The Modern Bar Cart Podcast

In this wide-ranging conversation with cocktail expert and bar mentor Jim Meehan (@mixography), author of The Bartender’s Pantry, some of the topics we discuss include:

• How ingredient sourcing and processing ties into the exercise of integrity--not just in sourcing the highest “quality” ingredients, but also exploring how your purchasing power plays into our larger agricultural and economic systems.

• The way that Jim and his illustrator, Bart Sasso, used procedural graphics to create a four-dimensional rendering of the ingredient prep recipes. I’ve never seen illustrations as clever as these in a cocktail or a cookbook, and I think you’ll love them.

• Why the process of being a good cocktail generalist actually forces you to become a micro-specialist in many different facets of cooking and mixology.

• The importance of taking ingredients and recipes seriously while also preserving the magic of fun and playfulness in cocktails.

• The fascinating, delicious gray area that opens up when you realize that the ingredients you’re transforming in the kitchen are also transforming YOU

• And much, much more.

In this LIVE Seminar recording, Eric identifies two key strains of B.S. that run through contemporary tasting notes. Then, using a concept he refers to as "locating the 'heart' of a spirit," he explores how to generate tasting notes that say accurate things about flavor while also allowing people to connect with the liquid in a glass or a bottle.

In this, sweet, funky, and occasionally grassy conversation with Ian Burrell (@therumambassador), author of Rum A Tasting Course, some of the topics we discuss include:

• Why Ian takes a “flavor-first” approach to rum (in general, but especially in this book), and how these flavors are gateways to history, geography, culture, and conversation.

• The different ways that rum can be categorized, and why these categories are a gateway to all the delightful exceptions that will bamboozle and delight your palate and your brain.

• We also discuss the three primary types of rum drinkers and the ways these different mindsets and preferences weave through the contemporary story of rum as we experience it at our favorite bars and distilleries.

• Ian offers a glimpse into some of the completely unique features of RUM: A Tasting Course, including how to make a DIY aroma kit to practice your nosing skills, how he learned about some of the more “illicit” styles of cane spirits being produced around the globe, and how to read a rum label in a way that gives you clues as to what’s in the bottle.

• We also explore how rum is the most global spirits category of all and why it can benefit from a “complex-systems” approach that introduces people to many different levels of description on their journey to understand and enjoy the bounty of world cane spirits.

• Along the way, we riff on why it’s awesome to know the shoe size of your favorite rum blender, the elaborate heist that Ian has planned in order to secure a barrel or two from Foursquare Distillery, which sex act is most comparable to the experience of drinking Campari, and much, much more.

Every conversation with Ian is both a joy and a complete reinforcement of WHY he is truly THE Global Rum Ambassador. I hope you’ll take the opportunity to give him a follow on social media and look into preordering his new book, Rum A Tasting Course, which will be available in the US about a month after this podcast goes live.

Eric investigates the Boce Coaster, descending into a noir mystery narrative to determine if it's possible for a drink coaster to reduce fusel oils in distilled spirits using "quantum tunneling."

Buckle up. This is a weird one.

In this campy conversation with Reece Sims (@reecesims), creator of Flavor Camp, some of the topics we discuss include:

• How camps - like bars - act as intense and intimate “third places,” where people with shared interests or commonalities can gather and thrive.

• What Reece does to shake up the traditional ruts we fall into when tasting spirits--from the way she sets up the layout of the room, to the way she goes about selecting spirits for any given flight.

• And did you know: Flavor Camp isn’t just the name of the program; it’s an organizing paradigm that Reece deploys that both SIMPLIFIES the typical flavor wheels we often see used in spirits tastings, and also EXPLODES the restrictions implied by traditional spirits categories.

• We also talk about how to navigate the “personal” and the “public” when generating tasting notes. How do you take something that tastes like a certain thing to YOU--like grandma’s kitchen, or the woods after a rain--and figure out how to communicate that very unique flavor to other people who may not share your experiences.

• Finally, we talk about the notion of the “Head-Fake” in the spirits and cocktail world: which is when you overtly focus on one thing, but that ONE THING teaches you so much more about other components of leading a meaningful life.

• Along the way, we discuss the one booze billboard that triggered me in a major way, how to pair donuts with whiskey, why simple cocktails made with high quality spirits are waaaay better than molecular gastronomy, and much, much more.

Eric shares some exciting previews of the episodes to come in the second half of 2024, including sneak previews of "Cocktail Futurism" interviews with Rob Nester (Drinking with Robots) and Jayme Blaschke (Lagoon of Mystery).

