Creativity & Cocktails with Dave Hudson

Intro: 0:36

Welcome to Story and Horse, a podcast where we hear stories from creative lives. Meet new people, hear about their challenges and triumphs, and get inspired to move forward with your creativity. Now, here's your host, Hilary Adams.

Hilary Adams: 0:58

Hi, I'm Hilary Adams. I am the host of the Story and Horse Podcast, and also creative coach, theater director and founder of Story and Horse where I work with creative people to remember integrate and expand their creativity out into the world. Here on the podcast, we meet people living creative lives, hear their stories and gather inspiration for our own creativeness. Today, I'm very excited to welcome back Dave Hudson. I know Dave from the musical theater world, where he is a lyricist, and playwright, and he partners with Paul Libman, who is a composer. And the two of them create some incredible musical theater together, you can go back and listen to episode 16 of this podcast and hear Dave and Paul talk about their many years of collaboration together in the musical theater world. Today, Dave is joining us as a cocktail historian. So we're going to hear all about creativeness as it has to do with cocktails. And Dave also has two books that has to do with cocktails. And we'll hear about those as well. So look forward to you joining us for this exciting episode of cocktails and creativity. Hi Dave. Thanks so much for joining me again.

Dave Hudson: 2:18

Thanks so much. It's great to be here. As always.

Hilary Adams: 2:22

As I said in the intro, you have been with me before and last time you were here with Paul talking about musical theater, and today we're doing something very different. We're going to be talking about cocktails. Is that right?

Dave Hudson: 2:35

Yeah, it is. It is it is it's it's you know, I guess theater and drinking are sometimes related. But, you know, I'll try to connect the dots.

Hilary Adams: 2:44

I think they're often related. So can you start us off by introducing yourself and telling us about the cocktails? And yeah,

Dave Hudson: 2:53

so my name is Dave Hudson, and I'm a book writer and lyricist in musical theater, which is how we met. But also a few years ago, I got really interested in the history of spirits and cocktails and really started sort of digging in there. And learning more. And it's funny, because as I tell people, you know, I was a guy who really didn't even like beer until I was in my mid 20s. I sort of like a wine cooler guy didn't even really get into spirits and stuff till I was in my 40s. I'm now in my 50s. So, you know, I'm kind of new to the game. But I really dove in and learned a lot about cocktails as well. And I'll just sort of dive in and talk about, like, why we're here. So during 2020, our favorite year, all of us, were here. We were all we were talking on Zoom calls with friends and like, you know, we had sort of March which was in you know, like you're numb. And when we got to like by summer, all of us were like, Hey, are you kind of drinking more than you were before? And we're all like, yeah, and and so there was sort of this universal thing, like kind of like everyone I talked to is like, yeah, those first three months were not good. There was nothing else to do. You were sort of like just sitting around and sipping at night. And then about my summer it was like when we were able to go out. Everyone's like, okay, maybe it's time to not drink that much anymore. But it was just sort of this theme. And then my wife, Gigi, the fall of 2020. All of a sudden she woke up she was I just had this idea. And she was what if we call this the Year of Magical drinking. As opposed to you know Joan Didion's book, The Year of Magical Thinking. And I was like, yep, there it is. And so she and I dove in, and started writing a cocktail book. And it was a fun sort of like, kind of hobby book really, that we put together. Very simple, very, you know, kind of like 101 stuff. But the fun thing is that book specifically, we did cocktails with themes. So like the first the January one was there was actually there is a cocktail out there called the Chinese whisperer. So the January cocktail in that first book was the Chinese whisperer because, you know, everyone's like, hey, there's something on in China. Is that real? Is that something to be worried about? And so then we had that and then there was like, bury your head in the Shandy, which is Sandy's a drink and it was like, you know, let's pretend it's not going to happen. And then just fun ones like, September's drink was Um, after that we lost, Justice Ginsburg. And it was the Ruth Bader Ginsburg in honor of her. So anyway, that's a long rambling introduction. But that's, that's how we got we decided to write down what we're going to do. And then this year actually released another book, you know, tying in with a little more sophisticated, more info and stuff.

Hilary Adams: 5:50

So the first books named is the Year of Magical drinking.

