rickhouse:

blue and red smash – bourbon, lemon, red and blue berries. excellent.
kentucky buck – bourbon and ginger/ginger beer, other stuff. also excellent.
favela – cachaca, lemon, coffee. not very good.
some kind of sling – gin, cherry heering, other stuff. also not very good

then went to boot and shoe service:

fata morgana – bourbon, amaro nonino, dry vermouth, blood orange, cardamom. really excellent.

…

some experiments:

1 oz bourbon
1 oz rye
1/4 oz lime
3/4 oz grapefruit-honey-maraschino mix
grapefruit bitters
grapefruit ribbon

grapefruit-honey-maraschino mix

6 parts red grapefruit juice
3 parts honey
1 part maraschino liqueur

cross between a manhattan and a hemingway. excellent. but i once again forgot: do not muddle seeds. never, ever.

also:

1 1/4 oz bourbon
3/4 oz vermouth
3/8 oz cherry liqueur
1/4 oz lime

basically a manhattan with citrus. very good.

i lost my bottle of angostura bitters. not sure if it can be replaced any time soon, as there is a shortage.

…i started these experiments using some cheap bourbon and rye, figuring that i didn’t care and couldn’t tell the difference. but i found that i did care, and could tell the difference. i upgraded to bulleit bourbon and old overholt rye (according to the bevmo lady, rittenhouse isn’t making rye anymore). life is better.

after i left (without getting my drink), i soul-searched a little, thinking, was i wrong to be upset? i try to be an understanding person. bartenders at hoppin, douchey bars don’t have too easy a job. maybe it pays well, who knows, but it is still hard work. but i think what really gets me was that the person who got preferential treatment was such a entitled-prick archetype. in fact, another person got service before me even though i’d been waiting before her, but she wasn’t waving and bellowing like an imbecile, and my pulse stayed normal.

are entitled pricks good tippers? this one tipped $5 on a $35 tab.

so i took a stroll to heaven’s dog with the hopes that jackie patterson would be there. she wasn’t. i nonetheless enjoyed a couple of very fine drinks:

biarritz monk buck – armagnac, yellow chartreuse, lime, ginger
rattlesnake – rye, lemon, syrup, egg white, absinthe

no progress on the employment front.

tonight i will take a break from the ‘learn the classics’ series and instead mix something with the peaches that big sister and stuntman b are growing in their yard.