What’s shakin, cocktail fans?
Welcome to Episode 197 of The Modern Bar Cart Podcast!
Thanks for joining us for this interview episode, where we track down the best and brightest minds in the spirits and cocktail world so that we can share their secrets with you. This time, we’re not playin’ around. Well…actually, that’s precisely what we’ll be doing because we had the opportunity to chat with Dave Beck, founder of Paverson Games and creator of Distilled, the first board game of its type to really delve into the intricacies and complexities of the spirits making and selling process.
In this well-shuffled, cleanly dealt interview with Dave Beck of Paverson Games, some of the topics we discuss include:
How a trip to Scotland sparked the idea for a game that would challenge players to distill, age, and sell their own spirits…all thanks to an inheritance from a long-lost relative.
Why Distilled is considered a “medium weight, Euro-style game, and what it looks like to make booze using cards, tokens, and distiller avatars.
How the Kickstarter campaign for this product met its funding goal in less than an hour, on its way to eclipsing that goal by over 15,000%.
Which technical distilling processes were creatively mixed into the game mechanics of Distilled, and which needed to be saved perhaps for a future edition, including heads and tales cuts, the Angel’s share, and pulling flavor notes from wood.
How the game educates and introduces players to spirits from different cultures, using avatars based on historical distillers from around the world – all with special recipe and abilities.
Along the way, we talk about why American games are so confrontational, the simple joy of summoning elevators, how to order a proper brandy old fashioned at a Wisconsin supper club, and much, much more.
This episode’s featured cocktail is The Gibson. If you’re a Martini fan, you’re probably familiar, and we’ve mentioned it in the past, but we’ve never featured it in its full glory, so here goes. To make a Gibson, you’ll need:
2 oz of Gin
1 oz Dry vermouth
Combine these ingredients in a mixing glass with ice, give em a good, brisk stir for about 15 seconds, then strain into a stemmed cocktail glass and garnish with a cocktail onion. Now, quite clearly, the Gibson cocktail is all about this freakin’ onion. You’ll notice that the recipe doesn’t include bitters like many Martini variations, and that’s because the onion brings some of that to the table, along with some sour and savory notes. Which begs the question: what is a cocktail onion?
Basically, it’s a pickled, preserved pearl onion, which has a bigger bulb than those little green scallions we enjoy in salads and in a lot of Asian dishes, but not such a large bulb that it wanders into Shallot or cooking onion territory. In other words – it’s the perfect size to use as a garnish.
There’s plenty of recipes out there for making your own cocktail onions, and we recommend you do your own research on this if you’re interested because this is your chance to completely own the flavor profile of your Gibson. YOU get to choose the gin you use, as well as the vermouth, and if you decide to pickle your own cocktail onions you also get to decide what spices, vinegars, and sweeteners you’ll include in your house recipe. In this sense, building your own cocktail onion recipe is sort of like a board game where you get to choose your own adventure.
You can check out Distilled by visiting the Kickstarter page, or by visiting Distilledgame.com. Be sure to also check out the Distilled Facebook Group or follow them on Instagram and Twitter for future updates. The campaign ends on Thursday, July 29th, 2021, so be sure to get your pledge in if you’d like to reserve your game. Below, we’ve included some gameplay videos and overviews for you to enjoy.
This episode was made possible with editing and sound design by Samantha Reed, board game guru-ship courtesy of Dave Beck and Paverson Games, and a little bit of interview magic by yours truly. This has been a Modern Bar Cart production, copyright 2021.
This episode is also brought to you by Near Country Provisions. If you live in the Mid-Atlantic and want to enjoy ethically raised (and delicious) meat from local farmers delivered to your door every month, then you need Near Country in your life.
Head over to NearCountry.com and enter the code BARCART when you sign up for your subscription to receive 2 free pounds of bacon or ground beef in your first delivery.
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