Liberty Bar founder and co-owner Andrew Friedman won the Seattle spot and moved on to the national competition in San Francisco. Read more about it how he did after the jump.

http://seattle.eater.com/archives/2012/10/22/seattle-bartenders-say-andrew-friedmans-second-place-finish.

Stop in to try a classic Negroni with your favorite gin, our barrel aged Negroni, or maybe even our Negroni Swizzle (one of our personal favorites.)

Who knows, maybe we’ll even have a barrel aged Negroni Swizzle soon…. *hint*hint*

Photo by Stuart Mullenburg, courtesy of Imbibe.

A Bartenders’ Guild for Bartenders

[Below, in this page is included additional information than what was already submitted with my USBG Candidate Form.]

As president of the Washington State chapter of the USBG, I want to thank the previous administrations for taking us to where we are today.  When bartenders get together, what is created is an unmistakably apparent insta-family and it’s time to encourage these relationships.  So, now is the time to move forward from where we are today, making the USBG what it really can and should become – A Bartenders’ Guild For Bartenders.

Having spoken to many of you or the leadership of your guild over the last few months, these conversations have encouraged me to run for President of the USBG, and I ask for your support.  As you read through my platform and have any questions, please do not hesitate to send an e’mail to andrew@libertybars.com, or call me at 206.579.2491.

Four years ago, when we started the Washington State Bartenders’ Guild, we started with a mission to promote community & education for our membership. For the last four years as President, together, our guild has chosen to value education over brand indoctrination and community over competition.  We have a progressive, tight-knit & growing community, and I’d like to work nationally with all of you to help the USBG become a larger extended family and not limited to what some think that has become: marketing blocks for large distributors & liquor companies.

There are four main directions that we’d like to see the USBG move towards in the next few years:

• Education
• Community
• Communication

Education

Here in Washington State, as I imagine in your community also, we hold a higher value for education over brand indoctrination, and I would like to start a program to work between our guild to replicate successful educational events that each of us has done and share these model for these successful events between our guilds.  There’s no reason that we cannot learn from each other’s successes, and education should be one of the first priorities of the USBG.

Community

For many of you who have been able to go to regional and national events where bartenders are able to meet & learn from each other, it becomes unmistakable that THESE are the kinds of events, such as an official Bartender Exchange Program, which will be truly valuable & important for all of us.  I would like to create a framework of connection between our organizations to allow these events to not just happen more often, but to allow for follow-up between members afterwards.

Communication

Right now, inexplicably, there is no organized communication between our guilds.  This is incomprehensible to me, as it obviously is to many of you that I have spoken with, and the first thing that we will work on together is to create this framework for communication between our guilds.  For instance, the Northeast chapters hold regional meetings a number of times a year – this is an outstanding example of what we could do if there were leadership which helped create a framework to promote great ideas like this and have a leadership who will work together to take these kinds of events national.  Immediately, we should have a forum available on the usbg.org website in order to allow all paid members to easily communicate.

In speaking to many of your chapter’s representatives in the last week, it’s become obvious that there are many things which we need to work together to do in order to improve the USBG in the upcoming, two-year term of the next president, so let’s move forward and continue the kinds of actions that our guilds have have taken individually – but this time as a community.

Also, in addition to my already-stated platform of ideas for change for the USBG, I would like to open a discussion on these following issues:

Transparency

As with any growing organization, there has to be leadership to ensure transparency.

Accounting

• Currently, even though the USBG charter calls for an annual Profit & Loss statement issued to all chapters, there has not been any such document sent out in many years.  But, at the same time, a request went out for a greater income tipped up to USBG National from our member’s dues.  Transparency – in situations such as this one, there needs to be a clear reason WHY the National leadership made that decision, and an argument made for what they will do with the additional income.

Election Operation:

• Organizations of this size often will hire an outside auditor to ensure election security & transparency.  There’s an inherent conflict of interest related to any current administration being in charge of an election where they are also a candidate.  I would suggest that we move to hire an independent auditor in order to operate our elections in the future in order to eliminate any doubt of the veracity of the election.
• In order to really give candidates a chance to explain why they should take any of the available positions, I would like to suggest that we discuss how to provide candidates with a greater ability to campaign for the position for which they are running.  Currently, candidates are given just one page which goes out to all of the members in order to explain their opinions & plans, and that is obviously not enough of an opportunity to really express why they are the right person for the job.

