Cache Bar

08/06/2023

"But sir, we're not supposed to negotiate with terrorists"
"Just pay the ransom"
"But sir-"
"I SAID PAY IT!"

01/06/2023

I'm finally working on the first panel of cocktails for this year's burn. Mezcal was a big hit last year so we'll try to expand on that. I love cynar and I want to introduce it to the playa. As far as the first panel of cocktails, you start with broad strokes- basic ideas of wierd flavor combos. Taste it neat. Taste it cold. And then taste it diluted. Take notes and grade. Develope. Exoeriment. Evolve. And hopefully you'd come up with a good product worthy of putting on a menu. Cheers.

01/03/2023

Underberg is a big bitter punch in the mouth. It's not for everyone. So I made something very similar, only substituting fresh Grapefruit juice as the bitter element. This is a little more suitable for a wider audience.

2oz tequila5oz cinnamon syrup5oz orgeat
1 oz lemon
2oz fresh Grapefruit

Blended and enjoyed many times over.

01/03/2023

I finally got my hands on some Underberg! It's a strong Amari meant for small sips. It is a punch in the mouth, made from gentian root. It has noted of liquorice, herbs and clove.

This cocktail is called the Ice-Berg, taken from the Amaro, by Brad Thomas Parsons; created by Brooklyn Bartender Garret Richard.

1oz tequila,
1 bottle of Underberg
1oz orgeat
3/4oz lemon

Blended (yes, blended) and served in stemware. Underberg bottle as garnish.

The combination of everything, including the blending, really spreads out the Underberg making it more palettable to the casual drinker. This drink belongs on the shore side of a beach bar along the Hotel del Coronado.

06/02/2023

The Absence Of Proof is a novel bar of mocktails. It looks like she executed her concept pretty well. I'd love to peek at their menu. If I was in her area I'd definitely check it out! https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100088043723775&mibextid=ZbWKwL

a night off of drinking   A one-of-a-kind cocktail experience welcome to absence of proof. we are a boozeless take on a night out. we can’t wait to see you at our next event or provide you the necessities for having an amazing boozeless night at home. follow along on social media subscribe to our...

20/01/2023

I guess this page is just my drinking diary now lol.

Dear diary,

I have left over limes from tacos and it's my first day off, so I'm going to reward myself with a caipirinha. Dry January is just propaganda created by chumps that got DUI's on new years.

2 spoons of brown sugar
1 quartered lime
2 ounces cachaça

Muddle the sugar and the lime in a tall glass. Add the cachaça.

I cheated and added soda water because I can.

06/01/2023

In defense of the long island

I know, I know. The long Island iced tea typically is a trash drink for trash people who are just trying to get trashed. It's a cluster f**k of everything in the rail and is somehow palettable enough to try to sell it to the next guy, let alone give it a name and put it on the menu. This is one of my guilty pleasures. I love long islands.

A long Island is kind of like a Side Car; booze, lemon and triple sec. This differs from a sour that uses only booze, lemon and simple syrup. A sour definitely drinks sweeter, whereas the side car has a bit more punch because triple sec is a liqueur. But after drinking this, I think the long island drinks more like a Collins- 2oz booze, .75 lemon, .75 simple, a little bit of soda to cut it down to a refreshing pull off a long straw.

Without tequila, this would be a civilized party. You would only have vodka, gin and rum. No doubt these three all play well together. It's the tequila that isthe s**t show you wish you'd never invited. To me tequila throws this whole drink off. But to keep it an official long island I have to find a way to use it. Here's my attempt at classing up the long island.
5oz gin5oz rum5oz vodka5oz dry curacao75 fresh lemon juice75 simple

Shake and strain into a Collins glass with 2oz. of soda already sitting on the bottom.

Nothing special there. But because I feel I have to use tequila somewhere in this drink to keep it officially a long island I'll float it with a Maserati. The Maserati is a 50/50-stand-alone cocktail made with mezcal and Ramazotti. I stirred the two together down to proper dilution before floating it on top of the finished cocktail.

The Maserati 5oz Ramazzotti (which holds cola notes)5oz mezcal

Putting it all together it does drink like a Collins. Nice and refreshing- until you stir in the float. After you add the tequila it still tastes like a trash can of regrets that you'd have to throw up before you go looking for your debit card.

One of the pitfalls with an LIT is that when you stretch it out with sweet, sour, and soda, it muddied the waters enough to stomach. And now you're throwing back 2oz of booze inside of 5 minutes because it easy to drink. Whereas a side car, because you can taste the punch, you'd drink it slower.

