Best dish: Giant platter of meat, but especially the brisket, at Black’s in Lockhart, TX.
Runner-up best dish: Knuckle Sandwich (stew of oxtail, tendon, and other bits, served with amazing bread) at A-Frame in Los Angeles. NB: Alcohol was involved.
Best drinking experience: Kopstootjes at De Drie Fleschjes, a tasting room operating in Amsterdam since 1650.
Best bartending experience: State Policy Network speakeasy party at Naga in Bellevue, WA. 200 libertarians, one punch bowl, and a whole lot of classic cocktails.
Go-to cigar: Berger and Argenti Entubar Quad Maduro. Perfect for my palate and has a striking appearance to highlight its unique rolling method.
Best reading experience: Infinite Jest. No it didn’t come out in 2011, but reading it in the spring reignited my interest in fiction.
Best new music: Decemberists, The King is Dead. I loved it on the first listen and it hasn’t suffered from repetition.
Most surprising comic book: Jeff Lemire, Travel Foreman, and Jeff Huet on “Animal Man.” The art, characterization, and story are all absolutely spot on.
Best magic experience: Performing the Fast and Loose con game at various Portland street festivals.
Newly appreciated product: Sherry. Both on its own or in cocktails, I’m going through more of this than ever before.
Product I wish was in the US: Bols Yogurt Liqueur. Seriously.
Prediction for 2012: Year of the Bone Luge. Seriously.
Most anticipated bar for 2012: Haymerchant, new beer bar in Houston, TX, from the folks behind Anvil.
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I’m flying to Amsterdam today along with the rest of the Bols USA team to hunt the Kopstootje in its native habitat of the Netherlands. I’ll be back on Thursday, hopefully with a suitcase full of genevers, kruidenbitter, and maybe even the intriguing Bols yoghurt liqueur.
My schedule will be pretty packed, but any recommendations for site-seeing or places to get good coffee (by which I really do mean coffee) are appreciated.
[Photo by Effervescing Elephant.]
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Cocktail Camp PDX returns next Sunday after a successful debut last year. This time it’s going to be bigger (at the Armory!) and better (we can serve full drinks!). Ezra Johnson-Greenough and I will be there giving a session on beer cocktails. Tickets are $40 if you buy them now; they go up to $50 starting tomorrow. I’ve copied the full schedule below; it’s a great line-up, so if you’ll be around Portland be sure to check it out.
10:30 — Lillet Meet & Greet and social hour
Morning social hour with complimentary low-alcohol cocktails served by Lillet. Come have a morning refresher and meet some of your fellow cocktail enthusiasts before the day gets started.
11:00 — The Art of Tasting Beer and Spirits
Set the stage and your palate for the day by learning how to really taste your spirits and beer. Learn what makes spirits different and how to pick out their defining characteristics. Lee Medoff (Bull Run Distillery), Nathan Gerdes (h50), and Alex Ganum (Upright Brewing) will lead the discussion.
12:15 — Beer cocktails: Why Have One When You Can Have Both?
Jacob Grier (Metrovino) and Ezra Johnson-Greenough (Upright Brewing) will teach you how to craft fantastic cocktails using the unlikeliest of ingredients.
1:00 — Northwest Distillery Social hour
Complimentary cocktail and punch bar hosted by Northwest Distillery and served by Nathan Gerdes.
2:00 — The New American Whiskey
The other whiskeys that have been taking bars by storm and redefining what “American whiskey” means. Learn more from Lance Winters (St. George Spirits), Lee Medoff (Bull Run Distillery), and Sebastian Degans (Stone Barn Brandy Works) about this growing movement.
3:00 — House Spirits social hour
Complimentary cocktail and punch bar hosted by House Spirits Distillery and served by Kyle Webster (St. Jack).
3:00 — Yes, You Can Entertain!
Learn how to plan your own amazing cocktail parties with the help of David Shenaut (Beaker and Flask, Irving Street Kitchen) and Jacqueline Patterson (Lillet).
4:15 — DIY Sodas, Syrups, and Bitters
Expert instruction on doing it yourself from San Francisco’s Jennifer Colliau (Small Hand Foods, Slanted Door) and Columbine Quillen (10 Below).
Times are approximate and subject to change as the event approaches.
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After a quick stop at Rickhouse in San Francisco tonight, I’ll be catching a flight to Guadalajara with a group of bartenders to celebrate Día de los Muertos and tour tequila distilleries. Call it vacation, call it professional development, either way I won’t be blogging. I’ll be back late next week.
