[ This is the first of an ongoing Survival Guide series for Tales of the Cocktail. ]

Tales of the Cocktail is anticipated, hot, and maniacally joyful. The event draws cocktail creatures of every ilk and creed to New Orleans for way too many days of imbibing and revelry. To be blunt, it’s deadly and awesome. Rad, even.

Last year I posted some lessons learned from Tales of the Cocktail. Some are worth repeating, but a new year brings new menacing decisions, so I offer these 10 rules to help guide your path should you choose to attend the liver-sacrificing event of the year.

1. Do eat as many beignets as you can stuff in your gaping maw.
2. Do not order an absinthe frappe if you find yourself at the Old Absinthe House past 1am. Or at least don’t order five of them.
3. Do pack white shirts, lots of deodorant, and a hat. Also, wear lots of dresses. Even if you’re a guy. Seriously, you’ll thank me.
4. Do not, by any means, consume anything that is bright red. Pat’s Hurricane, I’m talking to you.
5. Do stop by anytime at the Mixo House, sponsored by the CSOWG, as the bar will be better than any in NOLA.
6. Do not look to the left or to the right when walking down Bourbon Street, lest you be sucked into a cesspool of excellence.
7. Do reference the Mixoloseum Twitter feed if you want to know where all the bloggers are at any given time. We understand this may be used in order to avoid us.
8. Do get jambalaya from Coop’s Place.
9. Do take every muddler you receive and give it to Paul Clarke.
10. Do not, by any means, adhere to any rules or preconceptions you’ve brought with you.

What Rules Have I Missed?

Post additional rules in the comments!

A momentous thanks to Chef Chris DeBarr, Jeff “Beachbum” Berry and his lovely wife, and Wayne Curtis for making a magical evening for all of us. I greatly enjoyed the spirited dinner at the Delachaise last year, but this blew it out of the water.

For your salivating pleasure, here is the full menu (taken from Chef Chris’s blog) and some pictures:

A Cocktail to Begin

Ginger Grant
Lime, Orange, Honey, Domaine de Canton, 10-Cane Rum, Bittermen’s Tiki Bitters

Swanky Canapes

Tonga Zombie
Lime, Pineapple, Funkin Passion Fruit Puree, Cruzan Estate Light, Bacardi 151, Old New Orleans Rum

• Tiki Ceviche– hake, with cloudy sake & rambutan puree, coconut vinegar, lime juice, and tropical fruit
• The Green Hornet– cucumber rounds with marinated mackerel and Hendrick’s Gin-cucumber-red chile granita
• Lafcadio’s Sushi– rose petal rice with furikake and Lake Pontchartrain flounder

Bongo Appetizers

Pamplemousee Punch
Grapefruit, Rhum Clément Creole Shrubb, Old New Orleans Cajun Rum, Angostora Bitters and Herbsaint

I only included this picture to make fun of Seamus for not enjoying the delightfully crisp shrimp heads.

• Grilled Endive “Outrigger Canoes” with crab and jackfruit, umeboshi plum sauce
• Phnom Penh Pork Belly featuring Kurobuta pork braised in star anise caramel sauce, with “forbidden” black sticky rice and bamboo shoots
• Wahine Shrimp– jumbo LA. shrimp roasted “in a grass skirt” of ketaifi (shredded phyllo) with grilled pineapple and a lemony New Orleans barbecue sauce
• Black Bean & Banana Blossom Pupusa, with salsa verde, Salvadoran slaw

Big Kahuna Plates

Luau Coconut
Lime, Pineapple, Coconut Water and Coconut Milk, Cruzan Estate Light and Dark Rums

• The Green Zebra goes to Oz: a tomato trilogy – macademia-crusted green tomato in a bush tomato profiterole with tomato chutney, blue cheese, durian ice cream, and wattle seed mole
• Cochon de Lait Wearing Hawiian Sunglasses: Kahlua pork wrapped in banana leaves with roasted sweet potatoes and Hawaiian sea salt
• Buddha’s Jade Serenity Scallops: togarishi seared sea scallops on a bed of green tea jasmine rice with home made dashi and crisp kombu seaweed in eel sauce and fried lotus root chips.
• “The Old-Fashioned” Gulf Fish Menuiere: based on the classic cocktail, with a brown butter of bourbon, tangerine/satsuma juice, Luxardo Marischino Cherry Liqueur and Fee Bros Whisky Barrel Bitters, over parsnip mash, with sea beans and edamame

Tropical Dessert

Bandicoot
Macademia Nut Liqueur, Kahlua, Coconut Milk

• Baked Hawaii– Tiki-carved meringues hiding macadamia nut and Hawaiian honey semifreddo and a cake layer of roasted pineapple and crystallized baby ginger. Based on the famous Baked Alaska, but in a tribute to our 50th and most tropical state! Doused with spiced rum and sent to the table on fire

4:27pm – The panelists for this highly anticipated session are Darcy O’Neil, Robert Hess, Jamie Boudreau, Audrey Saunders, and Eben Freeman.  In front of us is a mysterious and small manila envelope.  If I had to wager, I’d say it contains taste strips.  These strips may, indeed, make some super-tasters in the room cry.  We shall see.  (Craig, “I wonder if their tears will be salty?”)

