Themed Bourbon Tasting – 2/7/2021

Our next Modern Bar Cart LIVE themed tasting is going to take place on Sunday, February 7th at 3pm Eastern. And in case you’re not familiar with what this is, it’s basically a free crash course in a particular spirits category. We pick 3 or 4 bottles that we’ll be tasting, and starting with this stream, we’re going to be sharing them with you ahead of time in case you’d like to pick up one or more of those bottles and taste alongside us in real time.

The theme for this upcoming tasting is Bourbon, and we’ll be joined in person by special guest Erin Petrey, who is a senior contributor at Bourbon & Banter. She’ll be walking us through a tasting designed to familiarize your palate with different bourbon styles and mash bills and I’m about to read off the 4 bottles we’ll be tasting in case you need to pause this episode and grab a pen and paper.

The bottles are:

You can feel free to join the stream on Modern Bar Cart’s Instagram, Twitch, or YouTube profiles, as well as on my personal Facebook profile if you happen to be connected to me that way. I know we have an Instagram-loving audience, but if you would prefer a slightly higher resolution experience, definitely aim for Facebook or YouTube because those will be streaming horizontal, HD video.

Tasting Tools

Last thing to note here is that we do have Glencairn nosing and tasting glasses, as well as The Essential Tasting Journal for Spirits & Cocktails for sale over at ModernBarCart.com, so if you’re as serious about your booze as we are, it might be worth picking up some tools to help you along your journey.

Diy Bar Cart Setups

This first question comes to us from our listener Robbie via Instagram, who messaged us saying:

“Hiya, great pod! Wondering if you can get more specific than the Bar Cart Foundations “hardware” episode about where to get a bar cart / sturdy surface under $500. So far I’ve started with an X-shaped keyboard stand with a spray painted piece of plywood on top and am looking for something a bit sturdier, maybe an affordable bar cart with a rustic-style look. Thanks!”

Well Robbie, I’m really glad you reached out because this is a great reminder that we can always go back and add to our foundations material. It’s been probably about 3 years since that episode launched, and I’ve sure learned a lot in that time, so let’s tackle this question.

When it comes to bar carts or what I’ll otherwise refer to as a bar cabinet or “dry bar,” you’ve got a number of great options out there, but you really need to be honest with yourself at the outset about how handy you intend on being with this project. If you’re pretty good with tools, there are a lot of REALLY cheap options for making a custom bar cart or dry bar. But, if you don’t have a good set of tools or much experience working with wood or metal, I’d recommend forking out the money to save yourself some aggravation.

In my experience, the best way to get a really nice bar cart for an affordable price is to keep your eyes peeled at antique stores. You could even call around to a bunch of them in your area and ask if they have any bar carts in stock. This approach is best for people who really enjoy the little chemical rush when you get a great deal on something, or conversely, for those folks out there who enjoy taking their time and enjoying the process of the hunt.

Personally, I sourced by Bar Cart from friend of the podcast Brandy here in DC, who loves to refurbish vintage furniture, but that was complete luck. I will say, though, that I was able to upgrade the wheels by purchasing some vintage-looking casters on Amazon for about $15, and I’ll have a link to those on the show notes page for this episode.

Speaking of wheels or casters, this brings us to an important question when it comes to sourcing a bar cart: do you really need to move it? Bar carts were initially designed for table-side service at restaurants, where the bartender would actually construction your drink right in front of you, but in most cases, home or apartment bar carts are relatively stationary, which means you might even pose the question: does your setup even need to be on wheels in the first place? Or, put differently, are wheels a practical or an aesthetic consideration?

Next, you’ll want to think about the materials you want your bar cart to be made of. Most of the cheaper ones out there are made of aluminum, particle board, or in some cases soft wood like pine or poplar. Expensive bar carts tend to employ sturdier or richer materials like brass, stainless steel, glass, and hardwood, but these materials really increase the price, so if money is your primary concern, you’re left with two options: source the materials and build it yourself, or settle for an attractive, but less luxurious pre-made bar cart.