Dave Hudson: 5:54

Yep, It's the Year of Magical drinking. And then the next one is a Year of Magical drinking round two or another round.

Hilary Adams: 6:03

And you have a third book that you're working on right now?

Dave Hudson: 6:06

Yeah, yeah, I'm working on one. And it's kind of a reflection of the second book, but the big thing that that there's a lot of kind of info on just the different spirits and stuff in in history of spirits and things in the second book. And I've had quite a few people say, you know, Mike, I'm gonna give this to my kid. And I also mentioned this, I do them, and they really like it. It's how to build your bar cart. And so the idea is like, how do you build a home bar, and with cocktail recipes, but also how to not break the bank? Like a lot of people I think they look at, you know, building a bar, and they're like, why don't have the money, you know, like, it's you just go walk to the liquor store, if you want to make all these cocktails. So the idea behind that book, and I'm not sure the title yet, but it'd be, it'd be behind this, like, how do you over the course of the year, build up your bar, so you can sort of have a complete set of ingredients that you can make lots of cocktails?

Hilary Adams: 7:02

Okay, so let's talk cocktails and stories. So, I in full disclosure, I don't you know, I don't drink alcohol. So the fourth thing here is don't talk to somebody who doesn't have any experience with this at all. So tell me about like cocktails and stories. And I am thinking about, you know, regular recipe, like recipes that I know like, right? It's like a story, is that,

Dave Hudson: 7:28

right? Yeah, there are, there's so many stories, and there's different stories behind them. And as those one one adage goes, that, you know, the stories that happen, we're at a bar, so you can never really trust what the real story is. But, you know, I would say in terms of stories and cocktails, I think that the big thing when you look at cocktails, or or liquor in general is spirits is that we have a history of rituals around drinking is human beings, right. And, and we know that the first site where they made, alcohol has been tracked back to at least 10,000 years ago, right, where they were actually formally making it. And it's gone forward. And, you know, like, the Egyptians were literally paid in beer at times. And you know, the people that worked on the pyramids, there's all these things, but at the same time, you don't have to, you know, to participate in rituals, we have other rituals that don't involve like her like, you know, tea. Tea is a very formal thing. You have the very formal thing in Japan, right of the ceremony and all that. But even if you look at the English, that's a very ritualistic, you, you make the tea, you strain it, you sit down, you pour it, it's this really cool thing. And I think that we've always had these rituals around sharing some beverage. And so that's, for me is fascinating. Overall, the story behind where did these drinks come from? Where does each liquor come from? They go back, you know, the first distilled liquor that we know of was around 1000 ad, or BCE, or CE. Sorry, I always miss those up. But do they go back that far. And then to tell you the quick story, the Reader's Digest. So the first kind of cocktail was really punch, and punch started in the 16th and 1700s. And that actually came from the, the Hindi word for for five, which is pench, Pa NCH. Or there's different spellings of that. And the idea without it, there's five ingredients and punch and it was water, spirits, citrus, sugar, and some sort of spice could be tea could be cinnamon and could be close. So the five, that's what basic punch was. And then honestly, one of the reasons why you had punch is that, you know, contrary to our idea that when people drink spirits, they do shots of tequila or whiskey. No one really wanted to do that. It's never been a pleasant thing, really, for most people to say, Oh, I'm just gonna SIP you know, some hard gin it like so they wanted to mix it down and mix it down. So punch was the first kind of cocktail and it was around and you as you will hear, people would share a bowl of punch, it was mixed in a big bowl, and you would pass it around the table. And then, really, when when things shifted was in the 1800s, when ice became more available, and then people started. The phrase cocktail first came around around the year 1800 And then it started evolving. And then once you had ice, then you started to see the idea of a cocktail evolve. And these all these different spirits beginning mixed into different drinks. But again, I you know, I always tell people, that idea of the five, it pretty much comes back, you'll always need a sweet, sour, a spirit, and then a little bit of ice or water to sort of like proof that down so that it's a pleasant thing to sip and isn't just like, sort of kicking you in the teeth.

Hilary Adams: 11:01

Oh, the idea of ritual. We've talked about that before on this podcast, and ritual and creativity go hand in hand. And obviously, cocktails are highly creative. Where does the word cocktail come from?

