Debbie and I can’t leave our property on Prince Edward Island, however, the property includes the Brain Brew Beach Bar land. This week we took Lexi with us and as the photo indicates, my wife and I saw the recent “warm weather” on Prince Edward Island differently.   

While the two of us agree on many things, it’s the differences between us that add spice and fun to living. 

Imagine how boring it would be to be with people who only think and act the same as you. 

Now, I do understand that it takes energy to deal with differences of opinion. And in today’s world, the stress people are feeling can deplete their energy reserves.

It seems to me that individual mindsets toward COVID are similar. Each person is on a different journey. They see the same news report that you see and it causes a different reaction within them. 

This is not a time for lectures about, “what is right and what is wrong.”   Heck – this is only the second one of these crazy things in 100 years! No one knows with certainty what the future will bring.

What it is – is a time for understanding and celebrating the wonderful diversity of people all around us. 

Together we will all get through this. 

Cocktail of the Week

My cocktail this week is a Classic Old Fashioned which is the drink I’m enjoying on the beach. I’ve become kind of fanatic about my Old Fashioned.

In a mixing glass (or shaker) with ice, add the following ingredients: 

• 2 oz of Bourbon, ideally Brain Brew’s Paddle Wheel Bourbon
• 1 teaspoon to 1/2 oz of Simple Syrup, my choice is 1 teaspoon
• 3 drops of Bitters (Aromatic or Orange), my choice is Brain Brew’s 1862 Aromatic Bitters

Next, stir for 20 revolutions and strain into another glass with one large ice cube in it. 

Enjoy! 

Doug

Nine days from now I will be less judgmental of Covid Restrictions than I was five days ago.  My wife and I are in Canada at our home on Prince Edward Island (PEI). PEI is a small province.  It has an amazingly low level of COVID infections.

Yes it’s an island and yes it’s a population that is unique (a conservative government ran for election once on implementing mandatory four bin sorting of trash to reduce waste and increase recycling and won with over 70% of the vote).  

PEI is a place I’ve come to for 53 years. This year it took almost a month to get all the approvals. Plus, we are required to go through a mandatory 14 day quarantine and it’s the real deal. We are called daily. They have fines that are SERIOUS and the community is in full support of the importance of quarantining.  

Being quarantined – not allowed to leave the property – not allowed to go to a store to get things for cooking a special recipe.  Not allowed to connect, even socially distanced with neighbors or even friends delivering food, is very frustrating.

However, as I jogged around the farm land in front of our house this morning, I came to the realization that while I may be frustrated because of what I can’t do, I actually should be embracing the positives around me.  

How amazingly beautiful the Island is. The photo above was taken this morning. 

How wonderful it is to have amazing friends who filled our refrigerator with food before we got here.  

How thoughtful it was for our neighbor across the street to leave two plates of Thanksgiving Dinner for when we arrived (Thanksgiving in Canada is in October).  

How great it is to have six different friends & neighbors reach out to help us get food or whatever we need – and they all really mean it.  

And most importantly, to be enjoying time with my amazing wife and our incredible dog Lexi. 

Yes, it’s time to savor the positives. 

Jimmy Buffet is the “Patron Saint” of the Beach Bar.

Bruce Springsteen is the “Patron Saint” of Brain Brew Custom Whiskey. 

In a recent interview in of all places, AARP Magazine, Bruce spoke about where he gets his inspiration:

“You have your antenna out,” he says. “You’re just walking through the world and you’re picking up these signals of emotions and spirit and history and events, today’s events and past remembrances. These things you divine from the air are all intangible elements: spirit, emotion, history. These are the tools of the songwriter’s trade before he even picks up the pen. My antenna is picking up so much information, I need to find a way to disperse it. So, I needed to learn a language that does that. And the languages of art, film, records, whatever you want to call it—all those languages do that. And you get to pass it on to your listeners or fans. That’s how it begins.” 

Our research on creativity finds that Bruce has it right. We call it stimulus mining.   

Basically, creativity comes from filing your brain with sights, sounds, emotions and experiences. Then, your brain assembles and reassembles the stimulus resulting in a new thought, idea or insight. 

Our challenge in today’s chaotic world is taking the time to stop and savor the wonder around us. We need to enjoy this unique moment in time for what it is. 

This morning on my jog abound the Beach Bar Lake, I stopped and saw a beautiful morning sight of the moon setting as the sun rose behind me.  