Ultimately, judging by the tone of Robbie’s question, I have two big pieces of advice:

First, get to know your ideal dimensions. If you plan on actually using your bar cart or bar cabinet for actually constructing your drinks, make sure it hits that sweet spot for you so that you’re not having to bend down to stir or pour your cocktails. To figure out what that optimal height is for you, take a tape measure and record the height of your favorite meal prep surface – in essence, the place in your home where you’d naturally make a cocktail if you didn’t have a bar cart. Armed with that knowledge, you can make smart choices that you won’t regret when you finally get the thing into your home. Also, if you’re planning to store bottles INSIDE your bar cart because keeping them out of sight is important to you, well…just make sure your bar cart has a cabinet large enough to accommodate even the tallest bottles you tend to keep around.
Second, think outside the box when it comes to materials sourcing. There are some DIY bar cart builds out there that involve going to Lowe’s or Home Depot and picking up some wood and some paint and some screws and then following some pictures and instructions online. But I’d recommend trying to find a store that sells reclaimed wood or recycled materials, like a cross between a hardware store and an antique mall. There’s one near DC called Community Forklift (link in the show notes), and I’ve sourced some really cool wood for book shelves there, and I guarantee they have lots of stuff that’s just begging to be transformed into a bar cart.

Last thing here, Robbie – what if you imagined the look of your ideal bar cart in your mind. Ditch the keyboard stand altogether. What does it look like? Once you have a good picture, I’d simply ask: is there a more affordable piece of furniture that this bar cart resembles? And if there is, why not source that night stand or desk and simply install some wheels on it so that it becomes a bar cart? Could be as simple as that.

If Robbie or anyone else out there has the chance to flex those DIY muscles and make a cool bar cart, we hope you’ll take the chance to send us some pictures and share your process via Instagram, Facebook or Email.

Decanter Talk

Our next question – which is more of a general interest topic – comes courtesy of friend of the pod Greg in Kansas City. You may remember a giveaway of his cocktail artwork that we did a while back.

He recently reached out asking about sourcing affordable spirits decanters, which got me thinking that we’ve never really covered this subject outside of our Infinity Bottles interview with Chad Robinson, so I figured we’d cover some decanter basics in this episode.

First off, there are two types of decanters out there, both with different morphologies and purposes. Of course, you’ve got your wine decanters. These tend to have a wide belly or base with a slender neck, and the purpose is to allow a mature wine ot “open up” by exposing it to oxygen for a short period of time before serving. So if you were to cook a really nice meal, you might decant your wine 30 minutes to 2 hours prior to the meal so that it has time to breathe a little.

That said, we’re not here to talk about wine decanters, we’re talking booze decanters, and these tend to look quite a bit different.

Unlike wine decanters, spirits decanters play a mostly (or depending on who you ask an entirely) aesthetic function in that spirits don’t benefit from oxidation post-bottling in the same way that wines do. When you buy a nice wine, generally there’s the expectation that it’s going to continue maturing in the bottle as long as you cellar it in appropriate conditions. But with spirits, well…distillers stick those things in bottles specifically to halt the aging and oxidation process that takes place in a barrel, so giving your whiskey time to breath doesn’t make nearly the sense it does with a wine.

As such, spirits decanters will always have some sort of lid or stopper to prevent more air from getting to the booze, and they’re generally going to look kinda fancy and faceted in order to catch the light and show off your scotch or your brandy. This makes spirits decanters mostly decorative or ceremonial, but they didn’t start out that way.

Back in 1675, an Englishman named George Ravenscroft invented crystal, which was a glass-making technique that employed lead oxide, which helped form silicate crystal structures in the glass. These crystals, it turns out, are great a a few things:

They’re exceptionally clear
The catch the light
And they form prisms

Now, you may have just caught the word “lead,” and yes – if you put a spirit into a leaded crystal decanter, that lead will leach out and you will find yourself consuming lead soup. I can’t imagine that would make the booze taste very good, and it certainly ain’t good FOR ya. Which is precisely why we’re lucky to have unleaded crystal available on today’s market, which uses barium oxide, zinc oxide, or potassium oxide to achieve the same effect as using lead…except with less of the poison.

In some antique stores, you may still come across decanters or glassware using leaded crystal, so there is still the need to exercise a bit of caution. But if you’re purchasing a decanter from a modern retail operation, you can bet that it’s safe to drink from.

