But things I’ve done lately:

• Cigar Advisor revamped as an online magazine. You’ll see something from me in their July issue. But they’re doing tasting competitions with a great deal on the cigars involved, and I did my first round last night. It was a J Fuego Origen Original versus a Schizo 60 versus a Trocadero Honore. The Original was good, though quite a tight draw, and unlabeled which made it hard to figure out which one it was at first. I liked the Honore at first, but it had an interesting spice taste that got a bit old after a while. The Schizo 60 was just a solid cigar, and so I voted for it.
• And it looks my “raccoon traps” – bowls with rags soaked in ammonia – are working to keep the bugger away from me!
• Plum Deluxe posted an article I wrote about upgrading your bar. Read it and comment about it on Facebook should you desire!
• If you know me, you know I like beer. That being said, I am now boycotting Rogue. It started with them suing some NOLA bartenders after they dared name their book “Rogue Cocktails” and now they’re suing a local restaurant, Rogue 24. That’s Not Cool, Rogue.
• Next Friday DC Toasts salutes African-American bartenders. You should go. I will be there. It will be fun.
• Just an FYI: Looks like neither Marshall nor I will be attending Tales this year. It’s sad, but it will be good for my wallet. I will probably write more at length on the biggest reason I’ve decided against going later, but if you’ve read my coverage from previous years (especially 2011) you can probably guess the gist of it.

Well, that’s about it for now. If you’re looking for a good brunch spot, go bug our fellow scofflaw Anthony at Beuchert’s Saloon. Order many Ramos Gin Fizzes and mimosas. Try the oxtail gravy and biscuits, because I haven’t yet but they look fantastic!

A Beuchert’s Saloon employee pours bright orange syrup into a glass, adds ice, and pulls the handle to a soda fountain draft releasing a stream of carbonated water. The result is a house-made orange crush soda.

“It’s very creamy,” said Rachael Lopez, 24, a patron at Beuchert’s. Her husband, Ben Berkow, 26, enjoyed the smooth taste and the subtle vanilla flavor he got.

This new Capitol Hill restaurant recently installed three soda fountain draft arms originally assembled by the Liquid Carbonic Manufacturing Company and dated somewhere between the late 1880s and the mid 1910s.

August Paro, 45, is one of the saloon’s three owners and procured the equipment more than a year ago from a collector he’d found on eBay.

After a few emails and phone calls, Paro got what he was looking for and began working with his partners figuring out how to install the pieces in their new restaurant.

“I absolutely love the fact that there’s a soda resurgence going on in the country now. That’s incredible,” said Paro, varnishing a new shelf he’d just built for the bar.

At Beuchert’s, one arm pours soda water. Another pours filtered water. The last pours Prosecco.

Two of the arms are donned with ball handles made of white onyx. The brass arms are coated in thick chrome which, Paro says, is most likely the original casting.

The Prosecco arm has a sleek “swan’s neck” design. The other two arms have a classic form most familiar to those who’ve been to the limited number of throwback “soda jerk” shops left in the country.

The bartender makes another orange crush and carefully throttles back the soda water stream, unsure of its threshold. It’s been a long time since someone’s used one of these fountains.

“You can put fresh gaskets in them and they work exactly the way they worked in, say, 1905. I mean those are really nice pieces,” Paro said.

When Liquid Carbonic manufactured soda fountains they were cutting-edge equipment. Jacob Baur, a pharmacist in Terre Haute, Indiana, founded Liquid Carbonic in 1888.

Terre Haute is a town plucked right out of a Norman Rockwell painting and is home to the famous “Crossroads of America” at the intersection of Seventh Street and Wabash.

According to Mike McCormick, contributor to the Tribune-Star newspaper and Terre Haute historian, several Baur descendants still reside in the town today although their involvement in their great relative’s soda fountain history appears minimal.

Baur’s soda fountain manufacturing company flourished for several decades after it had been established, eventually pivoting to other needs within the soft drink industry.

