Après Ski Culture at Stratton Mountain Village
Après Ski Culture at Stratton Mountain Video Highlights
00:30 Après ski at Bar 802
00:37 Talking about how small the community is
00:40 how each town in that region has a different Après ski subculture
1:15 what everyone does during the summer
1:46 how The Firetower's Bacon Old Fashioned was developed.
2:00 infusing the bacon in house
2:30 Maker's Mark Tasting
3:00 Après ski cocktails at The Firetower
4:00 Discussing past bartending experience
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Après Ski Culture at Stratton Mountain Video Transcript
Mike: her boyfriend is one of the chefs at the sushi bar. My best friend I grew up with one of the bartenders at 802 and now we’re best friends with the manager of the 802.
Rich: That’s a cool little place.
Mike: Yes. Yeah. 802 is awesome. It’s just this kind of experience that they put their craft beer lineup and their smaller.
Rich: Bigger TV’s for the sports bar
Mike: They are more of lounge bar area
Rich: I have heard their food is pretty good.
Mike: Yep, yep its good. Like I said, that it's all the chefs and we all know each other small community.
Rich: Nice. And, what about outside the village?
Mike: You said it too, it’s all different subcultures up here. Manchester's completely different.
Rich: Right
Mike: We all commingle right but they don't really like…
Rich: So you guys gonna keep it local?
Mike: Yeah I live two miles from here. Giovanna lives down the hill. We all kind of live close. The ones that are in the core we all kind of live around here.
Rich: Nice. What do you guys do in the summer?
Mike: Summer I’m here. Spring and the fall, we close for two months here. We close for two months in the fall. I pretty much leave. This year I’ll be in Southeast Asia for two months with my girlfriend. We’ve been in Panama, me and Giovanna and her boyfriend lived in Panama before we were here.
Rich: Oh wow.
Mike: Yeah, we’re all over the world the other times of the year. Summer we're back here so really it's really when we like to experiment and have fun. In the winter everything has to be scaled down with what we do as far as cocktails go. We’re too busy.
Rich: So how how did you come up with the idea for the bacon Old Fashioned?
Mike: Uhhh, I saw a bacon infused vodka for a bloody mary at a bar in Vegas once. Friends of mine were toying with a bacon infused bourbon and I’m just an Old Fashioned guy.
Rich: Yeah, they’re good.
Mike: Anytime I like to drink, I go to an Old Fashioned. A Whiskey drink.
Rich: Is the whiskey infused with bacon or is the bacon just in it?
Mike: No, we infuse it in-house, we infuse it in house. At first it took us two to three weeks to get it to where we wanted because at first it was like a punch in the face with the bacon. When you took a sip and you're like wooo, it’s overpowering. And you never want anything to be overpowering.
Rich: Right, what, what kind of whiskey is it?
Mike: We use Maker’s Mark.
Rich: Cool and you guys are having a Maker’s Mark tasting today, right?
Mike: Yeah, we’re doing the Maker’s 46. We’re doing the Knob Creek Rye. Like today we’re doing an Old Fashioned with the Knob Creek. And for the Maker’s 46 we’re doing with that a wash Manhattan.
Rich: Nice. That’s cool.
Mike: Peter just kind of comes to us and says we're doing this or even that come up with a drink. And then you're creative juices start flowing
Rich: Yeah, you’ve got a great like your cocktail menu is awesome. I know that's one of the things that when I originally started the beer article the previous year that I had you guys in Peter had mentioned, “you know we’re really fun stuff for cocktails you should check that out” and that's kind of gave me the idea for the cocktail article the following year. Well, I was like it’s Peter’s idea I gotta go back to him.
Mike: I was originally a beer guy coming into bartending 10 years ago my roommates and my friends we all, one of my best friend's was a home brewer. He had won the Vermont Homebrewers event like two years in a row. He was just like this beer guru genius out of Minnesota. He used to work up here, and then move down to new york city and opened up a brewery in Brooklyn called Three’s which was like this awesome cocktail bar, brewery down there.
Rich: That’s awesome.
Mike: Yeah so I kind of got into just beer knowledge and when I ran the Perfect Wife in Manchester.
Rich: You ran The Perfect Wife? Cool Bar.
Mike: Yeah I was there for about five years and then me and her got pulled here to do this and then kind of got cocktail influenced. She has influences out in San Francisco. She worked at like, John Collins which is a real cool cocktail bar and her boyfriend worked at 15 Romolo which is ranked as one of the best cocktail bars on the west coast.
Rich: I’ve heard of that one.
Mike: And then my buddies in New York City own Please Don’t Tell.
Rich: Yeah
Mike:So that's kind of where I got my..
Rich: That's the one where you gotta like you go through a phone booth or something.
Mike: Yeah it’s in Crif Dogs in St. Mark’s and you go inside. You go down into Crif Dogs. It’s my buddy’s hot dog joint. There’s like bacon wrapped hot dogs, hip hop blasting. There's a little phone booth you go ahead and dial zero or you just pick up the phone actually. Used to be you had to dial a number right now you pick up the phone and it’ll ring to the other side and, if you can get in, the phone booth door opens and you go in and small speakeasy. It’s one of the original speakeasy’s back in 2000. Not the original speakeasy, but the new higher end speakeasy that originated like 10 to 15 years ago.
Rich: Cool
Mike: Now everyone goes there. If you go there on a Saturday, there is a line through the phone to try to get in.
Rich: Yeah
