Cocktail Theory with Kevin Peterson

What’s shakin’ cocktail fans? Welcome to Episode 276 of The Modern Bar Cart Podcast!

This time around, I’m joined by Dr. Kevin Peterson. He runs an innovative cocktail bar and fragrance store in Detroit, called Castalia Cocktails and Sfumato (respectively), but for the purposes of this conversation, he’s the author of a brand new book called Cocktail Theory: A Sensory Approach to Transcendent Cocktails. This is, in my opinion, one of the most exciting and important books to hit the shelves in YEARS, so I’m absolutely stoked to have this conversation. 

In this heady, fragrant chat with Dr. Kevin Peterson, author of Cocktail Theory, some of the topics we discuss include:

• Why his time testing combustion engines in a laboratory made Kevin the perfect person to analyze the classic cocktail families for their ideal dilution, temperature, and ingredient ratios
• How bartenders can use the notion of “olfactory motifs” rooted in memory, nature, and music to design cocktails that thrill at a more three dimensional level–not just on the taste buds.
• What tips and tricks Kevin has drawn from the perfumery world to punch up the impact and blast radius of his drinks, including atomized spritzes, scent strips, and even service temperature manipulation.
• The sense in which bartenders are like magicians, constantly manipulating attention and generating novelty, and how you can apply these principles to both cocktail construction and service.
• And why, at the end of the day, cocktail service and consumption involves a whole bunch of complex systems that are constantly colliding, leaking information, and changing the way we play the game.
• Along the way, we provide tips and tricks to make your friends and bar guests say “I can’t UNsmell that,” probe the koji-fermented link between pineapple, aged cheese, and sharpies, uncover why Kevin doesn’t want to be known as “the cricket guy.” And much, much more.

Cocktail Theory: A Sensory Approach to Transcendent Cocktails is, in my personal opinion, the most important technical manual on drinks construction that will come out this year…and maybe for several years to come. When I scrolled through the digital copy that Kevin sent me, my eyes just got wider, and wider, and wider as I tried to wrap my head around the sheer volume and breadth of information it has to offer. But it’s not just a data dump: each chapter unlocks something new and profoundly actionable, from an empirical explication of ideal cocktail ratios, to longer lasting drink builds, to sensory-friendly bar aesthetics and design.