Tiered Sponsorship Structure:

• As the WSBG Sponsorship structure today is designed, only large companies are able to take advantage of the ability to work with our guilds.  I would like to suggest a tiered structure where brands of different sizes have different sponsorship levels to allow for the smaller brands that we love to use to take advantage of our national structure.  Also, I would like to suggest that any Sponsor under the top tier level would be able to specify which markets they would like to become involved with.  Most smaller brands are not available in every market, so it would only make sense to allow them to sponsor only the markets where their products are available.  We could also tip back to the guilds in these markets some of the sponsorship income as an encouragement for guilds to work with brands which they supported.

USBG Growth

• There are already many under-represented communities of bartenders all over the country who are working to have their own chapters, and we need to give them the tools to form & grow their chapters.  Why have them try to re-create the wheel in this case?

National Committees & Organizational Features:

Each of our guilds have a number of committees that we form in order to accomplish the goals that we set for our communities.  Many have suggested that the USBG forms similar committees to break up the work needed to allow the USBG to progress into a larger, more active, efficient & relevant organization.  For instance:

• Service.  We are a service industry first & last, and we should make the issue of Service to be a top priority for our members’ education along with proposing these following committees.
• Education Committee: The USBG should unquestionably be the leader in education for current & future bartenders.  The USBG does have a certification process, but I would suggest that we create multi-level certifications to allow for bartenders of all experience levels to increase their education.
• Fund Raising Committee: This committee’s importance goes without saying and should be a priority.
• Regional Leadership Committees:  Already the Northeast has formed their own group which allows them to encourage & operate the kind of communication that we need on a national level.  This type of connection between guilds should become the model for a national plan to streamline the networks between our chapters.
• International Communications: We all have heard of other bartender guilds all over the world, and we should develop a network to open a direct line of communication with these other chapters to encourage networking & events.
• Bartender Exchange: There are few better ways to develop the brotherhood of bartenders than to step behind each others’ bars.  We very easily could create a sponsored program to move bartenders around the country and around the world to share ideas & styles.
• A WSBG.org Forum: It would be very easy to place on our WSBG.org website a forum for greater communication between our members.
• Job Placement & Career Advancement: As bartenders move around the country, it would help if we had an organized way to help bartenders find great positions in other cities.  Also, many of our members move on from behind our bars to other jobs within our industry.  We should encourage companies to hire our members, and train our members how to expand their options beyond just working behind a bar.

Bio

President & Founding Member – Washington State Bartenders’ Guild (2009 – Present)

• Over the last three+ years, our guild has worked together to create an environment of education, community & cooperation over competition.

Vice President & Founding Member – Washington State Distillers’ Guild (2010 – Present)

• First having helped the Washington State Legislature create the a bill to all for a WA distillery to operate, the WSDG has since then blossomed to have more licensed distilleries in WA than in any other state.

Owner, Liberty (2006 – Present)

• With 800+ quality bottles of spirits, we are a scratch bar with a drink list of over 50 house cocktails along with dozens of house-made ingredients.  Liberty is at heart a neighborhood bar and has thankfully won numerous regional & national awards.

Partner, Alcohology

• Consultancy to help bars improve menu, pricing, service & general operational training.  Additionally Alcohology assists brands to promote well-produced events.

Liberty’s Andrew Friedman Uses Unflappable Amiability

Liberty’s Andrew Friedman

Local expert A.J. Rathbun finds the best barrel-aged cocktails at local bars for Seattle Magazine.

Another wonderful post by Camper English, this time about our Antoine’s Cocktails for FineCooking.com.

Have you seen Class Magazine?  It’s easily the best magazine ever that is about all things Cocktails, and it was good to open the pages and see this story, written by Camper English about Seattle’s Best Bars, and see our pals and especially ourselves in there.

This is part three of an ongoing series on Innovation In The Spirits Industry.

V.01 was “Innovation In A Brand” about Knob Creek’s single barrel.

V.02, “Age Your Own Whiskey Kit” discussed the art & science in barrel-aging cocktails.

Happily – innovation sleeps, but awakes when someone chooses to call for change.

And, in Kentucky at the Buffalo Trace Distillery, they woke that lumbering giant with their newest brand, the singularly amazing Single Oak Project.

