Mark Stoddard, bar manager at The Bitter Bar, makes a Mexican Firing Squad, which includes Corrido silver tequila, pomegranate juice, aromatic bitters, ginger beer and fresh lime juice.
With the first taste of warm weather, it’s hard not to already be thinking of those hot summer days that slink into leisurely evenings.
Time for a proper summer drink, one that pays homage to the season. Fortunately for locals, Boulder’s cocktail scene has gone through a major evolution in the past few years; the quintessential summer drink no longer comes out of a soft-serve margarita machine.
The clear spirits — white rum, gin, vodka, silver tequila — are in their glory, he says, as are citrus juices and seasonal fruits. But just as no chef worth his salt would use prepackaged stock in a soup or garlic powder, bartenders — or mixologists as they’re now called — are eschewing pre-made mixers and turning to fresh citrus juices. Bitters and grenadine are house-made, and mixologists are also raiding the kitchen for fresh herbs and unusual spices.
Here is a sampling of local spots using creative ways to wet your whistle.
At the Bitter Bar, inside Happy in downtown Boulder, cocktails are made with precision. Start with the ice. The bar uses eight to 10 different shapes of ice — all made with purified water — according to how the ice is supposed to behave in the drink.
Bartenders use ice from quickly melting chips, which change the taste of the drink as they dilute it, to spheres, which barely melt at all for as long as 30 minutes. To make the spheres, Stoddard uses a chainsaw to cut up sculpture-quality ice and then places it in a special machine that forms the ice using gravity and friction. The glasses, also, are the proper size and design for the drink.
“We encourage people to savor the drink for 15, 20, 30 minutes,” Stoddard says. To that end, customers are always served a big glass of water, too, so they’re not tempted to knock back that cocktail because they’re thirsty.
What might be in those glasses?
One of Stoddard’s favorite drinks is the Mexican Firing Squad, made with Corrido silver tequila, fresh lime juice, house-made grenadine made from pomegranates, house-made angostura bitters and topped with ginger beer, also made in house.
“We garnish it with a big lime wheel and a slice of ginger,” he says.
At Salt at Pearl and 11th streets in Boulder, Beverage Director Evan Faber says the bar staff takes the same approach as the kitchen does — looking to the farmers’ market for seasonal inspiration.
Those seasonal fruits and herbs might end up muddled in drinks or infused in simple syrups.
“You can create all kinds of things for cocktails,” he says.
He uses sangria as an example. The drink, often tooth-achingly sweet and made with red wine, Cointreau and brandy, can be lightened up with white wine, a spirit such as gin, fresh fruit and lemon grass.
The bar’s menu breaks drinks down into styles and spirits, with some guidance on complementary flavors, and allows the customer to choose a custom cocktail with the help of the server or bartender.
One encouragement to being adventurous: The bar offers a tapas size drink of just a few sips.
At Centro Latin Kitchen, a new menu of drinks called Passport offers cocktails that use ingredients from 15 different Latin countries. In addition to the rum and tequila you might expect, the bar also offers pisco, a South American grape-based spirit, and two sugar cane-based spirits, cachaca and aguardiente. The latter is flavored with honey and anise and is similar to sambuca. Aguardiente is often used where absinthe would be. Cachaca is a fermented cane spirit that is used in the popular in the caipirinha — a drink similar to a margarita.
Bar Manager Devlin Devore says one of her favorite drinks is the Matu Mate, made with mate, the South American herbal beverage that Boulder’s Celestial Seasonings introduced to the American audience in its Morning Thunder tea. The drink is made with white rum, mate, agave nectar, mint, lemon and lavender extract.
Devore says she and the staff help customers try new things based on what they already like. But there’s another way, too.
At Boulder’s Pinyon, which emphasizes craft beers, Bar Manager Dan Mirsky, has been playing around with beer in cocktails.
Mirsky says he takes his cue from the restaurant’s menu, which tweaks classic American dishes, presenting them in unconventional ways.
His favorite current cocktail is a twist on a gin and tonic called Hops not Tonic. As the name indicates, Mirsky uses hoppy IPA as a sub for the bitter quinine in tonic. The cocktail also uses grapefruit juice, as well as the traditional squeeze of lime. Another drink, Cocktail 21, uses Tank 7 Farmhouse Ale and Vodka 14. A simple syrup infused with cardamom picks up the spicy elements in the beer. Lemon juice balances out the cocktail.
If the new cocktail scene seems a little overwhelming, Local Table Tours offers a little education along with a fun afternoon. The company, owned by Megan Bucholz, offers tours to three restaurant-bars.
Typically, tour-goers taste a spirit and learn about how it is made, and then taste small cocktails at three bars, where they also meet the bartender.
The cost for the tour, including tax and tip, is $30.
“I think they’re a pretty good deal for the amount of time you spend with the bartender,” Bucholz says. The tours which start mid-afternoon, allowing patrons to return to a bar for happy hour if they so desire.