Here’s a few other nuts and bolts to consider:

If you’re looking at a decanter in a store or in a high resolution image and you can locate a “seam,” that means it was produced using a glass mold, instead of hand-blown, like the more premium, expensive crystal.
Also, because of the additives, crystal is going to be heavier than normal glass, so if you’re forced to make a material speculation based purely off your senses, the weight of a decanter can be a good hint about its composition.
Finally, just because spirits decanters have lids to prevent further oxidation doesn’t mean that your spirits won’t undergo other types of degradation if they sit for extended periods of time. So if you do choose to display your spirits in a decanter, try to keep them away from direct sunlight, which can do all sorts of funky things to what would otherwise be a nice, barrel-aged spirit.

In terms of sourcing decanters that are both affordable and sexy, well…turns out both Greg and I are still scratching our heads on this one, so if you’ve got a line on something you think might fit well on our eCommerce store, please do kindly drop us a line and we’ll take a look.

Up In Smoke

The next question comes to us from Candice in Washington State, who emailed, saying:

“Hey Eric and Team – hope you’re all staying safe and drinking well. I’m writing because I wasn’t in time to snag one of the Foghat cocktail smokers during the holidays, so I figured I’d see if you had any advice on at-home cocktail smoking projects that won’t break the bank. My husband and I don’t own a smoker, but if I’m being honest we’ve been looking for an excuse to get an affordable one if there’s any you’d recommend.

Thanks in advance!”

Well Candice, I hope you’re also staying safe and drinking well. And for those of you who haven’t visited our store recently, we launched some cocktail smokers over the holidays that turned out to be VERY POPULAR – so popular, in fact, that we’re still out of stock. But this is a great opportunity to do two very American things: pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and play with fire.

I will say that the book that got me into smoking is called Project Smoke by a fella named Steven Raichlen. We’ll link to that over on the show notes page. I like this book because it really is an all-in-one guide to smoking that doesn’t assume you know the first thing about what you’re doing – and I certainly didn’t until about a year ago. Since then, and with the help of that book, I’ve been able to make a bunch of really nice smoked foods, so this is a great inspiration for me to turn my efforts more in a liquid direction.

Now, before you go out and buy a smoker, you need to consider this one fact:

You can make a smoker using a hot plate, a box, and some wire cooking racks. There’s an old Alton Brown video on YouTube where he demonstrates this, and I gotta say, it’s almost mesmerizingly simple. That said, my co-founder Rusty gifted me a “Little Chief” smoker as a housewarming gift a couple years ago, and that has been serving me quite well for all my smoking endeavors. Online, those are selling for about $100, so if that doesn’t break the bank for you, Candice – consider it Modern Bar Cart approved.

Before we get into cocktail smoking projects, I need you to be aware of one slight nuance: hot smoking vs. cold smoking. Hot smoking is when you put a food or beverage in a container for an extended period of time with the heat source creating the smoke, whereas cold smoking takes that smoke and funnels it into a second container that’s away from the heat source. So if you ever find yourself in a situation where you say, “huh, this thing I want to smoke probably shouldn’t get too hot,” that’s a situation where you might want to employ something like a smoking gun and cloche (which is a little electric tool that pipes smoke under a bell-shaped glass thing that looks like a cake stand cover), or go crazy and build yourself a cold smoking box. But, I don’t expect that you’ll encounter this problem if you just want to experiment at home.

Now in a cocktail, there’s 3 things that you can logically smoke:

The cocktail itself (or an ingredient in that cocktail)
The ice you serve the cocktail over
Or the garnish

Each of these things can yield different results. To me, the easiest and most gratifying smoking projects are the ones that keep giving, so here’s some ideas in no particular order that should optimize for both ease of execution AND multiple applications.

Smoked Cocktail Syrups

First up, smoked syrups. All you need to do is make a cocktail syrup. This could be a rich simple syrup, a fruit syrup, or even something like a molasses or agave syrup. Then – and here’s the key – put it in your smoker in as wide a container as possible so that you’re maximizing the smoke contact with the syrup. And smoke for maybe an hour or so, stirring once or twice to move that syrup around and again maximize contact with the smoke. This is a great candidate for hot smoking because you have to heat the syrup to make it anyway, so there’s no harm or foul by adding heat. Now, if you were to try and put an entire pre-made cocktail into a smoker for an hour (let’s say a negroni or an old fashioned, for example), you might be at risk for some serious evaporative loss if the smoker gets too hot…and then there’s the added hassle of chilling the drink back down before you serve it, which is why I’m a way bigger fan of smoking syrups in large batches and smoking cocktails individually using a device like the aforementioned Foghat smoker.