Dave Hudson: 11:11

So knowing that's, that's a great one, no one can quite agree on where it came from. But it's interesting. You know, you're the Story and Horse Podcast. A lot of people feel that there's a good chance that it actually went back to the horse racing days, where a horse that wasn't purebred would have a tail that stuck up. And that's how you could tell that it wasn't like, like, like pure. And so they call that a cocktail like like a rooster. So that's one story. The other story was that a place in New Orleans serve things in a cockatoo? I think is I again, I'm not great at those words, but it was like an egg cup, like a little egg cup that had a rooster on it. So it was they they served in the smaller cup. So but again, everyone was drinking. So you know, where it really came from? We're not sure. But it came around and really did in the crate. Look, the cool thing is that the cocktail is, is really an American invention. It really kind of started here, they had other certainly other drinks in other countries. But it was really, really took off here. And for a long time, if you saw a sign in another country that said an American Bar that meant they served cocktails over rice.

Hilary Adams: 12:26

Is there a particular story that you'd like to share that you could share of either ingredient for a jerky fall?

Dave Hudson: 12:34

Well, I would start I think I like starting with just the the basic itself. So the original idea behind spirits was, people always thought that beer and wine were healthy, they thought they were good for your health. And that's why you still hear the phrase, I drink to your health, you know, that kind of thing. But the irony is they were healthy because people lived in cities that didn't have great water supplies, and great plumbing. And so they didn't, they didn't know understand about the sanitation that we do today. So certainly healthier in many, many places to drink wine or beer as opposed to drinking the water that you can get. So it was kinda true. That it was so with that idea when they when they discovered this distillation and could distill wine or beer, which is kind of the foundation they called it Aqua vitae which the the, the phrase means water of life. And so they thought it was even more healthy because they've taken like the good stuff out of that and made it stronger and stuff. So the cool thing that I like about that is that we have a lot of words that still come down. Vodka is the Russian slash Polish derivation of the words Water of Life. You'll hear in France, in Europe, Olga V, which is water of life. And then the fun one is, and I never say there's a bunch of pronunciations, but from Scotland, it was pronounced the SKA baths. And then that eventually merged into whiskey. So even the water of life is where we, you know, comes from whiskey. So that's a really I always love that story is that we have all these spirits that came down through the years and all go back to that same word. And I'm a board geek too, because I'm a playwright. So I'm always, I always love those really cool stories. Yeah, there's great stories behind every spirit. Jen is one of the coolest ones. It's, it comes from Jennifer, which is the word for juniper. And it came from sort of the Holland area that the warding bit Holland, Belgium, they made Jennifer there. And again, it was going back to you know, back in the days they believe that if you made any drink, it wasn't just that but if you made it with different herbs and stuff, it was healthy for you and people had believed for a long time that Juniper was was good. So that's where they started making that and then Juniper moved along, and the funny thing is they it's still to this day, people will call gin, Dutch courage, and the reason why it was it was standard for Dutch mercenaries and Dutch soldiers to have a couple of shots before a battle. And the English fought beside the Dutch for a while. Then they brought gin to England. And the funny thing is, was, it was Jennifer. Then they shortened to Geneva, as you know, English wildly shortened anything. And then eventually they just dropped the EVA. And that's how we got gin. It's a fun thing. And there's different kinds of gin and stuff. So it's, it's a, it's a, each vSphere. But gin has a very rich and sometimes troubled history.

Hilary Adams: 15:57

What part of its troubled.

Dave Hudson: 15:59

So William of Orange in the late 1600s took the throne and didn't was was against the French and was fighting with the French and so he didn't want to subsidize them by letting people buy brandy and wine. So he issued a license in London and all of England actually for like for like literally, like literally like$1 or, you know, come today's you could get a license to distilled gin. And, and London and England went gin crazy. And I'm not kidding. Like, you could buy it kind of for less than a loaf of bread like a pint. And the stories are pretty terrifying that everyone was like kids, women should you know, everyone was drinking non stop. And it sounds like they weren't all that exaggerated. There was a really rough time from about 6095 to 1730, where they had some serious problems in their hands. And they were like, and the, you know, the business owners were like, we can't get sober workers, we need to do something to stop this. So they eventually set it down. But the gin craze in England is a is a storage chapter with many, many disheartening things that happened. But they eventually locked down those licenses and made it more expensive and hard to get. But Jen had found a place in the English vocabulary for sure. When you're