Ebbe Almqvist’s History of Industrial Gases explains that Liquid Carbonic sold Coca-Cola Bottling Company the first low-pressure, carbonated beverage bottle filling system just weeks before World War I broke out.

Coca-Cola’s archives, however, were unable to confirm a business relationship between the two companies.

Most Americans would find little connection between the concoctions crafted in pharmacies before the 20th century and the ubiquitous soft drinks of today. Yet, the beginnings of the soda industry reside there.

According to Darcy O’Neil, booze blogger and author of Fix the Pumps, “The belief that carbonated water was medicinal put it squarely in the hands of the medical profession and their whims… at first, [pharmacists] used the sweetened soda water to conceal the taste of bitter drugs like quinine and iron. Then they started to add more exotic substances.”

Some of those exotic substances gave 19th century customers the jolt they wanted by serving up cocaine laced, cola flavored drinks while ostensibly imparting medicinal benefits.

In fact, writes O’Neil, pharmacies were so popular at one point they rivaled taverns and saloons with their beverages.

Government regulations and pressure from temperance organizations over time helped strip the harder narcotics from these drinks. Still, the American appetite for sugary, carbonated beverages remained.

Today, several innovative bars and restaurants are looking to revive a little of the innocent craftsmanship that went into the original hand-made sodas.

Reviving a craft takes the best tools and equipment.

Paro, who’s collected a half-dozen arms himself, worked with Phil Schy, owner of American Soda Fountain, Inc., to restore Beuchert’s pieces.

American Soda Fountain, based in Chicago, has been in Schy’s family for three generations and leads the industry in refurbishing old soda fountain equipment. Paro and company have maintained a working relationship since beginning the project.

“It’s not about dollars. It’s about seeing things go to good use,” said Paro.

He’s looking forward to featuring his other soda fountain treasures in other spaces sometime in the near future.

“Soda arms do no good sitting in somebody’s basement,” Paro said.

Full disclosure: Anthony Rivera is currently an employee at Beuchert’s Saloon. He wrote this piece individually and as an intellectual endeavor. Scofflaw’s Den receives no financial benefits from Beuchert’s Saloon for this article.

So where to begin reading? Begin by buying David Broom’s book, The World Atlas of Whisky: More Than 350 Expressions Tasted – More Than 150 Distilleries Explored. Not only is this a beautiful coffee table book, but this is the one-stop shop for understanding the whisky world. Do you know who David Broom is? If not check out his biography and a class he offers online here.

The above resources have been instrumental to my personal whiskey journey and I hope you will find them helpful as well. One last tip: as you start reading about the various whiskey flavor profiles, never underestimate your own taste palette! Keep tasting and taking notes along the way and you yourself will quickly become an expert. Good luck with your reads and please feel free to share other materials you find helpful here as well.

It’s been almost two weeks since I received the diabetus diagnoses. My wife and I have been eating a mostly paleo diet. If you aren’t familiar, the basic tenant of a paleo diet is that you eat like you live in the paleolithic period. This means lots of meats (BACON!) and veggies and cutting out processed foods such as bread, diary, sweets, etc. I call ours modified because we are still eating some diary, like cheese and sour cream. Of course, it’s been in moderation.

I also bought a Nike Fuelband to track my steps and calories burned through out the day. It is a little depressing when you work a desk job where you don’t move a lot to see your “activity” at the end of the day. C’est la vie. Regardless it’s a good way to keep track of what I’m doing to lose weight and it syncs with my iPhone so it’s easy to use.

On the booze front, there isn’t anything to report. I simply haven’t been drinking. I’ve also had a major head cold for the last 4 days so the cough and cold medicine has given me plenty of “entertainment” for a while. Tomorrow is the Super Bowl so I may have a cocktail or two or some sippin’ whiskey while watching the game.

In a comment to my first post, my friend Fred brought up his father-in-law. Fred said,

My father-in-law dealt with this. The major concerns were overdoing drinking for he stopped caring about blood testing and giving himself insulin on a regular basis, and that there couldn’t be an accurate read on his blood sugar if he had alcohol in his system.

