The modern cocktail renaissance

Last night I stumbled across a short video featuring Sasha Petraske, one of the key figures of the modern cocktail renaissance. I featured numerous recipes from him and his team in my Cocktail Guide and wanted to share a little more about him and his story given his impact on drinks today.

Sasha started working at a coffee house in New York after dropping out of high school. He despised his boss but admired the simple, mundane tasks that were required to run a cafe so he decided, from the age of 17, that he wanted to open a coffee house. A decade later he came across a commercial space on the Lower East Side for a bargain price of $800 a month. The original idea was that he would open a small bar then sell it to fund his cafe. The seminal bar he opened, was Milk & Honey.

Petraske's childhood friend and creator of the Gold Rush, T.J. Siegal, continued to help finance the construction after Sasha very quickly ran out of money. The renovation was never fully completed when he quietly opened on New Year's Eve in 1999. Even when Milk & Honey moved location 13 years later, the renovation still hadn't been completed yet the venue went on to become one of the most influential bars of the modern cocktail culture.

🎥 VIDEOS

The Cosmonaut was an original creation of Sasha Petraske and named as a cheeky jab at the popularity of the Cosmopolitan. This one keeps it real simple with just 3 ingredients.

• 3 cocktails made with jam | Bartender at Large

• 7 fresh cocktails | The Educated Barfly

• Threefold GSM Review | No Nonsense Gin Drinking

• Vegan Milk Clarifying | Dan Fellows

• Non-alcoholic Bitters | Cocktail Time with Kevin Kos

🔥 TIP OF THE WEEK

Modify the flavour of your drinks by using jams as the sweetener. This works particularly well in sour cocktails which are typically comprised of 2 oz spirit, 3/4 oz citrus and 3/4 oz sweetener. Simply swap out the sweetener with a heaped teaspoon of jam. Try and get inventive by pairing jams with your spirit! Perhaps a bourbon sour with peach jam? Or a tequila & mezcal sour with prickly pear jam!?

Examples:

• Breakfast Martini by Salvatore Calabrese

• Cosmonaut by Sasha Petraske

• King's Breakfast by Steve the Bartender

Made it this far? Let me know what you think of today's format in the comments!

Cheers,

Steve the Bartender

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