The latest Bitter Southerner cocktail celebrates the smell of smoke — and honors its place like no other drink in our series.
Words by Chuck Reece | Photos by John-Robert Ward II
Imagine this happening in your city.
An old and grand hotel opens on a historic Southern avenue in 1924. As the prosperous 1950s give way to the turbulence of the 1960s, its fortunes sink. As the millennium passes, time reduces the hotel to a flophouse. It becomes a home for the least of these and the most artistic of these, quietly like the legendary Chelsea in Manhattan.
Until New Year’s Eve 2009, when the city condemns it, citing everything from bed bugs to busted toilets.
The headline in the January 1, 2010, newspaper is:
Clermont Hotel Shuts Down, Strippers Unaffected
Then, developers arrive, proposing to refurbish it into a “boutique” hotel. When the proposal circulates through neighborhood associations, many citizens insist that developers promise to keep a strange, smoky strip club in the hotel’s basement.
Then, all that happens. In real life.
The Clermont Hotel, now refurbished and known as the Hotel Clermont, has a strip club in its basement — the Clermont Lounge. The Lounge is genuinely an Only in Atlanta thing. In the BS’s hometown, nothing lower was ever held in such high esteem. It’s a tiny cavern of a joint. The drinks are cheap, even the nonsmokers smoke, and the strippers’ average age is “a ripe 46.5” (to quote from Dana Hazels Seith’s story, “We’re All Freaks,” published in these pages six years ago).
The word upstairs in the new hotel is that, come 2020, even the Lounge will succumb to the city government’s smoking-cessation campaign. Won’t matter much. The walls of the Clermont Lounge will forever ooze cigarette smoke.
And regardless, upstairs in the new Hotel Clermont’s dark Lobby Bar, one drink will be dedicated to remembering all that smoke. It’s called The Bitter Southerner No. 9.
“All I wanted was just that smoky smell. Because I want it to represent the Clermont Lounge at its best,” says Daniel Keith, the No. 9’s creator and manager of the Hotel Clermont’s two gin mills, the Lobby Bar and the more casual spot on the rooftop. “I don't smoke, but man, there's just certain places you should be able to smell that. A good dive bar needs to reek of cigarettes.”
Newer readers of our publication might know nothing about the small seed that grew The Bitter Southerner — an idea for a blog on Southern bartenders. When we began in 2013, we challenged a host of stick-stirrers to create a cocktail called The Bitter Southerner, and we let them interpret how our name should taste. We have numbered each resulting cocktail. Before this year is out, No. 10 is coming. After that, we will shut the series down.
Ten is plenty.
Daniel Keith, a Georgia native, came up in the bartending profession under the tutelage of people he refers to as “an earlier generation” of mixologists in Atlanta. Some of those folks created BS cocktails years ago, and Keith says he learned much from them.
Thus, he felt a bit intimidated at the prospect of creating the No. 9. But he stepped up with a determination to honor both the Clermont Lounge (which, we should note, is a standalone business not owned by the hotel) and other things made in Atlanta. The result is, if you’ll indulge me, smokin’ good — and the first Bitter Southerner cocktail ever to require pork fat.
Oh, yeah.
The whiskey comes from American Spirit Whiskey, one of Atlanta’s earliest microdistilleries. It’s called Duality Double Malt, and ASW says it is “the world’s first whiskey of its kind.” ASW’s Justin Manglitz distilled it from a half-and-half mixture of malted (or sprouted) barley — which, when smoked over a fire, forms the basis of Scotch whiskys — and malted rye. Duality is now available in several Southern states. If local availability or the $47-a-bottle price tag deter your efforts, Keith suggests playing with mixtures of Scotch and rye whiskeys until you find a proportion that tastes good.
Once you have a bottle of Duality — or a home mixture to your liking — “put a pork wash on it,” Keith says. In the lobby bar, he pours a bottle of Duality into a quart container, then steeps just one teaspoon of room-temperature pork fat in it for about 48 hours. When that time passes, he pours the whiskey through a cheesecloth-lined strainer to remove any remaining solids.
