Reviews

The Home Bar: A Guide To Designing, Equipping and Stocking Your Own Bar

The Home Bar by: Henry Jeffreys with Foreword by Alexandre RicardWARREN BOBROW: IPHONE X

The Home Bar: A Guide To Designing, Equipping and Stocking Your Own Bar, by Henry Jeffreys  

Foreword by: Alexandre Ricard 

Book Review by: Warren Bobrow: The Cocktail Whisperer

The Home Bar, A Guide to Designing, Equipping and Stocking Your Own Bar, written by the elegant and talented Henry Jeffreys is perhaps the most deeply intriguing home bartending guide I’ve ever enjoyed reading and then critiquing. This may sound like a broad reach, at least on a literary standpoint, but I digress. This book is an all-in-one guide to the outlandishly expensive and the studied. The knowing and the unknowing consumer of high-end spirits guide to the best things in life.  From the handsome end to end cover photography to the carefully laid out rear photography, with just the right amount of written information, it’s clear that this book was created to impress more than just the casual lager drinker. It’s a richly studied design tome, with crisply worded explanations and historical references that allow the reader to become part of the ultra-riche, opulently luxurious, photographically gorgeous, narrative of this unique book.  The stories are so pleasurable to read, and they beg the addition of more exotic spirits into your home and eventually your belly. Sure, these are not your basement wreck-room, dive bar scenes that are visual pleasures, but carefully curated scenarios that evoke the finest in professional cocktail bars-but designed for the home and some cases, small apartment settings. Case in point, the completely, over the top, home bar of Alexandre Ricard, each luxury design element, reminiscent of ultra-riche cocktail bars on the Right Bank in Paris, intellectual in scope, yet encouraging just one more drink of the finest craft spirits that money can buy.  Another Absinthe garcon, please!

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Beyond Organic: Bringing an AOC to Luxury Humboldt Cannabis

Outdoor Grown at Sunrise Mountain FarmsWARREN BOBROW: IPHONE X

Terra Carver, the eloquent and peaceful Executive Director of the Humboldt County Growers Alliance is waxing poetic about the fine wine-like Terroir of craft cannabis to a group of broadly smiling Canna-Tourists. They are smiling and utterly enraptured by the gleaming, sunlit day, the long-tables groaning with hand prepared, fanciful appetizers and locally crafted Humboldt artisan breads and oozing, succulent cheeses. They sit enveloped by the aromatics of some of the finest craft cannabis that is grown anywhere in the country. Truly the taste and the aromatics of the place surround and deepen each breath. An experience so overwhelming that most people have never seen anything like this before and they sit, awestruck in the face of such beauty. This is a Victory Garden of outdoor growing. An experience of the the ‘highest’ order, and it is what we have come to see at Dave and Lorelie Sandomeno’s Sunrise Mountain Farm. Row after row of this lusciously scented craft cannabis fills the eyes and the nasal passages with vast bursts of spicy profusion. Terra is explaining with a smile, how the craft cannabis business is certainly to overtake fine California wine in overall sales in just a few short years. But can they accomplish what wine has accomplished with Terroir? That is her goal, to create an overall quality level that demands the greatest price, just like wine demands. In fact in the couple of years that her organization has been guiding local cannabis farmers, they have attracted the attention of the statewide organization, The California Growers Association.

Papa & Barkley JeepWARREN BOBROW: IPHONE X

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Hydrology 9: Liquid Filtration Vaporizer-Product Review

Cloudious 9 by Hydrology 9WARREN BOBROW: IPHONE X

This uniquely chunky, light saber looking device is going to revolutionize the art of smoking medical cannabis. Within the smoothly formed, hefty build of borosilicate glass, aircraft grade aluminum, and finely polished stainless steel lays inner workings that include a ceramic heating chamber and the above mentioned high heat glass. There are parts that securely snap on by powerful magnets and everything has a utilitarian feel of the finest workmanship. Each finely manufactured section is built with extreme care by talented and inquisitive engineers who have tested and retested the Hydrology 9 for perfection. This is no ordinary smoking device! It is a nerd’s way of bringing a very specific, Star Wars Light Saber looking technology to the friendly simplicity of smoking your favorite strain of cannabis. (Or even finely minced tobacco, should you desire) A puff of healing vapor becomes cooled by fluid dynamics. How does this work? It’s pretty basic although the technical engineering of the device precludes a flow-chart, so don’t ask!  The Cloudious 9 will change the way you imbibe cannabis, forever! You can really taste the fine Terpenes of the cannabis flowers. Lush. Gorgeous. Pure. Friendly. Elegant? Absolutely!