Can this drink be saved? Not today. Not by me. And no thanks to tequila.
I can already feel the black out potential. But I still love it. And I'll still drink it. Cheers.

28/12/2022

Merry Christmas to me!!!

25/12/2022

I don't know what to call this one yet. It's basically an amaretto sour with a bruleeléd fireball meringue.

Prep the meringue first:
1 egg white5oz cinnamon syrup5oz lemon juice

I like to cheat and use a hand blender to whisk the s**t out of the imulsion. You have to do this step first to let the foam "set up". Basically the acid from the lemon bonds with the proteins in the egg and it strengthens over time. If you don't let it set, your foam will be weak.

Now on to the sour:
1 oz amaretto
1 oz Whiskey (Russell's 10 year)75 lemon75 simple

Shake and double strain, up, into stemware.

Give your meringue one last hand whisk and plop it onto the sour. I toasted the foam just to show off. Just don't toast the whole thing. When you bruleé it, it creates a very sturdy 'skin' that's not too comfortable to drink. So if you do bruleé it, just leave the recipient some room to actually drink the cocktail.

25/12/2022

Merry drinking everyone! And happy-whatever-youre-celebrating! It's already 7am so I need to catch up!
I like to revisit old (s**tty) cocktails that have been revamped for the modern palette. Here's one I found for

The Stinger:

2.5oz cognac75 creme de menthe 5 fernet
A couple dashes of chocolate bitters
Orange peel for attention

Stir and strain, served over a king cube.

It really is a festive holiday drink. I don't really like mint as a prominent flavor, but the complexity and spice finish of the fernet makes it ok. I served it on a king cube but already I can taste the flavor slipping away, its becoming over diluted. The next time I make this drink, it will be served up in stemware so it won't loose its punchline within the first ten minutes. It will 'hold ots form'as long as you drink it cold. And something about this drink makes me want to play off ginger notes...

And now I'm sad because I'm out of good cognac and it's Christmas so I won't be able to get anymore until tomorrow.

24/12/2022

She wanted to go to total wine. I promised myself I wouldn't buy anything. I immediately broke that promise. This is a damn good bottle. Especially for under $40.

06/12/2022

Happy repeal day! I will not comply. 🤌

24/10/2022

And because I had half a lime left over i went ahead and made a simple daiquiri out of my new bottle of Lemon Hart and sons 151. For a 151, it's super tasty.. deep, rich notes of caramel and honey, coupled with the framework of a daiquiri, this drink is easily a homeowners. The lemon hart has a really long, sophisticated finish that you want to just hang out with before you take your next sip. You can slam this drink, but then you'd miss the after party.

1.5oz lemon hart 1515 lime 5 simple

Because of the high proof, you want a ton of dilution. Almost like an ounce and a half. To achieve this, whip shake the cocktail with just enough crushed ice just to dilute the cocktail. Shake until all the ice is melted. Add a couple more cubes (less than 1"³) and shake to chill. Double strain and serve up, in stemware.

24/10/2022

I broke my own rule today. I promised myself id never pay over $3 a piece for glassware but as soon as I saw these Calire crystal champagne flutes, 2 for $10, I had to splurge. As soon as I got home I made an

Angostura Sour:
1.5oz ango75 lime
1oz simple
egg white

Whip the egg white and lime juice first. Then add the ango, simple, 1 king cube of ice and shake. Double strain into a tall, frozen glass. Let your drink sit for at least 2 minutes. You need to let the foam set up. Now, Dip the back of a barspoon into your drink until it hits the bottom of the glass. Drizzle soda water (or in this case strawberry basil soda) down the spoon. The spoon will take the soda straight to the bottom without disturbing the head. You should be able to lift a column of foam well above the glass. The colder the glass, the colder the drink, and the least amount of water diluting the foam, the better.

Angostura is mostly thought of just bitters- a non potable seasoning. But it is boozy enough to be used as the spirit base for this drink. In large quantities, you can taste the spice, namely the clove, from the ango. This is a simple sour but the ango is so complex. It tastes like a ho**ah flavor.

21/10/2022

This is the Broken Shoe Shiner, taken from the beta cocktails book. This recipe came from Stephen Cole and its delicious as f**k.

1oz Pernod
1oz Aperol
1oz Benedictine
1oz Pineapple Juice
1oz Lemon Juice
Egg white
Rose water

Dry shake the lemon and egg white by itself. Then add ice and the rest of the ingredients and shake and double strain, served up, in stemware.

