Want a lift?
Sodawater adds froth and fizz to a creamy cocktail
There are all manner of categories of mixed drinks — toddies, fixes, fizzes, flips and sours, to name a few. And now, thanks to a couple of San Francisco bartenders, we have a brand new 21st century classification — lifts. Lifts are pretty simple, and they are light and airy as well as dark and heavy at the same time.
Eric Adkins is bar director for the Slanted Door Group, and part of his job entails him being the bar manager at HardWater, the American whiskey bar at Pier 3, the Embarcadero.
Jennifer Colliau, bar manager at the Interval at Long Now in San Francisco’s Fort Mason Center, is also the owner of Small Hand Foods, a company that makes top-class cocktail ingredients that are available online and at certain retail outlets in six states, as well as Australia and Singapore.
These are the culprits who first created lifts.
Lifts comprise a base spirit, heavy cream, orgeat (a complex almond syrup available from Small Hand Foods), a liqueur and soda water. And it’s the Bourbon Lift, a drink available at HardWater, that I bring to you today.
I’m a bit of a bourbon freak, as you might have noticed over the years, so this was a natural for me, and this drink also calls for Nola coffee liqueur, made locally at the St. George distillery in Alameda. It’s tough to drink just one of these, so be careful.