Canada's only magazine dedicated to distillers, spirits and cocktail culture.
• 1.5 oz gin
• 0.5 oz dry vermouth
• 2 dashes The Japanese Bitters Umami Bitters (or to taste)
• Garnish: cocktail olives or pickled mushroom (optional)
The Roof is on Fire! That was the name of a dangerous-drinks seminar that San Francisco writer Camper English (of alcademics.com fame) and Bittermens co-founder Avery Glasser gave in 2016 at Tales of the Cocktail. Their warnings on potentially dangerous bartending ingredients, equipment and techniques were so eye-opening, English later nabbed a grant to develop cocktailsafe.org, a geekily helpful website packed with deeply researched information and resources.
“Bartenders on Facebook were chatting a lot about potentially dangerous drinks … and I thought it would be useful to put all this information, and a lot more, in one place as a reference to bartenders everywhere,” he says.
Here are his top 10 red flags for home mixologists—and pros, too.
Warm, bright and pleasantly spicy—when the weather turns cool, we crave the flavour of ginger. Luckily, Fever-Tree has our holiday-spice cravings covered with a range of ginger mixers.
“People love it,” says Alexis Green, the national brand engagement manager for Fever-Tree. “People are slowly starting to discover the ginger ale range and they really love it. People are going crazy for the smoky and the spicy.”
This year could be peak Sober Curious: just check out the new booze-free vending machine at Larry’s Market in the Shipyards, featuring mickeys of Solbru booze-free spirit and cans of Sober Carpenter and Partake near-beer in slots that recently held healthy salads and takeout—proof that Dry-uary is a full-blown lifestyle trend.
• 10 oz Seedlip Grove 42
• 6 Tbsp agave syrup
• 4 oz fresh lime juice
• Ice
• Salt
• Lime wheel (for garnish)
For most issues of The Alchemist, we gather our tasting panel and sit in a room somewhere sampling our way through a dozen or so bottles of, say, rye whisky or vermouth. But with a pandemic upending everything, we couldn’t do that this time around. At the same time, since we’ve all been spending so much time chez nous, we wondered what our panelists were drinking at their own homes. So we asked them to recommend a bottle they consider essential for a home bartender, and what cocktail they’d make with it. This issue, our team comprises bartenders Sabrine Dhaliwal, Adam Domet, J-S Dupuis, Robyn Gray, Jay Jones, Trevor Kallies, Jeff Savage and Kaitlyn Stewart. Here’s what they had to say. Sip and shop accordingly.
• 1 oz Angel’s Envy Kentucky Straight Bourbon
• 0.5 oz Gonzales Byass Oloroso sherry
• 0.75 oz fresh lemon juice
• 2 tsp simple syrup (1:1)
• 5 raspberries
• 1 oz sparkling wine
Here at The Alchemist, we have a bit of a glassware problem. I mean, who can resist a cute coupe or an elegant Nick & Nora or a perfectly cut rocks glass? Not us.
Spirits of Latin America: A Celebration of Culture & Cocktails, with 100 Recipes from Leyenda & Beyond, by Ivy Mix (Potter/Ten Speed/Harmony/Rodale, $33.99)
In this beautifully photographed book, the multi-award-winning co-founder of Speed Rack takes our palates on a spicy journey through Mexico, the Caribbean, Chile, Peru and Bolivia, with a stop at her own Brooklyn bar, Leyenda.