A Jigger of Blog

Last night at Bourbon in Adams Morgan, Owen Thompson hosted a bottled cocktail night. Essentially a plan that seemed to allow him to work a night while doing as little as possible at the bar, we got to benefit from some incredibly tasty prepared drinks. The concept is simple: bottled cocktails are cocktails that can be prepared in large batches prior to an event. They can be kept cool in a refrigerator or cooled at serving time either in a large punch bowl with ice or shaken/stirred individually for serving. Obviously bottled cocktails only work with cocktails that don’t have drinks with huge consistency issues or ingredients like cream, eggs, or carbonation. Traditionally drinks that only consist of spirits are common for bottled cocktails, but if the time line for serving is short, fruit juice is possible too.

Owen’s menu last night included four drinks: Blood and Sand, Martinez, Jack Rose, & Hemingway Daquiri. Between me and my friends, we tried all of the drinks. Naturally my favorites were the ones that I ordered: a Martinez and a Hemingway Daquiri, which are two of my favorite cocktails of late.

The drinks were served in plastic 200 mL flasks along with a pretty swanky label, viewable to the right. I thought about saving one for later use, but Owen apparently takes a page from Major League Baseball and wasn’t serving the bottles with caps attached. Oh well.

The bottled cocktails were a great excuse to get out on a rainy Wednesday night and another sign of how DC’s craft bartenders are finding innovative ways to bring folks together around great drinks.