I think this brings up a very good point that should be discussed. Granted, I’m not a medical professional or a shrink (though I did stay at a Holiday Inn Ex . . . sorry) but I would hazard a guess that this happens to a lot of people. You want to live your life they way you have in the past. What does a little number mean? I don’t have pain so it can’t be that bad right? The problem is diabetus is like a ninja – quiet, stealthy and maybe Asian I just DON’T KNOW! The point is that it doesn’t hurt and numbers are important. Luckily for me, I don’t have to give myself insulin or test my blood on a daily basis. My next blood test will be in the beginning on March. Hopefully all the good work I’m putting in this month will show positive benefits in March. My goal is to make the changes in diet and lifestyle needed to reverse the disease so I don’t have to worry about taking insulin or checking my blood daily.

If anybody reading this series has been diagnosed with the diabetus and your doctor has you on insulin and testing your blood sugar on a daily basis, please talk to your doctor about drinking! Fred is right and it can screw up your blood results. 

Another friend of mine, Mike Dietsch commented;

There has to be a space in this field in which people can write honestly about drinking and health. It’s not a binary thing — you don’t have to choose between hedonism and AA. But that’s the way everyone seems to want to frame the conversation. You’re healthy, or you’re a drinker. No in-betweens.

But few people in our sphere seem to want to talk about this.

I think Mike hit the nail on the head. Everything is about balance. Think about your favorite cocktail. What makes it great is that all the individual parts are working in harmony with one another – everything is in balance. This is why the best bartenders will give their cocktails a quick straw taste. They want to make sure what they are serving is balanced. Right now, I am out of balance. The good news is that I know it and can make adjustments. Enjoying great spirits and working in the booze industry is part of me. That has to be balanced with a healthy diet and weight control.

In my opinion, there is a healthy in-between of healthy and drinker. Hundreds of thousands of people reside there. Some of us will have to work harder on the healthy side, but it doesn’t mean you have to give up the drinker side. There has to be a balance and going from one extreme to the other can be just as unhealthy.

Just to end this update, I’m happy to report that I’m down to 207 pounds!

Cheers!

PS. I mentioned my friend Fred who writes at Cocktail Virgin Slut. Well, he has a new book out and I highly recommend you go pick it up. I’m constantly turning to Fred’s site for new cocktail recipes and inspiration and now some of that is in his book. Highly recommend!

On January 22, 2013 I was diagnosed with Type II Diabetes.

This diagnoses was a bit of a shock at first. However, once I was able to think about it, I shouldn’t have been too surprised. I’m 36 years old and my weight has fluctuated between 210-220 for about the last year. The icing on the cake (damn . . . maybe not the best analogy in this story) is that my father was diagnosed with type II diabetes in his mid-to-late fifties. My grandfather had the diabetus as did his father who lost his sight from the disease. Obviously not a family tradition I’m keen on continuing.

My blood glucose was about 100 points higher than where it should be and there were indications my kidneys were not working at 100%. My cholesterol was okay though. The good news is that my doctor firmly believes that with weight loss and a change in diet my numbers will go down and I can reverse the disease by making these changes.

So here’s the deal. I’m going to use this space as a chronicle of my battle against the diabetus. I know from talking to some other folks there are more than a couple of people in the spirits industry who is either in the same boat with me or are standing on the pier. It is certainly tough to be in this industry, with the drinks, rich food and general conviviality and watch what we eat, drink and take care of ourselves. To be frank, I’m not going to cut alcohol out of my life. For the love of pete I’m trying to build a business based on cocktails and spirits. It is simply unrealistic for me to cut something out of my life that I am building a life around.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand the dangers of over-indulging with a disease like diabetes. And that is the crux of the issue, at least for me — over-indulging. Not even with alcohol per se, rather it’s the food that kills me. I’m constantly eating carbs and general food-types that are not healthy for me. This series will be, in part, a way to share what I’m eating (and drinking) in this fight. So, my wife and I have decided to follow a modified paleo diet where we eat almost all lean meats and vegetables. Most processed foods are being eliminated from our diet. We have been eating this way since Tuesday January 23rd and I’m happy to report that at my last weigh in I was 208 pounds. Positive moves indeed.

