.

That tequila cocktail will be some mixture of Juarez silver tequila, Dole pineapple juice, Rose's lime, fresh lime and ginger syrup, garnished with pomegranate syrup for sort of a tequila sunrise-type effect. Anybody with thoughts on ratios please let me know. Otherwise I'm just going to do it by trial and error tonight.

I got those little paper umbrellas for the tequila cocktail.

I still need bitters for the Champagne cocktail, but when I get them I'm thinking to do a sugar cube with a few drops of bitters (or maybe I'll mix bitters and that orange oil I found), topped off with Herzog sparkling. Garnished with a lemon twist, I guess?

For batching, I have four brand-new/never-defiled medium squeeze bottles for the pomegranate syrup and a couple of tiny ones for the bitters or bitters mixture. The Champagne cocktail doesn't need big batch containers because the volume of liquid comes out of Champagne bottles. For the other two, I was thinking of getting a case of Poland Spring gallon plastic jugs of water, dumping the water, and drawing lines on the sides in magic marker for the different measures. I'm sure I can engineer that. I assume for just a few hours the plastic won't be particularly reactive with the mixes?

All wisdom welcome. I absolutely do not know what I'm doing and will need to make a mighty effort to fake it on Saturday night.

[plattetude]

Christopher (plattetude), you mentioned that you think Aperol is kosher. Where are you getting that information? I don't want to go too far down the Aperol path without confirming that.

Sorry for taking you on a misguided tangent. I saw a listing on a website that touted Aperol as kosher, but I suppose you can find almost anything on the web, right or wrong, if you look long enough.

Christopher

[Fat Guy]

Tonight I had some friends over and ran through the three cocktails. They were well received, but there's still some work to do.

The Champagne cocktail came out very well, I thought. I made a mixture of Angostura bitters (I still need to get more of these -- I was working from my home supply which is down to an ounce or so) and orange oil, then soaked sugar cubes:

Then topped off with Champagne and a lemon twist:

I wasn't happy with my lemon twists, and worse the caterer will be providing the twists so I'll have no control over them. Still, I thought that flavor-wise this was a good cocktail.

Next, the tequila/pineapple/lime/ginger cocktail. Monin ginger syrup is a good product -- it elevated this cocktail above the mundane sweet-punch-like cocktail norm. I made a pomegranate syrup from Pom and sugar and topped the drink with some of it out of the squeeze bottle. But it didn't give a particularly nice effect. It just made the cocktail a reddish-brown color.

I made a batch in a Mason jar and used a cocktail shaker to do this as an up drink. I wonder if it will be possible to pull that off at the event. I suppose it will be fine on the rocks if necessary.

The 3:2:1 Bourbon:triple sec:lemon cocktail was, in my opinion, excellent. But I need a better garnish. The lemon is redundant with the lemon twist from the Champagne cocktail and I did a lame placement.

I also felt there wasn't enough diversity in the colors of the cocktails.

[Fat Guy]

I guess I need a fresh pineapple cube to weigh down the cocktail umbrella.

[thirtyoneknots]

I made a pomegranate syrup from Pom and sugar and topped the drink with some of it out of the squeeze bottle. But it didn't give a particularly nice effect. It just made the cocktail a reddish-brown color.

Pom isn't going to give the color saturation that normal grenadine might, which is part of the reason I've been basing my last few batches of grenadine on Monin Pomegranate Concentrate. Easier (and far cheaper) to get the flavor and color intensity you want from grenadine without sacrificing the flavor at all. Recipes that call for a barspoon or dash of grenadine simply cannot be made as written with 1:1 pom:sugar if you want any flavor or color in the drink. Since switching to the Monin concentrate we've been able to modify several recipes at work (where color was the primary objective of the ingredient) from using a generous barspoon to a scant dash--and still getting better color than before.

May work for you, too, since you liked the ginger syrup.

[Fat Guy]

Excellent idea. So you're talking about this product, right:

http://www.moninstore.com/prod_Detail.html?prodID=43&flavor=Pomegranate

And I just fill a squeeze bottle with it and squeeze maybe 1/4 ounce on top of the cocktail as a garnish?

I got hold of the Monin distributor in New Jersey who handles restaurants and bars in the city. He's delivering to a restaurant a few blocks from my house early Wednesday morning so he's going to bring me half a case of ginger syrup, and I can just as easily get a few bottles of pomegranate added to the order.

