The Flaming Moe :: A Simpsons Movie Special

SO YOU ALL KNOW about the Flaming Moe, right? Episode 8F08 in the third season revolved around it—the drink Homer invented and then Moe ripped off whose secret ingredient is children's cough syrup and that's made special by lighting it on fire.

In the show, Homer explains that the drink was invented when one of Marge's sisters drank the last beer. He combined all the alcohol that was left in all the bottles in the house, accidentally including children's cough syrup, and when Patty (or perhaps Selma) ashed into his drink, it went up in flames, improving its taste immeasurably. Most bars (I'm pretty sure) don't have children's cough syrup, so we set about making up a drink that would approximate the Flaming Moe. The only kinds of alcohol you can actually see when he's making the drink are tequila and creme de menthe, but man, we're not going to combine those two drinks. It has to have enough mass to fill a largish glass (hello, vodka) and taste like cough syrup (enter the flavored brandies) and be flammable (welcome, 151 rum).

3 oz. vodka
1.5 oz. Kirschwasser
1.5 oz. Creme de Cassis
1.5 oz. Blackberry Brandy
1 tsp. 151 rum

Take everything except the rum and pour it into a rocks glass. Stir. Now take a spoon, turn it upside down, and pour the 151 rum over the spoon so it distributes itself evenly over the top. WARNING: DO NOT ACTUALLY DO THIS. THE BOTTLE GANG ACCEPTS NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR ANY DAMAGES INCURRED BY THIS DRINK. Light it.





But I wouldn't drink it if I were you. I'd make it a shot if you had to, but in the show, it's clearly in a bigger glass than a shot glass, so we made it in a rocks glass. If it's a shot, I'd probably nix the vodka and cut the other things down to .5 oz. apiece. Again, though, DON'T EVEN TRY TO MAKE THIS. JUST LOOK AT THE PRETTY PICTURES. (McPHERSON)

Cocktailphernalia: Hobo pump decanter

THIS PLASTIC NOVELTY, probably dating back to the early Fifties, is precisely what you want when you need to decant some liquor -- the sense that an inebriated, clowlike-hobo is vomiting liquor directly into your glass. (SPARBER)

Book Review: The Ultimate Bar Book

WHEN IT COMES TO getting a book with an exhaustive list of cocktail recipes for you to try out at home, you've got a lot of options, and they're all more or less the same. But if you want to get a book which will give you all that, but also enrich your knowledge of the art of cocktails and give it to you with a wink and a nod, you absolutely need to get Mittie Hellmich's Ultimate Bar Book.

The first thing that distinguishes it from most other bar books is that the cocktail recipes are divided into categories based on the dominant alcohol in the drink, not alphabetically. This makes it phenomenally easy, once you've familiarized yourself with the basic liquors, to find a drink to suit your mood. Feeling whiskey? Just flip towards the back and find something delectable to mix up. Within each section, there are also subsections devoted to particularly significant drinks and their variations. So you get a page discussing the history of the gimlet under gin, a spread on the Bloody Mary under vodka, and a whopping three pages each devoted to the Manhattan and the mint julep under whiskey.

That's the technical part of the book, but there's so much more. The front section includes a glossary of bar equipment (with illustrations of the implements), a glassware guide, a guide to types of drinks (with the histories of standards like the rickey, the fizz, the flip, and exactly makes a drink a highball), and an invaluable section on the science/art of making a drink. Did you know that most cocktails consist of three parts? Hopefully you do if you've been reading The Bottle Gang, but thinking of a cocktail as consisting of the base (the bedrock liquor, greatest by volume), the body (the modifier, a sort of comment on the main alcohol, like vermouth), and the perfume (the last touch that adds complexity to the drink, whether through sweetness, bitterness, or perhaps a fruity overtone) makes it much easier to come up with good cocktails on your own.

Then there's Hellmich's writing, which is dry as a dry martini, especially in the sections that detail the stories of each type of alcohol. "Although originally used as a health tonic," Hellmich writes, "gin has no official medicinal value today; nonetheless, Martini drinkers claim a variety of positive effects."

And regarding vodka: "Even the regular premium vodkas tend to have a somewhat harsh finish, so unless you wish to evoke a Dostoevskyian moment, they are really suitable only as mixers."

There are lots of websites that can give you recipes for making cocktails, but Hellmich's Ultimate Bar Book treats the subject with respect and just a bit of tongue in cheek—a perfect companion for a night of tippling.(McPHERSON)

Road Trips: 21 Club

The Bottle Gang tippled a glass or three
at New York's 21.
We didn't drink them dry,
though they may say we tried.

We left so we could drink no more,
to go home and dream from our beds
that when we come back to 21
they don't treat us like the Feds.