Hilary Adams: 17:22

looking at the recipes, those seem like a form of story, too. And they're handed down, right? Yeah. And

Dave Hudson: 17:29

it's fascinating, because, you know, sometimes you'll find who exactly created that recipe. And there's one guy Harry kradic. Craddock, who worked at the he, the sadboy, in England, in London, he had a great recipe book, The disavow Savoy cocktail book, and that has a lot of recipes that we know that he created, super cool ones, but he also collected from all these different ones. And when he could, he tried to attribute to these specific bartenders who created it, but every time a recipe was created, then, you know, someone would say, Actually, I already made that. And it's called this. So that's another tough thing is a lot of times you'll have these recipes, you'll think it's called x, and then you'll find y and z, that have the exact same ingredients. And the funny thing is, you can't copyright a recipe, which is a good thing. Because, you know, if you think about it, like, you know, a Manhattan, right is vermouth, and rye or bourbon. And you know, bitters, possibly in the variety of vignettes of the simpler one, but like the, you know, you could turn around and you could say, well, I'm going to take that and I'm going to add, you know, three shots of lemon juice, and I'm going to call it the Hillary and no one else can make it. And so just like cooking recipes, it's very hard to to copyright, a cocktail recipe. And so it's a pretty open community where people share the ideas. One of the most fun recipes that we know who invented it, was actually in Fleming. The cars he talked about in a book, it's called the Vesper. It was double agent who James Bond, as he always did, seduced and was was was romancing and her name was Vesper. And it was an I'll probably get beat up for this, but I think it was one part vodka, two parts Gen or vice versa. And that's where he uttered the phrase Shaken, not stirred. That's where it came from when Bond did that, and ironically, it was really just a modified Martini. And you talk to any very serious part bartender, and they'll be like, you never shake a martini, you always stir it. So that's a great story of like, we know an author created that specific recipe. And there's others. There's a guy named Jerry Thomas, from the 1800s. And he was very famous. He started in San Francisco during the Gold Rush days, and he was the guy like his bar was the place where you went and he created all of these really cool recipes, and had a few books that came out. But then, you know, back in the day, copyright wasn't much so so he would come out with a book and three guys would take the book and put a different preface to it and sell the same thing. And so it was hard to track down exactly what but he was sort of the original guy. They call them the doctor, or the professor. So he was a cool guy, and then it moved forward. And then here's a fun story is with cocktails and those recipes and how you made them. We had this little thing called prohibition, right from 1920 to 33. And every good bartender left the country and or they quit. And so then we had the Great Depression when we came out of prohibition. So people weren't really going to fancy places and buying cocktails, and then we have World War Two. And then, you know, so if you look we had from 20, to really 4546, we had this long pause. And cocktail culture really crashed at that point, we really didn't have the kind of cocktails with fresh ingredients and cool stuff that we had had before then. And it honestly took until the 90s and 2000s for people to sort of get back into this whole cocktail craze and figure out how to make you know, the really fun cocktails with good spirits. Let's let's segue into mocktails. I will say this, I thought about this today is that, you know, I tried the vegan thing for about a year. And it didn't work out for me. But um, but one of the things I found was like, the other half vegan cheese, and it's typically not great. And if you look at how it's made, it's got like a bunch of steps in it right to create this cheese. So it's almost like more artificial than like real cheese which a cow ate grass and was milked. And that was made into cheese, where there's vegan, vegan cheese has all these things. So when I think about mocktails, I can there's a lot of Latin every year, the more comes on of these sort of non alcoholic spirits, you can get fake bourbon, you can get you know, non alcoholic gin, all these things. And for me, I personally am not a fan, I don't find the taste as good. And I also think that if someone isn't a drinker than they're probably they probably didn't like bourbon to begin with. So you know, asking this a try. That's fake bourbon isn't the way to go. But there's, you know, the cool thing about cocktail since since it's kind of had this revolution is that it's made with fresh ingredients. It's made with you know, fresh fruit with fresh herbs, all of that. And you can do a lot of really cool things and mocktails along those lines. And to harken back to what I said at the beginning, that idea that you want some sweet, you want some sour, you don't maybe want a little spice that that's the idea is that you don't want you know, you can make a smoothie and I wouldn't call that a mocktail I call it a smoothie, but you can make other things that are are really yummy and really kind of like make your your palate bounce that are made with herbs and and you know, different kinds of fruits and you know, different juices and things that I think are really nice and quite yummy. on a summer's day.