As far as drinking goes, I’m going back to a rule I had for myself about a year ago. The rule is that from Sunday through Thursday, no alcohol. I’ll only have drinks out or at home on Friday nights or Saturdays. I still plan on writing about delicious spirits and interesting events so you’ll still see that on these pages. (Especially, the Chartreuse VEP I got as a wedding gift!)

You probably won’t see me talk about food, recipes, etc. too awful much. There is this thing called the interwebs where you can look up paleo recipes, see how I’m screwing it up and probably find better ways to eat than me. However, if I do find an interesting recipe that seems to fit the bill for a cocktail party or a dish that seems to fit something you can order while setting at a bar, I’ll probably discuss it.

Bottom line, this series will be a work in process and I’m not 100% sure how it will go. It will be, by nature, very personal to me and my family. The only thing I can wish is that by sharing my story and what I’m going through somebody else will be inspired to get checked and make changes to have a healthier life.

After all, the longer we live the more wonderful spirits we can taste and enjoy.

Cheers!

I am a bartender at Jack Rose Dining Saloon in Washington DC and this bar houses over 1,500 bottles of whiskey. Yes you are reading this correctly, over 1,500 bottles of American bourbon, rye, single malt scotch, Irish whiskey, Canadian whisky, Japanese whisky and many more international whiskeys. Name a bottle of whiskey you love and odds are we have it, plus many more options you probably have never heard of. To give you an idea of the vastness of the collection I work with, we have over fifteen different types of Macallans to offer.

It’s incredible! So, have I always loved whiskey? Where did my knowledge come from? How did I “stumble” upon this job which is geared around recommending this fabulous libation?

The truth is I did not always love whisky. It all began as I delved deeper into learning how to be more creative with all types of spirits, liqueurs, spices, juices, syrups, etc. What differentiates a good bartender from a great one is their ability to create a cocktail on demand that is a reflection of whatever the customer‘s whim or wish may be. My journey to falling in love with whiskey began with making cocktails for customers, including a great deal of whiskey. The more cocktails I made, the more my taste palate developed. I began to understand the small and large nuances between whiskies in terms of the entire tasting experience. This includes starting and lingering tasting notes, smells, textures, and overall mouth feel.

I quickly became obsessed with trying as many whiskies as possible, as I wanted to understand how each one could affect an entire cocktail’s flavor profile. What better place than to expand my knowledge than at Jack Rose Dining Saloon. As every bartender’s dream with so many options available to create with, this place became my playground. I fell in love with whiskey pretty quickly and there is no turning back.

For only being 26 years old, my taste palate is that of an old man or a middle-aged man, but I do not despair. I want to share my passion for whiskey with you. If you don’t understand, it’s time to sit down and have a flight of whisky. Item number one: TASTE.

I often use music as a metaphor to whiskey. I try to entice new beginners who are apprehensive about trying whiskey by pointing out that one cannot say they hate all music. There must be one song out there you love? The same goes for exploring the world of whiskey. What people too often fail to realize is that the world of whiskey is so vast and has so many options for you to try. Many people do not realize what is available to them. What are you waiting for?

My tip for enjoying whiskey:: Keep tasting as many as possible because the options are endless.

The other night I saw a former bar employee ranting about about a professional food critic’s review of the person’s previous place of employment. It made me think of something about the atmosphere of certain bars that I wanted to touch on.

