I recently had the immense pleasure of being a judge at Finlandia Vodka’s “Vodka Cup“. It was there that I talked to Ryan from Hamilton Street Grill again, and met half of the Voya team and got to drink some fantastic new cocktails.

Each mixologist made 3 different drinks, using a maximum of 5 ingredients in each. The winner from the Vancouver competition went to the North American Shake-off in Colorado Springs, and then overall winner from Colorado Spings gets to go to the 11th Annual International Finlandia Vodka Cup, which will be held at the Lainio Snow Village, above the …read more

I’m still working on my full-fledged “cocktail geek” status, but I’m starting to get into making my own syrups. Nothing too crazy at the moment, but I’m working on it! The Mixoloseum has a fantastic guest post by Chris Stanley about where you can source all of the weird ingredients to make all sorts of funky syrups and fun tinctures.
Chris lists all of my usual haunts – farmer’s markets, ethnic grocery stores and alternative or whole foods markets. What Chris did list, that aren’t usual haunts for me, were several different sites around the wild wild interwebs that offer several …read more

After the success of “So you wanna learn how to drink…” and a subsequent discussion on Twitter, I realized that people want to learn how to make some of the fancy drinks you can get in the bars. You know the ones, they seem complicated, and so you just don’t attempt them at home, or, in the case of today’s drink, you’ve seen so many different recipes, you just don’t know what the definitive one is!
Be afraid of your cocktail shaker no more! Drinks After Dark is here to help you branch out, impress your friends and best of all, …read more

Am I the only one who isn’t ready for it to be August 1st? Seriously. Where the hell did July go? (sigh)
Well, since it is August, and there’s nothing that I can do about it, I figure I may as well enjoy it and roll out the features and fun new things that I promised I would.
July was a good month on Drinks After Dark. A new feature, “So you wanna learn how to drink….”, was introduced, and I promised something new along those lines for August as well.
Starting next Wednesday, Drinks after Dark will feature “So you wanna learn …read more