Welcome.

What is it that makes a bar?

The obvious answer is a collection of glasses, booze, tables, chairs and a bar top. Although suggesting that these are what make a bar is about as accurate as saying that organs are what make a person. Yes, we need them to exist but it is not who we are.

As insane as it sounds, bars have all of the characteristics of a living person. They are young or old, popular or not, dirty or clean. They can lie, they can steal, they can die and they can procreate. The can get sick and need help to get back on their feet. Though most importantly, they grow and change. As much as anyone wants their favorite haunt no to never change, be it a dark dive like the places I like to drink or shiny clubs like the places I choose to work, change they will and change they must.

Keeping a bar successful and healthy is a fight against many elements that your average guest of a bar would never really understand. There is the obvious stuff like keeping it clean and orderly, having the right product, and hiring quality employees. For a bar there are many more complex problems like targeting the quality consumer, keeping your current guests interested, and the inevitable problems of a high turnover industry.

What you are reading is the first entry in a recollection of what it is that I do behind the bar. Let's set down a few ground rules so we know we're getting into. First of all, please don't ever call me a mixologist.  Every person I have ever met that calls themselves a "mixologist" either drastically overestimates their ability or is fresh out of bartending school. I am a bartender. I pour alcohol out of a bottle for a living, and sometimes take it a few steps further. I dabble in home-brewing, I'm good at making cocktails and I'm more than good at infusing. I'm starting to explore stilling.

I'll be using this blog as a platform to tell people what I'm doing in the various bars that I work at, to describe my ambitions and further projects, inform you on upcoming events and to give you a bit of insight about what happens on the side of the bar you most likely have never stood on.

Welcome to The Bar Fight.