But first, let me state this: as a rule, you’ll probably notice that we rarely, if ever, post bad reviews of a bar by name. When we first started, there was one that we mentioned some issues with, but worked that out with the bartender later, and I wish we’d reached out to him before posting. If I am going to post something negative, it’s either because I’m very passionate about what I perceive as an injustice  (see most of my Tales posts recently) or I give them a chance to respond before I post (see my post on the William Grant & Sons party at Tales – they just declined to respond after saying they would).

That’s because there’s almost always another side of the story. This industry can be rough enough as it is, there is no reason for me to jeopardize somebody’s job because my Old Fashioned had fruit in it or I wasn’t happy with my bar snacks or I just feel like being a little bitch online. There’s a reason why people look down on Yelp-ers.

On the other hand, I feel like there’s very little reward for industry folks to lash out publicly at people speaking poorly of them online, unless it is to correct a factual error. Yelling online via Twitter, or Yelp comments, or whatever, will usually not garner you goodwill among people who haven’t visited your establishment and may engender some reconsideration among people who’ve visited your place before.

Enough digression.

What got me about the rant was the claim that the reviewer (disclosure: I am friends with the reviewer but don’t know anyone else involved) just didn’t get it. She’d visited the bar, but she just didn’t understand their patrons, and friends and family understood the vibe there. It’s her fault!

WRONG.

Here’s the problem with that: what you’re saying is that if you’re not a member of the friends and family of the bar, you’re not going to have as good of an experience. A bar should be open to all, it should not be a clique, or a fraternity, or a closed socialite circle.

Let me use some examples from around this area. I am not going to use the real bars’ names, as not all things will be complimentary. If you know me and know the area, you might recognize some of them.

BAR A: This bar wasn’t far from my old apartment. Every time I went in there was a group of regulars there, chatting with the bar staff. Service was perfunctory and sometimes slow. The staff and the regulars got along quite well, but newcomers to the bar were not included. When the bar closed, many folks complained and complained online about how “the atmosphere was so wonderful”. Why, yes, it was. For you. For the rest of us, it was a shitty bar and we were happy to see it go.

BAR B: This bar has a good crowd of regulars, both in and out of the industry. The staff is friendly to everyone, however, and does their best to include people in on conversations, introduce them to other patrons, etc. Meanwhile the patrons are often quite talkative to people visiting the bar for the first time, or just to people they’ve seen before. Obviously, this breaks down some when it gets really busy, but for the most part holds up well. The only folks I’ve heard complain about it are people who keep themselves distant from everyone else in the bar other than their own friends.

BAR C: An Irish bar down near where I used to live. The bartenders are amazing – go more than once, and they’ll remember your name and your order. The regulars tend to be a bit gruff and insular, but they’re also almost always willing to have a conversation or share some camaraderie. If the patrons at BAR A had been more like the patrons here, outsiders wouldn’t have felt so unwelcome, and perhaps their bar wouldn’t have closed.

BAR D: Everyone hates everyone else. When I’m depressed, that’s the kind of bar I like. It’s shitty and everyone knows it.

BAR E: Good service if you know the bartenders – but if they get distracted by other patrons, it can be slow as hell. Ever get used to being doted on by the staff, then find yourself unable to get a refill because the bartender is flirting with hot girls? It can give you a sad.

So how do you build a good bar experience for your patrons?

It’s all about the people. You need bartenders that can be social and friendly without getting clogged down with one small group of patrons. They need to be able to keep the bar running while making each patron feel special.

And it’s about the customers. You need the kind of customers who will be friendly to newcomers to your bar. This is helped by your bartenders – if the regulars see that the bar staff adds new people to the conversation (“Hey, come meet so and so” or “What do you think about XYZ?”) then they’ll be more willing to do the same.

Obviously, not every bar is going to want to go that way. But the next time you feel the need to defend a bar by saying “you just don’t get it” stop and think that perhaps you’re not the one who gets it.

As part of their coverage they interviewed yours truly on the subject of cocktail bitters. Click here to head over and give it a read.