WE'VE BEEN INTERESTED in New York's 21 Club for years, mostly because it piques our fondness for history. After reading Marylin Kaytor's "21" The Life and Times of New York's Favorite Club, we found that the club could have modeled itself after the wildly rambunctious, unbelievably booby-trapped speakeasies of Hollywood talkies. However, Kaytor's anecdotes are of the we-can't-make-this-stuff-up-folks kind, which helped us draw our own conclusion: Hollywood went to 21 for inspiration. Every nook and cranny in this low-light, checkered tablecloth atmosphere has its own fantastic story.

Our favorite stories about 21 begin during Prohibition with a man named Soll Roehner, a necessarily trustworthy construction worker, and his equally trustworthy, hand-picked crew. He was put in charge of designing a Federal Agent-proof door, not to keep the Feds out of 21 altogether (21 has never been a private club), just keep them from finding the 2,000 gallons of illegal hooch hidden in the basement. This door would have to endure, successfully, multiple tap tests, draft tests, and any other liquor-seeking tests the Feds could dream up. Roehner had quite a task at hand. He set to work with some ingenious ideas; not only did he design an invisible door, but an undetectable lock as well. Set a few feet back in a small alcove is a wall -- or the door to us insiders. Inside the alcove and on the back wall are thousands of small holes, many of them painted over now. To the Feds these looked like nothing other than places to put pegs on which to rest shelves -- and 21 did just that. They had cured hams hanging above miscellaneous sundries on the shelves. But one of these holes is actually a key hole. If inserted at just the right angle, an 18" long metal rod unlocks the behemoth, 5,000 pound door. Roehner had to design hinges that could facilitate this hulk to move smoothly, so as not to damage the brick on the door and the wall. In Kaytor's book, Roehner speaks about his famous feat of architecture:

"[The door] would have to function with precision balance to avoid damage to the brick door as it met the brick jam stop. A concealed metal adjustment stop was fabricated so that the brick just kissed against brick as the door swung shut. In the locked position, the door had to be perfectly solid with no visible play. The lock had to operate without a conventional key, to be absolutely jam-proof, and to be lockable from the warehouse side in case of siege."

Inside is a cavern of wines, practically over stuffed with bottles as old as 1880. Bottles of wine seem to be stored in the cellar indefinitely, among them are wines owned by Elizabeth Taylor, Elvis, and Richard Nixon among hundreds of others. Each bottle has the name of its owner labeled on the bottom and facing outward for easy locating. Further back is yet another cavernous room. We had to practically fold ourselves in half to get through this literal hole in the wall. Inside is a luxurious dining room -- longer than it is wide with a table that almost matches the size of the room. This room is also the active red wine cellar, and bottles line the walls. It takes some tricky maneuvering getting out -- especially for those exiting after dining and imbibing. This doorway is jokingly referred to as The Sobriety Test.

It may only be out of sheer unwieldiness that all of this still resides at 21 -- the door in particular -- as many remnants from that dry time have been renovated out of the infamous brownstone at 21 West 52nd Street. "You have to understand," explains Philip W. Pratt, 21's Sommelier. "People did not like Prohibition -- it was not a happy time." So the coat closets with dummy walls that could only open with an electric charge from a strategically placed metal coat hanger are gone, as is the back bar shelf that could turn over and dump bottles of illegal alcohol down a chute leading directly to the New York City sewer system at the push of a button. Kaytor describes what this sight must have been like:

"Shades of Orson Welles, Vienna, and The Third Man -- if one had looked down the opening revealed behind the back bar as the shelves tipped over, one would have seen a brick-lined chute with iron spikes jutting from the walls, arranged so that bottles would strike the spikes and shatter, and then fall on down to an iron grating to smash completely any stubborn glass. Under the grating was an opening leading down past the basement drain and into the New York sewerage system, into which everything ran off to disappear forever!"

For those of you squealing over all of that lost liquor, according to Pratt, the speakeasy was only raided three times. Federal Agents spent many unsuccessful hours searching the place, undoubtedly growing more frustrated by the minute as the smell of alcohol filled the room, and seeing patrons holding only empty coffee mugs instead of splashing cocktail glasses. In one case, an agent thought he had them figured out. This agent asked to be lowered into the water tower on the rooftop, thinking that 21's stash of alcohol would be hidden there. Once he reached the water, however, he remembered that he didn't know how to swim and the search was called off. It was an unsuccessful search with a nearly successful drowning. Another raid was cut short by James J. Walker, New York's Mayor at the time. Of course, it would be devastating to his career to be caught drinking in a speakeasy so "he called his friend the police commissioner," explains Pratt, "and had all the Feds' cars towed." 21 still has Mr. Walker's private booth where he could "do whatever he wanted to do out of the public eye."

