Welcome To Wonkette Happy Hour, With This Week’s Cocktails, The Bar Crawl Drinks!

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Greetings, Wonketeers! I’m Hooper, your bartender. Last Saturday, Hemingway’s was part of an epic bar crawl that hit nearly every bar in Medina, Ohio. A bar crawl turns our tiny craft cocktail bar into a hardcore dive-bar experience. We’re pouring beers as fast as we can, turning seats as soon as customers let us, and staring at the costumed insanity as it parades past. Basically, it’s trick-or-treat for grownups. Here are the recipes we built for the crawl, with some notes and some stories from the front line. Here are the recipes.

Fall Fashioned

2 ½ oz Buffalo Trace

¼ oz allspice dram

¼ oz amaretto

2 shakes black walnut bitters

2 shakes cardamom bitters

Stir all ingredients with ice. Strain into a rocks glass with a large ice cube. Garnish with a flamed cinnamon stick and dehydrated apple.

While a bar crawl generates massive volume, we can’t sacrifice our core values to turn tables. We need to serve drinks that stay true to who we are. This Old-Fashioned variation would be terrific on our standard menu, but it uses fall spices from the allspice dram to echo the Halloween theme. The amaretto keeps the dram’s spice in check while adding a fall nuttiness to the cocktail. We ran out of cardamom bitters midway through the crawl, but black walnut bitters alone will do fine in this glass. Our first bar crawl was last year, and somehow we all neglected to put a bourbon drink on the menu. This year, we knew better.

Midnight Margarita

1 oz Chambord

2 oz blanco tequila

½ oz fresh lime juice

Ginger beer

Place a large cube into a rocks glass. Slowly add the Chambord, taking care not to touch the glass wall or the ice cube as you pour. Shake the tequila and lime juice in a shaker for 13 seconds. Strain into the rocks glass. Top with ginger beer. Garnish with a lime wheel.

Another classic we absolutely had to keep on the menu for the bar crawl — a spooky-fied margarita. We used blackberry liqueur instead of Chambord for this recipe, but I figured casual readers would have better access to Chambord. The sweet liquor doesn’t exactly layer in the drink, but it swirls in an alluring and bewitching manner.

Malort

2 oz Malort

Taunt the guest by describing the dangerous, edgy history of Chicago’s finest. Dare them to do a shot with you. Pour 1 oz of Malort into two shot glasses. Hand one to the customer. Drink the Malort. It is customary for you and the guest to make faces at one another.

This one is entirely my fault.

When business starts to lag, we’ll send out a tray of cheap shots and sell them for $5 a pop. (Salted caramel vodka and cider were a big hit.) I took it upon myself to sell as many Malort shots as I could. After all, it was the scariest bottle in the building. It worked, but at a cost. I sold roughly twenty-five shots of Malort. I consumed ten of them. The next morning was … tender. My GI tract didn't lodge a formal complaint, but I was definitely put on the watch list. Never Again.

Another angle on the malcontents. I didn’t give the recipe for all of these — describe one in the comments and I’ll give you the details.

Midori Monster

1 oz Midori

1 oz vodka

2 oz pineapple juice

½ oz lime juice

Sprite

Shake all ingredients but Sprite over ice and strain into a clear plastic orb decorated with googly eyes. Add soda to fill the orb.

There’s always an element of “fridge cleaning” when a bar crawl comes around. When we first opened Hemingway’s, we made a slight error and ended up with three cases of Midori instead of three bottles. Ever since, some kind of green cocktail has found its way onto the holiday bar crawl menus. The plastic orbs started life as novelty Christmas tree ornament glasses; we upcycled them for Halloween and added little googly eyes. We sold a few, but I think we’ll have to bite the bullet and let the novelty glasses go … or try to sell them again next Halloween.

Medusa Juice

1 oz Midori

½ oz ancho chile liqueur

½ oz lemon juice

Pinch of sea salt

Soda water

Shake Midori, ancho chile liqueur, lemon juice, and salt. Strain into a martini glass. Top with soda. Garnish with a gummy worm.

My own attempt to use up the Midori. Midori is very green, very sweet, and slightly melon-flavored; this recipe uses a few tricks to cut the sweetness while keeping Midori front and center. Regrettably, I don’t think it sold well. Maybe our regulars are tired of green drinks … or Midori.

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 this drink for you… or anything else from our little Happy Hour here at Wonkette. We’ll make it through this together.

OPEN THREAD!