Category: bar hacks
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Failed Bar Hack: Watermelon Rind Tepache
Watermelon. Delicious on the inside, pretty gross on the outside. My spirit fruit. Eat the good stuff and throw out the rest, right? Hold on a minute. The typical thing to do is to vinegar pickle the rind two different ways, either in chunks or by using a peeler and making strips. Either way it’s…
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Bar Hack: Beer Cocktails!
Well…I am twelve or so posts behind in the postings for the new cocktails department. Maybe that’s a good thing? Lesson here: Look for the silver lining in everything, even your own apathy. No one reads this blog and it hasn’t exactly jettisoned my literary career. I do love when people tell me they read…
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Life Without a Centrifuge 4/5/2025
I know, I know, sounds like some sort of first world travesty. A gen Z crisis for sure if I ever heard one. I live without a centrifuge! The horror. The horror. But hey, surviving without a centrifuge is easier than you think. Two necessary, easy to procure items–coffee filters and agar agar–will improve your…
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Bar Hack: Stop Putting Canned Bean Juice in Cocktails, Make Meth Syrup Instead
Yeah, I just threw down the damn gauntlet. Vegans be damned, damned to hell. No more canned bean juice in cocktails please. Sorry, I know someone brilliantly called it aquafaba and a ton of people climbed on board this awful train bound for cocktail necropolis. When I see a bartender opening a can of chickpeas…
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Bar Hack: Next Level Lacto Meyer Lemon Sherbet
Meyer Lemons are the cool kid on the block everyone wants to be friends with. Sweet, less bitter, along with a less yellow, more orange spectrum sort of pleasant color. Typically the thing to do is a preserved lemon situation but this is too much salt for use in cocktails. What we can do, however,…
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Bar Hack: What to do with Five Pounds of Habaneros
I love the burn. The singe. The tingling scalp, the mopping of sweat from the brow. The stinging lips, battling my own constitution, summoning up that last ounce of gumption to put down another bite and wondering if I could possibly have another or if I should give up, call it quits, drink some milk,…
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Build a Better Espressotini
Face the fire, walk through the flames, force your way across the scorching coals of oblivion, desire, and angst. Folks, the bad news is that I don’t think the espressotini is going away anytime soon. The good news? There is no good news. Yes, it should not be so annoying but it is. Maybe it’s…
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Bar Hack: Über Sherbet
No, this post isn’t about eating a frozen scoop in the back of an ultra clean new age taxi. We are here, once again, to speak of liquid delights. Shift gears and think for a moment-The mother sauces of the bar are citrus, sugar, and booze, yes? If so, then sherbet would clock in at…
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Bar Hack: Lacto Asian Pear
It started with this coming fall fruit season question: How to lacto ferment any pear, apple, asian pear without the damn things turning brown? Pretty easy actually. The answer is this: Instead of using just salt and water as your brine, use your old lemon juice and salt as a brine but call it something…
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Bar Hack: Coco Hwey Hwip
I have no idea what it is but people love themselves a little something whipped on top of a cocktail. Maybe it hearkens back to the old Blowjob shots from the 80s. Never had one? Well…Amaretto, Bailey’s float, sometimes Kahlua sometimes not, and then whipped cream from the canister. A dark but necessary time in…
The Aging Bartender 