The 21 Club's sense of playfulness is not overshadowed by their extreme professionalism. There are lawn jockeys lining the facade of the building and toys hanging from the dining room ceiling -- the toys are an especially surprising sight for such a posh establishment. "This was the second plane that we hung up," Mr. Pratt says as he points upward to a large model plane of the Spruce Goose. "Mr. Hughes had to one-up the first plane we hung up." The first plane, according to Kaytor's book, was an American Airlines plane; 21's website says it was a British Airways "flying boat." Now there are thousands of different memorabilia hanging from the ceiling, from airplanes to baseball bats, brought in by patrons from around the world.

As for 21s drink selection, they have a talent for making room for new tastes while making sure to keep the classics. We're sure this theory permeates throughout the entire establishment, in fact, and is one of the major reasons for its longevity. We tried The South Side, which is basically a mojito made with vodka instead of rum and, according to Pratt, was invented at 21 along with Humphrey Bogart's drink of choice, the Brandy and Benedictine. We also tried a Cosmopolitan, which, from the first sip, spoiled us rotten for any other Cosmos from any other bar. This Cosmopolitan made all the others we've had in the past seem like something poured out of a juice box rather than the fresh citrus concoction that was set before us at 21. And we couldn't pass up the opportunity to have a martini -- Tanqueray, dry Cezano vermouth, with a dash of orange bitters (yes! They have orange bitters!), straight up with a twist. It was perfect. We tried two of their newer additions to the drink menu, the Peg Leg and the Global Daquiri, which are lemon drinks. We weren't crazy about these new additions to the drink menu, which seemed to be sweet and sour takes on the same recipe, but, admittedly, they were tolerable.

21 isn't the only remaining speakeasy in New York City; Minetta's, Pete's Tavern, and Chumley's are just a few of the better known establishments that have remained open. 21, however, certainly has the heir of being the most notorious among the group.

We were curious if any of those Federal Agents returned to 21 after Repeal, if only to ask where the good stuff was hidden. Mr. Pratt could only conclude "they probably did." As of now, the Bottle Gang hasn't found any accounts of curious Feds returning to 21 on a friendlier basis. But we agree with Mr. Pratt that at least one agent must have come back. After all, curiosity almost drowned one of them. With a cocktail lounge as luxurious as 21's, we can't see any reason for staying away. Except the danger of drowning in libations more exciting than that found in a water tower.
(MAULT)

Cocktail I made last night: The Tornado Cloud

LET US LAY THIS on you: You don't always have to invent an entirely new drink to come up with something banging and classy. Our recent interview with Rob Skoro (see below) touched not only on this idea, but also on the Dark and Stormy. Skoro's version sounds delicious, but the letter of the law dictates the following:

2 oz. dark rum
1/2 tbsp ginger or simple syrup
3 to 4 oz. chilled ginger beer
2 lime wedges

Get yourself an old-fashioned glass, put in ice, the rum, and the ginger syrup, then stir. Top with the ginger beer and squeeze those lime wedges in there.

That's your basic Dark and Stormy, but what if you wanted to keep the ginger overtones and bring in some aspects of a mojito or caipirinha? Here's what we'd do, and we'd call it the Tornado Cloud, because instead of being Dark and Stormy, it has the pale green color of clouds that are threatening to turn into funnels.

4 lime wedges
2 tsp. sugar
2 oz. Mt. Gay Sugar Cane Rum
2 oz. ginger-infused vodka
Club soda

Muddle the lime wedges with the sugar in the bottom of a highball glass, then add ice, the rum, and the vodka. Top off with club soda and stir. Voila. You've got a refreshing drink that retains some of the gingeriness and the rumminess of the Dark and Stormy and mixes it with the lime-muddling and effervescence of a mojito. (McPHERSON)

Robert Skoro: Bartender, Musician

MINNEAPOLIS' OWN ROBERT Skoro has been making music for an awfully long time for someone who's just 25. He got his start playing bass with Mason Jennings back in the late '90s, but since leaving Jennings' band, he's carved out his own niche with his independently-released debut, Proof, and his sophmore follow-up on Yep Roc Records, That These Things Could Be Ours. After a stint in Philadelphia, he returned to the Twin Cities and has been playing around town again and working at the 331 Club in Northeast. Since starting there, he's helped put together Sean and Chuck's Trivia, which happens every Sunday night there. He's got perfect pitch and writes compelling and thoughtful songs about everything from love to politics to loss, so naturally, the best place to start would be to ask him about music.

Bottle Gang: I'm going to ask you about bartending.

Robert Skoro: Oh my god.

BG: When did you start bartending?

RS: A little less than a year ago.

BG: And at the 331?