4:35pm – We’re going to discuss how taste works, things that affect taste, taster status, do a taste test and cocktail trail.  There are three kinds of tasters: non-tasters, normal tasters, and super-tasters.

4:38pm – The tongue can taste sweet, salty, bitter, sour, savory, and metallic (saved for New Orleans vampires).  Spiciness and coolness are more sensations, but can be worked with in cocktails.  There is even a reward system in the brain for water.

4:41pm – The obvious category for cocktails is sweetness.  Super-tasters can be extra sensitive to sweetness, especially with fake sugars which can taste bitter.  Sugar when mixed saltiness, acidity, and bitterness reduces the intensity of those flavors.

4:44pm – Adding salt to a cocktail increases its sweetness.  Acidity increases saltiness and bitterness and reduces sweetness.  Darcy is touching on the super-cool miracle fruit.  It makes things taste insanely sweet: soy sauce tastes like candy, lemons like lemonade, etc.  Savory increases sweetness and saltiness and reduces acidity and bitterness.

4:48pm – Bitterness uses 50+ taste receptors, while the others only use a few (this is why Fernet Branca and Campari are so delicious).  Many of the taste buds on the tongue will never be used if you don’t drink cocktails.

4:54pm – Adenosine Monophosphate or “anti-bitters” can be used to drastically reduce the bitterness of cocktails.  If you’d add it to grapefruit juice, it would remove all the bitterness, and you’d just taste the flavor of the fruit.

4:56pm – Viscosity has a huge effect on flavor.  Things like egg white, gelatin, agar, pectin.  If you increase the viscosity of a cocktail it will increase its sweetness.

4:59pm – As you increase the strength of a cocktail, it becomes less sour but more bitter.

5:00pm – The panel is discussing how its important to develop your taste for bitters.  Many of us have grown up on Count Chocula and Lucky Charms, so we have to attune our palate.  Though we think most super-tasters avoid bitters, there is a class of super-tasters who seek it out to enjoy the bitters like a rollercoaster ride.

5:10pm – Robert Hess is telling a fun tale about his quest over time to enjoy Campari.  He asked a flight attendant for it… straight, and hated it.  Then he proceeded to order drinks at bars with it, still thinking “Wow, this tastes like Campari,” and not enjoying it.  But then it started to catch on, and now he enjoys is straight.  Well done.

5:13pm – The easiest way to reduce bitterness in a cocktail is to add salt.  You can also increase viscosity, add sugar, reduce the alcohol, or cut the acidity too.

5:15pm – Our two drinks are the Greyhound and the Salty Dog.  The only difference is the salted rim on the Salty Dog; it’s amazing how it reduces the bitterness of the grapefruit juice.

Greyhound and Salty Dog

• 1oz Bombay Sapphire
• 3oz grapefruit juice

Shake with ice and strain into a glass filled with ice.  Salt the rim for the Salty Dog.

5:17pm – Certain aromas can increase the sweetness without changing any of the ingredients in the cocktail.  A strawberry on the rim can do this.  Gin is loaded with compounds that reduce sweetness, like rose and orange flower water.  Most botanicals don’t have a specific taste.  For example, vanilla doesn’t really have a flavor but an aroma.  There are certain woods or aromas that we’ll really enjoy the smell of but won’t please our palates.

5:20pm – Milo Rodriguez, the master distiller of Bombay, is talking a bit about how he is experimenting with the botanicals in their gins, like cubeb pepper, orris (violet flavor), and grains of paradise.

5:24pm – Now we’re moving on to the mental and social affects on taste.  Elevated serotonin allows you taste bitter and sweet at lower concentrations.  Let’s say you drink a ton of delicious alcoholic beverages, enough to get a hangover; the next morning the same drinks that you were enjoying will taste like crap.

5:29pm – Flavorful drinks are good served to low key people and perky people may not like bitters.  When you’re down drink tiki drinks… when you’re happy Darcy says to keep it low key, but he meant to say, “Drink more tiki drinks!”

