Warm Up with the Winter Cocktail Menu at 1886

1886 only gets better and better.  Pasadena's premiere cocktail spot has settled into a comfortable groove of innovation in its just over one year of existence.  Cocktail consultant Marcos Tello still provides guidance but now the team led by talented head barman Garrett McKechnie has been allowed to shine.  The new winter menu, which is smoke and beers themed, has cocktails created by many of the staff members.  This collective approach which highlights the deep bench, rather than focusing on a single wizard, is a telling sign of the 1886 ethos: unpretentious quality and comfortable fun.

The most dramatic cocktail on the menu is undoubtedly The Smoking Jacket, a Lacey Murillo cocktail served in a brandy snifter.  The base is Pot Still Irish Whiskey with house-made 1886 tobacco bitters, maplewood smoke and orange-vanilla ash.  As the smoke fills up and rises out of the glass, other patrons will inevitably look at your cocktail with curiousity and perhaps a twinge of jealously.  The cocktail is completed with the addition of the orange-vanilla ash, which adds a sweet and smoky element.  With such strong visual and olfactory elements there is a danger that the flavor might not live up to the other senses, melting away like the smoke into the night air.  Fortunately the taste delivers, enabling this take on an Old Fashioned to be a feast for all of your senses.

Marcos Tello descrived Brady Weise's Coffee and Cigarettes as "a chocolate version of a White Russian, but it's lengthened with stout, so it has this heavy chocolate coffee note and looks like coffee.  So when you drink this cocktail, you get the chocolate and coffee notes, and then you eat the cigarette and the vanilla flavor comes in. From afar, it actually looks like someone drinking their coffee and eating their cigarette."
The cocktail is made with Vodka, Dark Crème de Cacao, Yeti Stout, Hand Whipped Cream, & Vanilla Paper Rolled Cigarette.  The coffee notes from the Stout Beer come through loud and clear as this cocktail embodies both themes of smoke and beer.

On a cold night the warming effect of a Grog Logged, a creation of Greg Gertmenian, is just what the doctor ordered.  The cocktail is made with Black Rum and 1886's own proprietary grog recipe which includes ale, sugar and lime.  The drink name is a tribute to Jeff "Beachbum" Berry.  The cocktail is served in a jar wrapped in a koozie made out of rope.  This beverage is as potent as it is warm.

Another noteworthy addition to the 1886 repertoire is Danny Cymbal's Oak Knoll Manhattan, which is a twist on the classic incorporating housemade mulled wine vermouth.  It incorporates Bonded Bourbon with dry vermouth, mulled vermouth and garnished with dried sugar (the snowflake in the cocktail above).   The vermouth is housemade mulled wine vermouth utilizing several locally grown spices and botanicals.  Now Pasadena has its own Manhattan variation.  Who knows, perhaps soon bartenders will name their versions after neighborhoods in the area instead of those in Brooklyn.

Whether it is house-mulled vermouth, house-made bitters or creating their own grog, 1886 is focusing on putting their own touches on their cocktails by making their own ingredients.  The other new additions to the Winter Menu are:

Con Abuelita: Ancho-Chile infused Reposado Tequila, 1886 Hot Chocolate Mix, & Ancho-Chile Marshmallow
Chic(ory) Flip: Chicory-Coffee infused Rye Whiskey, Yeti Stout, One Whole Egg, & Carmelized Chicory-Coffee Sugar
Pimm’s Cup No. 2: Scotch based Pimm’s No. 2, citrus juices, ginger, mint, cucumber, & soda water Holland Daze: Bols Genever, Housemade Pistachio Orgeat, Maraschino Liqueur, Lemon & Housmade Sambuca Bitters
Per-Sin-Amen: Mescal, Fresh Persimmons, Housemade Cinnamon Bark Syrup, Lime, & Chocolate-Creole Bitters

1886 at the Raymond: 1250 South Fair Oaks Avenue, Pasadena.  Phone: 626.441.3136 | theraymond.com

Fall Cocktails & Barrel Aging at 1886

1886, the Pasadena bar which recently won the award for "Best Really Hidden Well Known Bar" from LA Weekly, has been continuing to turn out excellent drinks since Marcos Tello and Aidan Demarest consulted on its creation last year.  Head bartender Garrett McKechnie recently released his fall cocktail list, which is the first where he has truly driven the program.  Since the bar opened last year, a patio has been added and the customer base has grown, spilling out from the main room and filling up the patio.  1886 has truly filled a niche that hadn't been apparent before it opened.

