Some FAQs.
So, what is Comfortable Craft?
Mixology without the dodads. Craft cocktail components and techniques without the suspenders and a fedora.
What is Freepour versus Jiggering?
Freepouring is using an internal “count” to measure liquids coming out of a bottle. Jiggering is using a tiny measuring cup to measure things coming out of a bottle.
What is a BOOM?
A large format mixture of flavor. Used to replace individual syrups, fortified wines, bitters, liqueurs, purees, fruit, herbs, vermouths and other stuff that tastes good. It’s not a batch, shut your whore mouth.
What is a Freezer Door Cocktail?
A combination of a Vermouth or Syrup granita combined with an incredibly cold Spirit poured over it. We have Martinis, Gibsons, Manhattans, and Old Fashioneds currently. Negronis coming soon.
Yeesh, what's a granita FFS?
A rustic Italian-style ice.
What is anthropomorphic?
The attribution of human characteristics or behavior to animals, plants or objects.
Hiya!
I'm The Elbow Room. You may think that I’m just a dive bar with a fancy-pants cocktail problem in Vancouver WA. But I’m actually an anthropomorphic house of deliciousness. So, why dontcha pull up a seat, grab your cocktail and listen to what Toby had to say the other evening about Comfortable Craft.
What the fuck is Comfortable Craft? You ask.
You haven't heard of Comfortable Craft, because Toby made it up a few months ago. He had heard the term “fast craft” and then went out and complicated the matter. As per usual. Anyway, if you are ready, here is what he told me. He blathered over two Double Freezer Door Martinis so please excuse his verbosity. Here is what he told me.
“The term Fast Craft caught my attention a while ago because it was such an easily graspable idea. Fast food. Fast Casual. Fast Cars. Fast and the Furious. Fast Mixology. But I thought that was too simplified and reductive. Fast is part of what we wanted to accomplish for sure, because waiting 10 or fifteen minutes for a drink is very uncomfortable.
So first off I felt strongly it had to be a freepour program.
The impetus for the free pour cocktail program at The Elbow Room grew out of the bar itself, its laid back feel. I didn’t want to do an obvious mixology bar. Mixology happens, but in the back so we don’t get any on the guest.
We have a hybrid style bar. Our classics are jiggered, and everything else is freepour.
We live in a hostile, indifferent world which is hurtling towards entropy and chaos. Juice is different in June and in January, because of where it’s coming from and the season. The fruit itself is different if there was super rainy or wicked dry the week before it was harvested. Juice is different when it was squeezed an hour ago and 8 hours ago.
I think that the freepour program is centered on two tools, first is the speed pourer and the second is the tasting straw. You cannot have a program that is worth a shit if you aren’t doing quality control. The bartender's palate is the most important and final part of the process. Doing that straw taste and then TWEAKING the cocktail is what is needed. That beat between the taste and the pour is where the rubber hits the road. Not only does the bartender need to just taste the drink, they need to analyze it and figure out how it can be better. That is exhausting, and especially difficult after you have tasted dozens and dozens of cocktails.
If you are using a jigger, and using it well which isn’t a given, your drinks are going to be solid. But can you make them better, sure you can, a dash of bitters, a few drops of lemon or simple, three more shakes…getting to the heart of the cocktail. Cooks adjust their food for seasoning before sending it out, why wouldn’t you adjust your cocktail.
I wanted to create a program where the bartender still had control over the balance of the drink, while still banging out three touch cocktails. Three touches before bitters, floats and garnish that is.
A quick aside, when I was writing the manifesto the big thing I learned was that I’m an Idiot. I had never researched the brix of simple syrup at 1x1 and Demerara at 2x1. I’m not a math guy, and I was always a bit quizzical that 1x1 syrup only increased the volume by 50%. Right? You add one liter of sugar to 1 liter of water and you get 1.5 Liters. That doesn’t really make sense. But it does. So I know that 1x1 was about 50% sugar to water. So I assumed that 2x1 was double that. Obviously that's not true. OBVIOUSLY 2x1 isn’t even 90% sugar. It’s 64%ish. This completely changed the way that I used dem, i use it with abandon now.