[thirtyoneknots]

Excellent idea. So you're talking about this product, right:

http://www.moninstore.com/prod_Detail.html?prodID=43&flavor=Pomegranate

And I just fill a squeeze bottle with it and squeeze maybe 1/4 ounce on top of the cocktail as a garnish?

I got hold of the Monin distributor in New Jersey who handles restaurants and bars in the city. He's delivering to a restaurant a few blocks from my house early Wednesday morning so he's going to bring me half a case of ginger syrup, and I can just as easily get a few bottles of pomegranate added to the order.

The stuff I've been using is actually labelled as 'Pomegranate Concentrate' I think, but I don't see that on the website. In either case that stuff should work just fine employed in the manner in which you suggest.

[Fat Guy]

We're done with acquisition and ordering, and the recipes are locked in. This is the shopping list. I can't believe how much is involved in making three cocktails and stocking a minor bar for 150 people. Here are the details for those who are into this sort of thing.

K&D SHOPPING LIST

For the white and red wines:

WHITE: Herzog Wine Cellars Baron Herzog Chenin Blanc 2007 (SKU2567) $8.99/btl

RED: Herzog Wine Cellars Baron Herzog Old Vine Zinfandel 2006 (SKU11061) $13.99/btl

For the cocktails:

CHAMPAGNE COCKTAIL: Herzog Wine Cellars Baron Herzog Brut Champagne (SKU3992) $10.99/btl

TEQUILA COCKTAIL: Juarez Silver Tequila (SKU23410) $13.59/liter

SOUR COCKTAIL: Evan Williams Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey (SKU2982) $15.29/liter

For the Champagne cocktails, the pour is just under 5 ounces in my glasses. Assuming the rental glasses are similar in size that gives us 5 pours per bottle. That means 60 pours per case of Champagne. If we want to have the capacity to serve 150 Champagne cocktails and also pour straight Champagne if anybody asks, that means 3 cases of Champagne.

For the Tequila cocktails, assuming we serve them straight up after shaking the mix in cocktail shakers, the ratio is 6 tequila:1 fresh lime:1 lime cordial:1 ginger syrup:10 pineapple juice. The pour size is about 6 ounces in either a rocks glass or a stemless martini glass, because once shaken with ice and garnished with pomegranate syrup the 6 ounces will nearly top off an 8-ounce glass. So for 150 cocktails that means we need 900 total ounces of base mixture. Backing out the 6:1:1:1:10 ratio, that means we need 300 ounces of tequila, or 9 liters. The bottle size is 1 liter so we need 9 bottles.

For the sour cocktail, assuming a small rocks glass, the pour size is about 4 ounces because it's a rocks drink. 150 cocktails worth totals 600 ounces. In the 3:2:1 ratio that means 300 ounces of Bourbon. As above, that works out to 9 bottles.

Vodka and Gin

For vodka and gin at the bar:

Vodka: Luksusowa Vodka (SKU1251) $17.99/liter

Gin: Boodles Gin (SKU14835) $21.99/750ml

FRESHDIRECT SHOPPING LIST

Mixers for the vodka and gin

Water (still and sparkling water)

Soft drinks

Pineapple juice. We will need 500 ounces of Dole pineapple juice. 500 ounces is about 4 gallons. The juice comes in half-gallon cartons (http://www.freshdirect.com/category.jsp?catId=dai_juice_pine&prodCatId=dai_juice_pine&productId=dai_dole_pineappl_01&rank=1&trk=srch&trkd=relv) so we need 8 half-gallon cartons.

Gallon jugs of water. We're ordering a case of 6 x 1-gallon bottles of Poland Spring water. I will dump out the water at the school and use the gallon jugs to hold the cocktail mixtures, marking off the levels with magic marker. This is the easiest way to do it that I can think of. It's only $8.79 for the case and that's many times cheaper than buying any other containers I've seen. (http://www.freshdirect.com/category.jsp?catId=gro_bev_cs_wtr&prodCatId=gro_bev_cs_wtr&productId=gro_poland_galcase&rank=13&trk=srch&trkd=relv)

FROM THE CATERER

CHAMPAGNE COCKTAIL:

I've asked for orange twists but said lemon twists will do. Either way, I asked that they be long twists. (Last year the caterer provided tiny, skinny lemon twists that were about an inch long and were nearly invisible in the glass. We need something long and substantial enough to be visible.)