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My liver is already threatening to leave me as Portland Cocktail Week draws near. Next week the Great American Distiller’s Festival gets bigger than ever, preceded by several days and nights of fun events organized by the Oregon Bartenders Guild and the Drink.Write cocktail writers conference.
I’m personally involved with several of the events. First up is Thursday Drink Night Live, in which participants will improvise cocktails and compete for a spot at the Portland Cocktail Invitational. Somehow they’ve talked me into emceeing the event live on camera with no script and lots of alcohol in the room. This could be dangerous.
If I’m still alive on Saturday morning we’ll kickstart the day with coffee cocktails. I’m moderating a panel with guests from Intelligentsia, Water Avenue, and possibly a couple other roasters, discussing all aspects of coffee and its role behind the bar, and serving up a drink or two. They’re passionate about great coffee and promise to bring some fun things to demo, so I’m very excited to hear their thoughts. (Relatedly, here are my suggestions for seven spots to caffeinate during Portland Cocktail Week.)
On that same day is the first round of the Portland Cocktail Invitational. It’s a great group of bartenders competing and I’m thrilled to be invited back. This time I’m fortunate to be mixing with Encanto Pisco, which opens up all kinds of interesting possibilities. We’re changing the format to allow more sampling of the drinks by the audience, so this is guaranteed to be a good time.
Bols will be involved in a few events as well. On Wednesday, mixologists Chris Churilla and Adam Robinson will be pairing cocktails with a four course meal prepared by Chef Alyssa Gregg at Spints Alehouse, including cocktails made with Bols Genever and Galliano. This is not to be missed. Then on Saturday, experience the history of gin and genever at the Juniperlooza! seminar.
That’s just the beginning of events going on next week. There’s also a masquerade ball, a March for Mezcal, a tiki party, a full slate of informative seminars, and much more. Go get the full schedule and tickets here.
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I’m headed tonight to Upper Peninsula Michigan. Door to door this trip will require a train, 3 planes, a car, and a boat. I tried to work a dirigible into the route too, but tickets were unavailable. While there I’ll do some blogging, but hopefully most of the time will be spent in lakes, boats, or hammocks, and at night taking in the peak of the Perseids meteor shower under spectacularly clear skies. I’ll be back in Portland late Friday night.
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Two years ago today I drank this cappuccino and hit the road west from DC, destination unknown. According to some psychologists there was a good chance this decision was based on a focusing illusion, and that my actual happiness would be unaffected for long. However my own experience and that of everyone else I know who’s escaped DC for this coasts suggests otherwise. For some of us, at least, coffee, beer, good weather, and a more relaxed lifestyle really do count for a lot.
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This morning I’m heading back to DC for the Cato Institute’s first-ever intern reunion, a massive event bringing together veteran interns from the think tank’s long history. This will be my first time back in well over a year. On my last visit I’d only been gone a few months and it felt like coming home. This time the city and my lifestyle there seem more distant, though perhaps I’ll slip right back into once I’m there. I will say this for DC: Despite the political world’s constant careerism and its priorities that are often not my own, I do miss the intellectual engagement the city always had on offer and the camaraderie shared by libertarians living in the belly of the beast. Where else could one pack a bar to the walls by offering drink specials and airing a Milton Friedman documentary?
In any case, the weekend will be fueled with copious food and drink. I already have a reservation at Columbia Room and Sunday brunch plans at my old hangout Eatbar (even if we can’t light up stogies there anymore). The lure of pollo a la brasa is strong. I’d like visit all the places on my old list, though that’s impossible. Eventide and Birch and Barley have opened since I left and I would love to visit them. What else is new that I should seek out?
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I initially wasn’t going to link to this New York Times piece about how marijuana has “fueled a new kitchen culture” focused on delicious, casual food that stoned back of house staff like to eat. As causality goes that’s a bit of a stretch and it’s not news that people in the service industry like to light up now and then. However I agree with Radley Balko and Will Wilkinson that the more successful people who come out as marijuana users the better chance we have of changing our disastrous drug policy, so for that reason alone the article is worth pointing out. The main reason I’m linking though is this appearance from Portland:
Duane Sorenson, the founder of the coffee roaster Stumptown, said that fat buds of marijuana often end up in the tip jar at his shops.
“It goes hand in hand with a cup of coffee,” he said. “It’s called wake and bake. Grab a cup of Joe and get on with it.”
This happened to me once even in the staid atmosphere of Carlyle. A customer (service industry, of course) left me a large bud along with his cash tip. According to my coworkers it was a generous gift but unfortunately it was wasted on me. Not knowing any better I took it home and put in my humidor. It turns out this is not the correct way to store it, which is apparently common knowledge among my friends who would have gladly taken it off my hands. It turned into a big ball of mold that went straight into my trash can the next time I opened the lid.
