A couple weeks ago, just after CocktailCamp took place, we sent out a survey to everyone who attended in order to get some feedback on what we did well, what could have been better, and what people want to see next year. After giving people some time to respond, the CocktailCamp team got together to go over the information we got.

The feedback was overwhelmingly positive, and for that we thank all of you. That being said, there was also some good feedback on the things that weren’t so great, some of which we knew, some we didn’t.

First and foremost, yes, CocktailCamp was a dry event. It didn’t set out to be but we dug into the OLCC rules far to late to make any of the drastic changes that would be needed to secure the event license that would allow us to serve drinks. We knew this was less than ideal but there was no way to do it without putting our generous hosts at New Deal at risk, which we weren’t willing to do. Expect a big difference here next year.

Something we had no idea about until the feedback came is was that our chairs sucked. We didn’t see them beforehand and honestly had no idea what we were getting. We’re really sorry about that, truly. The chairs will definitely be better next time. Ugh.

Other things we will be improving include a tightening up of the schedule, with less down time, better space to socialize away from the speakers (with a bar), and more food options on the premises (this last is a requirement for an OLCC event license, so you can definitely count on that one). We’ll also be exploring the possibility of different tracks for beginner/intermediate and advanced mixologists. We had a good variety of talks this year, but also a good mix of people attending and not everyone was interested in every presentation. We’ve also realized that we didn’t explain and guide the breakout sessions well enough and that resulted in a bit of confusion there.

Based on our own experiences at the event and the feedback we received, we’re calling this a successful first attempt. We learned a lot in the process and expect to learn a lot more in the next year leading up to CocktailCamp 2011.

If you didn’t take the survey, no problem — we’ll continue taking feedback for the next 12 months so please let us know your thoughts. The comment forms are open and you can always email us. We’ll be keeping this site updated with the latest news as it happens so watch this space for the latest (but we’re taking a couple months off, so be patient).

A mere week and a half later and CocktailCamp PDX seems like it was a dream — a really good dream. All of us involved in planning the event are so pleased (and a little gobsmacked) with how smoothly our daylong event went at New Deal Distillery on April 11, 2010. We really appreciate everyone coming out for the event and for keeping it going into the evening with us at Clyde Common at the after party.

CocktailCamp PDX started as a group of social networking cocktail enthusiasts on Twitter and became a group who were meeting regularly “in real life” to huddle in various bars around town. Months of brainstorming, speculating and delegating went into this event and by chance, the combination our individual strengths, experiences and expertise seems to have pulled off a successful community oriented event for cocktail lovers. Attendees ranged from curious novice to seasoned industry professional and the feedback we have been receiving has confirmed that everyone had a wonderful time and learned a thing or two. This, above all else, was the goal.

We’d like to thank everyone again for being so supportive and enthusiastic from CocktailCamp’s inception. This event has been a joy to work on and we’re all looking forward to CocktailCamp 2011! Here’s hoping we can figure out a way to work within the OLCC’s oddly antiquated, Python-esque regulations to make CocktailCamp PDX a more intoxicating experience next spring.

That said, for a dry event, there sure was a lot of laughter! Thanks again to our wonderful line-up of speakers and panelists. It was great to watch attendees taking notes while people were talking. These folks held everyone’s attention with wit, humor and passionate insight.

Home Cocktail Culture with Dennis Hahn

Dennis, a local cocktail enthusiast, was able to convey simple ways to build a home bar from personal experience. It can be intimidating (and extraordinarily expensive) when you start building your bar at home and Dennis was able to break it down to the essentials and recommend multi-purpose tools, easy techniques and great the basic ingredients you should have on hand. Visit Dennis at his blog, Viva La Cocktail.

Steve McCarthy’s Art of Distilling

For the most part, Steve is decidedly anti-cocktail. Luckily, mixologists around the world ignore his leanings and create phenomenal cocktails with the spirits from his distinguished company, Clear Creek Distillery. Steve talked about small batch distilling. 2010 CocktailCamp PDX attendees should remember to bring their lovely Clear Creek gift glasses and passports (passed out during his talk) to the NW distillery to sample a Kir Blonde (Pear Brandy, Champagne and Pear Liqueur), as well as many other premium spirits made from Oregon’s natural abundance of high quality fruit. To learn more we suggest scheduling a distillery tour and be sure to ask about Steve’s distilling seminar this fall.

Shaken or Stirred with Nathan Gerdes

THINK BEFORE YOU SHAKE! Nathan went over when to shake (mostly why you shouldn’t be shaking at all, aside from when you should), why you should stir, refrigeration, freezing, demystification of ice and why James Bond got it all wrong. You can visit Nathan at Alu Wine Bar & Lounge where, as lead bartender, he serves up fantastic drinks. Ask about upcoming wine and spirits tastings too!

