Blighty’s drinking establishments are on point. Whether you want to hole up with a choice of 40 ales and a toasty fire, to be drip fed absinthe or served cocktails with RADA levels of theatricality – you’re sorted. But are you bringing your A game in the privacy of your own home?
We’ve all been guilty of plumping for supermarket deals and arriving at parties with desolate newsagent selections; it’s time to drink like a pro at home with the best mail order booze. The Holborn Bar has done our homework for you, so whether it’s craft brews, cocktails or spirits that you want to unearth, sit back in that armchair, and all will be revealed.
Shaken Cocktails
If the extent of your home cocktail repertoire is a weak G&T, up your game with Shaken Cocktails; the team painstakingly procure the finest ingredients to deliver a monthly discovery kit of cocktails: one classic and one modern masterpiece. Working side by side with drinks experts and distillers, the enormously enthusiastic team drum up dinky bottles of everything needed for an easy to prepare, yet sophisticated cocktail and deliver with two coinciding recipes right to your door.
Mark Jennings, Founder of Shaken found that “there was such a big gap between the drinks I could get in a bar and what I could get for myself at home. It’s not like the techniques were difficult or the ingredients were rare – it was just all a bit inconvenient” so he decided to take the plunge and solve the problem himself.
Shaken’s Explorers’ Club delivers a different box of recipes and ingredients every month, with the core being the spirit supplied, “it has to be a premium spirit and it has to be delicious” says Mark. Bartending experts come up with two recipes that will let that spirit shine, and inspiration is rife: “Shaken’s Godfather is Dick Bradsell, the inventor of cocktails such as the Espresso Martini and the Bramble. He’s been a personal friend for years and he’s a great guy as well as a bartending genius”.
It’s this sense of discovery that appeals to The Holborn Bar, both in trying new concoctions, or old favourites with novel brands, discovering spirits that will become a stalwart of the home bar for years to come, Mark comments: “from month to month, we make sure that there’s a constant sense of variety and exploration. We want to take our members on a journey, helping more and more people to mix the best drinks they’ve ever made.”
A monthly kit is £24 and a generous helping of spirits and paraphernalia suitable for making four cocktails.
www.shakencocktails.com?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss
Honest Brew
If craft beer is more your thing, then The Holborn recommends you plump for a trusty HonestBrew. Rather than packing off a box of odds and sods, HonestBrew match each delivery to your palate profile. Starting with the HonestBrew Taster Kit, which includes six diverse craft beers, you highlight your choicest measures and the HonestBrew experts will curate a bespoke collection of 12 beers for you to discover each month (from over 50 breweries across the UK, Europe, America and New Zealand).
HonestBrew exists to connect the dots between incredible microbrewers and people who want more from their beer. Passionate brewers from all corners of the globe are sourcing the finest ingredients and experimenting with different styles and recipes to bring out a variety of flavours you’ll not often find in beers in your local supermarket. With so many breweries, styles and flavours on offer, HonestBrew is here to bring you the best beers in a way that is easy to navigate. The team comment: “You can think of us as the studious bartender, here to guide you through the ever-evolving world of craft beer with our online beer delivery service”.
HonestBrew was built by a group of friends who are passionate beer lovers. Originally they started out brewing on a nano-kit and teaching others to brew their own beer from scratch, “as we ran these sessions we found an overwhelming amount of people enjoyed craft beer, but either didn’t feel comfortable picking out a style or brewery they liked, or had trouble finding the beers they really wanted. We set out to solve these conundrums and make it easy to enjoy craft beer.”
With more breweries than ever creating amazing beers the HonestBrew team are spoilt for choice in selecting the brews that they will list; as they originally began as brewers, they have a complex understanding of what makes a good beer and are even trained and accredited “tasters.” “It’s when customers start asking for a certain brewery that we don’t yet list – or point us in the direction of a brewery they enjoyed in a different country – we look to seek that brewery out. We now list over 50 different craft breweries and this grows week by week”.
Some of the breweries getting HonestBrew all hot under the collar at the moment are Liverpool’s Mad Hatter Brewery; Buxton Brewery; Somerset’s Wild Beer Co; Anchorage Brewing, hailing all the way form Alaska and New Zealand’s Yeastie Boys; producing everything from a beer made using the yeast from sourdough bread (Wild Beer Co) to a tea-leaf IPA brewed with Earl Grey tea (Yeastie Boys) – the opportunity for discovery with HonestBrew is seemingly endless.
www.honestbrew.co.uk?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss
Drinks by the Dram
For spirits enthusiasts, discovery can be rather limited, to take a punt on the unknown based on a simple tasting note often results in a dust-shrouded bottle banished to the back of the bar. That’s where Drinks by the Dram come in, having taken the very finest and singular spirits and divided them up into 3cl/30ml drams and, naturally, they’re a fraction of the cost of a full-sized bottle, ideal for the intrepid spirits explorer!
Spirits can be subjective; there’s no hard and fast way of telling whether you’ll like something or not before trying, for Drinks by the Dram offering taster kits of spirits “was a no-brainer, 3cl drams allow folk to try a wide range of spirits for a fraction of the outlay. Also, everyone has their own individual tastes and however many reviews you read you can never be certain that a specific whisky or other spirit is the one for you. That can make buying full bottles something of a risky business, especially at the more expensive end. Now you can try them before taking the plunge!”
With over 3,600 individual drams across a wide range of spirits including whiskies (1,600 single malts!), rums, tequilas, gins, vodkas and even mescals and absinthes and the like, the range really is astonishing.
What really gets The Holborn Bar going is their 50 themed Tasting Sets; from whisky sets full of super-peaty expressions, unusual cask maturations, Japanese whiskies, ‘extreme’ and grain whiskies – any of which could be unusual to even the most experienced spirits drinkers – to sets of Mescal and Armagnac as well as sets that concentrate on single distilleries, be it Glenfarclas single malt from Speyside or FEW’s craft spirits from Evanston, Illinois. Accompanied by expert tasting notes, Drinks by the Dram’s team of in-house tasters guide you in your discovery.
Drinks by the Dram are doing their part for spirits edification, “we’re seeing that people are also becoming increasingly adventurous when seeking out new drinking experiences, not just sticking to the spirit type(s) they’ve previously favoured. We like to think we’ve done our bit too, making discovering new spirits a whole lot easier and considerably more affordable.” We’ll raise a dram to that!
Tasting sets from £17.95, available via www.drinksbythedram.com?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss
Article by Alex Godfrey
Illustrations by Thomas Slater