TEQUILA COCKTAIL:

We'll need 50 ounces of fresh lime juice. Call it 2 quarts.

For the garnish, pineapple chunks. (They will be skewered onto the toothpick umbrellas.)

SOUR COCKTAIL:

We will need 200 ounces of fresh lemon juice. That's 6.25 quarts. That's a lot of lemon juice but we need it because we can't possibly squeeze that much ourselves by hand.

Lemon wedges. I've asked for either half- or quarter-rounds of lemon slices for garnish. (The reason I was hoping for orange twists for the Champagne cocktails was to avoid redundancy here, but if we have two lemon garnishes it's not the end of the world.)

The caterer will bring several cocktail shakers, so they can do the tequila cocktail. They can probably fit 3 or 4 pours in a shaker so it's not like it will have to be done 150 times.

STUFF I ALREADY HAVE

CHAMPAGNE COCKTAIL:

I have the sugar cubes, the components of the bitters (all kosher certified), and new squeeze bottles. I'll mix the bitters in the squeeze bottles at the school right before the event so as not to break kashruth.

TEQUILA COCKTAIL:

I have the lime cordial, squeeze bottles and umbrella toothpicks. Ginger syrup and pomegranate syrup are on order.

SOUR COCKTAIL:

I have the triple sec.

OTHER

A ton of ice.

[Fat Guy]

Tonight is the night. I finally have everything. The driver for the Monin syrup distributor in New Jersey called me yesterday morning at 6:45 to arrange the handoff. The per-bottle savings were only about 25% as opposed to buying at Zabar's, but that added up to $25 of the school's money plus I didn't find out about Zabar's until after I'd placed the order. And it makes for a better story to get the stuff off a truck at 6:45am.

I just wrote up some instructions for the bartenders. I'll be arriving early at the event, hoping all the supplies are there, and making the batch mixtures. Then I'll demo the drinks for the bartenders during the pre-service meeting and I'll give them instruction/reminder sheets.

BAR INSTRUCTIONS

GUITAR PLAYER

(Contains: a sugar cube soaked in our house-blend orange bitters, topped off with Herzog Brut)

1. Champagne flute

2. 1 sugar cube in bottom of flute

3. A few drops of bitters from squeeze bottle to wet the sugar cube

4. Top off with Champagne (5oz pour)

5. Twist garnish

CINDY SUNRISE

(Contains: Juarez silver tequila, pineapple juice, fresh lime juice, lime cordial and ginger, topped with Monin pomegranate syrup)

1. AP glass

2. Shake approx 6 ounces in cocktail shaker with ice (can double, triple, etc.)

3. Pour straight up

4. Squeeze a little pomegranate syrup on top

5. Garnish with umbrella pick and pineapple chunk

MATVEY SOUR

(Contains: Evan Williams Extra-Aged Bourbon, triple sec and fresh lemon juice in a 3:2:1 ratio)

1. AP glass

2. Rocks

3. Pour approx 4 oz over rocks

4. Lemon slice garnish

[Dorek]

Good luck!

[Fat Guy]

I can't believe how many things went wrong tonight. It's a miracle that we managed to serve three cocktails to a large crowd, and even more of a miracle that they were well received.

First of all the glasses. There were Champagne flutes but no rocks glasses or martini glasses -- just "all-purpose glasses." These all-purpose glasses looked basically like white-wine glasses. Which was fine for the tequila cocktail but kind of silly for the bourbon cocktail on the rocks. The glasses were also pretty damn big, so the drinks kind of got lost in them. The pineapple juice, lemon juice, lime juice and pineapple chunks were all supposed to be fresh. But what showed up were cans from Dole and bottles from ReaLemon and ReaLime. There was no space to work, no usable measuring device, no tool to open the cans of pineapple juice. The caterer only brought one cocktail shaker. And best of all we didn't have enough Bourbon so I had to run out in the middle of the event to buy more.

Everybody seemed to love the cocktails, though, except for one guy who came back to the bar with his Bourbon cocktail to ask to have more fake lemon juice added.