All senses were needed as four bartenders competed in the theater’s “Mix-Off: Bloomington’s Ultimate Bartender Challenge.”
There were three rounds to the competition: a batch cocktail taste test, a challenge cocktail test and a tasting cocktail test.
Rebecca Stanze, associate director at Buskirk-Chumley Theater, said that people should think of the event as a community-wide cocktail party.
“What’s fun about this event is that there is a little bit of everything,” she said.
There were four offerings for the batch cocktail round, one from each bartender. The winner of this round would have their drink offered as the Buskirk’s signature cocktail for the next year.
Dylan Swift of Nick’s English Hut won this round with the “Don Qiwi,” a rum-based cocktail featuring apricot juice, 7 Up, kiwi syrup and fresh kiwi fruit.
Swift said the key to this cocktail was staying simple. He got this idea from his work at Nick’s English Hut.
“We do a lot in high volume,” he said while manning his table and assembling cocktail samplers. It’s key for the drink to not only taste good but also be easy to make quickly.
His rule when creating cocktail recipes is that whatever he made had to be something people could recreate easily at home, he said.
“My drinks are simple,” he said.
He mixed his drinks with his customers in mind. The entire time he stood behind his tasting table, he hand poured and mixed each drink sample, plopping a centimeter-sized piece of fresh kiwi into a shot glass-sized plastic cup. Before handing any drink to an audience member, he made sure to mash the fruit with a drink stirrer.
His reasoning? He said he knew his customers mash any fruit garnishes with their straws into the bottom of their cups. However the tasting cups he had on hand were too small, so he said he was doing it for them.
It was not long before the bartenders were pulled on stage for the two remaining competition rounds. They first made a traditional cocktail, the name of which was not released until the moment they started.
This test was designed to see what the bartenders could do to a common drink to make it their own, Stanze said.
Within minutes, they made a Tom Collins, a gin-based cocktail that, according to judges, is easy to mess up because of how simple it is. The main flavor profile is derived from lemon juice, which, due to its acidity, can easily turn a drink overly sour. None of the bartenders made this mistake, according to the judges.
From there, bartenders made four personally designed drinks. Apple cider, hickory smoke, elderflower and egg white foam were used between the four men.
These drinks were made while Derek Richey of Bloomington Fading, a group that studies Bloomington’s historical roots, gave a talk on Bloomington during the ?Prohibition.
Nolan Hart of Michael’s Uptown Café won the overall best bartender title at the end of the night with a hickory smoke-infused cocktail. He did this by taking a culinary torch to a cone of hickory wood chips. Once he accumulated a glassful of smoke, he let his alcohol sit with the smoke for a few minutes to infuse the flavor.
He said he wanted the drink to give judges and attendees a sense of nostalgia. He wanted people to think of a campfire, he said. The drink’s name was “Over the river and through the woods.”
His drink had judges literally singing praise.
At the announcement of his win, Hart was given a bar’s neon sign-topped trophy. He threw his arm up moments later, raising the martini ?glass-light up in the air.
Danielle McClelland, executive director at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater, said what made this night special was that it was close to home.
“It happens right here in your hometown,” she said.
She and Stanze said that today, cocktails and bartending competitions are becoming especially trendy.
There is stronger interest in new twists on old drinks, Stanze said. However, the fact that this bartending trend was localized at the theater was what made this trend relevant for the locals that filled the Buskirk-Chumley Theater.
“This is your place,” McClelland said to the audience at the end of the night. “You have made it a rare, special place.”
