Welcome to our journey. Won't you join us?

We're just a couple of crazy kids who like to make excellent cocktails. Now, I don't mean that we're literally kids. Kids should not be drinking. We don't condone that sort of thing. Look, I'm sure there are some kids that could really use a drink. But, it's just not healthy for their small bodies and brains. They will need to be patient. There will be plenty of time for them to drink (responsibly of course) when they get older...

I feel I may have immediately wondered off topic...

Oh yes, excellent cocktails. That's our thing. And being adults. You see, before the great pandemic of 2020 my father-in-law made us Old Fashioneds. They were delicious. I had tried whiskey before and didn't care for it. This was somehow different. Did you know that there are a huge variety of different whiskeys? They are as varied and complicated as wine. My wife and I explored the aisles of our favorite local alcohol superstore and picked out a collection to try. Each one had its own distinct character and style. Some were harsh and others smooth. Some were smokey. Some preferred boxers over briefs. So far we've found that we tend to like Irish whiskeys. We did the same thing with gin, and vodka, and tequila. A whole world had opened up.

Being in lockdown gave us more time to learn and experiment with different cocktail recipes that we found.

We have a cocktail guide that we picked up at a used bookstore called, "Old Mr. Boston De Luxe Official Bartender's Guide." It's awesome. It looks like it's from prohibition times. However, publication started a couple years later. There are 52 editions printed through 1972, all the while collecting new-fangled recipes. It's small enough to be at home behind a real bar and its pages are bursting with drinks we've never heard of. The inside cover is inscribed with the name of "Richard Noel". Yes Richard, we have your book. We bought it fair and square. I imagine that to this very day Richard spends his nights staring up at the sky, a boring drink in his hand, cursing the day he ever let his Old Mr. Boston De Luxe Official Bartender's Guide slip through his fingers. "What was that drink I liked, again?" he'd whisper to himself, "The Poop Deck? What was in there? Brandy? I can't remember! Oh Old Mr Boston! Why have I forsaken thee?" Richard is a dramatic guy. And, he really has nothing to fear because of something called, "the Internet".

Can you feel us building towards an explanation of why we made this thing you're reading right now? Exciting!

While we love our Old Mr Boston guide, we quickly outgrew it. We wanted to search for cocktail ideas using the ingredients we had on hand. Or, we wanted to find out how to incorporate specific flavors. We have a rosemary bush which is probably the real catalyst for this whole thing. Our paper based guide makes no mention of rosemary cocktails, but a Google search provides many options. This is where our story really picks up steam because while we found lots of search results for our cocktail queries, we also found that the sites that house them are TERRIBLE!!!

I'm speaking generally here, but I find most cocktail recipe sites to be incredibly frustrating. All I really care about is the ingredients and ratios. But they always bury that below several screens of nonsense and an obscene number of ads. It's often so bad that even when I manage to find the actual recipe, it jumps around on the page because the ads are cycling/reloading and causing the whole page layout to react. I'm sure that's a great way to cultivate more ad impressions, but it's not what I would call "respecting your audience." This experience has guided our approach. This site is our answer and middle finger to big cocktail blogging.

Here-forth and on this day, we declare to you the tenants of sipping on it (and spinning).

• Brevity: You wouldn't know it after reading through this lengthy introduction, but we value brevity. We place the cocktail recipe and succinct instructions right at the top of the page. To be fair, we do also have a bunch of nonsense, but we always put it below the important part. We want you to choose to read the nonsense if you like and not try to trick you into reading it on your way to the recipe.
• Simplicity: We tend to prefer drinks that are easy to make. We tend to like using common ingredients where you don't have to mount an expedition to the far reaches of the amazon to acquire the special signature liquor that makes up 1/16th of the final cocktail. There will be exceptions of course (that amazon liquor is really tasty), but overall we're aiming for ingredients you either have on hand or can easily find at a grocery store.
• Fewer Ads: There are too many ads on these other sites and they get in the way. I don't mean to say that I'm against ads entirely. We are capitalists too and hope to monetize the site at some point if we can (we have expensive taste in booze). However, the ads should be fewer and augment the site instead of dominate it. Balance in all things. They should help you find related products that fit your interest and not distract you from your goal of drinking something delicious.
• Non-Seriousness: Seriously, we want to keep it light. No heaviness on this blog. No siree.

Now we're not expert mixologists. We're just a couple of crazy kids (though not literally, but I think we've covered that already). We are learning as we go and creating our own versions of cocktails based on our experiments. We often find that the recipes we try need some adjustment. We start trying different ratios or adding or removing ingredients. Pretty soon, we have something we developed on our own. Something that would make Richard and Old Mr Boston proud. You can find all of our creations in the "Crafted Cocktails" section.

This is the journey we've invited you to take with us. We'll continue on trying new things and publishing our results here. Sure, we'll make some mistakes along the way. We tend to use too many commas, for example. But our hearts and passions for cocktails are pure and our advice based on experience. Perhaps we'll build a small community here and we'll all learn to be better at drinking.

Can a cocktail blog be informative, easy to use, light, and monetizable all at the same time? Let's find out...

together.

**credits roll over inspirational music**