November: Bitters blending at Shaker & Co

Posted by GinMonkey on Dec 20, 2011 in Uncategorized | 0 comments

This post has been written by one of our members – the wonderful Sandrae Lawrence of The Cocktail Lovers. As well as taking part in our bitters blending Sandrae and Gary were on hand to help us to judge the final 14 recipes made by our members. Her thoughts on the evening are below… In our books a tutored tasting of the superior bitters in Master of Malt’s extensive portfolio would be a fabulous way to while away any evening but those clever chaps from the London Cocktail Society went and upped the ante for their latest outing....

October: L.T.D at The Social

Posted by GinMonkey on Nov 12, 2011 in Past events | 0 comments

This post has been written by one of our members – James Mitchell who has recently begun a blog called Straight-Up Lifestyle. You can also find him on Twitter, his username is @JG_Mitchell. His thoughts are below… L.T.D turns cocktail snobbery on its head, flips it over and then takes it one step further. After years of cocktail imbibitions, you may well be able to navigate your way around a choice of 30 gins or more. At L.T.D, however, you can leave that sort of knowledge at the door. That’s because you’ll be drinking what the...

August: Maker’s Mark at LAB

Posted by GinMonkey on Aug 30, 2011 in Past events | 0 comments

This post has been written by one of our members – Sarah Belizaire-Butler who runs the blog Eats, Drinks & Sleeps. She describes good food and drink as “the cornerstone of my universe” and we couldn’t agree more! In August Sarah attended our Maker’s Mark event at LAB in Soho. Her thoughts are below:   I have my Spirits WSET Diploma exam in a couple of months and so have signed myself up for a raft of Spirits tastings to help get up to speed. First up on my list was the Bourbon evening at LAB (London...

August: Choosing Bourne & Hollingsworth’s pouring rum

Posted by GinMonkey on Aug 8, 2011 in Past events | 0 comments

This post has been written by one of our members – Billy Abbott who runs the excellent Billy’s Booze Blog. In August Billy attended our rum event at the Bourne & Hollingsworth. His thoughts on the event, the rum and the cocktails are below: One of the continuing themes of this blog is a sentence at the start vaguely conforming to a pattern of ‘One of the boozes I don’t know well is X and it was lovely when Y asked me along to try some for REASON Z’. So, assume that I’ve done that again with X=light rum,...

May: Balvenie Whisky Den

Posted by GinMonkey on May 30, 2011 in Past events | 0 comments

Guest post by one of our members: Mr Ryan Alexander aka @rnalexander In May, the nice people at The Balvenie set up an special treat for whisky lovers just next to Covent Garden in London. A temporary installation in the space that used to be an antiquarian bookstore, these ‘pop-ups’ are becoming a trend. In this case whisky fans would have a month’s window of opportunity to come by the Balvenie Whisky Den to get a special chance to sample some of the Balvenie line, and learn a bit more about it. Even better, the Balvenie...

March: Blind Gin Tasting

Posted by GinMonkey on Mar 10, 2011 in Past events | 0 comments

At our Christmas party we surveyed our members as to what their top 3 gins were. This was in preparation for a blind gin tasting later on in the year. We decided March was the perfect time and just needed a suitable venue. We figured there was no better place to drink gin that a gin bar, and no better gin bar in London than Graphic! When we said blind we meant it, as we gave no indications as to what the gins on the menu for the night were. This was because we wanted to strip away any trace of marketing and focus on the contents of the...

March: Four Roses

Posted by GinMonkey on Mar 10, 2011 in Past events | 0 comments

At our March meeting we were lucky enough to have Mr Dan Priseman in session and tending stick behind the bar at Academy (formerly L.A.B). Dan works for Four Roses bourbon, and also runs a blog called Bitters and Twisted. I imagine there’s very little you’d want to know about bourbon that this man doesn’t know! A veritable fountain of knowledge we were all looking forward to an evening learning loads about this wonderful category! Academy were kind enough to give us most of the downstairs space for the evening, and Dan took...

December: The Christmas Party

Posted by mark on Dec 15, 2010 in Uncategorized | 0 comments

What a way to round off the year!  Callooh Callay very generously offered exclusive use of the entire venue. To be honest after all of their support over our first few months we could think of no better place to host our first ever Christmas party. Then it dawned on us that they’d given us the whole of the venue, and so the pressure was on to generate a guest-list to fill it!  However, this proved no problem at all as word quickly spread that this party was going to be the party to be seen at this year.  There was even talk of some...

Distillation at Sipsmith

Posted by GinMonkey on Nov 30, 2010 in Articles | 1 comment