DILUTION! Water eats booze and sugar faster than acid and flavor. I will make that statement with absolutely zero scientific backing, but my tongue knows it to be true. If you take one ounce of 80 proof booze, one ounce of Simple and One ounce of Lemon juice, and you add one ounce of water to all of them there will be a bigger difference in the spirit and the syrup than in the juice. Try it for yourself. Let me know what you think.
My other nonscientific opinion is that cocktails need close to 100% dilution to taste right. Here is another example of me being an idiot. I had always spouted the all cocktails need about 25% dilution mantra. Then I was writing Manny, and recipe testing at home, because it was COVID lockdown. I just couldn’tt get my cocktails to taste right. I was shaking harder than I ever did at a bar. I pretty quickly realized that the ice coming out of my home freezer was way colder than the Hoshizaki sitting uncovered in a well behind the stick. So I started adding AN OUNCE AND A HALF OF COLD WATER to my shaker and the drinks made sense. The super cold ice felt like shaking with Whiskey stones, giving great texture and effervescence, but not adding any H2O content. So armed with that knowledge I actually thought about H2O. What helped me visualize H2O content was a martini. The spec for the Martinis at TVH were 2.0oz Gin, 1oz Dry Vermouth, three dashes O bitters. Our Glass was a 5.5oz Coupe, with a sidecar. Our martinis would be an almost full coupe and a bit in the sidecar, coming out to about 6 ounces, more if we were using a Split base of navy proof gin. Which, even with my shitty math skills, comes out to 100% dilution.
I had read something somewhere that humans like the ABV of their libations up to about 16%, which is a where big wines usually sit. Everything beyond that is learned behavior, acquired taste or toxic masculinity. So that's what I shoot for in shaken cocktails. Stirred, and stirred up can be higher, but that’s because that’s what is expected. What water content does is it brings everything down to deliciousness. Simple Syrup is too sweet, lemon justice is too tart, booze is too strong, water mellows everything out and makes it quaffable.
Freezer Door Cocktails? The idea of this style of cocktails is that everything is brought down to about 8º F in a freezer is nothing new. The Dukes Martini at the London Savoy is probably the best known. But let’s be real. A Martini it really isn’t. It's a glass of gin with a suspicion of lemon. I wanted to do a wet, complex Martini. I struggled trying to make it in the bottle. Liquor, at 90 proof freezes at about Negitive 25 degrees F, once you start adding vermouth and dilution that shit freezes up fast. Because freezes around positive twenty degrees F. So I was struggling to get what I wanted for vermouth and Dilution 2x1 ratio before adding 50% water content.
So I was sitting at the counter at Paul’s watching a server make an ice cream float, scooping a frozen “liquid.” In a quick flash I thought of making a “sorbet” of vermouth. With a tiny bit of research I realized I wanted to make a granita. A granita has a more gravelly texture. I know this sounds like blasphemy in this era of silky smooth, clarified, crystal clear everything, and that's the point. We have all had those overshaken martinis “up.” They are opaque with bubbles and have a layer of crunchy ice floating on top. I've heard these referred to skating rink martinis, because the ice floats on top. They are not my favorite. I feel that there is a giant divide between taking ice that is frozen by itself and breaking that down during shaking, and freezing Sherry, Vermouth, Brine, and amaro together with water and a bit of spirit. The architecture of the ice is different, it freezes in sheets instead of cubes, it isn’t stable in the same way as ice machine ice, and it doesn’t float, its suspended throughout the cocktail. As an added benefit, texture wise, it slips across your tongue. It feels frictionless, like a hockey puck sliding across the blue line. The other thing it does is freeze the garnish into a snow ball. It’s not rock hard like if you froze it with Liquid Nitrogen, but it has a satisfying gush of biting into a snowcone. The onion is the best version of this as it’s less dense than the Cherry or Olive. In the rethink of this cocktail, and embracing the things I could not change, and leaning into the “problems.” I stopped seeing the crystal clear “silky” Martini as the plutonic ideal, and embraced the new version for it’s unique aspects.
So I PROMISED to explain a way to make craft cocktails fast. I’m not sure if I did that.
