Cocktail night
Saturday's party went pretty well. My Dad's 50th, and we'd gone for a 'nightclub' theme - Dad had set up a stack of stereo equipment and a couple of lights, and I'd agreed to mix cocktails.
I only actually got all the ingredients I needed for said cocktails a few hours before the party started - mostly due to having put off researching non-alcholic cocktails until that morning. Apart from that, though, we were pretty well-prepared: I'd spent the last couple of weeks getting cocktail recipes, buying glassware and ordering liqueurs and mixes.
The bar itself was somewhat improvised. We set up in the converted basement (in a room which normally houses the boiler and racks of washing) with a chest of drawers for a bar, and half the worktop space taken up by an impressive array of glasses, bottles and mysterious preparations. The afternoon of the party, Nate and I wrapped the bar with some cheesy zebra-print wrapping paper, arranged some mood lighting, and did some panicked last-minute preparation.
Finally, at about 7 o'clock, the bar was ready, and we were press-ganged into wine-waiter duty upstairs. It took until 11:30 for everyone to arrive, have a couple of drinks, graze on Mum's awesome buffet spread, cut the birthday cake, and eventually amble down to the basement.
We'd done a little practising beforehand - and of course, we'd been absolutely forced to consume the results of our practise - but we hadn't prepared for trying to mix three drinks at once between the two of us while crammed into a one meter square space. It was chaos for the first twenty minutes or so - our carefully arranged lines of bottles were broken and scattered, bottles abandoned wherever they had last been used. Things really weren't helped by the fact that one guy kept ordering a cocktail then deciding he didn't like it and ordering another - at least, until he found the icecream cocktails ("Hey, a bit of extra Bailey's in this one ... bit more ... that's about right! Ah, this is gorgeous. Jim, have one of these...")
I started off quite confident, and (after someone wanted to know if I could do any 'stunt bartending') even tried flipping and catching a couple of (plastic!) bottles while I mixed. This was quickly dispelled when the third throw I tried hit me in the side of the head, and after that I concentrated mostly on getting things made quickly. In the flurry, I kept spilling crushed ice all over the place, and we had something of an olive emergency when Nate accidentally brushed the jar off the worktop, losing all but a few of what became very precious olives.
After the initial rush, however, we tidied up, wiped everything down, and began a night-long orderly process of getting people enjoyably fuzzy.
A couple of hours in, we were well into the swing of things. We'd begun by diligently measuring things ("Okay ... 1/3 of a shot of lime juice, 1/4 shot of cranberry...") but eventually we mostly disposed of the measures and recipe sheets, judging everything by eye. This did result in some amusing situations - "Hi, would anyone like a strawberry daiquiri? I meant to make one, but it turned into four..."
The fact that people tended to stick to a small subset of the cocktails on the menu (handily, the ones I'd practised) helped a lot, even though I was slightly irked by the fact that nobody ordered some of the cocktails I'd spent hours researching writing up.
Eventually, the last people left at about 2:30am, and we shut up the bar and fell straight into bed with aching feet.
Overall, it seemed to have gone very well. We kept getting comments like "How much do you charge, and are you available for hire?", and Mum later told me that a lot of people had just been expecting a little bit of fun, rather than a full-blown bar, and were pretty impressed. We even got a little pay packet from the parents afterwards - which was not really necessary: I'd have done it just for the sheer hell of it. It was great fun, despite the chaos.
I've learned a couple of things from the experience, too. For one, I've discovered I actually quite like Martinis, despite having put off practising them for ages because I expected to hate them. For two, I now know roughly how much stuff I'll need for such a party - I massively overstocked, because I'd expected people to drink more drinks, and choose different cocktails; and now we've got to somehow use up three 2/3 full litre bottles of fruit puree and absolute assloads of mixers.
It seems I've also taught my parents quite a lot about alcohol in general, which is amusing. My Dad has discovered the joys of margaritas - previously, the most adventurous thing he'd drink would be a vodka and orange.
One of the parting comments was "So, this time next year then?", and it looks like Mum might be planning a more traditional party with drinks and games rather than the disco. We'll see!
---
In the meantime, I went shopping and bought a new pair of boots with my 'salary'. I've been looking for boots for years, since mine are coming apart at the seams, but it's incredibly hard to find ultra-wide size 12s which I'd actually like wearing. Eventually, I ended up in Adventure 1, the army surplus store outside Queen St station. I'd been in trying on boots without any success - all too tight, or too stiff, or not my style. I was about to go away and try somewhere else, when one of the staff offered to let me try a 'rogue pair' of boots: a pair which they couldn't figure out why they had, and which they never normally stocked. They turned out to be a pair of chunky steel-toe industrial Doc Martens with nicely padded collars, and they fit absolutely perfectly. I bought them on the spot and wore them home, and they rock.