5:34pm – Bloggers are the “curse of the drinking world” since we influence people’s drinking choices.  We help trends like absinthe, classic cocktails, rare spirits, etc.

5:42pm – Time for the taste strips!  20% of the population doesn’t have the TAS2R38 gene, which means they’re non-tasters.  60% are normal tasters and 20% are super-tasters. PROP is a genetically specific chemical that can identify tasters and non-tasters.  Women are more likely to be super-tasters as well as those of Asian and African descent.  35% of women are super-tasters and 15% of men.  Men’s taste declines more rapidly.  Many children have super-taster powers and grow out of them.

5:46pm – Non-tasters often enjoy spicy, salty, and fatty food.  The perceive ethanol as slightly sweet and often consume the most alcohol.  They also tend to weigh more than super-tasters.

5:47pm – Super-tasters have problem foods like grapefruit, coffee, soy, chili peppers, tonic water, salt, and olives.  Chefs tend to be super-tasters.  There are actually more chefs that are non-tasters than normal tasters.  A drink may be 4-8x more intense for a super-taster than a non-taster.

5:53pm – We’re tasting the strips.  A ton of people around the room are gagging from the bitterness.  Us tiki folk are either tasting wet paper or a slight bitterness.

5:59pm – Many of the panels have been great so far, but this one has kept the room captivated throughout.  I now have a whole new perspective on the recipe comparisons I’ve been doing on Kaiser Penguin.

12:29pm – Our panelists today are Wayne Curtis, Angus Winchester, Ben Jones (Rum Clement) and Chesterfield Browne (Mount Gay). This is going to be an exciting one.

12:42pm – Here are the cocktails for the session:

Winchester Swizzle

• 1 1/2oz Bacardi 8
• 1/2oz Rock Candy Syrup
• 1/4oz falernum
• 1oz lime juice

Serve over crushed ice.

Rum Punch

• 1 1/2oz Rhum Clement VSOP
• 3/4oz lime juice
• 1t grenadine
• 1/4oz rock candy syrup

Shake with ice and strain into an ice-filled mug

12:47pm – “A basic rum punch is basically the DNA of all great rum drinks.” And with that from Wayne, we get our Rum Punch. Rum is the key ingredient of North American history. Tequila has had an impact, but rum has been important through the ages, from when it was first developed. You should definitely read Wayne’s book, And a Bottle of Rum, so I don’t have to summarize all this lusty history.

12:56pm – There were about 160 rum distilleries in Boston around 1760 as rum spread into the New World. Rum was cheap from the beginning; the stuff was wretched and cheap. It was mixed with lots of sugar and citrus to make it palatable or steeped with cinnamon nutmeg or cloves. Flip was one of the more interesting ways to consume rum; mix strong beer, lots of rum, molassas or dried pumpkin, and stick a red-hot plunger into the canister to burn it. Wayne, of course, had an iron monger make one of this tool for him.

1:02pm – It looks like we’re going to be getting some fun kits for making punch during the session! Chesterfield takes the mic and immediately captures everyone’s attention with his boisterous delivery. He’s detailing the process for making their Mount Gay rum, which is based on molasses. From the fields, while still green, to the factory for knifing. It’s combined with extracts from limestone, then boiled until thick and it crystallizes producing a combination of brown sugar and molasses. It’s then spun to separate the two. After that it goes to the stills.

1:09pm – The rum samples have started to come around: Mount Gay Silver Eclipse and Extra Old. And now we’re making our own punches with the rum. Everyone is fumbling around with lime wedges, sugar cane syrup or demerara syrup, our rums, some nutmeg, cute little bottles of Angostura (Craig H. conveniently dumped in about 2 teaspoons in our punch), and some water. This display of neanderthal drink creation is vastly amusing and producing tasty results.

1:20pm – Ben, from Clement, takes the mic to talk about rum agricoles. The first sample, Clement Premiere rum made its way to our table. He’s detailing the process of their rum, made from sugarcane syrup, which must follow AOC laws.

1:31pm – Ben is now making a Ti Punch. His is passed around; it’s quite nice and smooth.

Ti Punch

• A slice of lime with equal parts skin and lime
• 1/2oz pure sugar cane syrup
• rum of your choice

Squeeze the lime, add the sugar syrup and rumive it a quick stir, and you’re done.

1:40pm – Angus Winchester jumps up and takes hold of the crowd. This is a captivating panel so far! Pirates, romance, crazy old rums sold for thousands of dollars. He points out how various rums often find their way into the same drink, something that doesn’t often happen with other spirits (you’ll rarely find two ryes in a single manhattan). Our Winchester Swizzle comes up and Angus rhymes the recipe for us.