I consider this story karmic revenge for all the times people have told me about the fantastic Cuban cigars they’ve been saving for a special occasion without keeping them humidified.
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Jason Zengerle’s New Republic profile of Tucker Carlson is worth reading in full, but it’s this paragraph that stood out for me:
More than three years later, Carlson is still defending his “Dancing With the Stars” turn, if not his dancing ability. “Oh, I loved it,” he insists, professing that his recent trajectory has not bothered him in the slightest. “I never take the long view on my own career. I don’t even know that I have a career or have ever had one–and I’m not sure I would ever want one.”
This reminds me of an anecdote from Steve Martin’s autobiography Born Standing Up. Martin, whose interests had meandered from learning magic to playing the banjo to performing stand-up comedy, was finally earning his first appearances on “The Tonight Show” with Johnny Carson as host:
I was able to maintain a personal relationship with Johnny over the next thirty years, at least as personal as he or I could make it, and I was flattered that he came to respect my comedy. On one of my appearances, after he had done a solid impression of Goofy the cartoon dog, he leaned over to me during a commercial and whispered prophetically, “You’ll use everything you ever knew.” He was right; twenty years later I did my teenage rope tricks in the movie ¡Three Amigos!.
Perhaps this is just rationalization — my income this week: a few bucks in Google ads — but I think there’s something to be said for doing whatever one finds most interesting at the time and accumulating a diverse set of skills. At least twice I’ve thought about settling into more stable careers and looking back I think I’d be missing out terribly if I had. As for whether I can make this erratic approach work long-term, well, that remains to be seen.
[Carlson link via TMN.]
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I’m in this MSNBC story by Eve Tahmincioglu talking about how cocktail blogging helped me land a job in Portland after my move from DC:
For mixologist Jacob Grier, his blog “Liquidity Preference” helped him land a primo bartender job at the Carlyle Restaurant in Portland, Ore.
Grier started blogging about making unusual cocktails two years ago as an outlet for his love of food and drinks. While working for a bar in Washington, D.C., he decided to move to Portland because of the culinary scene.
Thanks to the blog, he had already connected with two well-known mixologists in Portland. Those contacts ended up taking him to an industry event where Grier met the bar manager at the Carlyle, and the rest is history.
Yes, this is a bit ironic after just getting the news that my bar is closing. Time to start the search all over again, eh?
If you’re coming here from the MSNBC site, click here for cocktail posts. And if you happen to own a craft cocktail bar, let’s talk.
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Over the years I’ve had the pleasure of being on the opening crew of several coffee shops and restaurants. Now it’s my turn to be on the closing crew. From Carlyle owner Bruce Goldberg:
Next month is Carlyle’s seventh anniversary. February also marks the end of our current lease. Both milestones are significant in that they factor into my decision to announce that Carlyle will serve it’s last meal on Sunday, February 14th.
I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the many loyal customers, employees, and friends who have made Carlyle special. Though saddened by the closing, I ’m comforted by wonderful memories, ,and the opportunity to have worked with some very talented people.
I hope that over the next two weeks you’ll make a point of joining us for dinner or a drink. In addition to some recent menu changes, Chef Martin will be presenting a special prix fixe dinner, offered on both February 13th and 14th, to celebrate Valentine’s Day, and to serve as our farewell.
I’m eternally grateful to Bruce and to Neil, who first hired me there, for trusting me with their bar program. It’s been a fun ride and great platform for me as a mixologist. I think we succeeded in turning Carlyle into one of the best places in Portland to have a cocktail. Unfortunately we’ve faced an uphill battle running a destination restaurant in a tough location and a down economy, so this closing is understandable.
If you haven’t been into Carlyle yet, do stop in soon. And if you’re among the many friends I’ve made while working there I hope I’ll see you at least one more time before we close. Last call is Sunday night, February 14. Fernet is on the rail.
[Photo courtesy of the unbeatable Mayor of Carlyle, Ron Dollete.]
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2009 has come to a close and everyone seems to welcome its end. Personally I couldn’t have asked for the year to be much better. I started the year unemployed and end it with the lead of a fairly high-profile bar, a strong web of new friends in a new city, and a larger online presence than ever. My non-blog writing has slowed, something I hope to change in 2010 along with addressing a wider variety of topics, but in compensation I’ve become a far better bartender and polished my magic abilities back into the best shape they’ve been in since the early part of the decade.