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California Bud Company: Farm Fresh Flowers, Cultivating Happiness

Cannabis Farm FlowerPHOTOGRAPHER: ALBERT FLORES COURTESY OF CALIFORNIA BUD CO

A rather fat hand rolled-cone stuffed with the California Bud Company strain named Cookies was just passed my way with a knowing smile. I knew at that very moment, encapsulated in that slowly burning cherry at the tip, was more than just mere enlightenment. Inside this perfectly crafted cone contained their namesake product, the most wonderful cannabis, hand-tended and sunshine grown. It was, quite simply; “Cultivated Happiness.” There was deep love and his company’s cannabis grower’s passion spilling out of the spiraling smoke. This experience was way more than just another perfect Cali-type moment in time. Buckets of bountiful California sunshine came spilling out of each hit of the joint and the timeless Beatles’ song, Blue Jay Way reverberated throughout my sun-drenched memory of the day. A curiously sweet aroma of freshly crushed California coastal grown herbs: rosemary, thyme and sage, enveloped our heads as we gazed out over that endless horizon, purple and red and yellow in color. Sometimes the sky looks like it is even on fire, it’s that kind of place. Los Angeles’ sprawl spilled out over hundreds of square miles under this well-traveled road.

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Stir Don’t Shake

With 4/20 just around the corner, it seems the perfect opportunity to discuss the merits of stirring cannabis cocktails. I’m usually hard pressed to find bartenders who really know the physical differences between stirring and shaking a cocktail—any cocktail. Now, add to that equation fragile ingredients that you may not want to pulverize and turn into overly green (read: botanical) flavors like cannabis, and those differences become even more important.

One of the most unpleasant of all overly-green flavors is mint. When it is excessively manipulated, the aromatics and essences resemble that of mud. And no one wants to drink mud. You may have witnessed this yourself in batched up Kentucky Derby cocktails, where the mint is added to the ice the day before, frozen, and then topped with bourbon just prior to serving. The end result is a muddy mess that screams for a fresh glass, new mint, and clean ice.

Why Stir Cannabis Cocktails?

cannabis cocktails

The Dramatis Personae Cocktail, via Cannabis Cocktails, Mocktails, and Tonics / Fair Winds Press.

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Monk Elixirs: Ultra-Luxe Mocktail/Cocktail Augmentation

Warren Bobrow

Deliciousness Encapsulated

The market for botanically enriched, “health” drinks have exploded over the past few decades or so. There are hundreds of products on the market that promise wellness and health, but nothing could prepare the consumer for the coming wave of micro-dosed; CBD and THC liquids made specifically for wellness. It’s true! All that is required is a healthy thirst and the desire for something different. Case in point with the Monk line of drinking botanicals. This ultra-luxury line of tiny 4 oz bottles are scientifically calibrated to micro-dose just the right amount of CBD/THC to the careful imbiber. Careful because the dosage of CBD/THC is in the micro amounts- nearly undetected after enjoying the scant few sips of this ‘magical’ elixir. What each bottle represents are flavors and health-giving qualities similar to the days of the early apothecary, when fragile herbs and spices made their way into preparations that the pharmacist concocted to order. Not unlike the early preparations that made their way to the cocktail bar with drinks meant to heal the gut, like the famous Sazerac, or perhaps you’d be interested in knowing why Angostura is so helpful when you have a stomach ache, or are seasick? It all comes around again with the deep desire to write the first book about creative mixology that uses cannabis.   There is a large distinction between non-Cannabis augmented health drinks and quality products like Monk’s Drinking Botanicals. What we have here is a modern framework, one that is more flavor-driven as opposed to effect-driven, with varieties like the brightly aromatic and refreshing grapefruit/cayenne. This delicately spicy, yet not overly sweet concoction is precise and carefully combined to offer amusement, candor and excitement into every careful sip. Careful because the cayenne element is not overwhelming, but it is right there in front of the brightly delineated richness of the pink grapefruit juice. The combination resembles a fine craft cocktail- especially with the balance and the depth of the ingredients. They almost taste as if the grapefruit was freshly squeezed and infused with the cayenne peppers.

