Simon McGoram

Editor of Australian Bartender Magazine. Bartending since 2001, Simon won NZ Bartender magazine Bartender of the Year in ‘06. Contributing editor for a year in NZ, he moved to Sydney where he worked at the Bayswater Brasserie. Now settled into office life, Simon finds that the immature sheep jokes are wearing thin.

Bartender of the Year -Take the Test

Do you have what it takes to compete in Australia’s premier bartending challenge? Well now you can take last year’s test to see if you have what it takes to compete in the Bartender Magazine Bartender of the Year Competition sponsored by Ketel One in 2012.

Angostura Cocktail Challenge Update

Australia’s leg of the global Angostura Cocktail Challenge is well under way thanks to a bumper turn out at the New South Wales state final on Monday night. Held at Sydney’s shrine to rum – La Bodeguita Del Medio – it was Rockpool Bar & Grill’s Neilsen Braid who proved he can stomach his bitters with the best of them by shrugging off the other competitors to take out the state title.

How To… Veritable Vermouth — a DIY vermouth recipe

Some bars go to extraordinary lengths to craft the perfect cocktail. Sometimes it will be by using hand-chipped ice in frozen glassware like at Sydney’s Duke Bar & Bistro. Others will hand craft their own bespoke bitters or perfectly control the dilution of their Martinis by chilling them in liquid nitrogen ‘baths’ like the good folks at Brisbane’s Canvas. For others though, like Sydney’s Sam Bygrave, making your own vermouth is a grand way to add a little something special to your next mixological masterpiece.

Tequila Cocktails

Check out these top Tequila tipples from the May issue of Bartender magazine.

Home Grown

Photography by Rob Palmer Check out these drinks from March’s Bartender magazine. Taken from the…

How To: Punch

As with any yarn involving the demon drink, an accurate account of Punch’s early life has long been washed away by the high tides of merriment and low tides of memory loss paired with the debilitating affects of hard living. Despite it’s sketchy past, interest in the lost art of Punch making is returning to bars the world over. Coupled with and authoritative work on the subject by drinks historian David Wondrich and you mightn’t be wrong in assuming that Punch is seeing a full blown comeback.