Hilary Adams: 23:35

Have you included any in your books?

Dave Hudson: 23:38

You know, I haven't yet I haven't yet. That's that'll that'll probably be, I'll either keep away from it. Because I think there's some great people who do that, for example, my last book. I could have done a Bloody Mary recipe, but there are people who make great mixes for Bloody Marys and people who have entire books on Bloody Mary. So I was like put Mezcal and bloody mary and experiment with the in your favorite mix, that kind of thing. So I might, but I think that would be its own project. But uh, but I will say. So, here's a great, I think a great kind of mocktail that I think is great to start with is that so you can make your own ginger beer like really easily. And you just in the cool thing is almost all stores now even little ones have fresh ginger, right. So you just peel the ginger and you slice it. And then you throw it in the blender with simple syrup, which is just straight mix of sugar and water. Or you can even put sugar in and then you blend it up and let it sit for an hour or two. And then you strain it out through a strainer. And then that's your syrup. And you just add that to like soda water and you have better ginger beer than you'll ever have from anywhere in the store. And then you can add lime to give it a little different flavors and stuff. So it's the homemade ginger beer is like a really, really fun thing to put together.

Hilary Adams: 25:05

I know what I'll be doing. You just picked two of my I love ginger and I love lime. So I'm like this is perfect.

Dave Hudson: 25:12

Nice. Nice.

Hilary Adams: 25:14

So for people who are listening who are you know, we're very interested are like, Okay, I'm interested to cocktails. I'm into the idea of experimentation and playing new beginning some recipes, that kind of thing. How do they Perhaps they've already started. But I'll start for people who are I'll ask this for people who are just starting, how do they start?

Dave Hudson: 25:36

So, you know, there's a great bar here in town in Chicago, where I'm from, where the bartender came up with the Mr. Potatohead idea of, of cocktails. And what he meant by that is that there are so many similar recipes to in cocktails that you can just just like you do with Mr. Potato, and you swap out like the eyes and put different eyes on and you've got a different cocktail. So the same idea is true is that like, here's a great again, let's go back to the junior beer thing. There's the one of the, you know, classic cocktails is the Moscow Mule, which is ginger, beer, lime, and vodka, right? Well, so start with that, right, just get that and now you've got something. But then you can go to a store and get rum. And if you swap out the room for the vodka, that's called a dark and stormy. So start building kind of that way, you just like one bottle at a time, don't buy everything. That's the people just think they have to, you know, spend $700 To get going. And also look at there's some really nice budget bottles between 10 and $20. Right, that the one of the big things that's happened in the last 20 years is, there's all these like, you know, totally unique bottles that are really cool. And they like they're 80 bucks, right? And it's like, well, if you're gonna put a cocktail together, you don't want to spend your paycheck. Right? So there's, there's some great ones, you know, here's a good one is Jim Beam, right Jim Beam people think of as this old, like, hackneyed thing, but it's also reliable, and it's fine in a cocktail. Like, don't be afraid to, you know, don't be a snob when you start out, you know, just just figure out and then as you work up, you'll be like, Okay, well, maybe I'll try this better bourbon and see what that tastes like.

Hilary Adams: 27:26

Can you do anything with your ice cubes?

