McGowan Edward - Sloshies: 102 boozy cocktails straight from the freezer

SLOSHIES 102 boozy Cocktails Straight from the Freezer Jerry Nevins of snow & co. Workman Publishing New York Thank-yous There are many amazing people who allowed this book to happen, so its only fitting to thank them first thing. Please indulge me a moment. To my loving wife, Robynn, and our two amazing children, Sawyer and Scarlett. Thanks for letting Daddy put giant frozen drink machines in the kitchen for months on end, giving me time to write and drink while you made sure everything ran as it should over these many years. I love you, and couldnt have written this book without your love and support.

To my family, Stan, Paul, and Nancy, thanks for the support over the years to get me here. To my business partners, Andy Talbert and Lauren Cloud, entrepreneurship is a team sport and Im honored to be on your team. The great thing about working with people who are better than you is that you get to learn something new. I truly learn something from you every time we talk. To Jason Burton at The Lab, weve come a long way since I randomly called you up after seeing your name in an article. Thanks for all of your patience and for teaching me the ropes as I came to you with this crazy idea of craft frozen cocktails in 2010.

To my amazing staff (past and present) who have kept things chugging along while Ive been buried in my laptop writing all of this. And a special shout-out to Eric Shoemaker, Rachael Chesney, and Courtney Hollenbeck for the all-nighter giving these recipes one last makeover. There are friends too many to name who helped in ways large and small. As they say, it takes a village to make frozen cocktails, or something like that. Contents The First Snowfall For thousands of years, humankind has been experimenting with fermentation. While the discovery of alcohol is somewhat shrouded in mystery because of the passage of time, its very possible that some scrappy early farmer once experienced a light-bulb moment of discovery during a bite of fermented fruit, realizing its pleasantly buzzy properties and opening the door to experimentation with various fruits and grains.

We like to think the frozen drink was invented shortly thereafter, when our enterprising ancestors, thrilled with and possibly altered by their new invention, left their booze outside in the cold overnight and woke up to find a sloshie delight the next morning. Of course, were completely making up this tale of accidental genius, but whats true is that ice and alcohol have been around for a long time. However, despite this long period that could have been devoted to perfecting an artful combination of ice and alcohol, our common understanding has lately been colored by the daiquiri bar style of blender drinkavailable poolside, on a cruise ship, or (more accessibly) on the menus of some of your favorite chain restaurants. Before you roll your eyes at our snobbish ways and snap this book shut, please just know that we have had our fair shareyou might say a lotof those types of frozen cocktails in our lifetimes. As a matter of fact, now that we make our living on sloshies at Snow & Co., we can actually write them off as a research and development expense. (A great side benefit of owning a bar, in case youre interested.) And while the resurgence of cocktail culture is evident across the country, the frozen cocktail has not kept pace.

If youre a patron of daiquiri bars or a blender drink enthusiast, youre consuming drinks made with 151-proof, or grain, alcohol plus a bright, unnaturally colored syrup or a jug of branded pre-mix. A few notable bars are starting to bring their love of frozen cocktails out of the closet (The Tippler and Mothers Ruin in New York City and Drumbar in Chicago come to mind), with a focus and care similar to that seen in the craft cocktail scene. At Snow & Co., we didnt want to trot out just one or two amazing frozen drinks. We wanted to start a revolution of frozen cocktailsso they can hold their own next to some of the classics in the world of mixology. Although Snow & Co. is off to an auspicious start, we have quite the hill to climb and this book is our clarion call.

Our hope is that our sisters and brothers of the cocktail world take this book as an entry point and a provocation to make frozen cocktails as amazing as anything else inside their bars. After all, an awesome frozen cocktail is one of the cornerstones of any gathering of friends. The original Snow & Co. in the Crossroads Arts District of Kansas City, opened on November 4, 2011. Three MBA grads Walk into a Bar Cocktails are collaborations between ingredients, just like businesses are collaborations between creators. The three original founders of Snow & Co.Andy Talbert, Lauren Cloud, and Jerry Nevins (thats me)met in grad school at the University of Missouri, Kansas City.

We worked well together and knew if there was anyone we wanted to start a business with, it was each other. The only problem was that we didnt have an idea for a business. So, after we graduated, wed kick around every Wednesday night and bring our crazy ideas to the table. Some of them were horrible, like the floating birthday candle that would sit on top of your celebratory birthday beer (feel free to steal that one). Some of them were amazing, but impossible to execute at the time, like our local version of the RED campaign that would promote local causes through sponsorship dollars and rebuild the city core of KC. Then one day in May 2010, as we talked about what wed been up to, something unexpected happened.

Not just one of us, but all three of us had spoken to completely unrelated sets of friends who lamented the lack of a good frozen cocktail in Kansas City. Thats when it hit us. The idea for Snow & Co. was born. We started out with one location, then grew to a second a few years later, both in Kansas City. (Most of you might have a general idea of where that is.

If not, imagine a map of the United States. Now think of a spot smack dab in the middle of the map. There we are, on the Missouri side of the Kansas-Missouri border.) You might think it an unlikely place to start a business specializing in frozen things, if youre familiar with our Midwest winters. But despite the challenging weather during the colder months, we still couldnt let go of the fact that the people of Kansas City WANTED a frozen cocktail bar to call home. Plus, our summers can be just as hot as our winters can be bitterly cold. As we did our homework (yes, its a tough job, but someone has to do it), we realized that within the entire country, we couldnt find a bar that focused on carefully crafted frozen cocktails.

A handful of places were playing with the idea as part of a larger menu, but we thought it deserved to be the star of the showa fresh, artisanal lineup featuring frozen drinks as the main event. There were two major roadblocks to this idea, as we quickly found out. First and foremost, people had a hard time thinking of frozen cocktails as anything other than high-octane swill. One place where we did research told us all the drinks were made with grain alcohol; the only difference among drinks was the syrup they added for flavor. So this led us to believe that many of the frozen drinks out there are purchased for effect, not for taste. When it came to being frozen fanatics, we had our work cut out for us in terms of changing the perception of the drinking public.