1:44pm – “Are you a pirate or a naval officer?” Angus has delved into tiki drinks, and I’m too entranced to concentrate on typing… :)

1:55pm – Falernum, bitters, pastis, pimento dram, gold, demerara rum… just imagine everything tiki and that was the last 10 minutes.

1:56pm – A question was asked as to each panelists’ favorite rum cocktail. Ben’s favorite is new every week. Chester’s favorite is rum and coconut water. Wayne’s is the Ti Punch. Angus’s is “the one your about to buy me,” but then he goes with the Nuclear Daiquiri, a mix containing Wray and Nephew overproof rum and Chartreuse.

2:01pm – Favorite white rums… Angus goes with Havana Club and Appleton Silver. Wayne goes with New Orleans white and Prichard’s. Ben seconds Prichard’s and white rhum agricole. And Chesterfield goes with Wray and Nephew white and Mount Gay.

10:46am – Ted Haigh begins by going into the origins of the cocktail. Most likely a warm whiskey cocktail, with bitters playing a very important role. Newspapers took the role of publishing recipes, but it took 60 years before cocktails were popular enough to publish in Jerry Thomas’s bar guide.

10:51am – Germans were the second largest owner of bars in the 19th century; German wine was one of the most prevalent. But they also were the ones adding fun touches, new techniques, and in general, just making more interesting cocktails. They were also liqueurists as well. They made their own absinthe, curacao, etc.

10:59am – The “only” William, William Schmidt, a German and bartender was one of the most vocal cocktailians of the time. The Weepers Joy was one of his famous concoctions. He made famous for drinks containing the most ingredients and the craziest, poetic names. The secret of his art was his complex use of ingredients. He was really one of the first bartender writers to look beyond the bar; he even put ice cream in drinks for his female guests.

11:09am – He created a drink called the Which, a mix of lime juice, orange juice, sugar, old Tom Gin, brandy, sherry wine, egg white, and a few other ingredients which I missed. “A man who drank three of them asked nothing but “Which?” the rest of the day.

11:11am – Ted chimes in, “He made some good drinks, but by and large his drinks were hideous.” David has a description of him mixing the Hobson Cannonball: “One of its charms is its mystery. The ingredients are those of the Gin Fizz, and the proportions are the same. He who makes it works like an experienced military man… a ram of lemon… drink is poured into a long cylinder, and a glass is placed over it… nothing can exceed the rapid manner in which the Hobson Cannonball is shaken.” Basically a gin fizz that he stamps his foot when he pours it.”

11:16am – The ability to make ice was considered artificial ice, because you didn’t get it off a lake. Sparkling water not from a spring was near magic. When Jerry Thomas was mixing, you couldn’t get a Manhattan. Sweet vermouth, though in the U.S. was just not prevalent.

11:18am – Drinks were rolled at that point, but the shaker became associated with Jerry Thomas. Bartenders began to become more professional and less flashy.

11:21am – Vice districts began to concentrate in Chicago, San Francisco, New York as proponents of prohibition began to creep into society, and their bartenders began to get taken down one after another by the supports of temperance. They looked at drinking as the route cause of all the good and bad in these districts.

11:27am – “Everyone thought cowboys were drinking Rrrye, but in fact, they really liked creme de cacao,” says Ted. And the Pousse Amour; they loved that too. It has an egg yolk suspended in the middle sandwiched with layers of liqueur. David chimes in, “It tastes disgusting!”

11:31am – Our second cocktail is the Martinez.

Martinez

• 1 1/2oz gin
• 1 1/2oz sweet vermouth
• 2 barspoons Maraschino liqueur
• dash absinthe or two of orange bitters

Stir with cracked ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass

11:35am – Ted comments on how the liqueurs and spirits we’re drinking now are as good or better than what everyone was drinking so long ago.

11:39am – Brian Rea has been hilarious throughout the entire panel. Now they are talking about Trader Vic, Don the Beachcomber, and Pat O’Brien, who apparently was also a wizard with rum. We have discussed many times this weekend how his Hurricane must have been good at some point. Unfortunately, that time is long gone.

11:49am – Definitely check out Mud Puddle Books. They are republishing a bunch of ancient bar guides. Their attention to detail is crazy. Same fonts, same cover, etc.

12:24pm – I got a good bit of flack last year from Jamie for live blogging many of the events, so I thought it only appropriate to put him through the gauntlet this year.