Rum, Gomme and Lime with Craig “Colonel Tiki” Hermann, Blair “Trader Tiki” Reynolds and Matt “Rumdood” Robold

“White Grapefruit is sweeter and less bitter than Ruby Red.” Craig opened up a world of citrus complexities, variety and subtleties that the average person wouldn’t have been aware of when shopping for cocktail ingredients. Rumdood Matt gave a history lesson about rum, why it is the “greenest” spirit and rum varieties essential to every home bar needs. He claims “Whiskey kicked rum’s ass back in the day, but rum is coming back with a vengeance.” Blair used an animated slideshow to talk about how sugar is the “unheard hero” of the cocktail and gave attendees some advice on how important it is to balance sugar in your drinks.

Jacob Grier’s Coffee & Tea in Cocktails

Along with wonderful tips for infusing liquor with coffee and tea, Jacob provided insight as to why most bars have difficulty in delivering anything but mediocre coffee cocktails. He then provided clever solutions as to how this can be remedied at home or professionally. Using coffee bitters will allow you to add a coffee flavor to your cocktails without worrying about having fresh beans readily available. Find his coffee bitters recipe on his blog, Liquidity Preference.

We were so lucky to have such an esteemed panel of professional bartenders this year. Visit these clever mixologists at the outfits that are lucky enough to have them:

★ Jacob Grier, Branch Whiskey Bar, Portland, Oregon
★ Suzanne Long, Forbidden Island, Alameda, California
★ Ricky Gomez, Teardrop Lounge, Portland, Oregon
★ Mindy Cook, Toro Bravo, Portland, Oregon
★ Elizabeth Markham, Beaker & Flask, Portland, Oregon

Another special thanks to our wonderful sponsors and supporters: Aviation Gin, Bridgetown Printing, Cocktailia, Imbibe Magazine, New Deal Distillery, One Inch Round, PDX Pipeline, Spring Creek Coffee, The Bitter Truth, The Meadow, and Trader Tiki.

Thanks to our friends who helped out: Nathan, Cecily, Jim, and Steve. Plus a special thanks to Lindsay for delivering The Bitter Truth!

Look for video segments from the event soon and keep your suggestions for next year coming. Feel free to email us your ideas, news, tips, recipes, and feedback. We look forward to hearing from you and seeing you at CocktailCamp next year!

Make sure to join us on the new CocktailCamp PDX Facebook Fan Page.

Thanks for your support.

Cheers!
CocktailCamp PDX
(Aaron Jorbin, Aaron Parecki, Drea Hardin, Jen McCabe, Kenn Wilson, and Sarai Mitnick.)

The first CocktailCamp Portland is done and was a great time for all of us involved in planning it. We had some great speakers, some interesting breakout sessions, and plenty of opportunity to discuss cocktails with people that share a passion for great cocktails.

We are preparing a short survey that we will email everyone who got a ticket later this week and will also be posting the video and slides as soon as we can. While you are waiting for that, be sure to add your pictures to our Flickr group, post your thoughts on your own web sites and blogs, and continue to use the #CocktailCamp hash tag on Twitter to share your thoughts.

OregonLive.com already has a writeup of the event and we’ll be posting more links as they come in. If you’ve written an article or blog post, or found one written by someone else, post in in the comments here. We’ll then post a roundup of everything we’ve found.

Thanks again to all of our speakers, sponsors, and volunteers. Most of all though, thank you to all of our attendees. The event would never have happened if you didn’t have an interest in learning and sharing about cocktails. Stay tuned to this site for information on future Cocktail Camps.

We hope that everyone is looking forward to Sunday. We just wanted to give a heads up to anyone planning on taking Trimet or driving through downtown to get here that the Race to the Roses is going on and there are expected to be delays, so make sure to build some extra time into your transit plans.

For more information check out:
http://trimet.org/alerts/raceroses.htm

Everyone has sat at a bar and had a bartender explain the intricacies of a drink or differences between two different types of a liquor and been interrupted by another patron needing to be served. Our panel discussion, entitled “Ask your bartender”, is your chance to not be interrupted and ask not one, but multiple people who excel at their trade at crafting cocktails. We have bartenders from both top end Portland cocktail lounges and destination bars elsewhere that will be participating.

Format

The format will be a general Q&A, where questions will be provided by the attendees, with a handful or two from our moderator just to get things going. It’s not so much a formal panel, but a conversation that you, the attendees, will be having with these experts.

How To Prepare

We are going to be looking for questions from the audience, so start thinking of them. Also, since we will be filming and posting this (and all the other sessions) online, you can leave a comment here with a question you want asked, even if you won’t be in attendance.

Some sample questions to get your brain thinking:

• Did your interest in craft mixology lead you to becoming a bartender, or did it develop while you were already working behind the bar?
• What’s the one cocktail trend or habit that you would like to see thrown to the wayside?
• If a person told you they had never had a cocktail in there life, what would you make for them?

Post your questions here if you like, or just bring them with you.

Panel participants

The Ask your bartender panel will consist of these great bartenders:

• Jacob Grier, Branch Whiskey Bar, Portland, Oregon
• Suzanne Long, Forbidden Island, Alameda, California
• Ricky Gomez, Teardrop Lounge, Portland, Oregon
• Mindy Cook, Toro Bravo, Portland, Oregon
• Elizabeth Markham, Beaker & Flask, Portland, Oregon

If you’ve ever wanted to ask questions but couldn’t due to crowding at the bar, now’s your chance.