In this down-to-earth conversation with distiller and outdoorsman Tony Gugino of Eighth District Distilling Co., some of the topics we discuss include:

• How Tony’s childhood exploring and fishing in Upstate New York inform the way he moves through the natural world and experiments with botanicals in his spirits.

• The attributes and attentional faculties that separate experienced foragers from everybody else, and why foraging is less about memorizing plant names than it is about developing spatial awareness and being in open dialogue with the world around you.

• Then we use Tony’s recent victory as a contestant on Moonshiners: Master Distiller as a case study for how to build a foraged spirit from the ground up, analyzing not just the ingredients he used, but how he braided them into a cohesive, symphonic product.

• We also delve into foraging for bartenders, specifically: using seasonality and natural harvest cycles as a way to break out of the cloistered, “riff on a classic” approach that can place some bartenders in a creative rut.

• But foraging isn’t just for distillers and bartenders--it’s for everyone, so we conclude by offering some advice for home bartenders who have the option to start experimenting with foraging at a truly intimate scale.

• Along the way, we cover all the reasons why I was jealous of Tony when I first met him, how to make salt - yeah, you heard me…salt, the connection between Mulberries, Silk, and Connecticut’s textile industry, and much, much more.

Featured Cocktail: The Golden Ghost

This episodes’ featured cocktail is: The Golden Ghost. To make it, you’ll need:

• ¾ oz Espadin Mezcal

• ¾ oz Blanco Tequila

• ¾ oz of clear Creme de cacao

• ¾ oz genepy (which is a green alpine liqueur from France)

• 1 dash of orange bitters

Combine the ingredients in a mixing glass with ice, stir until well chilled and properly diluted, then strain into a Nick & Nora glass, garnish with a flaming star anise pod, and enjoy.

The Golden Ghost is a Bijou riff minted by bartender Brian Evans of the bar Sunday in Brooklyn sometime around 2018. Instead of 1.5 oz of gin, you’ve got a split base of mezcal and tequila, which kinda tracks. Some of those mineral agave flavors can act like botanicals. The ¾ oz of creme de cacao nods to some of the deeper more confectionary notes that a good sweet vermouth will provide in the Bijou cocktail, with the genepy standing in for Chartreuse to tone down both the proof point and the pour cost.

In this American, singular, and distinctly malty conversation with Tyler Pederson (@cerealdistiller), master distiller at Westland Distillery, some of the topics we discuss include:

• How Tyler came to be an American Single Malt distiller and what it’s like to develop a resilient supply chain of farmers and malt houses that can sustain itself year after year.

• Why distillers use the “hot steep” method to conduct sensory analysis of different barley strains, plus a hands-on demo where we compare three different samples from Westland’s barley portfolio.

• The difference between a “single malt whiskey” versus a true single varietal whiskey, plus what it takes to get a farmer to take a risk cultivating a varietal they’ve never grown before.

• And what the rules and standards submitted for approval to the TTB by the American Single Malt Whiskey Commission could mean for the styles and varieties of spirits that will be available on shelves and behind bars for the foreseeable future.

• Along the way, we pursue other interesting tangents, like why you don’t see much barley growing in the South, how the Japanese concept of Kaizen plays into running a distillery, Tyler’s personal thoughts on whether or not Bigfoot is real, and much, much more.

It’s entirely possible that this hot steep experiment and side-by-side tasting is the first time the process has been laid out and recorded for the public to see outside of a distillery or a brewery or a malting house. And because I’m super excited about that, I carefully recorded the whole process, and that video will be live on our YouTube channel within an hour or so of when this episode hits the podcast apps.

Featured Cocktail: Malted American Trilogy

This episode’s featured cocktail is the Malted American Trilogy. To make it, you’ll need:

• 1 oz American Single Malt Whiskey

• 1 oz Applejack

• A couple dashes of Orange bitters

• Some kind of dark, brown sugar - either a quarter-to-half an ounce of rich demerara or panela syrup, or a dark brown sugar cube. 

Combine these ingredients in a cocktail mixing glass with ice - and of course, if you’re using that sugar cube, do your muddling with the bitters and a splash of soda water first. Give everything a good stir, mixing until the drink is properly diluted and chilled, then strain into a rocks glass over a single large cube, garnish with an orange twist, and enjoy.