I’ve found that capturing the wonder requires a curious mind. It means taking the time to really listen to others – to understand what they are saying and why. It means looking under the rock or log not just at the surface view.    

It means giving voice to “what if…” and then taking action on the “what if…”

My Cocktail this week  is This World’s Greatest Sazerac

I’m often asked what my favorite cocktail is? My answer depends on my mood at the time. It also depends on the time of year. In the summer, I love Mint Juleps and the Whiskey Smash. Come fall, I love a Sazarac – one of earliest cocktails ever. 

My recipe came from a WHAT IF ….

In this case I took two cocktail legends Sazerac recipes and put them together. 

The base recipe came from Dale Degroff who I’ve written of before. It involves a mixture of Cognac and Rye. The twist on it comes from the book Speakeasy – from one of the world’s top cocktail bars – Employees Only in NYC.  PLEASE if in NYC, make the journey it is well worth it. They’ve created an amazing absinth bitters that is sprayed on the sides of the glass before making the cocktail.  

To make the absinth bitters, combine the following ingredients:

• 3 Cups of Pernod Absinth
• 1/2 cup Green Chartreuse
• 1 teaspoon Peychaud’s bitters
• 1 teaspoon Angostura bitters
• 2 tablespoons Fee Brothers mint bitters. 

Once combined, fill a spray bottle with the bitters and place in the refrigerator. 

This World’s Greatest Sazerac Recipe

First, spray two to three sprays of the Absinthe Bitters on the inside of a rocks glass.

Next, add the following ingredients into the glass:

• 1 large ice cube (if you have it – other wise a collection of cubes) 
• 1 ounce of high quality Cognac (Dale suggests Pierre Ferrand Ambre Cognac which is awesome but hard to find. I’ve also found Remy Martin – 1738 Champagne Cognac works really well)
• 1 ounce of our Deckhand Rye 
• 1 teaspoon of Simple Syrup
• 3 Drops of our 1862 Bitters (or Peychaud Bitters)

Once combined, stir 20 times if you used smaller ice cubes or 40 times if you used a big ice cube.

Enjoy this World’s Greatest Sazerac!!

Cheers,

Doug

As you can tell by the photo, my Great Grandfather Will Holder, was a sail maker. More than that, he was an innovator. He was the first to bring “sewing machines” into a sail loft.  

At the age of 95, my Great Grandfather Holder was asked his philosophy for life. His answer was simple:

“One time you’re down, another time you’re up and you’re down again and you come up again.”

What Will meant is that we need to accept the rhythms of life. Life is not a never ending ramp of continuing success. Life goes up and it goes down. It is these cycles that make life so wonderful over the long haul. The downs help us appreciate the ups that much more.  

Famous baseball player now General Manager, Derek Jeter, made a related comment recently:  

“I understand that players are going to struggle, and quite frankly I like to see players when they struggle because everyone’s going to do it. It’s just a matter of seeing how you’re going to bounce back.” 

So too – we are all living this cycle of ups and downs. We are living it both daily, weekly and monthly. There are even cycles within cycles. What I’m finding is the the important thing is to not get into a “funk” and fixate on the downs. We need to embrace both the ups and the downs as simply part of life.

The ups can be significant things in your personal and professional life. For me, they can be as simple as the beauty of the ducks on the lake in the morning, a phone call from a good friend or our amazing dog Lexi sharing her never ending love. 

My recipe this week is an EPIC UP… of an experience. It comes from the new Craft of the Cocktail by the amazing Dale Degroff. It’s called the RITZ COCKTAIL – as he writes – it’s his tribute to the Ritz cocktails of Paris and Madrid: 

Ingredients: 

• 1 ounce VSOP Cognac
• 1/2 ounce Cointreau
• 1/4 ounce Luxardo maraschino Liqueur
• 1/4 ounce fresh lemon juice
• 2 ounces Champagne
• Flamed orange zest coin for garnish (optional)

Directions: 

Shake the first four ingredients in a cocktail shaker with ice. Strain into a cocktail glass and fill with the champagne. Garnish with the flamed orange zest coin. 

Cheers,

Doug 

This week on my morning jog around the Beach Bar Lake, I turned the corner, stopped and snapped this photo. The scene struck me. It offered a path. It offered hope to those who believe that tomorrow can and will be better than today. 

