Gather Around Cocktails with Aaron Goldfarb

Now, the first thing you’re gonna want to do is make your cranberry syrup. For the full recipe, I’m going to refer you to the book, but it’s basically a combination of cranberries, sugar, dry white wine, and traditional holiday spices reduced to a delicious syrup on the stovetop, then strained and cooled.

Once you’ve got your syrup made and cooled down to at least room temperature, add it to a pitcher with the bourbon and the applejack and give them all a good stir. You’ll serve this drink on the rocks by pouring 2.5 oz of your booze and syrup mixture into the glass and then topping with 3 dashes of celery bitters and the coup de gras – a stuffing cube garnish.

You’re also gonna want to make those ahead of time, but they’re super easy. According to Aaron, all you need to do is preheat your oven to 400 degrees, mold and cut your favorite stuffing recipe into 1” cubes, place them on a baking sheet and drizzle with olive oil. After 10 minutes, you’ll flip them over, drizzle them with GRAVY this time, then bake until they’re dark brown and crisp. Once they’re cool you can serve these garnishes in your Gobbler cocktails on a cocktail pick, but if you don’t have those lying around, a toothpick will do just fine.

Show Notes

The first part of our conversation with Aaron revolves around his writing career. He began writing booze articles while he was on a quest to become a novelist in the early 2000s. Although Aaron did publish a few novels, he found a unique and innovative voice in the spirits and cocktail space. He initially spent a lot of time in the craft beer space, and then evolved into tracking the whiskey boom in the US, including its secondary online markets.

This year, he was honored by Tales of the Cocktail with a Spirited Award for “Best Cocktail and Spirits Writing” in response to his retrospective article on JaNee Nyberg’s 100-cocktail-video stint for Mahalo.com.

Then we transition into Aaron’s latest book, which was initially designed to be a book exclusively about eggnog, which is one of Aaron’s personal passions. It evolved into a 48-recipe book designed to celebrate the “usual” and “unusual” holidays in our culture that don’t necessarily have an official cocktail.

Gather Around Cocktails is both a self-renewing annual encyclopedia of custom (and often large-format) cocktails, and a technical guide to making great drinks for friends without a whole lot of sophisticated bar equipment. The recipes really do an excellent job of bridging the gap between fine culinary art and DIY punk drink recipes that celebrate an occasion without making the occasion too solemn.

Lightning Round

Favorite Cocktail

During the pandemic, I’ve been drinking a lot of gimlets. I’ve long had the daiquiri as my favorite cocktail, and the gimlet is basically a gin daiquiri. To me, it’s like alcoholic lemon-lime Gatorade.

If You Were a Cocktail Ingredient, What Would You Be?

I’m a big fan of egg whites. It turns some people off, but it adds so much beauty and texture to drinks without adding any flavor. I’m not sure what that says about me.

Cocktail with Anyone, Past or Present

I once read a story about Tom Wolfe going out to dinner with Hunter S. Thompson, and Thompson just kept on ordering rounds of frozen daiquiris and he’d go: “another round!” I think I’d like to swap with Tom Wolfe there.

Common Cocktail Ingredient You’ve Never Tasted

I never got around to tasting those activated charcoal cocktails. They kinda grossed me out, and it seems like their time has passed.

Controversial Opinion in the Spirits/Cocktail Space

I hate canned cocktails, and I cannot believe this trend is catching on. We’ve spent the last 20 years rebelling against non-fresh ingredients, and now all of the sudden everyone is putting canned cocktails on the market and people are acting like we should be celebrating them.