Month: July 2013

An eye-catching refit of the Prahran Hotel

Prahran’s High Street has seen some drastic changes in the rebuild and refit of the Prahran Hotel. Owners Matt and Andy Mullins, Tom Birch, and Doug Maskiell of the Sand Hill Road Hospitality Group are behind the resurrection of the hotel, the centrepiece of which is the erection of a two storey high series of concrete cylinders.

Heavy Water: this gold medal winning vodka is aerated

New to the country is this good lookin’ Scandinavian vodka: Heavy Water. Named for a group of Norwegian saboteurs operating during the latter part of world war two, the quality lies in how the spirit is produced, having picked up a number of gold medals at different spirits competitions — the San Francisco World Spirits Competition among them.

Here’s 5 liqueur cocktails worth stepping back in time to revisit

Much like it did to corduroy and flares, the ‘70s threatened to ruin liqueurs (and liqueur cocktails) for everyone. Whilst calls for B52s may have gone the way of the dodo, here’s a selection of drinks that we think that, with a tweak or two (and, in the case of the Hurricane, the right place) could use a revisit.

The NBHD Neanderthals tackling South Yarra

“We trade as a third waver café by day and a bar by night,” said Dax Byrne (ex theloft, Bathers Pavillion), one of the owners of this new Melbourne bar and café. Third wave coffee is getting in to more and more coffee joints — that is, going beyond the espresso thing and into pourover coffee, filter coffees and all that. They take an approach to coffee that seeks to be only a step removed from the growers — an approach that we think will increasingly be applied by bars with respect to the spirits they stock.

New Jameson expression lands August 1st

Jameson is riding the surge of interest in Irish whiskey, adding a new expression to their range. It’s called the Jameson Select Reserve, and is a combination of single Irish pot still whiskey and a rare small batch grain whiskey.

‘What was the movie when the sheilas got up on the bar and danced?’ Watch new series, The Pub With No Beer

Here’s something to give you a good chuckle. This short flick from Schweppes’ Cocktail Revolution shows a small country pub, The Old Hepburn Hotel (which has been keeping locals watered for 100 years) as they switch off the beer taps and shake up some cocktails for their regulars. Understandably, some of the reactions are quite amusing.

Rare Cognac to celebrate an even rarer anniversary

It’s not often that you turn 250 years old, but that’s exactly the anniversary that Cognac producer Hine is ringing in this year. To commemorate, they have produced a special limited release bottle (and just 250 of them).