I’ll leave the political comments off of the blog, but I will say one thing: the next day is the election, so you can go to the Passenger, booze it up, go to work late the next day and tell your boss “I was voting”. I can’t do that, because I voted early, but if you also vote early, you’ll have the sticker to prove it!

I’m just saying.

(And a special hint: both Brown brothers are supposed to be behind the bar, along with JP Featherston and Alex Bookless, so really, get your butt in there and drink yo’ face off. IT’S FOR CHARITY!)

Second, in the spirit of giving, the Passenger hosted our five year anniversary party a couple of weeks ago. We raised a couple of hundred bucks for our charities (the Museum of the American Cocktail and the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation) and had an overall great time. Many thanks to our sponsors: The Passenger, Chartreuse and Edinburgh Gin, Whisked Bakery, Diep 9 genever, Catoctin Creek, and Chairman’s Reserve Rum.

Now my drink came in second to Marshall’s in voting, but since Hurricane Sandy is about to give our area a punch to the nose, it seems appropriately named and timed for me to give you my drink.

Dark Storms Travelling Slowly
2 ounces Chairman’s Reserve Rum (gold)
3/4 ounce lemon juice
1/4 ounce allspice dram
2 dashes Bittermens Hellfire Habanero Shrub
Shake ingredients together and pour into a highball glass unstrained. Top with two parts ginger beer, one part soda water. Garnish with a wheel of lime.

(Also see this news article for the origins of the acronym I used.)

Yes, it says “whiskey” here but they insist it’s “whisky”.

Third, also in the spirit of giving, thanks to Joe at Taylor Strategy I was sent a sample of George Dickel rye whisky. (No “e”! Except on the sample bottle. Oops!)

The aroma out of the bottle was nice. Kind of sweet. I poured some into a glass and tried it straight.

It’s … different than a lot of ryes I’ve had. My very first taste, I liked it at first, then the after taste I did not care for. However, my second and third tastes I liked a lot better, and got the impression it has a different over all “build” to the taste than a lot of ryes have. I haven’t played with it in a cocktail yet but I’ll probably make a Manhattan and/or a Sazerac at some point this weekend OH MY GOODNESS I FORGOT TO STOCK UP ON VERMOUTH BEFORE THE FRANKENSTORM I HOPE THERE IS STILL SOME TOMORROW AT THE STORE!

(Any rumors that I might have also done a “Gangnam Style” tasting, dancing around in my house with no pants on and listening to the song while drinking Dickel rye out of the sample bottle, may be completely and utterly true.)

So I’m off to finish preparing for Sandy’s vengeful wrath upon DC. Have a great weekend everyone! And hopefully see you November 5th!

To commemorate this milestone, we are hosting a party on October 7, 2012 at The Passenger in Washington, D.C. The party starts at 4:00pm and lasts until 8:00pm. But knowing us, we’ll be sticking around for quit a while after that.

There will be a friendly cocktail competition between SeanMike and I. We’ll each create a cocktail that will be for sale at the bar. Everyone who shows up will get a ballot and can vote for their favorite drink. To entice you to try each drink, and to prove we’re not completely self-centered guys, we’re mixing for charity! The proceeds from The Passenger during our party will be donated to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and the Museum of the American Cocktail. We will also have a donation bucket for additional acts of kindness.

Additionally, we’ll be talking about a few upcoming projects and general direction of Scofflaw’s Den that is a bit of a departure, though certainly complimentary, to what you’re used to seeing.

At the party you’ll be able to order some great cocktails created by the Passenger folks using some of our favorite brands and sponsors of our party, Chairman’s Reserve Rum, Catoctin Creek Distillery, Edinburgh Gin, Green Chartreuse and Diep 9 Genever. We’re still working on a few other sponsors and hope we can announce them soon. BTW, if you rep a brand and are interested in being part of our celebration, shoot SeanMike an email.

There you have it! I hope everyone reading this will be able to make it to The Passenger on Sunday, October 7th between 4pm and 8 pm to celebrate our 5 year anniversary and support two fantastic organizations!

Cheers!