That 1oz of Pernod sounds intimidating but there's so much else going on to tame the liqorice bomb. The anise is always prevalent but is immediately balanced out by the pineapple. I can't readily taste the Benedictine and I can pick up the aperol in the background. I am sure that these are essential ingredients to make this cocktail work but if i didnt know what was in it idk if id be able to tell. Again, the Pernod is a lot to contend with but we have the sweet and spicy Benedictine, we have the bittersweet aperol, the sweet and tart pineapple, the lemon to cut it all down, and then you have this nice soft pillow of egg white to just land on. This drink makes you think about wtf is going on in your mouth and it also makes you take another sip right behind it like a double take. Oh. Oh my.

I made another one. I made the first one in a tulip glass to showcase the egg white foam. But knowing that this drink will not last long in anyones hands, i think a coupe is more fitting. And its an absolutely gorgeous drink. A nice peach hue, the surface tension of the meringue makes you want to lay on top of an overflowing pillow. The sheet of silk just drapes over the remainder of the glass and it just leaves silk on the tongue. The Pernod is right up front- star of the show. If you didn't like black licorice, this cocktail has a strong potential to change your mind. But then again if you don't like anise, you don't like anise. All the other ingredients are doing some really heavy lifting by balancing out that full ounce of Pernod and they do it all so well. It leaves you with a beautiful harmonious note of "i know it's supposed to be wierd, but I do want more".

Its 730am and im drinking pernod cocktails. I just got off of my graveyard set of shifts. What a way to start my weekend off. F**k that's delicious.

30/09/2022

The El Presidente was the most underrated cocktail on the menu this year.

A cocktail is only as good as its worst ingredient. If you were going to build a house, you would build it with the best materials.
The original framework for this drink consists of rum, dry vermouth, orange curaçao and grenadine. But I chose to use my best ingredients:

Using Lillet Blanc for the dry vermouth really classes up the joint. The Lillet rings through every moment of this cocktail. Even though its a priminent flavor, it really softens the cocktail and rounds it out. Diplomatico special reserve rum is my favorite sipping rum right now. It attributes a deep caramel finish. If you're going to use curaçao, you really only have a couple of choices- the cognac based Grand Marnier fits this role perfectly. It's too easy to make your own grenadine. And doing so pay off 4 fold- it's rich but not cloying. You can actually taste the pomegranate when you make it yourself. You only need enough to blush the drink. And still, this drink seemed a little soft. And if youre going to put it on the menu, it better be worthy. A joke better have a punchline. A story better have a point. And if youre going to drink a cocktail in the middle of the f**king desert, it better damn well be special. So I decided to finish this cocktail with a spoon of pisco to activate the taste buds. It was the perfect pop to push this drink in the winners circle for this year's Lo-Key Cachè Bar.

I only brought 1 bottle of each pre batched cocktail with me, 6 in total. So to make the booze last, to be able to share with as many people as possible, and to give everyone a chance to try multiple cocktails, I decided to serve 2oz cocktails. There was plenty to go around! No one complained about portions. Everyone savored every sip.

Tonight is my first day off and wanted a cocktail to celebrate. Here I paired the El Presidente with his and hers foster farms corn dogs with a Ketchup AND mustard dip. Options are paramount. Perfecto

26/09/2022

The pile of books I have yet to read keeps growing. This one just came in the mail in a thin cardboard folder. Is there even a "book" in there? Did I order a $35 fkng kindle book on cd? Is it a magazine? One would think that publishing books about cocktails is a finite subject and that its hard to keep pumping out quality books with gems of 'something I didn't know'. But we are inside the golden age of cocktails. Gorgeous new photography techniques, new culinary techniques are being used on old forgotten bottles and are being poured into updated glassware for a modern palette. Just by thumbing through this teeny tiny little book really quick, I can tell that the recipes inside are fkng bangers- heavier hitting than the same hundred regurgitated "riff on a classics", or the click baity New York Sour/ New York Hand Job (Any drink with a simple red wine float thats too easy to replicate and just as easily overdone.)

I was told that this book was made as counter culture in contrast to all the other flashy books that are coming out now. The philosophy of this book is that the cocktails must be simple and yet profound. You shouldn't have to buy too many obscure bottles or have too many niche seasonal ingredients that you can only find in one corner of the world kust to make a good fkng cocktail. This book is supposed to use well known ingredients that makes you challenge what you think "balance" is.