The American Trilogy cocktail was developed at the famous NYC cocktail bar, Little Branch, in 2006, and it traditionally employs rye whiskey, rather than American Single Malt. But simple cocktail formats like this modified Old Fashioned are a great opportunity to test the character of a whiskey - so why not give it a shot with American Single Malt (which is beginning to play the role today that rye whiskey played when the drink was invented)?

In this RTD redux with Keli Rivers, David T. Smith, and Joe Barber, some of the topics we discuss include:

• Emerging trends in the post-pandemic RTD (ready to drink) and RTS (ready to serve) cocktail space, including more bottled RTS SKUS, continued innovation by small producers, and marked improvements across the board in stability and flavor.

• Thoughts on the very real limitations of launching an RTD, such as flavor drift, limited off-premise shelf space, and market saturation.

• Increased adoption of RTDs by event venues and airlines, including a stunning demo of flight attendant choreography by David.

• A breezy romp through some of the more “populist” categories of RTDs, including boozy iced teas and vibrantly colored mermaid lemonades.

• And some discussion about the pros and cons of using a malt alcohol (i.e. fermented) base, versus employing distilled spirits in RTDs and RTSs.

• Along the way, we explore the use cases for “urinal cake” as a tasting note, the color “bleen” (coming to a crayon box near you), a spicy debate about sidecars and dividends, and much, much more.

This is a light-hearted departure from our normal, buttoned up interview format, but don’t let our casual rapport and bubbling excitement fool you: there’s a ton of great insights here for anyone who’s interested in producing or enjoying RTDs in the year 2024 and beyond.

In this Seattle cocktail retrospective with Paul Clarke, Editor in Chief of Imbibe Magazine, some of the topics we discuss include:

• How Paul began his drinks journey in the early days of the cocktail renaissance and became a regular at the ZigZag Cafe, a Seattle cocktail den that rose to prominence thanks, in large part, to a bartender named Murray Stenson.

• The fascinating gravitational pull that Murray exerted, both within professional hospitality circles and on the community of cocktail enthusiasts who congregated at his bar. 

• How Murray resurrected The Last Word cocktail from the pages of a forgotten 1950s cocktail book and why his quest for the weird, wonderful, and esoteric extended far beyond cocktails.

• We also examine hospitality through the lens of an old-school bartender, someone who understood that the people are more important than the drinks - and we try to collect some takeaways for young bartenders who are just starting out on their hospitality journey.

• Along the way, we consider the merits of large vinyl collections and a lifelong fascination with music, the simple pleasure of spilling “your unique weirdness” to the bartender after a couple drinks, why Murray was “too cool” for awards ceremonies, and much, much more.

Paul and I pulled up a seat during our recent spirits judging stint at the American Distilling Institute’s annual International Spirits Competition to explore the legacy of one of the cocktail renaissance’s most beloved bartenders: Murray Stenson.

Upon his passing in September of 2023, Murray was memorialized for the major part he played in bringing The Last Word cocktail back onto the world stage after decades of obscurity, but he also played a massively important role in stewarding the overall cocktail culture of Seattle for many years.

So this conversation, like its cocktail namesake, is an equal parts mix of history, elegy, technique, and idiosyncrasy.

Featured Cocktail - The Industry Sour

This episode’s featured cocktail is the Industry Sour. To make this Last Word variant, you’ll need either ¾ oz or 1 oz each of the following:

• Fernet Branca (A minty, alpine amaro from Italy)

• Green Chartreuse

• Simple Syrup

• Fresh Squeezed lime juice

Combine these ingredients in a cocktail shaker with ice, give ‘em a good, hard shake until the drink is properly chilled and diluted, then strain into a stemmed cocktail glass and enjoy.

Developed by St. Louis bartender Ted Kilgore in 2011, I think of the Industry Sour as an offspring of The Last Word, designed, as its name implies, specifically for nerdy cocktail bartenders who are “in the know” about esoteric ingredients like Chartreuse and Fernet.

In this case, the Fernet kind of stands in for the gin, which works (since it’s a dry botanical liqueur). And instead of the double-shot of sweetness AND nuttiness from the usual Maraschino liqueur, the Industry Sour takes a half-step back with the use of plain ol’ simple syrup--something that any good cocktail bartender will have within arm’s reach

For me, the only real shame is that the pearlescent green color of The Last Word is replaced by a kind of muddy brown in this riff - but again, it seems fitting. Anyone can walk up to something as beautiful as The Last Word and understand they’ve got something special, but it takes a true cocktail acolyte to really appreciate the complex, aggressive symphony contained in the brownish soup of the Industry Sour.