Toronto Cocktail Conference-A whirlwind of 36 hours
The last 2 days I've had the extreme pleasure of getting to attend the Toronto Cocktail Conference. I only managed to attend one full day and the opening evening, but it was truly an amazing experience. I'll break down the specific seminars I attended in more depth in future posts, hopefully with one for each seminar. But first just a general overview!
The Toronto Cocktail Conference was put together by the amazing people at Bartender Atlas (which I am a member of; you can search for really cool bartenders in cities around the world!) and the Drake Hotel. Designed to bring together the awesome cocktail community here in Canada and around the world, it was a great opportunity for me to meet bartenders from across Canada, North America and a few from around the world! I got the chance to compete in the world's craziest cocktail competition, try some neat cocktails and products, as well as sit in on some seminars that were informative and funny. I also got the chance to connect with some of the pillars and cornerstones of the bartending community in Canada, and I got to sign up for a mentorship with one of the coolest bartenders in Halifax (which happens to be fairly close to where I live).
The first night of the Conference, I had the extreme pleasure of competing in the Bartender Atlas Black Box 649 cocktail competition. I love to compete in cocktail competitions, mainly because they're a great chance to network, but also because they allow me to watch (and learn from) so of the best in the industry. I learnt this when I rode horses, you could learn so much from the top riders just from watching them in the ring (especially the warm up ring). For the same reason, I love to go and compete at bartending events. I'm also super competitive, but only with myself, I like to do better and be better than I was the day, week or month before. So for that reason, going to competitions is a great way for me to flex my creative muscle while learning to be better than I am now.
The 649 competition was absolutely insane. 6 of us were chosen to compete, the only thing we knew ahead of time was that we needed to bring a non-alcoholic regional ingredient with us. So until we arrived we had no idea what we would be doing! Talk about feeling unprepared!!! A 649 is a selection of ingredients, where you select the 6th ingredient in the first row, the 4th in the second and the 9th in the third row. The potential combinations were a little insane. I pulled the second spot in the competition and I pulled Olmeca Altos Plata Tequila (which is my least favourite base spirit), Frangelico (which I probably haven't had for several years) and flax seed oil from bartender Chad who was competing from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan! Admittedly, they were the strangest ingredients to pull together and I felt a little like someone had played coasters on my back bar. I ended up using the ingredients as well as a little lemon juice in a stirred cocktail in an attempt to pull all the nutty characteristics of the elements together. I also floated the flax seed oil on the top of the drink when presenting it to the judges. I didn't win, but I had a ton of fun. Getting to compete with no idea of what the expectations were was the craziest thing for me, but also the most relaxing. This is also a combination of flavours I'd like to return to and see if I can make it taste even better.
Now I will return home, after a whirlwind of 38 hours out of my province, and I will hopefully be able to impart some of what I learnt at the conference on some of the other bartenders in my community, both locally and at large in the community. I look forward to my next conference and my next, hopefully soon, meeting with the bartenders I met at the conference.
Black box '649' cocktail
Floating flax seed oil droplets