12:31pm – Here are the cocktails for the session:

Ramos Marshmallows

• 5oz G’Vine gin
• 2 1/2oz lemon or lime juice
• 3 egg whites
• 11oz sugar
• 1oz gelatin
• 1t orange flower water
• 4oz water

Create as one would marshmallows

La Bicyclette

• 1 1/2oz Plymouth gin
• 3/4oz sweet vermouth
• 1/4oz St. Germain
• 2 dashes peach bitters
• lemon wedge, for garnish

Stir with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

12:37pm – Jamie takes the stand! He’s wearing his typical sexy bartender vest. The other panelist are Eben Freeman and Claire Smith. Jamie dives right in with some definitions of Molecular Mixology, but I’ll spare you.

12:40pm – Jamie put forth a good example of how mixing ingredients together with the proper technique really matters. His example was for the egg foam for a Ramos gin fizz. The one done for a short time but with acid (citrus juice) and sugar, as a stabilizer, fares significantly better than egg white whipped for without the additions but for a longer time.

12:44pm – Jamie is getting all mushy now talking about a very important ingredient of cocktails: love. On to technique, though… some options include:

• Specific gravity
• Gelatin
• Eggs
• Liqueurs / sugars – dusts and foams, floss
• Infusions – fat washing, sous-vide, carbonation
• Aromatics
• Hydrocolloids – an ingredient when added to water will make a gel

12:47pm – Our first drink i arriving. I assume it’s the Chameleon, due to the blueberry purple color.

Chameleon

• 1 1/2oz Blueberry-magnesium infused G’Vine Gin
• 1/2oz St. Germain Elderflower Liqueur
• 1 1/2oz Blubly Brut Cuvee
• 1/4oz lime juice

Build in a glass. How easy.

12:50pm – After touching on foams and powders, he moves to fat-washing. Adding fat, ala bacon, will add more flavor, yet make it slick, so freezing the mix will allow the fat to separate and freeze, while leaving the alcohol liquid.

12:53pm – The row of bloggers and bartenders issued sighs of approval when Jamie mentions the use of fire to create aromatics for a cocktail.

12:55pm – Jamie is going through a lot of practical applications for the techniques… the rubicon, including burnt rosemary, the P.N.E. which uses several cups of candy floss that you pour your cocktail over. The candy floss disappears and only adds a touch of sweetness. The Mai Tai 3000 deconstructed: lime ship, orange cube, orgeat foam. Mary’s Fruit, where the inside of a cherry tomato is hollowed out, and the bloody mary is gelled and added back in, resulting in the same texture as a tomato, but the taste of the bloody mary. Finally he ends up with a Gin and Tonic Fog. A gallery filled the room with the fumes. Ridiculous.

1:01pm – He’s now discussing the magnesium-infused gin. Adding the magnesium changes the color of the Chameleon cocktail to green. He adds the acid, and the drink turns bright pink.

1:04pm – Eben takes the stand, garnished with a green bow tie, and begins his presentation. He starts out by suggesting we stop calling Molecular Mixology by its name and receives a few hoots of approval from the crowd.

1:08pm – He moves on to discuss a cocktail containing rum flavored with beets, Averna with orange, and topped with a Dark ‘n Stormy dust.

1:18pm – Claire steps up to the podium. She’s a representative of Belvedere vodka. It looks like some sort of cotton candy sticks are making their way around the room. … it’s a Red Bull candy floss. Some grapefruit marshmallows have also found their way around. So the way this works is you sip the orange vodka, suck on the candy floss and then eat the grapefruit marshmallow.

1:27pm – Eben #2 makes his way to the front. In turn, we are all gifted with a sazerac gummy bear in a plastic cup. He starts talking about sense memory. How cedar might remind you of your grandmother’s underwear drawer or the hamster that kept you up all night. oh my.

1:38pm – More candy! This might as well be called the candy session. The Ramos Marshmallow sprinkled with juniper powder is quite good; easily the most fun and tasty bit of the session.

1:43pm – Eben finishes with the following wisdom, “I don’t care if you made bad drinks. I don’t care if you steal my ideas. Just don’t talk shit about me on your blogs.”

The Cafe Adelaide Swizzle combines New Orleans Amber Rum, fresh squeezed lime juice, bitters, a splash of soda and a “secret ingredient” which just so happens to be Velvet Falernum.

The opening reception packed us all into a room like sardines, but plied us with drink and tasty cupcakes.

Dr. Bamboo drawing an accurate portrait of his hungover self from yesterday morning.

An Ojen Frappe from Lüke was a treat, as he Ojen Absinthe was a first for me. It was delightfully pink due to a touch of grenadine.