One of recipes I'll show below is an example of a different cocktail with the same ingredients: 1 ounce Pernod, 1 ounce Aperol, 1 ounce Benedictine, 1 ounce pineapple juice (FU***NG WHAT? ARE YOU MAD?!), egg white, lemon juice and rosewater. Again i say, ARE YOU MAD?! Shove 1 ounce of the angriest flavor bullies in a glass and expect them to play well?! And then look at the sequence: dry shake just the lemon and egg white, and then add the cocktail and finish the drink. Who does that? Well....I just might try it right fkng now

14/09/2022

All in all, my attept at a craft cocktail bar in a box. A bunch of pre-batched and bottled cocktails ready to pour, minus a couple of last touches.

I'll give attention to each cocktail by itself in a bit but I was cleaning the playa off everything and wanted to spotlight my sidebar of smaller bottles.

With any bar and any set up, streamlining the process is paramount. What really helps is condensing big ass bottles to smaller, more manageable bottles. I love chartreuse and use it all the time, but only about a half ounce at a time. So I don't need a big ass liter bottle taking up space in my rack or on my counter and then having to swing it around the bar just for a half ounce here and there. So I've to use smaller bottles so save space and wrist action.

08/09/2022

The Lo-Key neighborhood bar was a big success! I prebatched most cocktails to reduce work load and to streamline the overall process. I only opened late night/early morning and served only a handful of people. My goal was to aim for quality interactions vs high volume. It turned out almost exactly how I had planned it and could not be any happier. I wouldve taken more pictures but I was too busy enjoying the moment. I'll post the actual cocktails later. A really big bonus was that a big majority of guests were very cocktail savoy. I even served a couple of craft bartenders that tipped their hat to me.

Super
Duper
Happy

24/08/2022

Someone needs to come get their dad

22/06/2022

Cocktails were invented because booze used to taste terrible. Spirits used to be overproofed and unrefined so we tried everything under the sun to mask the gut rot. We used to use all kinds of fruit and sugars and mixers to cover up and water down the personality of the spirits used. We've come a long way. Now, an old fashioned is now designed to celebrate the spirit being used. Now, instead of muddling an orange wedge and neon pink cherry under a puddle of soda water just to pretend you like the taste of booze, we have refined the booze, the process, and the flavor profiles.

Now all you need for a good old fashioned is a sugar cube doused with bitters, pressed with a citrus peel, drowned with whiskey, (Any spirit really) and stirred to proper dilution over ice. The consensus is that bourbon gets garnished with an orange peel, while rye gets a lemon peel. Death and Co. puts both because why not? This is enough to accentuate, contrast and amplify the characteristics of your spirit of choice; the orange peel reflects the sweetness of the bourbon and the lemon contrasts the spice of the rye. The bitters seasons the cocktail while the sugar rounds off all the rough edges. And in turn you get to enjoy the flavor profile of everything you just put in the glass. And because this is one of the simplest formats of cocktails (booze+sugar+bitters), there are thousands of ways to execute this type of cocktail. The only way you know you've messed it up is if you don't like it. Viva la booze

18/06/2022

I bought a bottle of Cardamaro thinking it was strictly an Amaro. Once I cracked it and tried it, I knew instantly it was an aromatized wine- it's vermouth. Which is fine, except that once you open the bottle, it's expiration clock starts ticking. So I have about a month to figure out how to use thus bottle. Most of the recipes I've seen are Manhattan style cocktails- different variations of 2:1:1:. My initial instinct was to use brandy to pair with the grape profile that the Cardamaro gives off. So I went for a Vieux Carre which turned out so be too soft. So today I'm trying this cocktail called Holy Smokes

1.5oz bourbon5oz Cardamaro5oz Benedictine
2 dashes of Mole chocolate bitters25oz Scotch

The original recipe wanted to stir and strain, served up in stemware, but I just got off work and I need to go to sleep.

09/06/2022

I was looking to reference the Mazarati (ramazotti and mezcal) and found this recipe:

Good Night Vienna

1.25 Mezcal75 Grand Marnier5 sweet vermouth5 ramazotti

He ratios are already suspect on thia one but I'll update when I reach a verdict

05/06/2022

Still feeling like ass. Time to burn it off with some high octane booze. Wild Turkey Rare Breed clocks in at 112.2 proof. That should be enough to burn off the rest of this congestion. Cheers