MySpeedRail

This Thursday I fly down to Scottsdale Arizona to compete in a cocktail competition for Crave Arizona. To be quite honest, I'm literally scared to death at the quality of the competitors for this competition. Marcos Tello from Edison in LA, Marco Dionysous from Clock Bar in SF, and Tim Cooper out of NYC are just a few of the names that I need to be worried about. While I usually just relax and enjoy myself at events like this, the sheer level of talent attending (and its hosted by the amazingly talented Ryan Magarian) has me a bit worried. The way that I'm reading the cocktail competition rules seems to leave me with the opportunity to make my own syrups or bitters but no liqueurs. Instead, I have to use an array of base spirits provided by Skyy (good products mind you), a secret ingredient per round, and some minor liqueurs. I'm working on an assumption of herbs one round, fruit another, and I'm making an educated guess of chilies in the finals. It is Arizona after all. Jake Grier, bartender extraordinaire at Carlyle Restaurant here in Portland and I have been collaborating on some coffee bitters, and I've also got a batch of marionberry bitters going. Its important to me to allow my cocktails to have a sense of place, I want the judges to know that a bartender from Oregon made these drinks. As for syrups, I have one going that Portland bars are relatively famous for (a secret I'll reveal after the competition), a tropical syrup, a ginger syrup for any and all issues, and perhaps a nice little twist on orgeat.

Some other things I'm thinking about packing;

a microplane

a lewis bag

my own Pug! and Liquid Revolution muddlers 

sandalwood

nutmeg

Anything I'm leaving out? Any thoughts or suggestions that you might have for me? I'm all ears.

I'll post a recap of this event as soon as I'm back.