This is an interesting article I found in the Wall Street Journal the other day, it in following on the heels of the barrel aged cocktails and I think might be fairly successful in the big cities larger establishments.
At New
York City's Alder restaurant, the most popular cocktail is made of rye, yuzu
juice, amaro liqueur and smoked maple syrup and called Dr. Dave's 'Scrip Pad.
Despite the complicated recipe, customers often receive their drink in seconds.
The bartender pours it straight from a tap.
As
demand for creative craft cocktails shows no sign of slowing, bartenders have
struggled with how to serve drinks quickly while preserving the taste. From
small bars to hotel chains, they are making large batches of cocktails and
connecting them to tap systems like those used for beer. And cocktails on tap,
also called kegged or draft cocktails, make it easier to serve mixed drinks at
large events.
"You
can sell it with the speed of a draft beer. It's the best of all possible worlds,"
says Anthony Caporale, a cocktail consultant and representative for Drambuie,
the whiskey liqueur that sponsors a competition for kegged cocktails.
Part
of the appeal of a cocktail has been watching the bartender mix it. While
punches could be made in advance, cocktails needed to be made on the spot to
blend the alcohol or give a gin and tonic the perfect fizz, traditionalists
held.
But as
bartenders have experimented with cocktails on tap, they found that, after some
trial and error, they could come up with recipes that satisfied customers. Not
all menus list if the cocktail is on tap, but those that do make this point not
to warn customers, but to show off their capabilities, they say.
The
new focus tracks with a jump in demand for these drinks. U.S. spirits suppliers
have seen revenue growth each year since 2009, to $22.2 billion in 2013,
according to the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States, an industry
trade group.
read more at http://online.wsj.com/articles/mixed-drinks-on-tap-faster-manhattans-negronis-and-more-1410391659