Dave Hudson: 27:29

Yeah, well, that's holy cow, you want to talk about a change so. So, you know, you talk to any serious bartender and you see these big molds now, right? In the day, they make these molds that make great big ice cubes versus smaller ones. And they make round ice cubes for sipping bourbon. And then the really fancy bars literally will do like they did in the 1800s. And they'll get a big ol block of ice, and then they'll hand cut, and hand ship that ice at the bar. So that you have this totally clear ice in your drink and stuff. So you can, I think it's definitely worth getting some of the bigger, like, molds of, you know, for the ice trays that make larger ones. And you can experiment with that. But you know, don't, the big thing is don't be careful not to keep like if you shake a drink. It doesn't matter kind of what kind of ice you use in the shaker. But you don't want to leave it in there too long, so it doesn't get watered down. So that's the biggest trick when you're when you're making drinks in the shaker is that and you know, if you if you'd like put in like your you know, your refrigerator, ice, right, the ones that comes out of the icemaker that that releases a lot of water really quick. So if you put that in, you shake it for a minute, and then forget it. And then you pour it you've got like a really diluted drink.

Hilary Adams: 28:50

I was just thinking about how people make mud out of like when they do watercolor because they had too much water. That was what came to mind just then. Well, yeah, yeah. Can you mess this up? I mean, I'm just thinking about how people talk to me about being creative. And getting in the kitchen. There's a fear sometimes where, you know, where it's kind of, like, I'm gonna put this stuff together, it's not gonna work. And I know, it's no big deal. You can throw it down the sink, but you know,

Dave Hudson: 29:17

yeah, so that the big thing I learned is to when I was messing with it, I learned I tended to make micro cocktails. Like I actually got the little graduated cylinders that had the small so I would mix it like in 10, milligram, you know, intervals instead of 30, which is standard, like outside. So make them small, you know, with the same proportions and just see how it tastes. And you can totally mess it up. Myself and my wife can attest that I messed up many and I did learn to not feel bad about you know, that is horrible. Just toss it, you know, the toss that drink Don't Don't Don't be afraid. You only live once.

Hilary Adams: 29:59

I love that idea of micro cocktails. That'd be a fun party idea. It seems like

Dave Hudson: 30:05

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it is. It is if you go to like a lot of tastings where the they're having you tried several, you know, bourbons or something, they will they will they will give you tiny things and you still get the taste and you still get to get the get the feeling you're not like you know, walking out, you know, unable to drive.

Hilary Adams: 30:25

So what's your favorite cocktail?

Dave Hudson: 30:28

I think My favorite cocktail is probably I'll tell you a variety I found this year is I've just really become enamored with the mix of chocolate and citrus. Like if you think of like, you know, those chocolate oranges you get it at Christmas, there's a thing called creme de cocoa, and there's many other chocolate le cores. And then when you mix that with a grapefruit juice, or an orange juice and a couple of other spirits, you get this really cool creamy, like rich feel just like when you have those chocolate oranges at Christmas, and I'm really enjoying kind of messing with that part of the spectrum. You know, this month asked me again next month

Hilary Adams: 31:10

for people listening, we're heading towards the Fourth of July in the US holiday. Is there a good Fourth of July cocktail?

Dave Hudson: 31:19

Yeah, I would say there's two that I would really recommend. And I think for the big thing for me with summer you know, you think about sipping right. And so you don't want to do straight cocktails, you don't want to do the little like you want something that has a lot of body to it. So the two I'd recommend our first is there's a cool variation of the gin and tonic. It's called a Spanish Gin Tonic, and that's actually in my second book. And that's just served in the great big Oh, great, great big balloon goblet that you like a big wine goblet the balloon one and then you put in a lot of fruit a lot of like botanicals and he just you know put more way more tonic water than gin and just sip at it and then you let the the gin and tonic is a great drink though. Even as the ice melts in the summer sun it just kind of like mixes with the flavor and makes it like a fun one. So definitely look at gin and tonics and play with them there's there's a lot of different things to do with gin and tonics that there's different kinds of gin there's one called Old Tom gin, there's you can now get Jennifer you can do that. The other one that I really think is great is the Paloma which is tequila soda and grapefruit cocktail. And again that's a great one you can put a lot of ice and put extra grapefruit juice in you know mix mix to your flavors, but I think on a summer day, you know you don't want to be you know slamming back Manhattan's you know, that are just basically like solid whiskies you want to you want to relax and drink and let it last the afternoon.

Hilary Adams: 32:49

Thank you Hawk tails in literature, I'm wondering if you're and you're researching, whether you found cocktails and any books, or historical documents or anything like that.