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CANNABIS PAIRING

Cannabis Pairings

CANNABIS COCKTAILS, MOCKTAILS & TONICS

Combining cannabis and cocktails is a hot new trend, and Cannabis Cocktails, Mocktails & Tonics shows you how. Featuring a collection of 75 recipes of cannabis influenced cocktails and drinks; The Cocktail Whisperer Warren Bobrow will show you the essential instructions for de-carbing cannabis to release its full psychoactive effect. Learn the history of cannabis as a social drug and its growing acceptance to becoming a medicinal. Look beyond cocktails and create successful tonics, syrups, shrubs, bitters, compound butter and exotic infused oil to use in any drink. Start your day with coffee, tea, and milk-based cannabis beverages for healing and relaxation. Get your afternoon pick-me-up with gut healing shrubs and mood enhancing syrups. Make cooling lemonades and sparking herbal infusions to soothe the fevered brow. Then, have an after dinner herbal-based cannabis drink for relaxation at the end of a good meal. The options are endless with Cannabis Cocktails, Mocktails & Tonics!

 

 

 

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Precision, Perfection, Symmetry and Intensity… Japanese Whisky

Japanese Whisky: Quiet Perfection

A quiet pursuit of excellence is taking place by the careful and studied guidance of Eric Tschudi, the affable and youthful beverage director of Shuko. His hand-chosen selection of esoteric, Japanese Whiskies will certainly intellectualize even the most altruistic guest in your dinner party.  And then there is a private dining room that intrigues the carefully interested. This space is the most private room, set deeply down in the subterranean part of the former bakery- a quite hidden, inner sanctum, located in the depths of 47 East 12th Street in New York City. This is certainly not a tourist restaurant, nor does it have any signs announcing the constantly changing approach to an educated curiosity that takes place within the walls daily. There are no lines of paparazzi craning their necks towards the stars, nor very much in the way of foot traffic on this part of the street, set just off the teeming hustle and bustle of soon to be, lower Broadway. Find some parking just across the street, just up the way a bit and stretch your legs, but only so much. The scent you detect in the air may well tinge of sea salt water on this tiny spit of land only a few short blocks from the churning East River. The Japanese inspired liquids are driven by the culinary treats that emulate from within the tabla rasa walls. And all of these surprises are completely undetected from the street. A hidden gem surrounded by so much darkness.

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The Cannador

The Solution to Humidity and Cannabis

Warren Bobrow , CONTRIBUTOR Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.
Warren Bobrow: iPhone X

Problem-Lack of humidity Solution: The Cannador

It’s hard to live in an apartment without modern heating systems that provide humidity along with the warm air. Such is the case again this year, and with the recent cold snap, the air inside this apartment is tinder dry- sparks fly from the fingertips without much hesitation.  The same holds true for the fragile medicine, better known as cannabis that should be treated as kindly as fine (read: expensive) wine. Humidity and temperature seem to aid in the aging of this very expensive healing material and not everyone has the ability to run out to the store and buy what is fresh. Those of us on the East Coast have to jump through hoops with regards to our medical cannabis- it’s really pricey so it’s probably best not to wait until it turns to dust before re-hydrating it. Mold can form and all bad things can happen from there on. Remember in High School when you hid that bag of weed from your mom? She was still making your bed back then and you were worried she’d find your stash and rat you out to your dad.. So you stored that pathetic mass of brown leafy material in a plastic bag until you smoked it all, but it went all moldy first. What was that nasty “basement” smell and taste? Storing your cannabis in a plastic bag is just bad for it. There is no reason for you to store this costly material in a plastic sandwich bag, so stop this practice- RIGHT NOW. You should be using a glass jar. Not just any glass jar, but one from the Cannador. But first, what is a Cannador? This is a craft product that will preserve and protect your herbs. Whatever you’ve been doing before is fine, and this method has worked for you pretty well, or at least well enough until now. The Cannador is the very best humidor for cannabis that money can buy. A Cannador is what you should be using now. You don’t have to spend all your kid’s soccer money on the high end, six jar and storage version (but-it wouldn’t hurt..) You can buy a simple two jar version. When you are ready to spend your money, go all out and purchase that wonderful object of your desire. The six jar, humidor with its nifty internal storage humidor (pictured above)

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