In the Rocks

So here we are with big dreams and a big book.

If you haven’t held this book or seen it in person, it’s big. Really big. The giant book arrived at our door at the beginning of December, and it seems the more we peer through its pages, the bigger it gets. It starts with incredible stories and memos from the Aviary team, and the content is just beyond good. As we discussed our project, we tried to figure out where to start.

Logically, I suggested we start from the beginning. Enter Gin & Tonic. Easy enough, right? Wrong. The recipe calls for a carbonation machine, which unfortunately we don’t have (yet). It also calls for cucumber spheres, made with calcium lactate and a sodium alginate bath. Finally, as Angie put it, we didn’t have a really cool straw for the picture. We do have calcium lactate and sodium alginate, so this recipe is a nearly possible dream, but we agreed to put a pin in it until we can acquire the most important ingredient: a cool straw.

Flipping through the pages, we found our mark. Realizing we were coming up on a weekend getaway to Minnesota, where we could access different liquors due to the different state laws, Angie stated she wanted to do a series of cocktails so that we could adventure and acquire ingredients from a laundry list of cocktails, instead of searching for one single item to build. Enter: In the Rocks.

In the Rocks is a series in the book containing six classic cocktails, which are injected into the center of a spherical ice shell. This list of classics include the Old Fashioned, El Presidente, Red Hook, Boulevardier, Vieux Carré, and Remember the Maine. When served, the guest smashes the ice shell to release the cocktail with a slingshot. What better way to break the ice on our first blog post? Warning, if you have severe allergies to puns, this is your last chance to abandon ship. My entire staff calls my horrible puns ‘B(r)ad jokes,’ and they are often distributed in the server alleys as pun-ishment.

December 17th, 2018. Our trip to Minneapolis was a huge success. We found some cool mini-whisks for our bar set and explored carbonation machine solutions for future projects. The next day we took a few personal adventures, including a beautiful festival at Loring Park. After a morning of vacation fun, it was time for our liquor quest. Our first stop was the North Loop liquor store on Washington Ave. We managed to check only a few items off of our laundry list of liquor, and we got some details and suggestions from the staff. One young lady informed us that she worked with a former Aviary employee who runs a bar nearby. She gave us some suggestions for more liquor stores and we were off!

Our next stop was a liquor store that was beyond our scope of experience with liquor stores. Everywhere we’ve ever shopped has been small-scale, and mostly local. At this stop we found ourselves at Total Wine, a department store of booze. I’ve never seen so many aisles and so much variety. It was exciting. Angie and I danced down the aisles like children running down the halls on Christmas morning, yet simultaneously it left a taste of “manufactured” in our minds. There was something less satisfying about shopping in this corporate behemoth of liquor, but at least we scored some awesome stainless steel bird-themed toothpicks. Surprisingly, we found only a few more items, despite the sheer supply. Botran Reserva Rum, as well as a few other items, continued to evade us. Then, we found the bar our liquor store friend mentioned…

Welcome to the Hodges Bend. Perfection in cocktails, perfection in espresso, and I bet the food is just as incredible. We never had the chance to try dinner, but it is first on our list for our next visit. Not only that, but after a good chat with our bartender, who once worked under Micah Melton himself at the Aviary in Chicago, we learned that if we had a problem acquiring Botran Reserva Rum, we could substitute Ron Zacapa 23 Centenario Rum for a similar effect. We thanked our bartender for the information, and decided to try a shot of his legendary espresso. I ordered it with a side of sugar, and after the first sip without sugar I immediately pushed the sugar away. The rich flavors of this espresso were so incredible, no sugar was necessary. Seriously, if you are anywhere near Minneapolis, put Hodges Bend at the top of your list of places to go. It is absolutely incredible.

We paid our tab and prepared to leave when our bartender shared something called a “boomerang” of none other than Brovo Boomerang liqueur with us. This was our first time being introduced to Brovo Boomerang, and the concept of a boomerang in general. Brovo Boomerang liqueur is a creation by Micah Melton, the Beverage Director of the Aviary. On the bottle it reads, “When a bartender respects another bartender, they send a boomerang – a cocktail – carried by a regular. This liqueur is our boomerang to you.” I’d be lying if I said Angie and I didn’t jump up and down and squeal after we left the bar and turned the corner on our way back to the car. We jotted down a few more recommended local liquor stores, then we were on our way.

The next day, we managed our first huge success: we completed our grocery list. This step is going to be the hardest, most time consuming part of our project, every step of the way.

At this point in time, Angie and I didn’t have a website, and neither of us had ever made one. It was time for me to do the thing I do — watch Youtube videos and read articles until I master the basics of a new craft. This is how I taught myself piano, Korean, how to build a computer, etc.

January 2nd, 2019. I did it! We did it! We are officially online. We have a website, and we are ready for blogging. Now to do the thing with the drinks and the alcohol and stuff.

