We had the pleasure of providing our mobile bar services for Toast's Stockbridge store in Edinburgh. Toast provides its loyal client base with modern, simple and functional clothing, as well as trendy furnishings and statement pieces for your home.
We were asked to help them out creating another amazing in-store event. Our remit was to provide a pop up bar serving up some cocktails using local products and locally foraged ingredients for guests to enjoy.
Our cocktail service was to take place hidden away at the back of the store to draw guests through the space so we had limited space for our usual portable bar units. We were able to create a small service area which still fitted the aesthetics of the store and acted a perfect platform for mixing up our bespoke cocktails for the event.
Local and Forage Ingredients
As mentioned we were tasked with creating a small cocktail list using local products and some foraged ingredients to be in keeping with event. On this occasion we started by selecting three great Scottish spirits as the base for our list.
Scotlands first potato vodka. Distilled an hours drive north at Ogilvy Farm, Angus. Super smooth and creamy with great warming mouth feel it works amazingly as a base for many many cocktails.
Another great base spirit used was Edinburgh Gin Classic. Distilled literally five minutes walk from the venue, it is a modern take on a London Dry style of Gin. It contains 14 botanicals which includes lavender, pine buds, mulberries, cobnuts, orange peel, lemongrass and lime peel.
A really easy drinking and super smooth single grain whisky made by the guys up at the Loch Lomond Distillery. The whisky has great character offering stone fruit and creamy vanilla on the palate with sweet lavender perfume on the nose, and still remains one of our favourite whisky products to mix with.
After selecting the three base spirits that we wanted to use for the cocktails we then had a think about what other great flavours we could use that were fresh, local and still in season (and foraged!). All the ingredients were picked from my garden at home which I am pretty sure counts as foraged right?
Lavender
Still in season, just! We thought we would use one of our favourite cocktail ingredients and make use of the last of the fresh lavender for the year potentially.
Basil
Basil is another of favourites at Shake That Bartending! Like the lavender plants it was probably getting to its last couple of weeks before we wouldn't be able to grow any more fresh.
Local Honey
Is there a better sweetener for cocktails? Something quite magical about bees, the pollination, the production of honey, and its role our eco system. And it tastes amazing and gives you sustained energy. What is not to love!
On a tangent do you know why we use sweetening elements in cocktails? Apart from often balancing out the sour and bitter flavours, it acts a a fixative which basically means it helps our palate identify flavours more easily.
The first cocktail on our pop up bar menu was the Gin Basil Smash. If you have used our services before you will know this is one of our personal event favourites. Visually pleasing with its vibrancy and understated simplicity, combined with its fresh and well balanced flavours it really is a crowd pleaser.
A new creation for this event and one we will definitely use in future events. We combined Ogilvy Vodka with fresh pressed lemon juice, a lavender infused honey syrup and soda water to create this cocktail. The first three ingredients are shaken up to dilute, mix and chill and then topped with soda water. Really simple but with layers of fresh and tasty flavours.
The third cocktail (which we didn't actually manage to take any pictures of) was the Lavender Old Fashioned. A simple twist on an Old Fashioned Cocktail. We used the Single Grain Loch Lomond Whisky which worked as a lighted base than your usual Malt Whisky or Bourbon, and then stirred it down over ice with the Bitter Truth Aromatic Bitters, Fee Brothers Orange Bitters, and the lavender infused honey syrup. The cocktail was garnished with a nice big orange twist to give the drink an extra sweet citrusy kick.
On the night the service was great fun! Guests were getting stuck into the cocktails and trying to work their way through the menu, and back again in some cases.
If you have any upcoming event and would like to work together creating the perfect event then please get in touch.......