First – let’s get the basics covered for those that may want some background. We’re talking about bourbon, but exactly what is bourbon? Well, basically, bourbon is American whiskey and is and can only be American whiskey – it has to be made in America, and we’re very serious about that. Since ’64, our congress has said that no one else in the world can call any distillate containing at least 51% corn mash, bourbon. So, since the early 1800’s when bourbon was first made until very recently, bourbon has been basically the same thing. You distill it, you put it in a charred oak barrel, you age it and … voilà! You have bourbon.

Innovation though has started to change that reality. The first major innovation was from the Woodford Reserve distillery, whose Master Collection turned American whiskey history and practice on its head by using different methods of production to change the flavors of their whiskey, such as using maple wood, old wine or relatively old wood for the barrels to age their spirits. Then, Jim Beam gave us the Devil’s Cut, which innovated by inventing a process to suck the leftover bourbon out of the used oak barrels…

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Now, Buffalo Trace has gotten into the game by their Single Oak Project, and they are not mess’n around. Their innovation is that they have chosen SPECIFIC trees for their barrels and then have aged the whiskey in what they feel were the very best single trees that they could find. And, not just that, but TEN years ago, Warehouse Manager Ronnie Eddins went and walked around a forest in the Missouri Ozarks and picked 96 oak trees that they knew that they would use for barrels… Ten years ago. That’s forethought. That’s some nerdy distilling guys wondering what would happy if they used SPECIFIC trees to age their whiskey, and then even past that they aged the staves at different rates, which

The issue here is Barrels… Bourbon is aged in white oak – the trees are cut into staves, which the wood pieces that make up a barrel. These staves are then toasted to burn the inside of the barrel,

Charring Barrels

which is what causes whiskey to get a lot of its flavor and especially its color. Here’s the fun part (at least for those of you that will enjoy this nerdy nuance): How whisk(e)y works is that the high-proof, straight off the still alcohol goes into these barrels, and then the now-whisk(e)y will sit in that barrel for years, soaking into the wood. So, in the summer, when it’s hot – the whiskey will soak into the wood, pushed in as the heat causes the environment inside the barrel to expand. Conversely, in the winter, Kentucky gets cold – causing the wood to constrict which forces out all of the whiskey from the wood – and season after season of this sugars which caramelized during the charring process and natural color are pulled from the barrel, and that’s what causes whisk(e) y to be whisk(e)y. Sweet, ‘oakey’ & amber in color.

[Side Note: I am writing "whisk(e)y" with the brackets around the "e" because, generally for American whiskey, we spell the word with that "e", while in the UK, they leave out the "e"... with the exception of Maker's Mark, who, on their bottles of bourbon, spell whiskey, "whisky" in the UK fashion due to their Scottish heritage.]

It gets even more nerdy – turns out that the wood from the TOPS of the trees contain more sugars, while the harder, older wood at the bottom will not provide as much flavor to the whisk(e)y. So, what Buffalo Trace is doing is splitting their normal ol’ Buffalo Trace whiskey between barrels, EACH TREE getting their own barrels – but separating lots of it between the TOP and BOTTOM wood, which are made into staves and then into the barrels. So, not only are there 93 trees worth of experimentation, but really double that as they are selling different lots with the top & bottom staves, allowing YOU to taste the difference. That’s some nerdy shit, ‘eh? I love it.

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The big question though? Is this innovation going to produce a better whiskey? Is this crazy? Is this even innovation or just crazy people acting crazy? Well, we’ll find out, and when we find out, we’ll let you know.

First up, a cocktail from the previous menu, re-named and re-calibrated;  Charlie Don’t Surf.

On the previous menu, I had named it Fred.  This was back when I was making up a lot of drinks on the fly during one of my shifts and started to just give them people names.  As Jamie Boudreau once noted, drinks can take about 10 minutes to make up, drink names take a couple days to even a week.  So I went the easy route and named them after people.  I had a Bob, Arnie, Harry, Margaret…a bunch of others.  Oh, and a Fred.  Fred made it onto the cocktail menu at Liberty, but the damn thing never sold.  If I made it for someone, it was loved and ordered over and over again.

The easy solution, then, was to re-name the thing.  Also, I swapped Pommeau de Normandie (a low proof apple pomace that is 50% apple brandy and 50% apple cider) for the more expensive Calvados.

Anyways, here’s Charlie Don’t Surf (a reference to Apocalypse Now and The Clash)

1 oz gin
1 oz Pommeau de Normandie
1/2 lemon juice
1/2 simple syrup
2 barspoons mango puree
muddled ginger
Shake and double strain into a cocktail glass
Garnish with a kaffir lime leaf