For reasons I don’t fully understand, it also reminded me of a quote from The Empire Strikes Back – after Yoda raises an x-wing from the Dagobah swamp:

LUKE:  I don’t believe it.          YODA: That is why you fail

LINK to Video Clip

As I jogged, I thought about how as we journey together in this upside down world, believing in better can be challenging.

The words believing in better connected me to a song  by Lennie Gallant, a legendary Singer / Songwriter from Prince Edward Island. I stopped and hit play on his song, Believing in Better, on the album of the same name (available on streaming services). It was the perfect connection to the image… as I jogged forward into the rising sunlight.  As he sings in the chorus:

Don’t let it go, don’t let it fade,
Believing in better when things get worse.

Here’s the song on Apple Music

My conclusion as I jogged listening to the title cut and others on the album (well worth listening to by the way), was that believing in better is a choice. 

We can choose to believe in better or chose to believe in worse.

I choose better 🙂

Dale Degroff’s Classic Cocktail Book was updated and published this week “The New Craft of the Cocktail.”

Dale is the definitive expert on cocktails and cocktail techniques.  What I also LOVE in this revised edition is he has highlighted cocktails from craft bartenders and those that he has created or optimized himself. They alone are worth the cost of the book.

My recipe this week is from the book – it’s one of the “craft” recipes – this one from David Thompson of the Capital Hotel in London who won first prize with this drink in the first annual London Absolute Vodka Cocktail Contest.

It’s called ABSOLUTELY BANANAS – and it gets a big thumbs up from my wife

Add the following ingredients to a shaker:

• 1 1/2 ounces of Vodka
• 12 ounces of Creme de Banana Liqueur
• 1 1/2 ounces of Pineapple Juice. 

As dale explains, shake very hard to a slow ten count – a layer of foam from the pineapple juice will float on top of the drink and make a great presentation.  

Cheers,

Doug

I find that fall and spring are both filled with hope and opportunity. Part of this comes from being born and brought up in Maine, New Hampshire and Prince Edward Island.  

Both spring and fall are times for rebirth. Both engage a ritual of putting away one set of clothes and pulling the next season’s clothes from the back of the closet.

With the crazed world of today, rebirth is something we all need more of. We need to restart and disengage from the political and covid “noise” that can consume us. 

Spring has the growth of sunlight hours, the return of birds, plants and warmth. Fall has the  mist over the lake each morning as the heat of the water releases – as you can see in the photo from the Beach Bar. Fall also has the harvest, the anticipation of the holiday season, the restart of school and work.  

This week, as the heat broke, the hummingbirds left to go south and a fleece was needed for my jog around the lake. I experienced a rebirth of energy as everywhere I looked there were fresh ideas coming to life.

Working with my long time friend, Renee Strom, a totally new type of visual event was created – a Jump Start Your Brain – THINKING ADVENTURE. It embraced the benefits of ZOOM and created a level of energy and engagement that I haven’t seen in six months of digital events.  Actually, it was the second amazing event – the other was a Raptor Zoomie held by the University of Minnesota Raptor Center.

A call with Maggie Nichols sparked excitement as she outlined fresh Eureka! Ranch offerings that are wicked cool.

The amazing Brain Brew Custom Whiskey team blew my mind this week with very creative covid safe live experiences and wow upgrades to our products and operations methods. 

I STRONGLY RECOMMEND – that you embrace REBIRTH right now. When you embrace the Fall as an opportunity to change what you’re doing and how you’re working / living – a spark of energy will grow within you!  

What are you waiting for – Get Up! Get Out! Do Something Different!    

My “recipe” recommendation this week is a book that everyone needs to read. 

Ruhlman’s Twenty: 20 Techniques 100 Recipes A Cook’s Manifesto.     

It’s the best cookbook I’ve ever read! (Sorry Julia Child and Francis Mallmann)

It will also set you on your way to a REBIRTH of your cooking this Fall.  And with your cooking restarted – more of your life will restart as well. 

Ruhlman’s Twenty is a totally different type of cookbook. It will shake up how you think about cooking. Like many during Covid, I’ve gone through cooking phases – bread phase – gourmet phase – grilling phase. This book has opened my mind to a totally new way of thinking about how I cook. 

I knew it was a SPECIAL BOOK when I opened it and found that technique number one is THINK.

Special thanks to Phillip Kurtz, Director of R&D at Brain Brew & Master Chef, for the recommendation of Ruhlman’s book!   

Enjoy!

Doug