I only actually got all the ingredients I needed for said cocktails a few hours before the party started - mostly due to having put off researching non-alcholic cocktails until that morning. Apart from that, though, we were pretty well-prepared: I'd spent the last couple of weeks getting cocktail recipes, buying glassware and ordering liqueurs and mixes.
The bar itself was somewhat improvised. We set up in the converted basement (in a room which normally houses the boiler and racks of washing) with a chest of drawers for a bar, and half the worktop space taken up by an impressive array of glasses, bottles and mysterious preparations. The afternoon of the party, Nate and I wrapped the bar with some cheesy zebra-print wrapping paper, arranged some mood lighting, and did some panicked last-minute preparation.
Finally, at about 7 o'clock, the bar was ready, and we were press-ganged into wine-waiter duty upstairs. It took until 11:30 for everyone to arrive, have a couple of drinks, graze on Mum's awesome buffet spread, cut the birthday cake, and eventually amble down to the basement.
We'd done a little practising beforehand - and of course, we'd been absolutely forced to consume the results of our practise - but we hadn't prepared for trying to mix three drinks at once between the two of us while crammed into a one meter square space. It was chaos for the first twenty minutes or so - our carefully arranged lines of bottles were broken and scattered, bottles abandoned wherever they had last been used. Things really weren't helped by the fact that one guy kept ordering a cocktail then deciding he didn't like it and ordering another - at least, until he found the icecream cocktails ("Hey, a bit of extra Bailey's in this one ... bit more ... that's about right! Ah, this is gorgeous. Jim, have one of these...")
I started off quite confident, and (after someone wanted to know if I could do any 'stunt bartending') even tried flipping and catching a couple of (plastic!) bottles while I mixed. This was quickly dispelled when the third throw I tried hit me in the side of the head, and after that I concentrated mostly on getting things made quickly. In the flurry, I kept spilling crushed ice all over the place, and we had something of an olive emergency when Nate accidentally brushed the jar off the worktop, losing all but a few of what became very precious olives.
After the initial rush, however, we tidied up, wiped everything down, and began a night-long orderly process of getting people enjoyably fuzzy.
A couple of hours in, we were well into the swing of things. We'd begun by diligently measuring things ("Okay ... 1/3 of a shot of lime juice, 1/4 shot of cranberry...") but eventually we mostly disposed of the measures and recipe sheets, judging everything by eye. This did result in some amusing situations - "Hi, would anyone like a strawberry daiquiri? I meant to make one, but it turned into four..."
The fact that people tended to stick to a small subset of the cocktails on the menu (handily, the ones I'd practised) helped a lot, even though I was slightly irked by the fact that nobody ordered some of the cocktails I'd spent hours researching writing up.
Eventually, the last people left at about 2:30am, and we shut up the bar and fell straight into bed with aching feet.
Overall, it seemed to have gone very well. We kept getting comments like "How much do you charge, and are you available for hire?", and Mum later told me that a lot of people had just been expecting a little bit of fun, rather than a full-blown bar, and were pretty impressed. We even got a little pay packet from the parents afterwards - which was not really necessary: I'd have done it just for the sheer hell of it. It was great fun, despite the chaos.
I've learned a couple of things from the experience, too. For one, I've discovered I actually quite like Martinis, despite having put off practising them for ages because I expected to hate them. For two, I now know roughly how much stuff I'll need for such a party - I massively overstocked, because I'd expected people to drink more drinks, and choose different cocktails; and now we've got to somehow use up three 2/3 full litre bottles of fruit puree and absolute assloads of mixers.
It seems I've also taught my parents quite a lot about alcohol in general, which is amusing. My Dad has discovered the joys of margaritas - previously, the most adventurous thing he'd drink would be a vodka and orange.
One of the parting comments was "So, this time next year then?", and it looks like Mum might be planning a more traditional party with drinks and games rather than the disco. We'll see!
---
In the meantime, I went shopping and bought a new pair of boots with my 'salary'. I've been looking for boots for years, since mine are coming apart at the seams, but it's incredibly hard to find ultra-wide size 12s which I'd actually like wearing. Eventually, I ended up in Adventure 1, the army surplus store outside Queen St station. I'd been in trying on boots without any success - all too tight, or too stiff, or not my style. I was about to go away and try somewhere else, when one of the staff offered to let me try a 'rogue pair' of boots: a pair which they couldn't figure out why they had, and which they never normally stocked. They turned out to be a pair of chunky steel-toe industrial Doc Martens with nicely padded collars, and they fit absolutely perfectly. I bought them on the spot and wore them home, and they rock.