Smoked Ice

If smoking syrups sounds like a bit of a hassle, then perhaps the place to start for you might be to smoke your ice – or rather – to smoke the water you use to create your ice. This can be done in much the same fashion as smoking a syrup, but you need to expect to lose some of your water to evaporation the longer it stays in the smoker, and you need to be realistic about your expectations for clear ice once you freeze it. See, smoke leaves particles behind, and these particles are gonna fall to the bottom of whatever mold you put them in and freeze last. That means if you want that smoky flavor, you probably won’t have crystal clear ice, and if you strive for clear ice, you’re probably going to lose some – but not all – of that smoky flavor.

Smoked Garnishes

Finally, consider the humble garnish. Smoked culinary garnishes are a delight in that they bring a bit of subtlety into the normally hairy, barrel-chested world of smoked flavors. You can make your cocktail like you usually do, but then just add a hint of smoke with the garnish. I like this move. And not just because smoke is primarily something you perceive via your olfactory sense, but also because smoking something is a great way to preserve it, so if you’re planning a brunch or a small gathering you can smoke the garnishes ahead of time and put them in a quart container in the fridge in the day or two leading up to the event itself. The best types of garnishes to smoke are going to be protein- or vegetable-related. I’m thinking smoked olives, smoked pearl onions for a Gibson, smoked carrots for a custom cocktail. The nice thing about smoking your garnishes in a large format is that it forces you to almost go back to the drawing board and find a cocktail formulation that will jive with that particular nose and flavor, which is a great way to break out of a rut and infuse some creativity into your at-home cocktails.

Types of Wood for Smoking

One last note here: there are many different wood chips on the market that you can use to smoke. The ones that I enjoy the most are Hickory, Apple, and Mesquite, which all have very unique flavors. Hickory is almost that prototypical “smoke” flavor, Mesquite is oily and a little salty to my palate (great for pairing with Mezcal or Scotch), and Apple lends a hint of fruity sweetness to the profile. So for what it’s worth, those are my favorite woods to use in the smoker.

Flying High

We’re going to wrap up this mailbag episode with a question from Jess, who’s a bartender in California. She emailed me just a couple days ago with a bone to pick about a comment I made in my recent interview with Christian Krogstad, creator of Aviation Gin. She writes:

“Hi Eric,

Big fan of the podcast. It’s been really nice listening during quarantine since I’m not able to get behind the bar and do what I love. I was listening to this week’s interview with Christian Krogstad and was a little surprised to hear you describe Aviation as a “citrus-forward” gin. I always thought of it as spicy and complex, but not so much citrusy. Do you know something that I don’t? Just wondering why our palates register such different flavors. Maybe I’m just bored, but I figured I’d ask!

Cheers,
Jess”

Well Jess, that’s a great question. And you know what? It actually prompted me to go back to my bottle of Aviation Gin and give it the old Glencairn treatment to see if I’m the problem here. And it turns out, I am, so ya got me, but if you give me a chance, I think I can explain myself.

Normally, when I enjoy Aviation gin, it’s in my wife’s favorite drink – an Aviation – or in some other citrus-forward cocktail. So in my Cro Magnon brain, I’ve been conditioning myself for years to think “Citrus” when I see Aviation Gin. And part of the reason why I think Aviation is such a lovely pairing with citrusy cocktails is because it has a delicate, yet distinct blend of really round botanicals that go into the cocktail shaker and give all that racy citrus juice a big ol’ hug so that it calms down and really results in a balanced drink. This is the allure of New American-style gin, which is going to hopefully be featured in one of our subsequent themed tastings on the live stream.

To be sure, this is a category that deserves its own full episode, but the basic gist is that the loads of juniper you find in London Dry style gins plays a very different role in a citrus-forward cocktail than the subtler and perhaps more mischievous New American style gins.

So good catch – Jess, I let my cocktail conditioning get ahead of me on that description, but I stand by the opinion that Aviation Gin is one of my all-time favorites when you need to make a bright and tangy, yet sophisticated drink.

Smoke and Leaded Crystal