Dave Hudson: 33:02

There are so many references, you know, like, you know, Hemingway had a lot. And just tons and tons of references. There's actually a couple of books around that just talk about this is what this writer drank. Dorothy Parker was a big drinker. And loved her cocktails and talked about them a lot. So yeah, there's there's so many of them in there. I even ran across a series of a mystery writer who she like, it's kind of like that, that one writer who does the alphabet ones, you know, A is for that. But she's got like a whole series of of, you know, each one is has a different cocktail is the like the title.

Hilary Adams: 33:44

Does she put the recipes in the book?

Dave Hudson: 33:46

She does. Yeah, yeah, she puts them in. So

Hilary Adams: 33:49

that's very fun. Yeah. Is there anything else you'd like to share about cocktail? You know?

Dave Hudson: 33:57

I think for me, one of the things, the last thing I would say is that, you know, get a good book. My my second one specifically, is actually a pretty fun book to start with. It's got a lot of history behind the different spirits. But there's a lot of great ones out there. But start with the book. And but keep it simple. Don't be overwhelmed by it, you know, here's an example is that there's this cryptic bar in Chicago called the aviary. This totally fancy, they're the kind that like, smoke your drinks, and you know, make you aware of Hood and stuff like that to drink it. But they're there. Their book is like a massive, you know, coffee table book, and it's beautiful and amazing. But it's also one of those really, in depth, like each each drink has like seven recipes. So start simple. And start easy. But I think it's also a great option, just from a budget perspective, you know, to mix cocktails at home, it's like holy cow. You know, I live in Chicago and is it is not unusual, though, at a bar that, you know, cocktail Prices start at 13 or $14, and go up from there. So it's a great hobby to save money.

Hilary Adams: 35:09

And I know you were saying before we started recording that in with your book, and it's really about the person who's doing this at home, who doesn't want to break the bank. And you're aiming for using ingredients that are easily procured.

Dave Hudson: 35:24

Yeah, yeah, I tried to keep them simple like two two to four ingredients. cocktails. I also in my book, I also list here's your budget option like this is the kind of gin you could get if you want to go a step up, you can get this kind. So I also list list those. And that's a fun thing that you can do you know, is start with your, your one I talked about is Gordon's Gin. Gordon's was one of the original kind of like, big brand gins was the top 10 in the world for like, 30 years, people kind of looked down on it now. But it's, it's a reliable London dry gin, which hardly cost anything and is great. And a lot of cocktails.

Hilary Adams: 35:59

I didn't ask you about the glasses, and you've mentioned them several times.

Dave Hudson: 36:04

Yeah. And then. So the crazy thing is like, you know, there's all these glasses, there's a coupe, there's a one called a nick and Nora, there's the martini glass, which is also the all these ones and a lot of people are really specific. And one of the things I've loved is I do have a lot of cocktail glasses now. But I've gotten almost every one of them at a thrift store. You know, I scope out the you know, the local Goodwill, and I find what I need there. And I haven't bought any like, you know, those, you know, online, you know, super expensive ones. There's a there's a great company called Libby which makes great cocktail glasses, but they're, they're pretty pricey. So I just, you know, hit hit your thrift store, and then you've got all your selections.

Hilary Adams: 36:50

And they already have some stories built in. They do.

Dave Hudson: 36:53

Exactly, exactly. Yeah. You don't know You don't know what stories you're going to absorb.

Hilary Adams: 36:59

And can you tell people how to reach you and how to find your books?

Dave Hudson: 37:03

Yeah, yeah. So to reach me, I'll be sending you info. And my books are a Year of Magical drinking, and a Year of Magical drinking another round by Dave Hudson. And I'll give you my contact info. I don't have a website yet. That's that's the next part of the launch from from my books. But yeah, just just hit me up on the contact info I give to you. And if you view or wanting to want to talk mixology, I'm here.

Hilary Adams: 37:32

So for everyone listening, if you want to reach Dave, all of the links and everything will be in the show notes, including ways to reach him and his books to connect with his books. And if you want to reach me, I'm at Story and Horse and, and story and horse.com and Dave, it's a real pleasure to talk with you. Thanks for coming back on.

Dave Hudson: 37:53

Oh, you bet. Thanks so much. Thanks. Thanks.

Hilary Adams: 37:55

Yeah, take care bye.

Outro: 37:58

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