No, I’m not going to lock myself in a room and do a bunch of heroin until I come out with the greatest cocktail menu of all time. No, I’m not relating cocktail menu creation to one of the greatest jazz albums, if not the greatest jazz album of all time. Yes, I’m a little bummed about the menu right now. I’ve had many ideas but no time to execute, no time to go to the farmer’s market, and in general just a lot of real life shit going on and not much dwelling time for R&D.

Life was so simple and then it wasn’t.

If only I didn’t have to sleep. Then nothing could stop me. Shit, that’s the premise of Nocturama, but the protagonist ends up going insane…

…Something has to give one way when you give time to another. Maybe it’s just me, but I have trouble giving my all in too many areas and goddam there’s a lot of areas. I think one has to grow accustomed to life changes. Adapt. Shit man. If you told me a year ago I’d be this insanely busy I probably would have believed you but I also would have told you everything would be ok in the long run, which yes, it always will be. But writing in the morning, taking my son to the park, training my own body so it doesn’t fall apart, driving, doing a million adult chores, taking care of the building, husbanding, bartending, and attempting to squeeze in eight hours of sleep a day? Yeesh. One of these areas has to slide a bit, an unfortunately it’s had to be the cocktail menu. Luckily I’ve got Angel, who has been stepping it up. We worked on an apple/mezcal drink last night that came out good..I think…Sometimes after too many attempts at a cocktail things get a little…Muddled…Ha…Did it actually taste good or did our slight buzz and too much tasting add to our opinion of it? I have no recollection of the formula. The kitchen gave us some apple juice…Angel reduced it down and used this bomb aged apple cider vinegar to make a shrub…There was manzanilla sherry involved at some point…Apple calpico…Thyme…The details have escaped through the slipstream of time…

…It’s strange how easy it can be and how hard it can be. None of it ever makes any sense. Most of the time, it’s easier when it’s stripped down and has less ingredients but there’s also times when an eight ingredient drink is a total banger. It’s tough to keep up and I think the pressure of continually putting new items on gets to me. As of right now, there’s three that are running out with no replacements in sight. There was a time when I had plenty of new cocktails in the chamber ready to go…Not so these days…The mez/apple has been in development for a couple of weeks. I wanted to challenge us because every apple cocktail includes either apple brandy or whiskey, usually bourbon, I thought it would be cool to take the opposite route and use a spirit not commonly associated with apples but the results so far have been meh. We don’t even have an agave cocktail on the menu right now which is also odd. I don’t know anymore…Apples…Goddam apples…How to use them without doing what every other schmuck is doing? Also, you have to be so careful because the juice turns brown so quickly.

When I got home from the park I had the bright idea to somehow make this a two ingredient cocktail, that everything, flavorwise, would just be included in the calpico…Add mezcal and voila! Done. Yeah, that didn’t work out.

The whole problem comes down to what is available where and when. I had this revelation about it when I woke up. Apples don’t grow in Mexico. Duh. They’re a cold climate fruit. Normandy, Washington, Vermont, these are places they grow. That doesn’t mean mezcal and apple can’t join together but I think it makes it tough for them to get along. For it all to work I think another ingredient has to be present to get them to hold hands and walk down the road together.