From its inception, CocktailCamp is first and foremost about the community. This is the reason behind the unconference sessions and also why were able to sell out our available seats with basically no promotion other than talking about it on Twitter.

While we don’t have any seats left for the 11th, all the presentations will be recorded so you’ll be able to watch the videos from the comfort of your own home. We won’t be streaming live, but we’ll have the videos online as soon as we can after the event. We’d also like to encourage our attendees to share their experiences. Blog about it, live-tweet, and post your pictures on Flickr, Facebook, and anywhere else.

So that people can find your stuff, be sure to use the #CocktailCamp hashtag on Twitter, and tag your photos and blog posts with cocktailcamp and cocktailcamppdx. As well as making your posts and photos available to people now, they’ll help us promote CocktailCamp 2011 next spring. After the event, we’ll do a round up here of everything you post.

We encourage everyone to publish their photos using a Creative Commons license. We’ll be making a gallery to showcase the photos that best represent the event.

We’ve got an amazing group of speakers lined up, but there is one speaker you don’t see listed on that page, and that’s YOU! One of the components that we’ll be having at CocktailCamp is an unconference track, which is your opportunity to set the discussion. It’s based on the belief that the sum of the expertise of the people in the audience is greater than the sum of expertise of the people on stage.

What is an “unconference”?

Now you might be wondering, what is an unconference? An unconference is a facilitated, participant-driven format where you, the participant, decide what is presented and how it’s presented. This can be an idea that you wish you had submitted as a presentation topic, a question you want other cocktail enthusiasts to discuss, or a conversation that you start with another attendee and think others might be interested in joining in on. Essentially, the unconference will be what you make of it.

How does it work?

When you arrive you will notice a whiteboard with both the current schedule laid out and open spaces for you to add your ideas. When you add a topic, make sure to put your name along with the idea/topic. We have an entire space that is separate from our main area set aside for these unconference sessions, so you don’t have to worry about distracting each other. If you have any questions, feel free to ask Aaron Jorbin (the big haired guy wearing a bow tie; you’ll meet him during the morning introductions).

What you can do now

The first thing is to start thinking of things you would like to discuss. Have you always wanted to make your own bitters? Throw that up on the board as odds are there will be someone there that has done that. Have you experimented with finding the perfect whiskey for a Manhattan? Throw that up as odds are you will find some people willing to discuss it with you. The next thing, kick off the brainstorming by commenting here with any ideas you may already have. Finally, be prepared to have fun. Perhaps you’ll be on to a topic that will be the perfect fit for a presentation at the next CocktailCamp. The unconference is all about you, the participant.

CocktailCamp 2010 is just over a week away and it’s time to break the radio silence we’ve been keeping over here. There’s a lot to say, we just needed to find the time to say it. To start off, here’s a rundown of some general information about the day.

Getting here

First things first, you need to get here before anything else matters. Getting to New Deal by car or bus is pretty straightforward but here’s a Google map to get you started. New Deal is located in an industrial neighborhood and on a Sunday there should be plenty of street parking on the surrounding streets.

Getting in

Don’t forget to print out the PDF ticket you received via email and present it at the door. If you can’t make it for whatever reason, feel free to give the ticket to a friend; tickets are fully transferable. If you bought a ticket but didn’t receive an email with a PDF, contact us and we’ll take care of it.

Just a reminder, CocktailCamp is a 21+ event. If you look young, please have your ID ready. Thanks for understanding.

Food and drink

We’ll have water available as well as coffee provided by Spring Creek Coffee, for those who need a little pick-me-up in the morning or after we break for lunch at 1:00pm. Lunch will not be provided, but we’re just a couple blocks from the Green Dragon on Yamhill and Lucky Labrador on Hawthorne, and there are a handful of other places not too far off.

After party

I know this event is going to make me thirsty, and I suspect I’m not alone here. For various legal reasons, we can’t have a bar at the event, but we’ll be making up for it by having an after party over at Clyde Common once the day wraps up. We probably won’t be able to finagle any drink specials for attendees, so this is actually less “after party” and more “everyone just going out for a drink”, but it will be happy hour so that must count for something. Personally, I don’t need any incentive to go to Clyde Common other than the fantastic drinks I know I’ll get there.

As always, feel free to get in touch if you have any questions about anything that isn’t covered here, and continue watching this space over the next week for more information.

As of this afternoon, CocktailCamp 2010 is sold out. Thank you to everyone who bought tickets, and our condolences to those who won’t get a chance to. We’ll have the presentation videos online shortly after April 11 though, so you can watch those whether or not you attended, and whether or not you’re even anywhere near Portland. We also aim for CocktailCamp to be an annual event, so stay tuned for news about CocktailCamp 2011.

We may be able to work in a couple more seats in the next week or two, so stay tuned for updates.

See you in three weeks!

CocktailCamp PDX is still about a month away and tickets have been going fast. As of today, there are only 10 seats left. If you were on the fence about coming out for it, you had better make up your mind soon.

As always, buy your tickets via the CocktailCamp web site. At $10 each, these last few aren’t going to last long.