At home, whether you use Duality or your own Scotch/rye concoction, pour 750 milliliters of it into a quart container. Strain some bacon grease while it’s still liquid to remove any solids, then let it come to room temperature. Add just one teaspoon of your pork fat to the whiskey. Cover and let sit for a day or two, but no longer, then strain through cheesecloth like Keith does. (To save money on your experimentation, get your kitchen scale and convert to full metric at this ratio: 750 milliters to 4.2 grams of pork fat. Take that down to 175 milliters of your Scotch/rye mixture to just one gram of pork fat, and the result would leave you with only enough for three No. 9’s.)
It’s amazing what only a teaspoon of bacon grease will do to a bottle of whiskey in only two days. The effect is subtle, but the smokiness of the barley and the bacon combine into something quite comforting.
Keith augments the smoke even more by rinsing the serving glass with the smokiest Scotch whisky he can find, usually Laphroig.
In the No. 9, sweetness comes from two sources.
The first is as Atlantan as can be: Coca-Cola. In Keith’s case, he boils a Mexican-made, cane-sugar Coke down with some extra turbinado sugar. Keith calls it “Coke Turbo syrup.”
The second comes from how the drink is served at the Lobby Bar: over a 2-inch-square, peach-infused ice cube.
To make a batch of Coke Turbo syrup, get a Mexican coke or two, pour into a saucepan over heat, and reduce by about half. When you think it’s done, put a container on a kitchen scale and pour in the reduced Coca-Cola. Weigh it, then add half that weight in turbinado sugar. Pour the mixture back into your saucepan over low heat and stir until the sugar dissolves completely. Then, let it cool to room temperature.
To make peach-infused ice cubes, put a little bit of peach liqueur into a lot of water, then pour the mixture into a tray that makes two-inch cubes, and freeze.
The BS No. 9’s bitterness melds its hometown of Atlanta with New Orleans — pairing Peychaud’s Bitters with Barrel-Aged Havana & Hide Bitters, said to “evoke the flavors of leather and cigar leaf,” from Atlanta’s 18.21 Bitters and available online or in many stores around the South.
There’s a three-step prep here.
First, put your serving glasses — double Old Fashioned size, ideally — into your freezer to chill. While they are chilling, fry one slice of bacon for every two drinks you’re making, then drain on a paper towel. Finally, pour a little peaty Scotch into a small spray bottle (or, if no spray bottle is handy, just pour a wee splash into any other glass and hold until your serving glasses are chilled).
Then, into a mixing glass filled with cracked ice or small cubes, add:
Two ounces of pork fat-washed Duality Double Malt (or your homemade mixture)
A half-ounce of “Coke Turbo” syrup
Six drops of Barrel-Aged Havana & Hyde Bitters
One dash of Peychaud’s Bitters
Stir for about 30 seconds.
Take your serving glass and spray its interior sides and bottom with Scotch whisky. (If no spray bottle is handy, just pour your splash of Scotch into the serving glass and roll it around to coat the insides, then dump the few remain drips, just as you would do with absinthe for a Sazerac.)
Put your peach-infused ice cube into the serving glass. Keith says a big cube of plain ice will do just fine if you’d prefer not to trouble with the peach liqueur, but if you have a bottle on hand, why not?
Put a strainer on top of your mixing glass, and pour the cocktail slowly over the big cube. If you have your Scotch in a spray bottle, finish the drink with one spritz over the surface.
To garnish, break each bacon strip in half and lay one half across the top of the glass, like a bridge. It’s fine — appropriate, even — to dunk the bacon in the drink and eat it.
The Bitter Southerner No. 9 is a celebration of smoke, from the peatiness of the barley inside it to that strip of bacon on the top. It’s a highly altered but deeply Southern take on an Old Fashioned, for when the weather and/or your demeanor get nippy.
