Welcome To Wonkette Happy Hour, With This Week’s Cocktail, Jimothy Spoke In Class Today!

Try to forget this. Try to erase this from the blackboard.

Yes. It is on fire.

Friends. Wonketeers. Countrymen. This week was a rough one, with the loss of Dolly Parton, Tim Curry, and now Gloria. There was another piece of bad news here in Cleveland that cut the craft cocktail community to the quick as well. LBM, one of the most badass cocktail bars in the area, announced it would be closing in the first week of October. Let’s mourn the end of an era with this absolute dumpster fire of a cocktail. LBM deserves no less. Here’s the recipe.

Jimothy Spoke In Class Today

½ oz Sazerac Rye

½ oz Planteray OFTD Rum

½ oz Cynar

½ oz Ginger Liquor

½ oz lemon juice

Cola

Shake all ingredients except the cola. Pour into a highball glass and top with Coca-Cola. Garnish with whatever you can set on fire.

We just got the details on what killed LBM today: The insurance costs were through the roof. LBM’s gone through five different insurance providers through three brokers in the past nine years. It’s a damn shame. Eric Ho and his friends literally built LBM with their bare hands. They remodeled the space from scratch and bet that, somehow, a Viking-themed craft cocktail bar would make it in the suburbs of Cleveland. And it really, really worked. LBM hung in there for almost a decade, which is a really good run for a craft bar. I suspect Eric will have another bar in him, once he and the staff have had some time to mourn.

FirstEnergy, the local power company, also bears some of the blame. There were repeated power outages in Lakewood over the summer. When you run a restaurant and the power goes out for several days, it’s a huge loss. Not only do you lose business, but everything rots in your coolers. You have to file an insurance claim to survive. FirstEnergy is on the hook for millions in fines, but I suspect they’ll never pay a dime. They’re a ridiculously corrupt corporation that was front and center of a huge bribery scandal last year.

The most notorious cocktail on LBM’s menu is the Dumpster Fire!!, a cocktail served in a dumpster-shaped tiki mug and showered with flaming overproof rum. (According to rumor, one of the reasons the insurance company upped LBM’s rates was because of this monster.) I wanted to honor their work with an in-your-face version of my least favorite cocktail of all time, the Long Island Iced Tea. A standard LIIT is a hot mess — four different boozes in a glass, none of which particularly like each other, topped off with some lemon juice and cola. For those of you who don’t know, the Long Island Iced Tea has no tea in it. The meager amount of cola in the drink gives the cocktail it’s “iced tea” color.

My dumpster-fire drink uses two different pairings of spirits, instead of disparate liquors, to build a riot of a cocktail. Cynar and whiskey are a natural pairing. Ginger and rum love each other as well. The end result isn’t precisely harmonious, but it’s intriguing, bold, and outside the box — a solid cocktail to send off one hell of a bar.

As for the cocktail name? Well, raccoons and dumpsters always go together. This is a small, cute version of the legendary LBM Dumpster Fire, so why not? And I’ve been dying to make the pun into a cocktail name. You’re welcome.

Let’s talk ingredients:

Ingredient shot. I used Buffalo Trace in an earlier iteration of the drink. Sazerac is better, trust me.

Sazerac Rye: My rye of choice. Not too dark and heavy, but crisp and peppery in a way that bourbon can’t match.

Cynar: The artichoke-based amaro tastes nothing like artichokes. It’s bitter and herbaceous. Somehow, it pairs with whisky beautifully — the herbal notes lengthen and complement the natural pepper of rye, making them greater than the sum of their parts.

Planteray OTFD: A dark, flavorful overproof rum. My “secret sauce” in some of my tiki drinks; the extra boost of dark, rich rum notes takes any drink over the top, this one included.

Ginger Liquor: I considered using something spiced, like allspice dram, to complement the rum. Unfortunately, the allspice dram clashed with the Cynar in a way that muted both liquors. A sweet and spicy ginger liquor proved to be the better option.

Lemon Juice: You are absolutely not using bottled juice in this drink after we tossed four liquors into the glass. You will use fresh juice. Don’t make me come over there.

Cola: Whatever’s on the soda gun; I’m not too picky. I’ll be shocked if you can taste any cola flavor in this glass. The pop’s here for bubbles and color.

My home bar is Hemingway’s Underground, the hottest cocktail bar in pretty little Medina, Ohio. I’m behind the stick Wednesday-Saturday, 4-10. Last call’s at midnight. Swing on by, and I’ll make a drink for you… or anything else from our little Happy Hour here at Wonkette. We’ll make it through this together.

OPEN THREAD!