A new addition to the program is the launch of 1886's first barrel aged cocktail, the Vintage Caprice.  The Caprice, made with Beefeater Gin, Benedictine, Dry Vermouth and orange bitters was aged in a barrel seasoned with sherry.  This was no small barrel; 24 liters of Beefeater, 6 liters of Benedictine and 6 liters of Dolin vermouth went into it.  Half of the first batch was removed from the barrel after 4 months and the remainder was left to further age.  The Caprice aging in the barrel will be eight months old at the end of the month.  I recently had the opportunity to try a freshly made Caprice and the 4 month and 7 month aged Vintage Caprices.  It was really instructive to taste how the cocktail evolved through the aging process.  The rough edges literally melted away and the final end product of the 7-8 month old Vintage is a thing of beauty.  Something not to be missed.

When the team at 1886 decided to embark on the barrel aging process, they reached out to Erick Castro, the West Coast brand ambassador for Beefeater & Plymouth Gins.  He was able to procure a barrel for the aging process and as much gin as the bar needed to fill up the ample vessel. Marcos Tello collaborated with the bartending staff at 1886 to help decide which cocktail they should age.  They selected gin as the base spirit because as 1886 bartender Danny Cymbal said, "lots of bars were doing whiskey-based, darker cocktails, but the end result was hidden by the color of the liquid.  So we decided to try it with a lighter alcohol."

Bartenders suggested various cocktails to be the one that was barrel aged and after much discussion and sampling of the options, it was Cymbal's suggestion of the Caprice that was selected.  Ironically he is not a fan of the unaged Caprice, "I wanted to choose something not all that great to see if it could be improved in the barrel," he explained.

I recommend trying the taste comparison yourself by sampling the fresh, 4 month and 8 month versions of the Vintage Caprice.

The Indian Summer is a good choice for a warm autumn evening as the watermelon juice and jalapeno blend to take summer into fall.  The cocktail is made with Blanco Tequila, agave syrup, watermelon juice, cilantro, jalapeno, watermelon chunks and chili salt.  This drink is more on the refreshing and juicy side.

One of my favorites from the new list is the Therapist.  It is from the Stirred section of the cocktail list, which is where I recommend visitors begin their ordering as it also includes the Vintage Caprice.  The Therapist is made with Highland Park 12 year single malt Scotch (the same stuff that is so wonderful in the Scottish Cashmere at Drago Centro), Drambuie, Carpano Antica, chocolate bitters, and carmelized orange essence.  Another fan of the bar named Aaron (not me) got a shoutout on the menu as he helped inspire this tasty concoction with a reference to fashion designer Alexander McQueen.  It is aromatic and multilayered.

There are four sections on the menu including the aforementioned Stirred, as well as Regional, Shaken and Seasonal.  In addition to the Caprice and Therapist, El Jimador, a tequila based cocktail created by Tello is featured.  The Regional Section includes the 4th iteration of Tello's Pimm's collection, known appropriately as Pimm's #4, which includes Jamaican Rum and his top secret recipe for Pimms, topped with Ting's Grapefruit Soda.  The other two cocktails in the section each pay homage.  The first, 1886 Kentucky Colonel (no relation to Colonel Sanders), was the house cocktail at the Hotel Bel Air when legendary bartender Dale DeGroff was behind the stick there in the 1980s, and the second, the Raymond Hill Smash is dedicated to the hill behind 1886 where the Raymond Hotel once stood.  The Colonel is made with boubon, Benedictine, orange, Angostura bitters and the Smash is made with Cognac, mint and oranges.

The Seasonal section includes the Indian Summer, as well as the Malted Mule, a collaboration between bartender Lacey Murillo and The Raymond pastry chef Jeff Haines that includes homemade gingersnap ice cream, Lemon Hart 151, Mt. Gay Eclipse aged rum, Jamaican rum, and homemade barley malt syrup topped with ginger ale.  That is a lot of Caribbean flavors all in one beverage.  The final seasonal offering is the 1886 Chin Chin, an adaptation of a cocktail created by Sammy Ross of Milk & Honey.  Note Ross also created the Penicillin, so he is truly a creator of modern classics.

The Shaken section has one original and two tributes.  The original is the St. Elmo's Fire from bartender Brady Weise, a beer cocktail made with 90 Minute Dogfish Head IPA, gin, aperol and lime juice.  Drinking one of these might just Emilio Estevez to drive after you in the snow.  The Big Mac cocktail is a bourbon and berries beverage from Damian Windsor of the Roger Room and the Earl Grey Martini is a gin sour from Audrey Saunders of the Pegu Club in New York, another modern cocktail legend.

Now instead of Pasadena residents driving downtown to get their cocktail fix, traffic is going the other way as folks from all over LA are making the pilgrimage to 1886.  This latest menu further solidifies its place among the top tier cocktail establishments in the city.

1886 at the Raymond: 1250 S. Fair Oaks, Pasadena.  Phone:: (626) 441-3136. Web: www.theraymond.com