Local bartenders add new twists to classic cocktails

STORY BY MICHELLE DUTRO
photos by Rachel Brown

Using a whisk as if to make whipped cream, bartender Dennis Schafer combines a pint of hard cider, lemon juice and egg whites. The lemon juice breaks apart the molecules in the mixture while the egg whites act as a binding agent, bringing the molecules together again in a new, stable form. The mixture is now thick foam, which Schafer pours delicately on top of a bourbon drink.

“When you drink the bourbon through the foam, those aromas and flavors of the cider are incorporated into it,” says Schafer, molecular mixologist and bartender at Bayou on Bay’s Oyster Bar.

In Bellingham, the Oyster Bar is one in a handful of bars that offer specialty craft cocktails, adding new twists to classic recipes.

Rather than using sours made with corn syrup, bitters from a bottle or Smirnoff’s flavored vodkas, these bars use local products to make key mixing ingredients in-house.

One key ingredient, bitters — a high-proof grain alcohol infused with bitter herbs and botanicals — have always been a defining staple of cocktails, says Brandon Wicklund, owner and bartender at The Real McCoy.

With no formal training or chemistry background, Schafer was hired at the Oyster Bar after two years of practice experimenting with drinks and local ingredients. He combines, cools or freezes ingredients to create chemical reactions between the molecules of specialty drinks.

One of Schafer’s specialties is an orange liqueur gel, which he makes by dissolving gelatin in liquor and squeezing drops of the gelatinous booze into chilled oil. The oil forms a skin around the alcohol, solidifying it to create alcoholic jelly similar to a Jell-O shot.

To create infused liquors, Schafer experiments with techniques such as fat washing — pouring fat solids such as bacon grease into a bottle of bourbon and then leaving the bottle in the freezer. The alcohol won’t freeze, but the fat solidifies and rises. The bacon taste leeches into the bourbon, and the fat is strained out.

“We’re paying more attention to the food we eat, and there’s this shift to drinking organic,” Schafer says. “Why not be paying attention to the cocktails and booze we’re drinking by choosing locally?”

As bars that serve specialty cocktails have begun to surface in Bellingham within the last four years, bartenders agree the shift to fresh, local ingredients is changing the bar scene.