RS: Pure nepotism. That's like the story of me and this city, is just pure nepotism. I had enough experience running Caffetto to be comfortable working by myself. I move really fast and you need to if you're going to work in the food service industry if you're going to work in any sort of branch. So I think Jarret's words himself were, "Dude, a monkey could bartend." Make the drinks, take their money, give them the change. It was just a matter of—Jarret and I had never met, but I knew a couple other people who worked there already, and I knew Jarret's dad. It's a real small, tight-knit kind of staff. Everybody is related. There's two people who work there who aren't related who are childhood friends of the family, and I'm one of them. Nepotism. We haven't hired anyone since.

BG: But you haven't just been a monkey. I know you like making drinks.

RS: It's been really fun to take on that part of it. I'm kind of a foodie to begin with, but I was never the kind of person to keep a bar at home and make stuff at home. If you play music, you're in bars enough where you're just drinking brews most of the time. It's fun to get to study that stuff. The 331 was really great because they have such a vast selection ofliqueurs, so you can get really creative with the stuff. It's not just always some kind of liquor and a gun.

BG: Do you feel like you're getting a clientele, if I can use that word, that orders that kind of stuff? Has that been the vibe? Because I know I go there and look at the back wall and go, "Hey, you have that and you have that and you have that."

RS: Well, it's still a neighborhood bar. But a good thing to keep in mind about what we're doing there on Sundays, it's a scene that I basically told Jarret, this is what I want to try and do. I have enough people who are running some kind of hustle that could help bring people in here and create an atmosphere that's not just random people ordering Long Islands all night. It's people that I engage with in conversation with both in and outside of the bar so you can create this kind of environment where you can just suggest something to someone, and they'll gladly try it out.

BG: So what's your current favorite drink?

RS: Well, that's kind of a tough one. I've gotten really into this liqueur called Gammel Dansk, which is a kind of sweeter, less pungent liqueur like Fernet Branca or Pernod. I'm a pretty bare bones kind of guy. Usually a really nice rum or gin and a little bit of citrus and maybe a splash of something. Nothing all that fancy. I've sort of been making these modified versions of what you'd call a Dark and Stormy, which is rum and tonic and cola and citrus. We've got that ginger wine at the bar—that's really fun to use. You can use it in place of ginger ale for a lot of things. It's a great little secondary kind ofliqueur.

I guess mostly there aren't really drinks that I get into so much as there are kinds of alcohol I like to toy around with. For a while, it's been the Pirate Rum, which is just delicious. I think of rum and I think of getting really, really sick when I was 14.

BG: I think that's a problem that a lot of people have with certain alcohols—tequila gets a bad rap for that, gin also gets a bad rap for that—because bad gin and bad tequila are horrible. But good stuff is good. Good gin, good tequila—you can sip good tequila like you would sip whiskey.

RS: It's amazing how much, especially brown liquors—well, any liquor: I take that back—it's kind of amazing how much a really great product can transcend the status quo for what people think. I remember the first time I had Hendrick's or a nice yellow Patron. It's almost like a different liquor from something bar pour or Cuervo, even.

BG: I've always felt that really good gin has more in common with really good whiskey than it has with bad gin, in the sense of an experience, because it becomes complex. You get a lot out of it. When you drink Hendrick's, there are a lot of different notes and flavors going on. It's a totally different experience.

RS: That tends to be the trend with any top shelf liquors—the recipe is dialed in and you're wasting your money if you're going to start doing things that are going to challenge the pre-existing properties of the alcohol. Just getting into a nice brand of alcohol and doing little subtle modifications to it, but never going too out of control.

I had some of that potato vodka—the Chopin—I had never tried that and I don't really like vodka all that much, but the Chopin was really nice. Vodka's supposed to be colorless, tasteless, odorless legally, but somehow they always end up having these distinctive characteristics, even if they are filtered. The Chopin just had a fundamentally different quality to it. I really liked it. I think people drink vodka because they associate it with being a refreshing beverage, and the Chopin is by far the most transparent.

BG: I've been really into this Bison Grass Vodka which is really delicious. It has a spear of grass in the bottle, and it's slightly green. It's got a kind of slippery quality to it, almost a sake kind of thing. But it's really good. I can sip a shot of that, but generally—that's the weird thing about vodka: it's essentially a dilutant to whatever you're going to drink because it's supposed to be like water, but alcoholic. So it's weird because we got a sample of Reyka and it's almost completely tasteless, odorless, whatever, but for that reason it's great to combine with other things. The thing about that high-end vodka is that you can use other stuff and have a good drink because it lets that other stuff work together without getting messed up by some funky flavor you don't want in there.

RS: You know, one drink that I'm really into right now is a Bloody Mary made with Citron, Peppar and about two fingers of Guinness in it. It's really something else.

BG: That sounds good. I've been a little interested in Bloody Marys since I went to Topolobampo in Chicago. They only have tequila drinks and they had a drink called a Vampiro, which is a crazy Mexican Bloody Mary. (McPHERSON)

To continue reading about Skoro's musical endeavors, head to the jump over at Signal Eats Noise.