For this blog, 2009 has been a year of cocktails, nanny state foolishness, and morning links. Total traffic has hit its best year ever, with 99,442 visits according to Google Analytics or 124,155 according to SiteMeter. That’s still a lot lower than I’d like, but doesn’t include people reading via RSS or Facebook.
Most visitors continue to come from search engines. According to Analytics, 57% of visitors come from search, 31% from other referrers, and 12% from direct traffic. I’m very much writing for Google. Of the 10 most viewed posts of 2009, only 2 were actually written this year:
Top posts of 2009
1. Camel crickets invade DC
2. Miracle fruit — I’m a believer
3. Finally, sampling miracle fruit tablets
4. How to get rid of camel crickets
5. Who will watch the Watchmen smoke?
6. The stapler’s secret
7. Dark ‘n’ Sue Me
8. Buy miracle fruit
9. Stocking your home bar, pt. 1
10. The Mystery of the Five-Inch Bull Balls
That’s a little disheartening, but on the upside I’m glad to see that the Rocky Mountain oyster post still gets so much traffic.
Here’s what people come here searching for:
Top search referrals of 2009
1. miracle fruit
2. camel cricket
3. spider crickets
4. miracle fruit party
5. camel crickets
6. how to get rid of camel crickets
7. sobieski vodka review
8. miracle fruit tablets review
9. miracle fruit tablets
10. where to buy miracle fruit
Clearly my strategy for 2010 should be selling ads for miracle fruit and insect poison (which is not to say the two should be taken together). Other intriguingly popular searches this year include “bull balls” at number 11, “nutmeg facts,” “make your own dragon,” “jacob grier human consumption,” “miracle fruit sex,” and “the widowmaker pizza.”
Here’s where this site’s readers live:
Top visitor cities for 2009
1. New York
2. Portland, OR
3. Washington
4. San Francisco
5. Chicago
6. London
7. Arlington, VA
8. Raleigh
9. Seattle
10. Los Angeles
Site traffic is low enough that my own visits to the blog are enough to artificially boost Portland, but I’m glad to see that I’ve found some local readership and that the constant cocktail posts haven’t turned off political readers in DC and Arlington. The other cities I’ve lived in land at spots 17 (Nashville) and 24 (Houston).
For non-search referrals, this was the year for social networking. Two sites send a ton of traffic from their blogrolls, probably attributable to the same few people clicking daily. Thanks go out to Radley for once again sending the most readers my way.
Top non-search referrers for 2009
1. The Agitator
2. Liqurious
3. Facebook
4. The Blog to End All Blogs
5. Twitter
6. The Daily Dish
7. Reason
8. Lifehacker
9. Zhubinness
10. The Pegu Blog
Thanks to everyone for reading, have a fun and safe celebration tonight, and I’ll see you back here in 2010.
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I’ll be back in my hometown December 25-29. Obviously I want to stop in at Anvil, where bartender Bobby Heugel is serving up creative cocktails. And word is David Buehrer has finally brought great coffee to Houston with his Tuscany Coffee. Good Tex-Mex is a must and easy to find. I’d usually consider barbecue essential, but Podnah’s Pit in Portland is such a good fix that I might do without. Where else should I visit?
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Ortlieb office bag — Early this year my trusty backpack finally wore out and I replaced it with a pannier bag. Taking my laptop off of my back and onto my bike has made cycling much more enjoyable. The bag is waterproof, which is a must in Portland. The weight isn’t much of an issue while riding, though it does make the bike a little unwieldy while walking it. The bag itself isn’t cheap and I needed to buy a rack and laptop sleeve too (with corduroy lining!), but the added time I’ve spent biking has been well worth it.
Rice cooker — I’m not one to stock up on excessive kitchen appliances, but when even Fuschia Dunlop wrote, “If I could have only one modern gadget in my kitchen, it would have to be an electric rice cooker” I thought it might be a tool worth having. And it has been, mainly for the benefits of consistency and not having to coordinate rice preparation too closely with the rest of a meal. Most of my cooking interests lean Asian anyway, so the ease of this tool has me in the kitchen more than I otherwise would be.
An unnamed magic pamphlet — I’ve spent thousands of dollars on magic books and videos over the past decade, but very few of those sources have been as useful as one $10 dollar pamphlet detailing a single card sleight that I came across this year. No, I’m not going to link to it. That would defeat the purpose.
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Jacob Grier is a freelance writer, barista, mixologist, and magician in Portland, OR. He writes, eats, and drinks a lot. His articles have appeared in The Washington Post, Reason Online, The Oregonian, and other publications.
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