MxMo: Retro Redemption!

Over a decade ago I was working at Boeing mopping floors, taking out trash, and trying to work as little as possible while avoiding my bosses and co-workers. It was a pretty sweet job as I was paid fairly well, I only had to work about half my shift (while I spent the other half getting caught up on my reading), I had full benefits, and Boeing was paying for school. However, there was also mandatory overtime and I worked nights, which definitely put a cramp on my style (by style, I mean ability to go to punk shows and chase girls). At the time I had a friend who was waiting tables at a shitty chain restaurant and making the same money as me, but working half the time. That was really all it took for me, so I quit Boeing and took the fhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifirst job waiting tables that I couldhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif get with no experience, which was a graveyard shift at Denny's. Suffice it to say, it was awful, and after months of grinding it out working 16 hour shifts, having customers threaten to beat me over brown vs. white gravy, and making pennies (literally bags of them), I was given the option to get off graveyard if I would take over for the bartender who'd just walked off the job. This was in the late nineties, so when Jacob over at Liquidity Preference chose Retro Redemption as this month's Mixology Monday theme, it resonated with the young bartender in me who made too many Alabama Slammers and Alien Urine Samples.

Those of you who've been in the bar know that I don't really stock any of the saccharine sweet, sticky, hypercolor liqueurs that seemed to dominate the back bars of my early bartending jobs. So, here's what we've come up with:

Hilltop Slammer
.5 oz Evan Williams bourbon
.5 oz Pacharan
.5 oz Lazzaroni amaretto
.5 oz Kuchin peach brandy
Splash of oj
Splash of lemon juice

Combine ingredients in shaker over ice, shake, then strain over ice into pint glass. Finish with orange twist.

It actually wasn't too bad. Sweet, orange, and boozy. I definitely won't be having another, however.

Hilltop Iced Tea
.5 oz well vodka
.5 oz well rum
.5 oz well gin
.5 oz lemon juice
splash triple sec
house made cola
.5 oz Lemon Hart 151

Combine the first five ingredients in a shaker over ice. Shake, strain into a pint glass over fresh ice. Add cola. Light the 151 on fire, make an ostentatious show of it by swirling the flame around the glass, then pour over the top of the drink.

Ya, so, this one is kinda tasty and really boozy. It does exactly what it's supposed to do, which is why we have a two drink limit.

Finally, I finished with a Balvenie Doublewood as a palette cleanser because through this entire endeavor I was reading Pacult's Kindred Spirits. He mentioned that the popularization of scotch in the late eighties opened the door for the proliferation of single barrel small batch whiskeys. Regardless, I needed something a little..sturdier. I do this for you guys...