We bought coasters and a drill to cut the center and make the rim guards for our slingshot. A rubber band and a pretty round metal bit made our slingshot complete — if you could call our jimmy-rigged contraption and unmounted finger-slingshot a completion. This was trickier than I expected. Drilling the center of the coaster caused a lot of tension and made the wood splinter and crack. Our first attempt was a huge bust. Literally. However, round 2 and round 3 came out beautifully, and only kind of very off center. I prefer to call them artistically non-symmetrical.

To make the ice-shell spheres, the book suggests a “refrigerated circulator bath.” The only problem was that it was very expensive, and we really didn’t know what we would do with it after the project, even if we had the funds (which we didn’t). So, we agreed not to be cool kids and made the shells via our own standard freezer. Throughout a two week period, Angie and I took turns making hollow ice balls from a single, large silicone ice mold. It took about 4 to 4 ½  hours to freeze the outer shell without it being too thin and still leave room for the cocktail center in our freezer. This is a long shot from the 5 minutes it takes for the aforementioned refrigerated circulator bath to generate a fully-functional ice shell.

Finally, by Sunday, January 13th, we had about 9 handsome looking shells stored in a big ziplock baggie. We mixed most of the cocktail ingredients from home and put them into jars. Then, we packed everything up and went to the restaurant that I manage. This restaurant is our playground of professional development. Angie created the bar program, I created just about everything else. From menu design to computer programming, it is our baby. The rest of the ingredients we had batched out the week previous, and purchased them from the restaurant (this saved us a lot of money instead of buying entire bottles of everything), then we finished our mixing at the bar. We noticed what we could only assume to be a typo, as the Red Hook called for 12 dashes of Regan’s Orange Bitters in the single cocktail recipe, which we were quite skeptical about. After consideration and comparison to the other recipes, we decided to opt for 2 dashes of bitters instead.

The cocktails were prepped; Angie made the demerara syrup, grenadine, and the cherry granita earlier in the week. We had a big syringe (or a “flavor injector”) and we were ready. Then, Angie set up her light box and took some sample shots.

Finally, it was the moment of truth… Round 1, Old Fashioned In the Rocks. As Angie prepared for her photography session, I descended to our lower bar and began injecting the first ice shell with our batched Old Fashioned. This was the part that terrified me. I had no idea how fast the ice would melt, or how fragile it would be. To my surprise, it was very sturdy. I had no difficulty injecting our ice with a belly of liquor. Then, I hurried upstairs to Angie and to our excitement, it  worked! It held up, and we crossed another milestone! We had successfully completed our first Aviary cocktail: The Old Foggy In the Rocks. Seriously, it took the longest 5 minutes of our lives for the foggy frozen glass and foggy ice to clarify. Old Fashioneds are my go-to. Angie and I like Woodford Reserve Double Oaked as our bourbon of choice for our Old Fashioneds. The Eagle Rare, demerara, and bitters paired very nicely together. It was a great drink, perfect for our first… crack at it. Brad puns for the win.

As we continued to craft our cocktails, some friends who joined us for the journey hung out, ate pizza, and played games. We all took turns destroying ice shells with the sheer power of our artistically non-symmetrical slingshot of wonder. Some attempts were better than others. But we prevailed and eventually got to the center of every tootsie-pop.

We learned from the Old Fashioned that we didn’t need to put the glass in the freezer. We were nervous about the ice melting, and our precautions weren’t necessary. Round 2, El Presidente was a bit bumpy. The hole for the syringe was too large and the drink started spilling out of the ice. Round 3, Red Hook went off without a hitch. The lemon really makes El Presidente pop, it definitely became a new favorite. Red Hook had a strong, bold flavor to it. Bitter, bold, and complex. The other problem child was round 4, the Boulevardier. Perhaps I got impatient, but I broke my first shell and battled the syringe on that one. The Knob Creek Single Barrel Reserve Bourbon had less bite than the Cody Road Rye, making a more elegant impression with sweet vermouth and Campari. Round 5, Vieux Carré truly drinks like an aperitif. I enjoyed it for the smooth and colorful palette. Finally, Round 6, Remember the Maine was the prettiest of the promenade. I loved the way the cocktail was nestled in the fluffy cherry granita, like a jewel in a pillow.

The thrill and joys of this experience taught us a great deal. Before this experience we had never really batched cocktails, so learning the do’s and don’ts of making a batch was great. We made a few new syrups, made a few awesome connections, and made a lot of awesome memories. I can tell this project is going to get a lot harder very quickly as we thumb through the pages once again, like assassins on the hunt for the next mark. It seems like we are building a crime board, connecting all of the recipes that share ingredients like stringing together murders in some big plot to take out a mafia boss. Meanwhile, I find my mind boggled at how we will take out the street-side grunts. Well, cheers to a successful first shot at our project. I look forward to the next chapter.

Enjoy some gifs of us ?????????? – Angie